Thank you for your hard work :)

Absolver does not fit your theory, that it's only cosmetic stuff. Boss re-matches, boss loot, several fighting techniques. Those are major parts of a game about stylish fighting and looting and not just some paint-jobs.

Not as big, but also bigger that just some paint jobs are the weapons in Dying Light and Synthetic: Legion Rising.

But you're right. There were games where bonus material was missing. What triggered this protest was the fact that CDPR started to DRM their own bonus content. This shows either a change in corporate direction - or proves that the doomsayers who always predicted that GOG was on a continuous and intentional path towards more DRM were right all along.
Still, GOG should not allow something like Absolver here and this game nicely illustrates how lax GOG's definition of 'affecting the single player game in a major way' is. I would say Absolver is majorly affected. GOG says 'meh, you can start the game in single player mode. Content is overrated.' and probably thinks: 'meh, as long as we get money for it, we're OK with everything'.

I talked about Absolver multiple times, it's a special case because it's not like it's some looter shooter or rogue like where you can keep playing forever increasing difficult enemies while improving your character, the game is basically a PvP game with a small single player campaign.

It's not like you have a new game plus or anything, once you finish the game all that remain is farming for the PvP which is the endgame. The game itself it also rather easy so it's not like re-fighting bosses poses any challenges it's more endless grinding to improve your character so that you don't get wreck when playing against another player.

I would have agreed on No Man Sky if it wasn't fixed, as I said the only reason why I was somewhat lenient with the NMS situation in the first place was because it was added 4 years after release.

I don't know about Synthetic, but as far as Dying Light is concerned, the game is basically a shooter looter-like you get tons of weapons and those weapons break after a couple of minutes, so yes Gold tier weapons can mostly only be obtained in online modes but they are just slightly better than legendarily, they are more a novelty that anything.

I agree that is was stupid, I can understand that they wanted to push peoples to register on Gog, even peoples who purchases the game elsewhere, but they should have included it by default in the Gog version. (I still think they will include it by default eventually like they did with other "bonus" in Witcher games)

But I don't think that it's a change of corporate direction or anything, more yet another dump PR move to try to increase Galaxy and Gog visibility, but given Cyberpunk issue it just managed to had some more oil on the fire.

I think it more illustrate how fuzzy the DRM definition is, heck even you own thread shows that peoples have different, sometime very personal, ideas on what constitute a DRM or not. Gog considered that the single player part of Absolver was enough to call it DRM-free, as I said you can argue whenever it's the case or not, same thing happened some times ago with Goblins Inc and I am sure there will be other similar "fringe" cases in the future.

But I don't think it's any indication that Gog "changed" or suddenly embrace DRM, just that more and more games follows the craze of "register on our forum and gets this exclusive skin" or "play online to get this exclusive goodie", not for DRM purpose but because of, IMHO, a misguided attempts to create some online community or involve peoples in multiplayer, and that Gog, instead of taking a fully binary approach and reject all those games is more working on a case by case basis.

Kinda funny. They certainly didn't believe in the dev's right to design and sell their games in a way they choose when they cancelled Devotion and Detention...

*makesyouthink.jpg*

Goblins Inc isn't here anymore, is it? As for Absolver: if that really is their reasoning, they should just classify Absolver as pure multiplayer game with an offline training mode. But that again hits one of the major problems on GOG: communication. GOG would need to explain why they are OK with the DRM in Absolver - and for that, they would have to admit that it is there in the first place. But as usual, GOG chooses silence and ignores all questions about the DRM in Absolver.

But now, that Ponczo has broken the silence, we have a clear statement: as long as the single player game isn't affected in a major way, GOG is OK with DRM. ... And what constitutes a major way is up to GOG or the devs to decide. I find it worrying that GOG doesn't say 'as long as the single player game isn't affected. Period.' ... no, reducing the single player eperience in a minor or moderate way is officially OK. As long as it isn't 'major'.


True. In that case they believed in the Chinese government's right to censor the way developers design their games. Even beyond their own jurisdiction. Worldwide, to be precise.

Yes but it was another example where there was some discussion about its single player part.

Again it's not binary, it's not all black or all white. I played Absolver campaign and never cared about the PvP part, it's not a long game but we had much shorter games released here, heck I would say that the recently released Little Nightmare II is probably shorter than Absolver SP despite the later being an 100% offline game.

So why would this game be considered as a "pure multiplayer", you have games like some of the CoD where the SP campaign is less than 2 hours long does it means that those games should never be released here because the SP campaign is too short and the majority of the "endgame" is the multiplayer ?

Again it's nothing new, we had a lot of games where "part" of the single player missing, we had games where some pre-order bonus were exclusive to a specific vendor, games where some optional content was not released on Gog for X or Y reason, where some SP content was only available directly from the devs (e.g. Neverwinter Nights), heck we even had a game where the actual ending DLC was never actually released on PC and is only available on console. But all those games were released on Gog because Gog considered that the missing part were minor enough to not impact, and it's the same today with Dying Light, X4 or others, you can play the whole SP section just fine and Gog is ok with some optional skins / cheat or other minor things being removed or only available thorough Galaxy.

Why should that matter? So it's ok if a game comes onto GOG DRM-free and then the developer introduces DRM via a sneaky patch several years later?

So what? Non-cosmetic content is non-cosmetic content. Do you see this is precisely how slippery slopes happen? First, we have people arguing that cosmetic content doesn't matter, then the next step is people like you arguing that 'minor' non-cosmetic content doesn't matter, because it's only a little bit better than the regular, non-DRMed content. Yeah, we can excuse that ... What's next Gersen? Where are you going to pull the line back to next?

This is why I absolutely reject ALL these attempts to normalize and justify any level of DRM, including cosmetics. If we give an inch, they will take the mile. The line has to be drawn somewhere. And, when I draw a line, it stays right where it is.

Sorry, but why should the length of the SP game matter? That is totally, utterly irrelevant. It seems you are intent on doing whatever mental gymnastics you can muster to justify and defend the presence of DRM on GOG.com. No. Single payer content is single player content, period. The length of it does not matter.

Regarding your point that there may not have been a change in policy with GOG, you may be right. I suspect the downward slope started when CDPR went public. At that point, it was inevitable that, as with any corporation, they would cast off any moral principles they once had in the pursuit of ever increasing profit margins. It may be the case that their misguided direction has become increasingly clear over the past year or two.

However, as far as I am concerned, none of that matters. It doesn't matter exactly when they decided on this course change - who cares? To me, all that matters is that they are clearly heading in the wrong direction. GOG is on a misguided course that is clearly going to lead to them increasingly abandoning DRM-free. What matters is where we are, not how we got here. We need to make a stand now, to show that we will not tolerate the direction the store is headed in and push for a change now, before it is too late.

So, many of these points you are making may be correct, but they seem rather irrelevant. You saw what was going on and where the store was headed before everyone else did? Congrats. Ataboy, have a gold star. The question is: given that knowledge, what are you going to do about it?

Sorry I haven't been following the thread, so just for my knowledge, where was this said?

It was in an e-mail response to a user who asked why GOG wasn't doing more to address the games that are listed here to include DRM. I have now quoted it on the first post of this thread.

Thank you, I found the exact post, in case you want to also add it to the OP.

OK. So you are arguing now, that Absolver IS a single-player game too. As such it should be DRM-free. It really is a binary thing. Either it is DRM-free, including all Techniques and weapons that you can use in singleplayer, or it isn't. When I have to go online to learn a technique or earn some loot, that I want to use in the single-player game, the single player game isn't DRM-free.

What I meant is, if GOG wants to give Absolver a free pass, because it is only multiplayer, then they should classify it as only multiplayer. If they sell it as single-player game, it has to be DRM-free. Which it isn't.

Myself, I would prefer it if all multiplayer games here were DRM-free too. But GOG has decided against that long ago and many, many gamers have swallowed the lie that DRM is necessary for multiplayer. Which it isn't.

If you allow for a sliding scale of DRM, you only invite more DRM. Because GOG will always push towards allowing more DRM. I and many others have been warning about that and the development of GOG proves this suspicion right. So, a binary classification is the only way to stay DRM-free. Either a game is DRM-free or it isn't. No matter what the DRM-ed content is and if it is 1% or 99% of the game. Or to re-use a comparision I used before: either you are cancer-free or you have cancer. No matter whether it is one tumor or a hundred. The difference is only: if you start doing something about it as long as it is one tumor, you have a chance to remove it. Once the cancer has spread, your chances are very slim. The same with DRM. If you wait to get angry about the DRM on GOG until it is already everywhere, there will be no going back.

This is a great analogy. "Well, it's ok ... it's only a little bit of cancer and it's not hurting me right now. If I leave it alone, it won't get any worse, right Doc?"

Because it's not something existing that was locked behind a DRM, as in it's not a Dev adding a DRM stealthy after X years as you said, but the dev adding a whole new feature that didn't existed before, on a game that had a ridiculously high number of new features added for free over more than four years.

So yes I was more lenient about it because of that. If it was a game released on day one like that I would have been a lot less.

I said optional content, cosmetic is just an example of that but not everything, in Dying Light case it's basically the same weapon with a different rarity color and some different stats and it's all random, it's just that when playing some of the online mode you have a very small chance of having a gold rarity to drop and can also be used in SP. But you can play SP for hundreds of hours having billions of weapon drop and not getting a gold drop once every X million years instead of a legendary won't really change anything in the experience... therefore optional.

That's fine, but then I would say that Gog probably never was the shop you were looking for. As I mentioned they already had games with some optional SP content removed / not available on the Gog version for years.

I mention length as a example as to why Gog probably considered that Absolver single player part had enough content to qualify it as having a single player part and not being just a "multi player-only" game.

No, the whole "going public" is just a basic easy scapegoat, before it was publishers, now it's shareholders, later it will probably be CEOs, etc....

It started when Gog started selling more recent games, with old games there was no issue, the games didn't had any DLC and the MP was either totally dead or using LAN. But with recent games started the issues of DLCs, regional pricing, optional content, etc... and Gog had the choice of either remain as strict as before on all those subjects and die and loosen / remove some of their rules while keeping the DRM-free part for the core SP part of games and sell recent games.

The same things I am doing since 2008, continue purchasing DRM-free games on Gog like before, if someday they stop being DRM-free then I will stop and you will be able to add me to your boycott list.
That's the thing, you can play Absolver from start to finish (i.e. the single player part) offline with nothing locked down.

It's just that, once you finish the single player story you can continue playing, online, to level up your character, lean others technique, all that to prepare for PvP.

Also note that since its release Absolver had a DLC that was supposed to increased the amount of single player content (i.e. offline) but I finished the game before that and I haven't replayed it since so I don't know what this DLC added.

DRM is DRM. Whether it was added to the game intentionally or not is irrelevant. Imo, it doesn't excuse GOG in any way from their obligation to uphold their stated standards on their store.

'Optional' is a very vague term and could be applied to a wide variety of things. Most of the content (i.e. side quests) in a game like Oblivion is 'optional'. So, if we are exempting 'optional', it would be ok for optional side-missions to be locked, that are part of the 'base game'?

This seems to be at the core of our disagreement: that we have different definitions of DRM. Let me ask you then: what is your definition of DRM? Where is your line drawn? Mine is any game content (single or multiplayer) that is locked behind a requirement to connect to a remote server.

I would also suggest that if GOG were ever to cross the line of what you seem to consider DRM, by that point it would be far to late to do anything about it (or at least, doing something about it would be far more difficult).