Well, yes, it is a joke. As a brit, maybe the Polish sense of humor isn't that obvious to you, but believe me, right now somewhere in the GOG offices there are a couple of guys rolling on the floor laughing "Man, did you see that? He couldn't buy the DLC because he didn't have the base game from our store! LOL! This was already the third time this summer. Works every time!".

Well to think I would buy DLC without knowingly having the game seems like a bit of a stretch in stupidity... I was purchasing the DLC for the game I already have (cleary implied.. wasn't it?), anyone that thought any different really need to surround themselves with smarter people.

Some good and logical points in here, and externally you can link games to your Steam profile to enjoy the benefits of what that entails... in a lot of cases this is not so true. To the person (human acknowledged) that stated my outrage was mis-placed.. maybe my crime was misplacing how much benefit I could get from GoG and what I thought was possible.

I'd still like a mods perspective on it, perhaps as DRM is removed, maybe there is an issue with the way it interlinks to the base title/s. Or maybe it is just to generate revenue. Thanks guys ;)

I suspect the root issue / difference between GOG / steam is that steam has a refund process that is nearly 100% automated, and GOG is seemingly 100% manual (submit ticket, get response, yada yada).

Steam is happy to take the revenue even if it's unlikely they'll keep it, because it's little to no cost to unravel it (probably some small transaction fees) and it's convenient from a consumer POV.

For GOG, the refund process has actual labor cost associated with it, thus it makes sense they'd forego some small amount revenue in exchange for the cost savings, and/or consumer aggravation.

if you wanted a (near) universally compatible drm free dlc download without first owning the base game on the store you should have supported shinyloot when they were still on the go.

Try buying a game here and buy DLC for it elsewhere, now boycott that store if the DLC isn't compatible. You can't buy games anywhere if you're going to be consistent with your way of thinking.

You can't. Not for yourself, at least.

Wait wait wait, I thought we were already boycotting mass derepping.

These protests are so confusing!

There's a rather simple logic to this; why would you want to buy a content pack for a game you've yet to own?

Is that the cardboard box from the original Metal Gear?

No, I drew this myself in GraFX2 in about 5 minutes.

Linking a game to Steam that you didn't have a Steam key for doesn't give you any benefits of having bought the game on Steam, though. (Such as achievements.) Surely you knew that. There aren't any stores where you can buy DLC for a game you bought on a different store, so it's odd you'd think GOG would be different, plus I'm unclear why you'd even want this. If you already have the base game on Steam, why wouldn't you just get the DLC there too? It's not like there would be any benefit to having GOG DLC with a Steam game even if it was possible.

Attached is another example of how DLC is handled, in this case Sunless Sea. As you might infer from the file sizes, the Zubmariner DLC download is actually the entire game with the DLC included (so there's no point downloading the base game if you have Zubmariner). If you could use GOG DLC by itself without owning the base game, then buying the DLC would give you the full game + DLC for the price of the DLC alone, which you'd have to admit is unfair. This is the way the developers handled it; GOG didn't make them do it like that, so again, misplaced outrage. It's just not technically feasible for GOG to offer DLC without owning the base game.

The OP is protesting against that, without really understanding how things work, or don't work.

Like, he thought that merely "linking" the GOG DLC to the Steam profile would somehow make the GOG DLC work with the Steam base game, LOL!

The most probable explanation is that the OP incorrectly thinks that GOG is a Steam key seller, ie. sells Steam games (just like Gamersgate.com, Humblebundle etc.).

Suggestion to the Gog staff :

A big red banner on the front store page with this text : We don't sell Steam keys . DLCs bought in here are incompatible with non-Gog base game versions .

Ah, I've only tried it as far as adding a DLC in the shopping basket. never as to actually commence the purchase.