I'm sure they will suggest it, but I doubt that Sega will invest as much.
Merging parts of anold version of the game with the current one and all the testing ... that does not come for free.

Why are you pretending these games didn't have story modes?

Please name a few of that old games that where there before the campaign became a thing but that gave us basically skirmish mode.
For strategic games I can only remember the time when games ONLY had a campaign.
You know, like Dune 2 or Herzog.
The first game here with skirmish was (to my knowledge) Command and Conquer, where skirmish was in fact simply replace a possible human player in multiplayer with AI.

And to my understanding all old shooters were sending you through a series of levels to meet an end boss.

And regardless how open, vast or whatever the worlds of RPGs where back then - you had a main story line to follow..

So, what games you are talking about.

It's not GoG's fault. It's Relic's/Sega's. The Steam version of all DoW series games require internet to play the multiplayer (and Skirmishes in DoW2). Only the disc copies of the original DoW series had LAN.

It's still inexcusable. I was hoping the GoG version of Retribution would have offline/SP Skirmishes and Last Stand. So, the "sale" price of $20 is overpriced for what it is (I don't care about the base game and CR, nor any of the multiplayer DLCs).

Really?

Never even played say Quake 3's single-player offline mode? Or say BF 1942 in offline mode with AI/bots? Or even Unreal Tournament GOTY?

Yeah, that's nothing but skrmished bot-matches against AI & can be played offline over whatever maps.

Those games didn't have a traditional campaign at all.

Battlefield didn't really get a Campaign Mode until BF: Bad Company or BF3. And if you wanted Unreal games w/ a campaign, you didn't buy Unreal Tournment games - you bought the main-line Unreal: Gold or Unreal 2.

Someone forgot about BF2 on consoles had great Campaign. If games have no Campaign offline bots are must for me.

Same as will happen when Steam goes down.
Well ... almost. On GOG the single player campaign remains, on Steam it doesn't.

Or people will write emulators like they did for other multi player games in the past.

Apparently, there is already a mod/crack that lets you play AI skirmish offline. It's on Moddb.

First of all, the developer, not GOG, gets to decide what kind of DRM-free version, if any, they are willing to release on GOG.

There seems to be a call by some that if a developer is not willing to release a version where every feature can be used completely independent of online services offered by the developer or GOG (Galaxy), then GOG should not sell the game. I have to push back on that.

Admittedly DoW2 has a quirk with its skirmish mode. However, most multiplayer features in games of the 90's and 00's ran on a third party online service. Many of those have shutdown, like Gamespy and Games for Windows Live, rendering the multiplayer component of those games nonfunctional outside of Steam. Yes, GOG can ask the developer to release a single player only version like FEAR 3 or Supreme Commander 2. Maybe GOG could have asked Sega to release a single player only version without skirmish if Sega refused to change how the skirmish and multiplayer of DoW2 works. But surely it is better for GOG to get a version where the multiplayer/skirmish could at least be played via Galaxy, as long as the offline installer still installs a game that can be played offline just like a single player version would have.

There are games that cannot be played without an internet connection. Should GOG/Galaxy users be forever denied a chance to play those games? Some of those games make money, a lot of money. GOG could use some of that money to further their offering of other DRM-free games.

I know that GOG started with a simple promise of everything offline and DRM free all the time. How many games could GOG offer in those early days compared to now? How many games have been released on GOG that is totally or substantially playable DRM-free when everyone thought those games would never be offline or DRM-free?

Of all the fights for DRM-free, and I am a stronger proponent than most, DoW2 skirmish mode is not the hill to die on.

"Surely" seems like a quite confident way to put it. For those who don't care about having to play with the client DRM, certainly yes, they get more game content. However, in the sense that GOG is ostensibly a DRM-free gaming store and critical in a broader sense to the future of DRM-free gaming as a whole, requiring the client DRM to play parts of games is "surely" worse. Since a gamer can get DRMed client-required multiplayer games basically anywhere, and DRM-free gaming is a very small niche, these are not equal positions and the person who wants to play DRMed games can do so on literally any other storefront. There are some other DRM-free stores for the DRM-free-only gamer, but, none on the scale of GOG and none yet getting the amount of big releases (e.g. Skyrim, Yakuza series, etc.) like GOG still does.

Yes, though (see above) they are not truly denied the chance to play those games unless for some bizarre reason they insist on GOG-only-or-no-buy. So that's a bit of a red herring.

Also, it need not be "forever"...perhaps those games could be patched to work offline...but that will never happen with the attitude that online/client requirements are okay.

Unfortunately there are already games on GOG which cannot be played without an internet connection (GWENT is arguably the worst offender) so the genie is out of the bottle.

Yet the genie being out of the bottle isn't enough for some of the pro-clienters and pro-onliners. Some seem to need the genie to fly across the entire desert civilization before they're happy.

How has that worked out for Humble Bundle over the years? They have basically devolved into a Scheme key reseller and the DRM-free section of the store is a poorly maintained (imo) corner of the store that many customers may not even know exists.

IIrc, I once bought a $20 DRM-free game on there that when I downloaded the offline installer it turned out to be a DRM-free *demo* of a game whose full version was on Scheme (to Humble's credit, they refunded me without issue)..So more money doesn't necessarily = more care to DRM-free section. I would say it's the opposite.

Here on GOG, I ran into an issue with the singleplayer game Tempest, which, since its recent update, doesn't even get to the main menu if you don't have Galaxy running. So they're not maintaining their existing DRM-free games properly, at least in a timely enough fashion for some of us. Let them fix the "offending" games before adding more.

Well that's I think the heart of the distinctions being made here.

I would rather have "smaller selection but 100% DRM-free" than "larger selection, but with DRMed games and DRM-free games", because I think the store should be DRM-free as a whole and the presence of any DRM precludes that in the same way that finding a hair in my soup means the soup cannot be considered "hair-free" even if people try to tell me that it's mostly hair-free or that it's okay because that's the direction modern food preparation went in or that don't worry the chef washed his hair this morning so the hair is merely cosmetic content that can be ignored. Beyond the principled reasons to insist on DRM purity, there are the practical considerations I discussed in the last quote above.

I don't think amazing releases like Diablo+Hellfire or Skyrim or what have you were facilitated in any meaningful sense by the presence of DRMed content like requiring Galaxy to play some old game's multiplayer mode or having GWENT on the store. However, by contrast, I do think pisspoor releases like the later-delisted release of Hitman: Game of the Year Edition which gated huge amounts of content behind being online, were attempted due to the increasing slide towards DRM, with the chief culprit imo being the focus on the Galaxy client over the years.
Sorry, just saw your response. I may have been unclear in my quote. I appreciate the encouragement and your overall comment! I have supported Zoom-Platform by buying various games over the years albeit nothing terribly recently. So while I did not mean to downplay them in general per se; just that in this case I felt the other user may be more interested in other smaller stores where there are (to my knowledge) zero games with any sort of online whatsoever. Cheers again for Betrayer.

And support two different game versions? Heck no.
Try to immagine having to go through the question what the installation source of the game was for every question asked to support or on the forum.
And who would pay for handling two different versions? GOG doesn't sell many copies of a game to begin with.

The game versions installed through Galaxy and the one through offline installers are always supposed to be the same. Sometimes a offline installer is outdated, but either they fix it or Galaxy will patch that version to the newest one.


ps: I don't mind buying from different platforms.
If Zoom Platform or someone else ever offers anything that is DRM free there, but has DRM on GOG, let me know.

Can't link, because mods, but in my opinion at the moment the "Z" has better version of first AvP game - Alien vs Predator gold edition - which doesn't have multiplayer tied to Galaxy, but has old-style features, including LAN. I don't know how about those Rebellion Map packs, if they're available for both version, but they're also included in Gold Edition.

I don't pay attention about more trivial differences (there is a bunch of titles containing some scans of additional goodies etc), but for sure I would recommend AvP game.

Thanks

I knew all these games tying all these MP's with proprietary suites like Steamworks, Epic Online Services, etc. would be a problem when they hit GOG. I knew it, years ago - b/c you knew GOG versions might be lacking content (i.e. see games only shipping w/ their Single Player content here, such as EYE Divine Cybermancy on GOG) and/or their MP might be rolled over to their MP suite for Galaxy.

I think the other key is going to be - namely b/c there's so many Multiplayer portions tied to say a client-app/client-suite like Steamworks - that the dev's and pub need to be CLEAR here on GOG on what's DRM-FREE offline and what's tied to Galaxy, right on the store page.

ALL of that info should be listed on the store page - similar to what Steam does for "Single Player", "Multiplayer", "Steam Achievements", etc.

Except on GOG - they need to be Specific here -> "Single Player Campaign - Offline", "Skirmish Mode - requires GOG Galaxy and must be played Online", "Competitive Multiplayer - requires GOG Galaxy", etc.

And yes - even old games with LAN Support - yes, they should say so "Multiplayer - LAN Support / TCP-IP support", etc etc.

The easy way out for a lot of MP will be for dev's coming from suites like Steamworks (over on Steam) to just re-work it a bit for GOG Galaxy and call it a day - but I really wish a lot of that skirmish stuff did work offline single-player style with bots too; and/or had LAN/TCP-IP support. Dev's need to think more long-term and less short-term, if they care about preserving their classics.

And honestly, it's not fair to the Map makers & dev's that are focused on skirmish - for their maps, skins, characters, systems, etc to die in a short period of time....just b/c nobody's playing it online, at some point. The nice thing about making Skirmish being made to work offline, online server-side, LAN/TCP-IP support, with all options available - is these guys, their legacy & design can live on, if one Joe Smoe wants to play this game b/c they own a copy of it.

I'd love to have had Kane & Lynch series' games w/ their multiplayer skirmished work offline with AI bots and also have the option to take it online with LAN/TP-ICP - wouldn't you? I didn't get a chance to play much of it b/c nobody was playing it - but, wouldn't it rock to bang around the mode while offline? What about Bioshock 2's Skirmish Mode (i.e. Bio2's MP)? Wouldn't it be awesome to play Bio2's skirmish mode offline with bots/AI?

This is very interesting; thanks for the info.

Now we need a modder to figure out a way to unlock all of the Hitman 2016 stuff - and their sequels too, while we're at it - so those can be played offline with ALL of the extra exits, disguises, equipments, etc too.

Of course, it's always better to have it officially done - but, sometimes modders are our best answer for problems, when dev's and pub's ain't officially supporting their game properly and/or those dev's are busy w/ making a sequel, spin-off, or some other awesome game.