But I think that it's exactly where the problem (and the whole Hitman fiasco) lies, on one side you have what peoples are "expecting / imagining" what DRM is or not (and it changes depending to whom you ask) and on the other side what Gog consider what is a DRM or not.

In your post you said : "the simple reason that the underlying desire for DRM-Free is game preservation, ie, being able to play a game offline 20 years in the future as you bought it, with no content missing, nothing interfering in the startup"

So if you install a game through Galaxy, let's say Fallout 1, backup the install folder, you can preserve it, play it offline in 20 years (if PCs still exists by then),no content is missing and nothing interfere with the startup, so by your definition it would quality as DRM-free (And I would agree) ?

Yet you will find plenty of peoples on this very forum who will fight you to the death saying that if you cannot download the offline installers or have to use Galaxy to do so then it is not DRM-free.

The big problem with "DRM-free" is that it is more a marketing gimmick than a clear statement, as in it's more marketing to say "We sell DRM-free games" than saying "We sell games that don't requires copy protection or online activation to play the single player part, but we don't case about the multiplayer part or optional cosmetics". When most games were offline only or with dead multiplayers it was enough, but IMHO it is no longer the case nowadays when we see more and more games with more or less optional online components.

IMHO what Gog should do is to put in the FAQ somewhere a very clear definition of what they consider as being DRM and what they do not.

After that peoples would be free to agree, disagree, to try to get Gog to change their position or find another store altogether. Because I think that no matter what they do with Hitman the problem will not got away and will appear more and more often in the future and that simply using DRM vs DRM-free will only result on endless threads on whenever or not having round icons instead or square ones is a form of DRM.

Yes, on one side we have people with brains who can think critically and come to good conclusions.

And on the other side, we have people (apparently like you, quoted user) who do everything in their damned power to excuse consumers being harmed, who apologize for companies (who truly don't need it), and otherwise are grossly misguided about things. The same people who love to spout DEFINITIONS DEFINITIONS!, while refusing any. And also not understanding that it's not about as written words, but actually using thoughts for applying them. Since you are so set on "definitions": consider connotation [people who see DRM as DRM even as others try to deny it] vs denotation [DRM-defenders, contrarians, edge lords, "devil's advocates" [etc] like you].

A few years ago I might have agreed but less so now in the direction we're heading in now for newer games on the store. We're seeing missing content due to Galaxy having it's own special way of downloading "extra bonus" content that's seemingly being "silently activated" like how Steam activated separate DLC 'depots' and locked to just Galaxy (that was why Deus:Ex MD DLC was initially broken). And we're seeing Galaxy API being embedded deeply into games (with GOG's encouragement and blessing) such that some new games now have broken settings unless they are always run through Galaxy due to how Galaxy has taken over a core internal function of the game.

If we were at the point where Galaxy genuinely was just a fancy GOG downloader 2.0, and once the files are offline that's that, for every game in the store, there may be an argument but we're already past that situation, in that we have games like SR3 Remastered that remain broken 5 months post launch if you try to run them without Galaxy, and no attempt to fix it. Let's see this crap fixed first (of which GOG have shown little to no enthusiasm), and then we'll discuss how "optional" Galaxy is in practise because right now there are games on the store where Galaxy is needed every time (like Steam) for them to work properly, and not just to "download the files the first time".

Edit: This is the one of the reason why few people used to say the old GOG Downloader was DRM but increasingly see Galaxy as starting to act like it. The downloader was just a downloader that didn't force the use of galaxy.dll or alter the offline installer builds in any way. Galaxy API however has far more reaching effects that are "not without issues" for impacting client-less offline usage.

Come on, here you are taking very specific and limited examples, Saint Rows 3, Necrobarista are bugs, it's not acceptable and it must be fixed and Gog is taking their sweet time to have them fixed (With of course their trademark lack of communication), but still, it remains two games out of 3000+ for the very vast majority including those using Galaxy implementation they work transparently with or without Galaxy, and still my point was not that all devs were able to implement Galaxy without screwing up, but that something you or me might consider as being DRM-free would be considered as being a DRM by others.

I dare you to name one example where the offline installer is working for months and years, while Galaxy users have issues all that time. That type of reverse situation would never be allowed to happen, as everything is poured into this damn "mother of all clients". And calling those issues "bugs" may be technically accurate but is generous considering they have major effects on the user experience for one type of customer but not another.

As several people commented here in the past, if GOG went out of business, Galaxy would become abandoned and if a serious security issue was later discovered in non-updated galaxy.dll's that due to no-one being around to fix was serious enough to get blocked on an OS level, that would actually break many hundreds of "Galaxified" GOG games in a way it wouldn't have with pre-2014 installers. Obviously that's not a likely short-term issue, but as a wake up call to those who think it's outlandish, we've already seen it happen with SecuROM, Adobe Flash, etc, dll's get hard-blocked by W10. Fixing it would literally involve swapping out the galaxy.dll with a fake one exactly as pirates do to remove Steam's DRM. And the bottom line is, dealing with that 'exactly like DRM' crap isn't why people want actual DRM-Free installers regardless of what you want to personally call it.

What can I say to you if you don't even get why always online is DRM... only one thing, you are stupid.
if you can start to make sense we can have a conversation but if you cannot understand a simple concept like this there is nothing to discuss.

Also, galaxy like steam like epic is not drm by default, if you use them as a download and the result can be played offline without limitation that's not drm.
But if there are limitation to that backup for any reasons that's drm.

So a MMO that is always online is almost always DRM only (there is a way to make that DRM-free, just use player 2 player connection by default or LAN and that will always work even if the server go down in the future).
Denuvo is DRM because it just not protect the drm, it also make call to a server so it will need a connection to work.
Anything that try to prevent you from using your purchase is DRM unless there is an official workaround for it (so for multiplayer if the server go down if there is a player2player connection mode or LAN that is DRM-free and of course the server should not check if I own my copy of the game, I should be able to connect to the server without identify my identity).

And I'll add one more thing... there are some kind of old DRM that I can accept and I don't even mind, like serial keys that will work offline and are static. I don't mind to insert a serial key to install a game even if it's drm if it will work by the end of my life and I don't need to connect to a server.

the most important thing for me is that I need to be able to make a complete backup that will always work. Anything else I call it DRM.
You can say it's my own opinion (I don't mind) but you cannot say "always online is not a drm" like it's a fact because that's your wrong stupid opinion.

Why do you want me to give you example of something I never said or even implied ?

On of the reason why Galaxy was created was to be able to have patches and fixes faster than with the offline installer, if you don't remember or weren't there at the time but it was actually a big issue with Gog in the past where offline installers of newer games were routinely days if not weeks behind the Steam version.

So that Galaxy version are patched more often, more regularly than the offline version it is by design and it always was. Now where I agree with you is that it is not an excuse for the offline installers to lag behind, while it can be understandable that the offline installer might be one or two days behind the Galaxy version it is not acceptable when they are weeks or even months behind and that is something that Gog definitely needs to fix one way or another.
Dude, In case you missed it I didn't admit that it is subjective, my whole argument was that what peoples consider DRM-free or not IS subjective and most of the time not based on the technical definition of DRM and that things would be better if Gog made a clear statement on what they consider to be DRM-free or not, at least it would be possible to discuss on something concrete instead of everybody making up their own definition and being angry about it.

No, that's comparing apples and oranges, the whole issue with Securom and why it got blocked by Microsoft was because it was installing a driver with old un-managed code that could constitute a security loophole. But that's all, they also didn't disable / blacklist the non driver part of Securon. For example FEAR on Gog still uses Securom parts, even though the disk check is bypassed, and yet the game works fine under Windows 10.

For Flash it was something similar, it was un-managed code running outside of the browser sandbox and therefore could be used by an attacker go gain access to your computer.

But that's doesn't apply for Galaxy.dlls, even if Galaxy was no longer supported and a critical security flaws was found in it, then at worst it would be Galaxy itself that would be banned to prevent it to run, but even then it's would be unlikely, there are thousands of badly programmed programs out there full of security flaws and Microsoft didn't block any of them, that's what the UAC is for.

Also even if somehow Galaxy was blacklisted it wouldn't impact simple DLL located in the install folder. You think that all the old games that ships with outdated DLLs of Gamespy or other similar long dead online services don't contains any security flaws ? Yet none of them are blacklisted.

IMHO Microsoft is more likely one day to totally kill Win32 support (at least natively) than ever start blocking Galaxy.dll.

I think the gog staff is using one account for each thread where people are worried about to spread lies and try to convince people that "is not drm"... I saw the same type of stupid arguments on the
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/boycotting_gog_2021

just different name.

Interesting, where can I learn more about this galaxy.dll issue? Also can you give a scenario/example of a security issue that might get the galaxy.dll blocked on an os level? Also what about the steam.dll, is that a similar issue?

They already have. For a long while it was "Single-player = 100% offline but we don't guarantee online multi-player and if a game has that we'll usually remove it" (eg, Bioshock 2). Problem is more recently that was watered down to "partial chunks of single-player content if it were DRM'd on other stores due to the game being half a product half a service but we'll make excuses for that by calling it 'bonus content' even though we regularly included other 'bonus content' in other games in the past". There is no unchanging concrete technical definition of what GOG deems DRM-Free that you appear to be demanding, since GOG themselves have noticeably watered it down quite a bit over the past couple of games to get "half product, half service" games like 'Hitman Trainwreck Release Edition' here.

Bottom line is though as AB2012 said, people are here for the offline installers - we know why we're here and what we're here for without defining definitions - and for many people the reason isn't wanting GOG to become a 2nd rate Steam or making excuses for butchered single player games. If that's how far you're willing to stretch your personal "DRM-Free" definition, then I doubt you'll ever get anyone with agree with you here on the subject...

You might think that's your argument but it falls flat on it's face because you believe a "technical" definition is the only one that matters -- in spite of the fact that you previously acknowledged that intention is relevant to determining what is or isn't DRM. Your "argument" is shot through with inconsistency. A "technical" definition is mostly relevant to how DRM is implemented, not what it is or isn't.

There is no issue at the moment (at least for non XP users, though we could soon see a repeat of that for W7-10 if galaxy.dll's end up compiled for W11), just another potential "point of failure" for future retro rigs that's really completely unnecessary for offline installers to have in the first place.

Exactly. Game preservation is all about extending the life of a video game by removing as many potential "blocks" and dependencies for the future as possible. This includes 1. DRM, 2. Middleware (eg, game clients or launchers that 'need' an OS version higher than the actual game does and run on an older system). The fewer "points of failures" the less likely it is for a game to have any future compatibility issues (outside of the game code). Personally I'm at that stage where I simply don't care if people want to sit around all day playing word games over 1. and 2. as "completely different things". In reality, the lifespan of a game is extended by removing as many of both as possible, not swapping one set of issues for another then arguing over theoretically "perfect definition" labels to eternity (that never really existed in the first place).