I think what GOG does here qualifies as a Foot-in-the-door technique.
By the way, you can still be locked out of your purchase with Gwent: it’s advertised as a free game, but includes in-game purchases.

Their original core principle was "no DRM, no matter what". It’s what got them where they are today.
Now we’re somewhere in "no DRM, unless it’s a multiplayer game, or a free game, or we didn’t manage to remove it".
I wonder what the next step is going to be…

Likely nothing....the main pillar left(afaik) is drm free for SP and that's what sets them apart from other stores for the most part.

There's just one cdpr game(Gwent) that does such and it's otherwise DRM free, and the MP games that need galaxy need nothing else to play MP(afaik).

As such, I think we shouldn't rush to worrying about what ifs and deal with actual problems when/if they arise.

So what would be the benefit of buying such games from GOG, instead of Steam?

I think that is why GOG is so firmly with DRM-free, as they know that is what makes them special.

CDPR still owns gog, though, and can override their decisions if they want....same with most parent companies, i'd expect.

No, CDPR does not own GOG. CDP does.

My mistake.....I mixed them up.....thanks for the correction, good sir. :)

I actually view the multiplayer thing as fair game so long as they aren’t gutting native functionality in the game for non client based multiplayer.

It just feels disingenuous to me to call client based multiplayer drm if it is them adding additional functionality to the game that wouldn’t exist otherwise. If they gut a native feature for multiplayer in favour of their client that’s a different story... but I can’t think of any examples of this.

If you tried to be funny, you didn't succeed one bit.

I remember it happened to Civilization IV on Steam. They disabled multiplayer options such as Direct IP and forced Steam for multiplayer. I think it was re-added some time later, after the outrage this caused.

On GOG, I can live with basing multiplayer on a client if that means that the game is released here and single player works 100% offline, but I agree intentionally removing features such as LAN or direct IP is a no-no.

"Everyone" already had DRM in their games when GOG first started and Valve had started their DRM crusade with Steam a few years before.
Try again.

Hey now! You don't know he's dutch! ;)

I would be totally thrilled to have yet another store that sells Steam keys. We clearly don't have a dime a dozen already.

(To any who read this and don't into humor: The above is a joke)
==================================== (Above ends at 50 seconds, the rest is advertising for the channel it's on)

Earlier GOG simply removed the multiplayer part from games. Sure the partial game (ie. the single-player part) was then DRM-free, but still...

Anyways, I actually want DRM in online multiplayer games because it deters cheaters (being caught and banned from a DRM'ed multiplayer game means losing access to the multiplayer). Also, by its very nature, I don't consider online games as something I need to be able to preserve in order to play 5 or 20 years from now, as they are not really useful unless there are other gamers online playing the same game.

With single-player games, I don't need to care about other players or whether they use cheats against me, so I care about DRM-free.