That's my fault for being ambiguous in the title, sorry. Gog isn't retroactively forcing galaxy for multiplayer but more & more releases are requiring it for online features & multiplayer.

Exactly. They always say "But the singleplayer is DRM free so the game is DRM free". But what about the games which only have multiplayer, which difference to their competitor Steam is there still, exactly? I don't see one. And why should the customer buy here, again, then? Questions I ask myself when I'm up at night

All modern multiplayer-only games require you to create an account somewhere. Heck, a good chunk of older ones did as well, does gamespy ring a bell? Hell, old Westwood games had an online client. Wouldn't you prefer to just use the same account to play MP games as you do to buy them?

I actually wouldn't mind signing in with my gog account to play online. I just object to having to run it through the galaxy client. If all I had to do was slap in my username and password or a 1 off key I wouldn't be complaining.

Nope. I'd rather favor to buy the game and get a serial code with it I enter while installing, and have the whole game operating un-dependent of the buyers platform. Also plenty of games which did that in the past, too lazy to list em.
As on why, it's obvious. less dependency less woes when some service goes tits up or decides to ban your ass.
But that's not the point at all, is it? My point is there literally is no difference between a game having multiplayer only driven by galaxy and, say, every other DRMed game out there each using its own launcher, like Overwatch. At least LAN should be an option.

The problem is gog claims it's optional and yet it's not if I want to play the game for what I bought it for. Also if the post claiming gog only put the galaxy requirement on the page 2 days before release is true (it wasn't there when I preordered months ago) then surely gog knew about them utilizing galaxy a long time before that and neglected to update the information. I purposefully haven't purchased any games on gog that require galaxy for multiplayer, so in this instance I feel a little conned by them.

Galaxy just isn't established enough for me yet and it's still in beta with no major revisions for sometime which, to me, implies gog is half-arsing it as usual. They did the same thing with gog downloader before abandoning it for their steam clone and downloader was incredibly simple by comparison (I still use it & it's still temperamental). Galaxy also has too much potential to be altered in negative ways and I just don't trust gog to have my best interests like I did in the early years because it feels like they've taken a lot of steps at my expense.

I assume you've requested a refund by now ... ?

I've contacted support but obviously they don't work weekends. I haven't specifically asked for a refund, I'm more interested in what gog says in response as they are false advertising DRM free & they always seem to hide from threads like this.

For those that seem to have short memories, GOG did actually release games whose Steam versions were based on Steamworks matchmaking and user account authentication. The result of steadfastly refusing to implement this? The games were either nothing more than cracked versions of the Steam version (Brütal Legend) or had the multiplayer option simply excised from the game (Anomaly 2).

Those games were still DRM-free, only instead of a multiplayer mode behind a matchmaking service, there was no multiplayer mode at all or only one that was entirely non-functional.
No, they're not, and honestly, these desperate attempts to try and redefine "DRM-free" to try and justify these hissy-fits are starting to get very tiring.

The bar for DRM-free is set by the ability of the game to be played when you have no LAN or internet connection whatsoever. If the bulk of the game can be reliably played offline, it's DRM-free. That's what Shadow Warrior 2 does - the game can be played without connecting to an online server. Many multiplayer games nowadays use centralised infrastructures for in-game profile management in a way that cannot be reliably achieved with simple direct IP connections (levelling up, leaderboards, matchmaking).

Honestly, in a lot of cases, I suspect a lot of the bitching about it is coming from people who bought one copy to share around with several friends and are pissed that they can't do it.

I didn't complain about that. I don't mind putting in my username & password to play. I bought the game for co-op multiplayer, galaxy is preventing me from playing multiplayer without using it when it's supposedly optional & not part of the game. Third party software preventing you from playing mulriplayer without it sounds like drm to me.

Well, then you're arguing semantics because basically what you're asking GOG to do is bundle in a "Galaxy-lite" with the installer and not show you the GUI, because honestly, that is what it would take for multiplayer as SW2 offers it to run.

GOG did bundle a Galaxy-lite client with a couple of games in the past - Double Dragon Trilogy, AvP Classic and The Witcher Adventure Game. Whether it might be possible to do that again, where you get presented with a login window with an offline option upon launch, but as I recall, that too met with a huge uproar here.

I'm actually pretty sure GOG claimed that Galaxy'll be required for MP from the getgo, but I can't find where. I wasn't looking too hard tho.

Yup, and I vastly prefer the current approach, since I can install Shadow Warrior 2 and launch it directly without ever needing to tough Galaxy in any way, unless I want to play MP. If Galaxy was integrated, this would quite simply not be possible.

Let's rewind things a bit. Every single game that came to the GOG store is solely responsible for whether or not it provides multi-player at all, and how they go about providing it. Before GOG created the Galaxy client and backend services platform GOG.com did not have any multiplayer service available at all, and if GOG wanted a game to come here, or if the publisher of the game wanted it to come here then these were the following options with regards to matchmaking service:

1) The game developer would have to implement the entire multi-player matchmaking service themselves from scratch, and host it with their own back-end servers. This was the most common approach in the 90s and early 00s prior to the uprising of online digital distribution platforms and the prevalence of the ubiquitous Steam API and back-end services and other alternatives. This is the most costly of all options as it is the "do it yourself" option. The upside of this option is that the game developer/publisher are in direct control of the multi-player matchmaking service and can keep it running as long as they are in business and decide to keep it alive. The downside of this, is that many companies end up shutting down their multi-player servers after a few years due to a decrease in active players because eventually the cost of keeping the multi-player component online grows larger than the revenue that is being produced by the game's sales. The companies generally kill the multi-player matchmaking eventually and gamers are left either with any other remaining multi-player options that might be present (ie: LAN or DirectIP if available) or a single-player-only game. As a result, a large number of games no longer have multi-player matchmaking available anymore because the game's developer/publisher owned servers went offline years ago and they wont bring them back online. Modern versions of some of these games still have the code for multi-player present it just doesn't work without the servers. Other games have had the multi-player just ripped out because it was no longer functional anyway.

2) The game developer chose to save a tremendous amount of time, effort and money and use a pre-existing service such as GameSpy to implement the multi-player matchmaking in their game. The upside is that this allowed them to essentially subcontract that part of the game to a 3rd party and be able to complete their game and get it into the marketplace sooner. The downside is that the game company is not in full control of the longevity of the game servers and the multi-player function and are relying on that 3rd party. Sadly GameSpy went out of business years ago, and with them went the multi-player matchmaking capability of any games that used that service, instantly making the game limited to single-player and any other multi-player modes the developer may have chosen to implement (LAN, DirectIP, etc.) The games that used GameSpy thus no longer have multi-player matchmaking unless the developer/publisher has decided it was crucial part of their game's business strategy and they spent the money and other resources to redevelop a new multiplayer back end or switch to some other available 3rd party service.

3) The game used the Steam API for matchmaking services, which in turn requires the Steam client to play multiplayer matchmaking. The developer would be required to replace this functionality with something else that does not require Steam to get it on GOG, or the multi-player matchmaking component would need to be replaced with either a 3rd party service like GameSpy, or a service developed and provided by the game developer themselves. GameSpy is defunct nowadays and the go-to solution is almost universally Steam API these days, which would mean such a game either doesn't come to GOG at all, or it comes as a single-player only experience.

All of the above scenarios are sub-optimal for GOG customers because all 3 of them have a reliance on a 3rd party service (from the respective of the GOG platform/storefront). They either require a publisher ran service, Steam, or a 3rd party service in order for multi-player to exist at all, and for it to be kept running over time. What this has resulted in over time is a lot of games coming to GOG without working multi-player matchmaking and often without any form of multi-player at all. The game "Full Spectrum Warrior" is a prime example. This game originally used GameSpy for multi-player but when it was released here after GameSpy died, they released the game as a single-player only game. The company re-implemented multi-player using the Steam API because that was the simplest, cheapest and fastest solution available to them at the time. Obviously a company is not going to want to incur a great expense of rewriting something like that entirely themselves with a game long since out of its prime, so Steam's API is a very attractive business proposition. In the end - GOG gamers lose out, and so does GOG. Worse, some game companies decide they do not want to release their game single-player only here single-player and fragment their audience with a sub-optimal product, and that they'd rather just have the whole experience with one simple solution - so the game ends up Steam-only with multi-player.

Over time, Steam has become the defacto way for publishers of PC games to implement multi-player match making. It is not the only way it is done but it is certainly the most common way, and it is because it is a solid reliable solution that is cost-free and saves developers a tonne of money, time and effort. It's hard to compete with that from a business perspective.

The problem with all of this is that GOG previously never had their own compelling solution to the problem that was attractive to developers/publishers and so many companies just simply would not even consider bringing their games here at all if they did not find the prospect of rewriting their entire multi-player matchmaking solution from scratch just for the small (relative to Steam) number of increased sales they might get by releasing their game here. They'd have to do 10 or more times the work for 1/10th to 1/100th or less the customers depending on the game. It just doesn't work for the bottom line.

GOG recognized this and set out to create the multi-player component of the GOG Galaxy platform in order to provide a new alternative to game publishers/developers. The purpose of Galaxy multi-player towards game developers is to provide a ready-made easy-to-use API and back end servers for handling multi-player games without the game publisher having to spend the time and resources to do all of that work themselves, thus making Galaxy multi-player a new potentially attractive option that publishers might decide to use instead of just not bothering to sell their games on GOG at all, or selling them here with multi-player matchmaking ripped out. Also, because GOG runs the service, like Steam - the longevity of the service is tied to the store/distribution instead of some short lived gaming service or developer, and the costs of running the service are lower being shared across various games and are on the store's bottom line not the publisher.

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As a result, game developers may now choose to use Galaxy multi-player instead of no multiplayer, and they might bring their game to GOG now instead of not bothering to bring it here at all due to the high expense and low return of doing it all themselves before.

Let's be very clear here - GOG does not force or in any way require game companies to use the GOG Galaxy multi-player service nor any other service. They provide it as an optional convenience to developers who choose to use it to save time, money and effort and it is up to the developer of a game whether or not they wish to use that service or not. Developers are not forced to use GOG's Galaxy services any more than a developer is forced to use the Steam API to sell games on Steam either. Both APIs are completely optional and provided only by these platforms as a potential convenience to game developers. It is the game developers themselves that review their available options and choose whether or not to use any of the services provided by these convenience APIs.

If a game uses Galaxy multi-player matchmaking and you don't want that, then do not buy that game here. The end result is the same thing you would have if GOG never had Galaxy multiplayer service to begin with largely, because that game probably would not be available for sale on GOG at all in that case. The game is probably here to begin with simply because the Galaxy API exists at all in the first place, and that gives people the chance to buy the game without having to go off-platform to Steam/Origin/wherever, including if they only just want the single-player experience anyway.

What you're essentially asking for, is for GOG to shut down it's Galaxy service because you don't want to use Galaxy or have anything to do with it. That is infeasible and simply not going to happen now or ever. GOG has invested significant resources and time into the development of all aspects of their Galaxy software, APIs and services to improve the gaming platform and draw new publishers and new games to their DRM-free store. They've been successful in doing so, and gamers have responded by spending gobs more money here and validating the platform.

All matchmaking services require a backend centralized server to run. For that to work someone has to own it, and it has been shown over the last decade and a half or more that the most reliable place for these back end services to run and be continuously available over the longest period of time, is when the storefront/distributor/retailer owns and manages the service. If you dislike match-making, that's your choice but you're in the minority out there so no game company is going to wake up tomorrow and remove a valuable in-demand feature like this from all of their games because people are out there who don't want it - when those people don't have to have it simply by not using that feature (you're not forced to play multi-player), or by not buying the game at all if it bothers them that much.

Then there are the "Well I'm not going to buy ANY games from your store then anymore! NEENER NEENER NEENER!" people. To them I say "don't hit your head on the door on the way out" as their numbers are small and have no net harm to these proven in-high-demand gaming services nor to profitability.

Complain all you want about it, misunderstanding the reasons why it exists and the dynamics at play, but it isn't going to go away.

As for the other item that comes up in such discussions like this - the lack of LAN and DirectIP multi-player options in games in the last decade or so - that's something that a game developer decides to implement or not implement in their games based on their own choices and has nothing to do with GOG. If someone is upset due to the lack of these options being available in a given game, and transfers their anger to GOG because the game uses GOG Galaxy multi-player matchmaking, your anger is misplaced - direct that towards the people writing the game's code who made that decision - the game developers themselves.

In all cases, GOG is an innocent neutral party in all of this simply trying to provide useful services to game developers to draw more game publishers and games to the platform and thus to provide those games for sale DRM-free to their customers, and their strategy is working highly successfully so they're going to keep doing it. Regardless however, if someone doesn't like the way this is all done, talk to the game developers - that is the sole way that your voice has a remote chance of being heard where it could have any effect on changing the outcome of things in any way.