Has anyone actually even asked for the ability for player-hosted servers? I doubt it very much. Most people are just content to play the game.

Ask some of the (millions) Minecraft, pre-Microsoft, players.

However, most people want convenience and typing a some ip numbers is too much work.

Demon's Souls and Battlefield 2 say hello.

Yes. I. And everyone else who asks for DRM-free multiplayer and complains about the Galaxy requirement on many multiplayer games here. Just because you are content with being shackled to a company run server doesn't mean that everyone else likes being shackled too. You're not the measure of all things, you know?

It's fine to use a company run server when one chooses to. But to be forced to use a proprietary server - and Galaxy to boot - is against everything that DRM-free stands for. DRM-free is about choice. I decide how and where I play my game. But GOG is taking away that choice wherever they can get away with it. Which shows that they have abandoned DRM-free as their core principle and have replaced it by Galaxy.

No offense, but that's a bit overly dramatic. Would you freak out at GOG if they started permitting MMOs to publish on here? After all, it's pretty difficult (if not impossible) to allow players to legally host their own private MMO servers without genuine security risks.

I get you... it's like selling computers. It shouldn't be allowed!

And -

Ultima
Everquest
Warhammer
Star Wars Galaxies
WoW
Tiba
Ragnarok
Aion
Lineage


most mmorpgs tend to get private servers, some of course are not legal, but a fair few are for mmorpgs long since dead e.g. Warhammer

Also Earth and Beyond
(also also curses to company that shut it down)

I believe you meant "Tibia". I personally don't mind typos, just that the younger generation won't find it like that.

Thanks for reminding good old games of a genre not represented here.

No. I'm just saying that your preference is not the standard for the whole world. There are many who prefer their multiplayer modes DRM-free. You're simply wrong about your perception that no one asked for player-hosted servers. Nothing dramatic about that ... unless being wrong is a dramatic realization for you.

It shouldn't have existed in the first place. Talk about embarrassing.

Gwent is a always online game that requires Galaxy to work, Cyberpunk requires Galaxy Client also if you want the complete package, so tell me how this isn't DRM ? I game that is crippled by an online platform in order to work or in order to work 100% is in fact DRM 120% !

Precisely. Some games, like Terraria for example, have taken that approach (distributing a headless server binary that you can run yourself).

Its a very future-proof forward thinking way of doing things. It helps ensure that multiplayer for the given game will remain usable no matter what.

And it doesn't even need to entail that much overhead for developers. The problem is that distributors like Steam and GOG chose to focus their efforts toward providing integrations for proprietary multiplayer platforms instead establishing a standard to provide a headless server along with games (including integration libraries).

GOG could have really played to their drm-free base here and provided dual integration for BOTH their galaxy platform AND a freely distributable headless binary.

Heck, its even good for business. Many in the drm-free crowd will buy extra copies of games for their friends and loved ones if those games are playable via a headless server or at least LAN. During the pandemic, I bought my gf, who is abroad, a copy of Terraria so that we can play via a headless server that I setup.

The website was such a cringe that even the Gog officials realized that.