They do leave themselves a *lot* of room for allowing blatantly DRM'ed content that would have been unthinkable here before. Basically anything and everything beyond "you can start the single player game offline without Galaxy and it's technically possible to reach the end of the game that way" can be gated behind DRM.

Availability of items/weapons/equipment? Graphics settings? Save games? Cutscenes? Voice acting? Music? Character customisation? Mods? etc... All could be restricted with online activation & not be counted as DRM under GOG's warped new definition.

I've taken the survey (I wasn't sent the link, of course, got it from this thread; cheers), was quite the unsettling experience with the stuff that was asked, more importantly perhaps how it was asked, especially after the most recent incident with TW3.
I guess the probing with the question of how important DRM-free is was to be expected after they redefined it. Can't say I feel optimistic for 2023.

I'm certainly not very sure about that.

Maybe GOG weren't truly aware, which is troubling if so.

More likely it was an exercise in negotiating deals. Showing to the provider of Hitman, that yes many at GOG would not be happy with it, perhaps countering an argument that provider was trying to push. Nothing works better than a live example.

At this point I am not going to guess and say GOG deliberately did the wrong thing to see if they could get away with it. It might be the case that they were also testing the waters, but I hope not. But in any case, if so it back-fired and it seems unlikely to me they will do it again, especially as they eventually apologized. It would not be a good look and even less acceptable now if they did attempt it again.

My take on it (also just finished the survey), is that they are certainly looking into maximizing their revenue stream and being "hip". Classic GOG really, instead of focusing on addressing known flaws in their current offerings, they go out poking around for "subscriptions", "loyalty programmes" and mobile apps :/... guys, if you'd just invest more in your engineering department and a bit less in these "new age" marketing approaches, that would be nice, just saying. People are here for the DRM-free games mostly, not because they want "an experience".

How would you attempt to explain Cyberpunk & the Witcher 3 (which were released previous to Hitman)?

Leaving out for a moment the fact, that these two games (TW3, CP2077) have nothing in common with "Hitman 2016" (which has most of his SP gameplay hidden behind always-online-DRM), I will try and answer your question:

Both, TW3 and CP2077, are games made by CDPRED - the mother company behind GOG (spare me with: the actual mother company is CD Project: to-may-to, to-mah-to, in the end it's all the same company).

The same company is responsible for (and put a lot of money in) the development of the GOG-client (Galaxy), therefore they want to offer incentives for people to use that client.

Hope that answers your question. Happy New Year!

I personally don't think so. GOG does miss some things here and there. I think it was Aragami, the GOG release of that game would not run without Steam running and I doubt they did THAT on purpose.
I think that in some cases they just don't throughly test the games. Game starts, check. Next.

Well I guess we will never know, but I for one are prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt at this point.

What exactly would I be explaining about them?
How similar is their situation to that of Hitman GOTY?

And I certainly haven't seen the forum go ballistic for those two games like they did with Hitman GOTY, so it would seem on the face of it, that there is quite a significant difference, and maybe some folk are making a mountain out of a molehill.

I also don't yet have Cyberpunk 2077, so have very little familiarity with it. I do have Witcher 3 full original and new versions and I cannot say I am aware of any big issue.

I'll keep you posted. LOL

I'm very sure of it. I'm not saying that BECAUSE they released Hitman, but because that's when they started using their new definition (and using it to defend the Hitman release early on before they ultimately realized how heavily it was DRMed and had to pull the game). I'm saying that staff FLAT OUT stated that having single player items with DRM was fine as a publisher choice as long as you can complete the game. That definition from GOG popped up about the same time they released Hitman. I'm not implying the two are directly connected in anything but chronology.

I'd bet real money that GOG already have their new business model and subscription service ready to roll out. They're just waiting for the time when the benefits (to them) will outweigh the backlash so they can pretend that it's what we wanted all along.

For me personally the irony is that in the past I actually wanted to give them my money and support. There were even times when I purchased games not so much because I wanted them, but to give regular money to one of the final companies I actually liked and respected. After all the BS over that last couple of years though I now second guess every purchase.

Seconding this. I thought I was supporting DRM-free gaming but instead these cretins in suits just poured all the money into their increasingly NOT-optional client, their precious Galaxy.

Aside from the non-optional creep that we're seeing with Galaxy, another issue is that Galaxy has been very quickly surpassed by other open-source library managers/launchers.

At this point, the best option for GOG is to open-source Galaxy so contributors can step in and add things like the oft-requested Linux and Mac builds. After seeing the direction that Galaxy 2.0 has gone over the past few years, I have determined that Galaxy is never, ever going to be what GOG hoped for it to be. It's not the "one launcher to rule them all" because they never delivered on the initial promises that they made regarding multi-service integration features, and because of this it will never be anything more than a GOG-branded game downloader/manager since there are other launchers out there that do basically the same thing as Galaxy but better. So the least that GOG could do is open up the source so community members who care can at least add features that they want to see in the launcher.

Otherwise, Galaxy should just be downscaled to be a very simple offline installer downloader/launcher just for GOG games, and the excess resources that are being dumped into Galaxy should be moved to site maintenance/upgrades, offline installer maintenance, restoration of classic games for re-release, negotiating with AAA devs for DRM-free releases, etc. As it is though, Galaxy is just a monumental waste of resources on CD Projekt's side, and it's a waste of time on my side which is why I avoid it completely.

Then you are OK with DRM, which is rather disappointing. Your % above... In Australia, do you use the phrase, "If you give an inch, they'll take a mile"? That's precisely what's happening with the .000000...01, each time moving the decimal point over. Soon it's going to be .1% DRMed. And then 1% DRMed, and 10% DRMed... Anything that allows or accepts DRM at any degree is effectively the same as accepting all DRM; it's a binary. [Your 99...% was other thread; relevant here.]

Exactly. I bought and never played The Witcher 3 for supporting DRM-free AAA gaming. And now that it has DRM, they're refusing to refund me (and attempting to redefine DRM so as that it cares about the quality/quality of the gated content (which is entirely in incorrect).

I don't care about the game itself at all. I care about the concept of DRM-free AAA games, which is what I consider my money as having gone for. Which is completely gone. GOG's still made bank on me if they refund my amount, if they ever do the right thing and refund me, when you account for inflation and whatnot.