And how is that a real thing? How about giving an example of a developer/publisher that wants to prevent online multiplayer? It sounds a lot like "not wanting to implement lootboxes because people might like them".

Okay, let me show you a couple examples I've run into on GOG.

Far Cry has a LAN mode that is artificially restricted[1]
to a specific IP address range (and no, that has nothing to do with LAN). Of course, there are workarounds to jump thru those hoops. Of course, ubisoft wants you to log into their service to play on the Internet. Of course their service for Far Cry is down. There are workarounds for that too, point still stands...

Torchlight II has a "LAN mode" but it does not provide a way for you to connect to any IP address you like; you're forced to go through the game's own server discovery (which probably works by broadcasting on your subnet, so again it's artificially restricted in a way that has nothing to do with LAN and you can't use it for online play without VPNs or other "workarounds"). For internet play, you're required to log in to a Runic account and use their server browser (can't enter arbitrary IP) but they do not host any game servers; for both LAN and internet play, the game uses the exact same peer to peer networking code.

Unfortunately those aren't isolated incidents, just ones that I have personally run into.

Judging by how much people seem to be having trouble with Grim Dawn's LAN mode, I wonder if that's also an artificially crippled apparatus. It looks like they want to impose Galaxy DRM for real multiplayer. I'm still not sure, so that's why I haven't bought the game.

EDIT: Jesus fucking christ GOG's forum code is bad.

Here's the link I wanted to post about far cry:
[url=https://www.google.com/search?q=far+cry+lan+restricted+ip+address+site:forums.ubisoft.com]https://www.google.com/search?q=far+cry+lan+restricted+ip+address+site:forums.ubisoft.com[/url]

I think both are equally likely to be interpreted literally. I've demonstrated how LAN has been interpreted, and I'm sure "offline" already has common meanings in people's heads: split screen, shared screen, hot seat, handhelds that use short range wireless links; anything that doesn't involve an internet connection. That's not what I'm after. Any term that implies not on the internet reeks of artificial restrictions.

I've already demonstrated that devs/publishers want to impose their DRM for internet play, and only provide a limited/restricted for "playing on the LAN" or offline or whatever you want to call it. Both terms have this same exact problem. I just want multiplayer without DRM or artificial restrictions. LAN, offline, those terms have nothing to do with it. There are two separate restrictions here.

The first is that the "normal" online multiplayer is not DRM-free; it's account or service restricted multiplayer.

The other restriction is trying to artificially prevent the use of "LAN multiplayer" for just "multiplayer" by limiting the IP ranges it allows you to connect to. This is obviously a deliberate attempt to try and force plebs to use the normal account/service/DRM crap for internet play.

If you had neither of those restrictions, then you simply wouldn't need two different modes, all you need is "multiplayer" and it works where ever you want to play. These modes and problems only exist because of artificial restrictions. And I suspect it is the case with many many more games, for example Grim Dawn...

I can't think of particularly good technical excuses for the problems people are having with its LAN mode and the fact that it does not interoperate with its internet mode in any meaningful way. Could be shitty code, but I suspect it's deliberate. Curiously, if you look around on GD forums or reddit for posts where people ask for help with LAN multiplayer or hamachi/tunngle/whatever, you find cases where people get instantly accused of piracy... shows that this is working as they intended. I think this is where our disagreement stems from. Again, I don't care for locality or LAN. Just forget it. I just want "multiplayer!" The game should just connect to whatever IP address I ask it to, nothing more or less. It is none of the game's business where the computers are physically located or what sort of packet transmission equipment sits between them. Or whether I have an internet connection available to me at the time I'm trying to connect. It should just connect to the address I tell it to connect to, that's all, my operating system and router and pigeons or ISP or smoke signals handle all the rest automagically. I just want to play without any sort of artificial restrictions such as DRM or "LAN mode that's meant to be only played locally and will refuse to connect to a non-private IP address" or other BS. I don't want anything that should be characterized as "offline" or "LOCAL." Just "connect here, this host could be next to me or it could be on the moon but please just send packets that way because I say so."

As soon as you throw terms like LAN or local or offline, devs/publishers will interpret those words to mean what they literally mean and implement it as the "restricted multiplayer mode that casual pirates won't be able to use for multiplayer on the internet without going through VPNs or other hoops that are annoying to set up, potentially degrade performance, need to be configured separately for each game, ..."

I grew up playing DRM-free multiplayer games on the internet. That's slowly becoming a thing of the past, because DRM-free multiplayer has gotten quite rare. And for people who equate DRM with internet connection, an artificially restricted LAN mode that you can play in a cabin is enough for them to consider it DRM-free so throwing such a thing at them does seem to silence most of the people who complain about DRM. That's not the sort of DRM-free multiplayer I grew up playing. I wasn't restricted to a local area network or cabin or being "offline." I could play with anyone on the internet OR lan OR a mix of both local and internet connected participants (it is none of the game's business) and no accounts, ownership checks, logins, or other bullshit would get in the way. That's what I call multiplayer without restrictions.

"DRM-free" multiplayer sounds nice, but unfortunately old games that required some now defunct communication protocol or online hubs that have been now closed are not likely to get their multiplayer restored in any other way than by using Steamworks which then perhaps may lead it to be substituted by the Galaxy-API in the GOG version or the other way around if GOG managed to release the game first.

Even with new games the developers would be taking a huge risk by trying to create their own multiplayer code from scratch as it would consume a significant portion of their budget with no guarantees that the end result would perform any better than taking advantage of an API like Steamworks.

Most importantly, by the time a game gets released here it is far too late to request a fully in-game multiplayer framework as the potential resources for that have already been allocated and spent on other things.

A far more better chance at getting multiplayer support future-proofed with GOG games would be to encourage developers to port more and more of their games to use the Galaxy-API and then get someone to reverse-engineer that and release an opensource client that allows setting up our own independent servers.

Maybe? Kind of? It certainly requires you run something else to access your game. Still as long as GOG carry on offering the Offline Backup Game Installers i can ignore it and carry on enjoying the awesome that is GOG.

If that option ever stopped, well i guess i would stop being a GOG user and fan!

Every game (or at least game engine) today still needs its own protocol. Uhh, if you are in a position to start modifying the game's code and add new dependencies to it, then there's no reason Steamworks should be the only choice. Again, every game (or game engine) needs its own netcode, and that's the hard part! What steam provides is a glorified socket API (which is open source[1] and not dependent on Steam so you can use it even if you have no plans to use Steamworks) plus a server browser. That's the trivial part.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets

First, I get that "offline" doesn't encapsulate the same thing as talking about completely unrestricted multiplayer. While I do share your desire for that, I admit my bias is more in favor of offline modes being available, though ideally there are unrestricted options for all kinds of modes. Moreover though I am not sure how to "save" online multiplayer at this point. I think its a lost cause. This may seem like a cynical view to some, and a practical view to others. I am not sure what it would take to get companies to stop restricting online. Offline I think still has a chance, mainly thanks to the success of some singleplayer games, some popular local games, and people's memories.

As for my terms, it seems there is much more potential to misinterpret "LAN" than to misinterpret "offline." This is because "offline" implies multiplayer modes that are DRM-free, such as the ones you just mentioned. Such offline modes are baked right into the game regardless of internet connectivity and don't require any extra steps to access, hence it is unlikely devs and pubs can put in that DRM they love so much. Whereas with the term "LAN," it's easier for them to say "you have to register this product key first, you need to buy a separate copy for each player, etc." Using "offline" generally cuts out the potential of them being able to add these extra steps.

You may point out that the extra steps are still not necessary and are only put in by developers. Of course you would be correct. In other words (and this is backed up by your excellent post), there is really nothing stopping unrestricted multiplayer from being "baked in" the same way that something like splitscreen would be. To me the key problem there is the online connection...give devs/pubs ANYTHING based around this, and the DRM is never far behind. Actually, that's probably where the issues with restricted LAN modes stems...the fact that its based on a network. Take the "connect" (even local) option off the table from them, and there is much less possibility for restrictions.

What term do you propose we customers use? "Multiplayer without restrictions"? I do want that too. Again, I recognize the term "LAN" is imperfect but I do think customers at least generally know what they want out of it (whether the companies cooperate is a bit out of their control). Except for borderline shills and fanboys, are any customers really demanding LAN mode with restrictions on it? I am looking at how things went in practice and how they continue to go. From my view, it's not like there are a slew of companies lovingly crafting offline modes and then forgetting about online multiplayer or restricting it. In nearly every case it is the opposite of that. But I digress.

With a term like "unrestricted", I assume most people would just say "oh, unrestricted online multiplayer? You mean Crossplay?" which misses the point. And, if a term like "DRM-free multiplayer" is used in regards to Galaxy client, I feel "unrestricted multiplayer" can also be misinterpreted (in its case, it seems a bit broad where people won't instantly agree on the meaning...unlike when you say "LAN" as everyone, even people born decades after they were popular, can have a mental image of a LAN party. As a contrast, no one mentioning LAN thinks "oh boy, now my friend needs to go into the store page to buy an additional copy so we are allowed to play the LAN". That isn't the mental picture that comes up).

Plenty of new games are still being released with unrestricted multiplayer. Just like plenty of DRM-free games are still being released.

This (non-exhaustive) list makes me somewhat optimistic: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/lists_games_that_need_galaxy_for_multiplayer_and_the_ones_that_dont/page1

As you can see, about three dozen games require Galaxy, and then there's a long list of games that work without Galaxy or offer single-PC multiplayer or a LAN mode. (Of course, the last and longest of the lists leaves me with questions about what sort of artificial restrictions they might have in that LAN mode.) Nothing will, just as nothing will stop DRM. Still, I buy DRM-free only (with very few exceptions), and I try to avoid buying games that require DRM for multiplayer. There's still plenty to play. Not that I believe in voting with one's wallet, it's just a silly slogan made to given the common man an illusion of freedom and power, in of the tyranny of companies and the "majority." I'd like to leave the discussion about terms since we got stuck going in circles, but I have to add this: they can still restrict "offline" mode, there are games that require unique serial keys and will refuse to work if two players try to join with the same key. I think GOG still sells games that require serial keys for multiplayer... so if someone really wants to try and slap DRM on "offline" mode, they will, just as they will attempt to prevent the mode's use for multiplayer over the internet. But so is an "offline" mode unless you're talking only about split screen/hotseat/etc. If someone develops a LAN mode that requires an internet connection (and I've heard such a thing exists...) then I'm sure the same idiot can develop an "offline" mode that requires the same. Don't underestimate the twisted mind of DRM-loving lunatics :P DRM-free multiplayer, unrestricted multiplayer, multiplayer via direct IP connection. Anything that doesn't try to imply it only works offline or on a LAN is good to me. Based on all the googling of posts I've done in the past couple days, it seems that most people literally mean a local area network (or a VPN that they try to use to work around broken multiplayer modes) when they talk about LAN mode; that's where the cabin in the woods idea came from.

Most people equate DRM with internet connection, and are concerned about their ability to play multiplayer offline (i.e. on a local area network in a cabin in the woods with no connection to the world outside). If they can do that, they are evidently happy. It appears that very few actually care whether they can play multiplayer over the internet without DRM. Hell, even the GOG forums are full of people who evidently don't have a problem with online multiplayer requiring Galaxy, accounts, logins, ...

Hence, they will happily keep buying DRM infested games as long as they offer a "LAN mode." No, they don't ask for the LAN mode to be somehow restricted, they just never bother to check it and investigate, because in their mind it's just the option that you use when you're stuck in a cabin in the woods throwing a lan party with no internet connection. They don't care if it has restrictions, or the few that do will but only when it's too late, i.e. they actually got the game and are trying to play it and then bump into the restriction (see earlier links about Far Cry, or everyone having problems trying to use Torchlight 2's LAN mode). You're right. There is a slew of companies lovingly crafting DRM-infested online multiplayer modes and then (sometimes) throwing a bone to please the crowd that wants to keep playing on LAN after the publisher pulls their servers down. And if they can lift a pinky to make it harder for pirates to use that LAN mode for online multiplayer, they'll throw some restrictions at it to make sure it's only good for some definition of LAN that pleases most plebs who are on 192.168.X.0/24 via a NAT box from their ISP... or, like in Torchlight 2's case, simply don't offer a way to connect to anything the game doesn't discover by itself on your subnet. I specifically don't want the image of a LAN party invoked, because that implies it's ok for it to have restrictions that makes it good only for a LAN party :)

Also, unfortunately, my mental image of real LAN parties involves clashing serial keys, authentic CDs being required to be in each machine (or one CD in every three machines, as with Age of Empires and such). Unfortunately a lot of the discussions about having a gaming LAN party I've heard run into the problem of figuring out what to do if everyone doesn't own a legitimate copy of some game they're planning to play (and that's a real issue because they can't ever agree on a game that everyone would want to buy just to be able to participate), and then it either turns into a desperate search for workarounds (cracking the DRM, keygens, better CD copying/imaging software...), or they start to look for games that don't have such restrictions.. oh hey, somehow we're talking about unrestricted multiplayer games again. Or they they don't find a solution so everyone who doesn't have the planned game just doesn't come and it ends up being a party with three guys playing their favorite game on Steam online in the same room.

But as it happens to be most used one today and whoever is doing the porting is unlikely to have been given a huge budget, the other choices really aren't going get much consideration especially if a future GOG release was not even in anyones mind at that time.

Trivial it may be, yet someone would still need to be designated to do that part instead of helping getting the hard part working well, so of course the developers will choose to use that socket API and then it is far too easy for them to get carried away and soon their game has in fact many features tied to Steamworks.

I am all for petitioning that the developers do not tie their multiplayer into any external services, but I also think that multiplayer between multiple computers is always in far greater risk of becoming non-functional than single-player games, so having the DRM-free versions now ported to one common API might actually one day make it easier to get them to work with whatever protocols we may eventually end up using in the cyberspace than any games that had their fully own multiplayer framework as restoring them might require individual fixes meaning that the less known games might never got the attention of people who have the skills to do that.

TCP/IP and UDP are so foundational that they will keep working long after other protocols become mainstream. And they have worked for decades already. Old games using these protocols still work just fine today, and they will continue to work. The basic socket APIs are the common APIs that every internet application uses either directly or indirectly, and they have been around for decades and if they went away, you'd break the internet right now.

Problems only begin after games start to use proprietary APIs and services (such as Steam's) which is exactly what you're proposing here.

Relying on proprietary services is precisely why some old games' multiplayer stopped working.

The solution is not to use another proprietary service, but to avoid using one, and implement the game in such a manner that any extra services that are not vital to gameplay are optional, so you can still keep connecting to players even if the game can't connect to the server that hosted leaderboards and daily challenges 15 years ago. Furthermore, if you can, use already existing solutions (that do not rely on steam accounts & their service) for things like the master server for the server browser. So someone else can take over when the publisher doesn't want to keep it running.

I see. I haven't bought from GOG for quite some time. Last time I checked, only Gwent was mentioned as requiring Galaxy and I wasn't interested in Gwent.

I would like to avoid these games and would clearly see them as DRMed. Is there maybe a list available of these games, so they can be avoided? Doesn't necessarily have to be managed in this forum, for example https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/ may be a good place. If you would start a topic there with what you have, people could make suggestions for the list in the comments.

Or is there any reliable other indicator on the game pages here about this behavior?


Technically no problem at all. Just bundle the necessary parts of Galaxy for multiplayer (without the game library organization, update, machmaking, authentication, ...) parts with the app in question. Technically, it should be no problem to use newer protocols without any DRM. DRM is not a technical requirement for the use of newer technology. If GOG would say that a bundle with parts of Galaxy is not possible, they would be lying (not sure if they actually say that).

Suffice to say, it goes beyond just GWENT. This forum topic seems like the go-to place:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/lists_games_that_need_galaxy_for_multiplayer_and_the_ones_that_dont/page1

As with many other resources regarding the site, this list relies on user effort and feedback. Unlike my understanding of GWENT, these games are still playable offline; it is only the multiplayer component that forces Galaxy.

Iirc there used to be a GOGmix page on here where a user listed such games. Some of the more cynical among us may believe the reason they got rid of GOGmixes was to silence such criticism, but I digress.

On the gamepages themselves in the store, there are little "notes" underneath the system requirements which will say things like "Note: GOG Galaxy is required for multiplayer / Multiplayer is only through Galaxy between GOG users."

The harder thing to find is what modes outside of Galaxy are available, if any. For example, it's usually hard to know what offline options (like LAN, splitscreen, hotseat) are in a game.

I intentionally jumped in time to a point where the internet as we know it is no more, by then it might actually be an a blessing in disquise that old games had been gradually converted into using the same higher level API which might by then be trivial to port to use the current networking protocols and perhaps even get some of the later added extra features like achievement tracking restored to all such games instead of needing to either fix each game separately or enable system wide some ancient networking protocol that migth expose the future OS to who knows what security risks that we don't even know about yet.

Anyways, I am not blind for the fact that this way of thinking could easily be turned around by saying that Steam also will eventully be emulated fully, so why should I not start playing its singleplayer exclusives right now instead of waiting for them to get released here or the blasted service getting closed down one day? To that I can only answer that I obviously don't put much value on any one game's multiplayer in itself, I just value the time I spent playing them with my friends which is a commodity I can't exactly future-proof by simply archiving a game, I would also need those friends to keep existing in the future, still like to play some ancient multiplayer game, find time for it and in the end it still would not compare to launching an old singleplayer game and being able to keep the illusion that it was always this hard instead of me having become much worse at playing it.

My point was that when some try to apply the same definition of DRM-free for multiplayer support in old games that they expect for GOG's singleplayer releases, they don't seem to realize that removing a DRM-check from a game is child's play compared to changing the way the multiplayer works even if the source code is available and properly documented.

I can only imagine that the higher ups at GOG are kicking themselves for not branding themselves initially as the Good Old (singleplayer) Games with just a possibility of having the multiplayer sometimes working too in some fashion.

Yes, that could be, but I guess they are fine the way it is.