I do agree with you in so far that it is ALL down to business decisions ;). But what about the regional pricing? What happened there?

Unfortunately, that is a very dangerous road to go down. In principle almost everything is a service nowadays. Coding a game for you, could be seen as a service. Letting it run on your hardware at home or somewhere else, hardly makes a difference really, we could even split the effort and compute a bit here and a bit there. Surfing in the Internet surely is also a service. Everything is a service of someone to someone else.

Following this logic service can and should be denied in almost all possible scenarios and some sort of control (could be called DRM as an abbreviation) would be needed.

But I guess that multiplayer and online gaming would also be imaginable without checks. I guess, there is an alternative. At least GOG should clearly state that Galaxy and an online authentification is not optional in general and actually required in these cases.

I see it as DRM, but then this is not even my biggest concern. My biggest problem with online gaming is that there is never a guarantee how long this service will be available. I always feel a bit disadvantaged there, basically the whole risk seems to be on the side of the customer. This kind of discourages me a bit.

They lost some customers and gained others. Shrug. We wrote a long thread with 10k posts and as a result maybe they introduced the "kind of fair price" package. Regional pricing stayed in effect until today.

When you make use of those services, yes, which is precisely the point I'm making. Patching, support, multiplayer are all ongoing services that by their very nature require the continued involvement and participation of the developer or publisher, and it's right that they should be able to verify whether the user of these services has paid for those services.

Many developers and publishers on the other hand are quite happy to slap DRM onto a single-player game or bind it to unnecessary online features to maintain unwarranted control over it while offering little in the way of post-purchase support or services. In fact, even the most rudimentary support is severely lacking in many cases, see Steam Support. Most F2P mobile games are worst for this.

In the past they've specifically stated they're fine with doing so in a home environment, even playing the same game with multiple people. They might be changing that stance now given that they now are adding more multiplayer games considering limiting multiplayer access to non owners is a particularly desired feature for developers/publishers, but they used to be fine with it.

ps: Off to bed, will go through the other responses later ^^

Imho, the biggest problem with Galaxy is its insecurity by design. I don't like software that puts security passthroughs "to make things easier". I want my approval to be necessary whenever something wants to perform administrative tasks, which is precisely what the Galaxy service short-circuits (in the same way the Steam service does).

I didn't like either when the GOG installers started to give full control to everyone to the game directories (à la Steam once again) since that's another security passthrough, but at least this one is easy to counter, I just have to remove the rights immediately.

care to give further details, just for fun I checked NVN and it is not at all as you describe, I used the offline installer. ?????

as far as I know: No.

No one of course. It's not about trust. It's about guarantees and putting a price on risks. Selling a service which might or might not be available is not really good. Better would be selling a service and promising to keep it available for a certain reasonable amount of time.

And as I pointed out and asked specifically:

But then why is it not right also for single player games to verify whether the user of an app has paid for it?

Sure, development of a single player game is more a one-time cost instead of ongoing costs but where is the difference really? Costs are costs, however they are incurred.

Why do we think that DRM for single player games is then such a bad idea? After all, by using DRM, the IP holders only try to protect their involvement and participation. Just because it is a bit more convenient not to have DRM? Almost everyone has an online connection nowadays.

Heck, if I were a publisher I would make every game online, even the offline ones, and be done with it. Just put 10% of the game code on a server and tell everyone this was the more convenient solution (it may even be, who knows).
I haven't used Galaxy so far and I would be willing to pay for any DRM-free online multiplayer solution.

For Civilization IV one could actually run Pitboss Multiplayer servers on your own. That was great.

OK, clear standpoint I can live with it ;)

And for your opinion: Would you mind describing what your preferred solution would be (with this points exchanged above)?

Not really, no, because what happens to that single-player game in its given version post-sale does not require or benefit from the intervention of the dev or pub. If it is illegally reproduced and that illegal reproduction is played offline, the dev/pub does not incur any additional costs as a result. Enforcement of IP rights in this regard is the result of the perception that piracy constitutes lost sales. There is a limited amount of truth to this, but experience and research have proven that it is not significantly so - most pirates are motivated to play a given game thanks to it being free of charge.

As far as multiplayer services, support and patches go, on the other hand, the use of these by unlicensed users does incur costs. Increased player counts and higher patch downloads require higher server capacity. Support ties up staff capacity, which costs money. Those capacities need to be reserved for paying customers as capacity is finite, whereas the game itself, once developed, is infinitely reproducible at zero cost.

This is a distortion of the facts. Almost everyone might have an online connection, but that is not the problem. The problem is the ongoing maintenance of the DRM server by the operator. An online connection is useless if there's no server to communicate with at the other end in 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 years from now (yes, I do actively play 20-year-old games from disc).

The difference with locking single-player content behind an online DRM wall and locking patches, centralised online multiplayer and support behind online DRM/ownership authentication is that patching, online multiplayer and support are inherently online services which could not exist without the dev/pub's continuing participation. They could not be feasibly realised without connecting to the operator's server, so it is fair to say that if the user is connecting to the operator's server, it is an opportunity to authenticate the user's ownership credentials without unfairly disadvantaging them.

After much complaining I reluctantly installed galaxy earlier. Firstly I tried running it without logging in & ran shadow warrior 2 through it. When trying to start an online game in shadow warrior 2 it presented the same message about requiring galaxy as it does when you run it standalone. I then quit, signed into my account through galaxy (*#@#@# captcha) and repeated. This time the game worked. So there's definitely a requirement that you are signed into your gog account to play it online, I don't know if this means you cannot play online with another member of your household on the same account though, can anyone clarify that?

I was also very disappointed by how outdated and primitive galaxy is. It lacks most of the now standard features that its rivals have such as voice chat and even ingame invites (you appear to have to tab out.). It really didn't feel suitable as a modern day online social gaming platform.

Below are some example quotes from Gog's galaxy page which I feel are misrepresentative of the product when considering the above:

DRM-Free online gaming platform. Fully optional client.
GOG Galaxy is fully optional because you don't need it to play games on GOG.com
Optional also means that all features in GOG Galaxy can be turned off.
Beyond all these features, the Client will never be mandatory.

Yet another thread set up to argue about the definition of DRM instead of focusing on the underlying point that actually matters instead of terminology. The underlying point being whether a given practice of a game developer is anti-consumer or otherwise takes away from a positive consumer experience. Whether the given thing "is DRM" or not who gives a shit really, it's just an arbitrary and subjective label.

This issue isn't about Galaxy either, it's about centralized multiplayer matchmaking services in general. Are they anti-consumer? Do they take away from a positive customer experience?

The truth of the matter is that there is no one single correct answer, and there are valid arguments as to how centralized multi-player matchmaking services are anti-consumer as well as how they provide a valuable pro-customer experience as well. It's not one nor the other, but both at the same time really. How the individual sees it is really a matter of subjective opinion based on what specific experience the individual is looking for, and what they consider to be anti-consumer practice in nature.

So is Galaxy multi-player anti-consumer? Is it DRM? The answer is whatever each one of you thinks it is in your own mind regardless of what anyone else thinks because you have a right to have that opinion regardless of what it is or whether anyone else agrees with you or disagrees with you.

At the end of the day, label it however you want for yourself but by and large nobody else gives a crap really. :)

Unfortunately, with regards to the individual features within the client being configurable - GOG may have been vocal with their intent (although not clearly labelling/distinguishing it as such in communications), but they have not been too good at executing that within the software, because the Galaxy client configuration is essentially an all or nothing deal since it was first released, and any actual "optional" features that may have been intended to be configurable to disable - they have never implemented any way to disable them other than a small number of greyed out checkboxes that are still non-functional 2 years later.

They should either remove all of the greyed out settings entirely or make them functional and do it ASAP. I wouldn't say it is "false advertising" as that's a legal claim, but it is certainly disappointing to be told certain things are going to be optionally configurable for 2 years and it just never happens no matter how great the intentions may be.

Having said that, the client itself is as optional as they stated it ever would be from the beginning, including multiplayer matchmaking. Some people just don't see it that way because they consider if Galaxy is the only option for multiplayer then Galaxy isn't optional. What's optional is _playing_ multiplayer. Nobody is forced to do that, and it is the game developer that decides whether they will provide other multiplayer modes or not, not GOG. It's easy to point the finger at GOG though and cry "burn the witch" as is done here in the forums.

Simple solution is for GOG to abandon Galaxy, remove every single game from the game store that implements multiplayer using Galaxy, and remove all those games from everyone's account also. See how popular that would be for everyone who bitches about it. :)

Then watch perhaps a few more dozen games leave the store by the same publishers, and watch the incoming game count shrink back to what it was like 3 years ago.