First I was thinking of ignoring it,but I give you a chance:

TW3, Divinity, Titan, Homeworld, Blackguards, just to name a few, are crappy indie walking sims?

As I do not own all of them I can not say for sure, but I have to see prove of your claim, that even those crappy indies would have mandatory galaxy for mutliplayer in it.

If your post was just reflecting your biased (and false) opinion, you have the right too, but you stating it as a fact is plain simple false.
Only as a quick remark for the moment:

You know that there were full prized games being released in a even more crappier and dire state? ;) At least galaxy (the SW) is free of charge.

EDIT: you never replied to my post far above?

It's not Stealth DRM. It's Beta™ DRM.

Peer-to-peer multiplayer without a central server or free servers (you can run your own game server for online games) or game servers that allow unathenticated access or anynonymous access, maybe up to a payment option (like you buy access tokens and then access the online part), and a guaranteed up time of the server of say at least two years after release and at least one year after purchase. And a clear labelling of online multiplayer games as DRM (because they are, otherwise the term DRM doesn't make much sense anymore) and a DRMed games section on GOG.

Something like this. Many small improvements are possible.

Notice how nothing goes GOLD any more? Shit, they took the dollar off the gold standard, now they took games off of it too. I guess we'll have to settle for BRONZE releases from now on.

I guess it depends on the point of view. Yes, it's not exactly the same but I don't care much about the differences because I think they are not so significant. I think if DRM doesn't make sense for single player it also doesn't make much more sense for multi player (although it is a bit different) and again, if it makes sense for multi player it also makes sense (maybe a bit less) for single player.

I think you described the differences as larger than they really are (and they are becoming even smaller) and you overestimate the costs of keeping the servers running. It's just a guess but I guess the one-time development costs of the games are still much, much higher than the ongoing server maintenance costs, so we do not really need to worry much about possible losses there. But I may be mistaken and would like to get more first hand information there.

For example, if you think you will want to play single player games 20 years from now then you should also consider that you might want to play multi player games 20 years from now. After all they are all games. But this will be very hard if there is no server to communicate with. On the other hand you could for example publish the server (after some time maybe) so fans can run their own multi player servers, then there would be no problem.

As I said, as a publisher I would just kill single player games and make them all online at least partly and if many publishers would follow what choice would customers have than to buy the DRM and play for only a restricted time.

Yes, that would be locking single player content behind a DRM walll, but the same way you can (and that is done already) lock multi player content behind a DRM wall by not releasing the server part, so you could as well justify trying to lock single player content too. I think that differentiating too much here between single and multi player does more harm than good regarding the impact of DRM and that's why I try to avoid it, but I guess one can see it differently. It all depends on the point of view. Obviously GOG chose the easy way out but at least they should label these games clearly as DRM.

Online authentification always was regarded as DRM, otherwise what meaning has the term "digital rights management" anymore? It's only DRM if we can advertise that we don't have it? This is kind of silly.

Sorry.

Back when it first started up, gog actively worked on creating expectations and constantly preached promises and made commitments like DRM free, old games will never cost more than $9.99 etc, that's what drew me into gog in the first place and I prioritized purchasing on their site and convinced others to sign up because of that focus of "we're gamers just like you, we're not like other companies."

As gog has grown over the years I've watched them break most of those commitments/promises whenever it didn't suit their business growth but they still spin doctor everything to be positive instead of using that honesty that won people over in the first place. GOG now seems to adhere strictly to a growth chart nowadays, ticking off the next landmark whether they are ready for it or not. As a result they are always releasing new features prematurely then largely abandoning them (movies?) or just poorly handling them (indie, early access, galaxy etc)

Galaxy is a good example of this as it has been out a long time now & yet so little has been done to it. Most of the updates are just minor bug fixes and breaking XP/Vista compatibility which is no good for a program they want to push hard as their multiplayer solution. Gog needs to either focus on it properly or outsource it to a team with more time or talent to get it up to scratch. So whilst it is free, as you say, it's little consolation when I have to use it for some multiplayer games and it's in the state it's in.



In general I find it strange that requiring 'optional' Galaxy for multiplayer hasn't had a more thunderous uproar from the community when things such as old games costing more than $9.99 & incorrectly disabled/leftover remnants of drm have. If you dare to mention steam in most threads you can expect a torrent of arguements from anti-steamites yet Galaxy seems to get by largely unchallenged despite being a kind of proto-steam. I guess the number of games requiring galaxy for multiplayer is still very low at the moment though.

Just out of curiosity, how feasible would a "Galaxy-lite" client be for games with Galaxy features, where it simply starts the Galaxy service when the game launches, pops up a simple login window with a CLEAR offline mode button and closes it when the game terminates? This would keep the Galaxy service completely in the background. Surely it would be possible to transpose many of the client-based features like achievements and friends to a browser page for Galaxy refuseniks?

If you're dependent on having the same installation packages for both in-Galaxy and non-Galaxy installations, have the lite client perform a check to see if the Galaxy service and client are running.

A BLUE!

RUN!!!!!!!!!!

Galaxy isn't a necessity for multiplayer though unless the developers have chosen to make it so.
As for things such as achievements needing online, these are claimed to be optional, as is Galaxy, yet it is required in some instances along with a login/account check to play online. Whilst I don't personally mind an account check, I'm pretty sure that does fall under the definition of DRM and I really dislike being forced to use Galaxy to play certain online games, especially in it's current state.

The main issue is that you are misrepresenting Galaxy as being DRM free and optional when it's neither in situations like this.

The problem is that they're all upset that they can't install copies on other computers violating the individual game EULAs of the publisher and play a 10 player game after buying only one copy to save money. They want GOG to make it easier to pirate GOG games so they can buy one copy and liberally share it far and wide with their friends and play multi-player offline.

Oh gosh darned it! Fiddlesticks GOG, foiled again!
:)

I agree with you 100%. I used to recommend GOG to all of my family and friends, but not any more.

You're still missing the core issues. Galaxy is advertised as completely optional and a big deal is made of that. However galaxy is required for online multiplayer on some games & it does use a form of DRM to ensure the user owns it.

I am actually ok with having a simple username/password check as DRM as I find it non-intrusive but it shouldn't need an external program too and gog should be more honest about it when they push DRM free so hard. A simple entry on a game page stating that the game uses a basic account check to verify ownership for online isn't unreasonable.
At the moment some pages just state that a game requires galaxy for online but again this withholds information and goes back to the fallacy of galaxy being an optional program.