Two games i've encountered so far, that both connect out on startup and will both crash if it's blocked by the firewall.

Kingdoms & Castles

Rise of Industry

Now this is seriously starting to irk me, Kingdoms & Castles was a recent development (Jan) and it was never an issue prior to a patch sometime around then.

It's not DRM as such, but it basically acts like it, as connecting out should never be a requirement unless you're wanting to play online.

I just had a look at what the game engine is for both of them and they both use unity, I wonder if its something to do with Unity's telemetry option (maybe a recent patch enabled it behind the scenes?)

If it's Unity's telemetry, try to open a ticket and hopefully GOG sorts it out

I don't think they can. Last I heard even developers that use Unity can't disable but maybe that's changed. I'm not up to date on it. And yea both of those games use Unity.

The "remake" of King of Dragon Pass does the same since version 1.0.6. I even posted a patch in its forum for those who had not saved a backup installer of 1.0.5 before the update.

It was reported in that case that once the connection was allowed one time, you could run the game normally afterwards even if you blocked the program with a firewall, but I cannot vouch for that.

I am a Unity developer (but I only do it as a hobby right now).
This is the first time I hear about this issue.
The last bug I had to face was with google play (I have a really small brekout game there) that required a privacy policy even without ads/in-app and without the Unity Analytics package.
Anyhow, I tried to compile and launch the game I'm working on windows, in airplane mode (I also used the airplane mode to compile the game) ... It works.
So it shouldn't be a Unity3d problem ... at least not the current version and not with default plugins.
Of course I cannot try those games in unity (since I'm not the developer of those games) but at least I can ensure that unity allows drm-free.

Also by Unity's telemetry you actually mean Analytics that can be disabled (a unity developer can just remove the package). By the way I tried my current project with Analytics so the problem is not that.

A lot of DRM panic on here is silly, but if it won't start without an internet connection then that definitely goes against GOG's policies and should be fixed or delisted.

Just out of curiosity: have you contacted Support about this?

ya really interested in that as well.
If you are online and then there is some weird interaction between the firewall "block" and the game trying some kind of ping it's bad but maybe related to the implementation of the firewall.
If you can't launch the game while being completely offline this would be a huge issue and no no

Time to invoke Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

Have you tried pointing them to a null connection?

Theres been quite a few games like this over the years.

In some cases the game "trying to connect" was actually just a loop back to the computer, and not an actual online connection.

With others (defcon for example) it was in fact dialling home: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/defcons_drm_is_still_active_support_doesnt_give_a_crap/post1


Edit: and yes, the telemetry on unity games is one of many abysmal things about that engine choice.

I've seen reports of folks crashing with Deadfire when the telemetry tickbox is on and the game was blocked. Given this seems to happen with multiple Unity games I'd say that there is something in the way the network code interacts with the game that has a knock on maybe with middleware or with some optional plugin.

Out of interest does your firewall allow all dns? Is the problem that the game knows the network is there but then stalls trying to connect? I ask as I block dns and don't think I've ever encountered these crashes.
You can either try blocking dns for the game or find the address its trying to connect to and add it to the hosts file.

I had same problem with "Shadow Warrior Classic Redux", so I contacted GOG support, official reply was:

"The issue is caused by the way your firewall blocks the game, instead of letting it know that no network connection is available the game gets no response and this is causing the crashes.
Please use a firewall that doesn't cause this issue or disable the internet connection if you don't want to unblock the game.
Sorry for the inconvenience."

I would be also happier it would be without this feature...

It may be due to Unity Engine telemetry as other have said. However from what I've seen, the GOG versions of Bioshock 1-2 (made in Unreal Engine 2) with Galaxy integration have a 10-11s delay in starting up if blocked via Firewall whilst the DRM-Free Humble version (same game, same version) starts instantly. Others have noticed the same thing including on both the Classic & Remastered versions (Unreal 3 Engine) apparently due to something (possible Galaxy related) wanting Internet access through a firewall here:-
https://www.gog.com/forum/bioshock_series/slow_startup_time_on_both_bioshock_remastered_titles

I think weak / slow "fallback code" in the event of no Internet (or whitelisted Firewall) is something GOG should definitely improve as to me, DRM-Free = it should work offline and startup at least not slower than DRM'd titles, period. Not 'um, uh, have you tried disabling your firewall to get our offline game to work'?...