I will respond in kind to your points:=

1/. Having it but not choosing to make it available isn't really providing the whole product DRM free if you are skipping parts of it. It is being used by developers as a form of DRM even for games like AOW3 in which you are playing in cooperation with other players rather than against them.

2.. You are entitled to your opinion but mine is this 'If you are selling a product as DRM free, it should be possible to use it without publisher imposed restrictions of use be it online checks to use. By definition if they have the tech to allow for servers they refuse to allow private servers and insist on only being able to play half the game without DRM.

3. Yes they do which is the reason why private servers exist, they allow those running them to set their own rules, some may run modded only versions of the game, some might only let you connect if the person running it knows you will be good. Private servers literally make the person running them responsible for them both in uptime, upkeep , setting the rules & enforcing them.

Many games provide private servers including the likes of Valve for things like TF2.

4. I'm confused on your point here, I pointed out merely requiring an internet connection to play something without any other restrictions does not constitute DRM unless there are enforced checks required to facilitate play.

5. IF they mean only SP DRM free then frankly GOG have shown contemptible incompetence with how they have conveyed this. At no point does their official fckdrm.com website distinguish between single player DRM it either intentionally ignores multiplayer being used as an enforced DRM or wilfully hides in the ambiguity of it.

6. Needing to register to play official games on official servers isn't a problem but you can't legitimately say you have a DRM free product if the only way you can play it is with official servers with control, access and even the possibility of the servers existing at all completely controlled by a third party.

In the case of AOW3 their online infrastructure specifically exists to check you have a valid serial number for each machine to allow them connect together they provide not match-making AFAK or actual servers merely enforce DRM and add no value to the customer.

7. I am aware of this, whether people believe it is the official position of the company or not is their choice. Their actions are consistent with it being an undeclared truth let slip by careless lips.

8. Look when things are being updated it means the developer/publisher is engaged in actively maintaining their product, that they are committed to it on the platform it is being sold on. The updates people are annoyed about being missing are bugfixing and product improvements.

If you are selling an old version of your product abandoned in terms of maintenance by definition it must be valued far less than a similar product you make which is receiving active updates and fixes, that isn't being reflected in the price or being officially disclosed or in many cases on GOG hidden until after you have bought the product and then can see the version history.

9. Not sure I follow your point here but I'm interpreting it as they don't care as they are dealing with a minority of people. Perhaps but is it a minority of people because they understand it & don't consider it important or a large group of people ignorant of it occurring. If it is the latter then anyone running a business should be very concerned as they are sitting on a powder keg likely to explode and wipe out any accumulated value of their company.

If i is the former it may be legal but it is unethical in my case it was enough to mean I will no longer buy Triumph (the makers of AOW3) products on any platform because I don't like the way they conduct their business. No game is so good you can't pass on it.

Maybe they just lost one sale, of everything they will make from this point going forward, maybe they won't understand why, maybe others will take a stand. I'm not the Shepard of any other but I do believe people should be informed & make choice for themselves rather than being kept in the dark.

Thank you

1. Again it's up to them.....their house, their rules, etc. We may not like it but what can one with little power do beyond not buy/complain?

2. They are not forcing one to not play MP, however, and give people an option....as such they are not keeping anyone from anything(unless one has to pay for said MP access).

3. Again, it's up to them. It'd be nice to have(private servers) but it's not essential if they provide FREE official servers. One just has to make an account to gain access usually.

It'd(being mad about that) would be akin to being mad one needs to buy an internet subscription to access websites, and cannot run their own private internet with all the same sites as the regular internet.

4. If those checks are just to make sure one has access to the net then I don't see them as DRM...that's the point I was trying to make with that part.

5. They most likely either meant only SP being DRM free was their intent or they don't see official servers needing accounts(which are usually free, as I said before, and easy to get) as DRM as most agree.

6. As long as they offer an alternative(or someone makes one) to continue MP after the official servers close and said official servers are free/accessed by anyone I see no problem with it.....just my two cents.

7. That is hard to prove for certain, though. Either option could be correct and we wouldn't know without being them or having insider knowledge of some sort.

8. Imo as I said before SOME updates break things and the older builds are worth more/more superior by that definition. Should they charge more for those versions that are better? If so, how much more and who decides and how? Imo as long as a game has ALL content and is working to be able to enjoy it 100% then it's ok even if it isn't the latest build.

9.a. They already sadly lost value through dropping various core concepts over time(on gog)....this would be like a spit in the bucket for them.

9.b. I could never be that tough on anything.....I cannot see not partaking in something just because a company did x or y thing or said z thing at some point. Life is shorty and the list of things one get mad at and not partake in gets longer every day and at some point one has to draw the line and not get offended/cut off so much or risk losing access to a good amount of stuff that one would otherwise enjoy in life.

9.c. As long as one has good info and doesn't jump the gun without proof of bad things/words someone said as people often do nowadays. If one does it right it is an admirable/good stance to have.

If they REALLY sort out this mess, my next purchases here WILL be (the complete) "Party Hard 2" and any upcoming DLC for part 1.

At least ONE major flawed series would be repaired that way, but what to do about "Nuclear Throne"? That one is heavily botched till this day, too.

Is this means we will see a deep discounted weekly sale of Tinybuild games on next monday ?

I contacted Rami earlier this week. he said he'll take a look the upcoming week.

Honestly? If not spoken in irony many thanks in advance.

Can you / he do something about "Luftrausers", too? Last time I read about the problem was something like "we do not know how to replicate the error, even some Steam-players were affected" or something like that, which makes solving the error kind of hard...

I'm honestly not sure what to do about Luftrausers. That one confuses me. Might be better to contact him yourself? He seems to respond pretty well on Twitter.

1. No one is asking or forcing you to reply, but it is appreciated and a good b it of conversation so far. :)

(I do hope you got the gist of them, though)

As for why they did it: They could also just be lazy in general and not so bad, or maybe gog got some updates but it taking time rolling them out? Who can say for sure. :\

2. The thing is some devs do it in reverse(ie the steam version is outdated, etc). Imo dropping a dev over such small potatoes seems a bit too harsh....just a tad.

Also as I have told others and heard others say before: It is a good stance to hold if one sticks to their guns but the ones who buy will always outshine the ones who don't when it comes to businesses making decisions. To get their attention you have to do as some did and make a stink in public about the problem to get results.

3. They have to make sure pirate users aren't using a pirate copy to play on official servers they didn't pay to gain access to in that case.

4. This is up to opinion...some things are DRM that to others are not & vice versa.

5. Or they know most people won't care if MP needs an account to play and that most don't consider that DRM? That could also be it.

I DO think gog could be more transparent/open on some things, though.

6. While not the MOST important devs/etc are very important as without their product we wouldn't have anything to play short of making it ourselves....and we all know how good most of us are at that due to lack of skill/laziness.

7. As I said above making people aware is better than not buying, as they can ignore a few lost sales but not public outcry. Of course, one should be careful to verify their facts before making accusations on flimsy proof as some tend to do(in general).

8. And some as I said will buy anyways.....buyers have different priorities and the only way people could get a bunch of people on board is through force , mind control, or some major wrongdoing that affected a ton of people who used those products.

9. The site has tons of flaws that could be addressed....I agree.

10. Always verify everything you are going to be buying then before buying.....buyer beware is a saying for a reason, after all.

11. True.

Oh neocore - they are awful. I told them THREE times that their German localisation for Van Helsing Final Cut is incomplete. I even fixed some of those, corrected the subtitle timing and send them the files - offering them to add those to their game without much additional work. They always told me that they will fix this by themselves but at the moment they don't have the time. Since this is now a few YEARS ago, I will call the LIARS and I still intend to fix the localisation myself.

Actually solving such a bug is more or less impossible. Best chances you might have if this really is the case would be to send them a savegame in which you can reproduce the bug.

1. The fact that you can do such work and bothered to do so is an amazing thing and should be commended. Maybe offer it as a fan patch/addon via a community for others in the same boat?

2. I remember a similar near impossible to fix bug I had with Harbinger(sorta rpg scifi game by SIlverback). The human character got to one point with one of the main characters finally meeting them face to face and the game wouldn't be able to progress beyond that point. No matter what the support tried they couldn't reproduce the bug and I never got it fixed. I think it did go away on replaying it, though, so who knows what caused it or if it would ever come up again.

Don't mind me, I just dropped by to remind of a wishlist entry titled "Version number of games displayed on gamecard".
Just in case anyone would be interested. :-)

Sounds good, but you DO know about the version numbers posted on the offline installer links for most games, right?

The version number/name is on some offline installer DL links on each game's card for most games.

Well, that's the closest request to "Tell us what the current version of the game is so we knew if it's up to date or not" I found. Then there's this entry, hmm...
Yeah, I saw that. Kinda shame those stand-alone installers keep being hidden so it often takes an extra click to get to the version number though.

At least some of them are there....although some games have weird versions like the Titanic game one which has something on the end like tour fix or some such, and another which says hotfix 4. o.0