All we can do now is hope for a silver lining. Inevitably Microsoft will be reminded of GOG. I don't remember reading about any tension between inXile+Obsidian and GOG, so maybe via osmosis Microsoft will have to deal with GOG in some way. Maybe it will be the type of relationship will all hope for...

Probably not. But it does mean no more new games from inxile and obsidian.

See below.

It most likely would affect their future games in the worst way. From MS gaming division: Note - "exclusive games" and "Microsoft technologies". So, expect everyone to be excluded, unless they are using MS stores and MS platforms and expect more push for MS only lock-in like UWP and DirectX, instead of collaboration on cross platform technologies. And the goal is not to reach more gamers, but to turn gamers into "loyal Xbox fans"...

I'm afraid that means no more isometric crpgs from Obsidian/inXile.

But as noted here https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41239&page=2 Pillars of Eternity rights might be out of this deal. Wonder if it's the same for Wasteland/Torment.

I liked POE, loved POE2, but I adore NWN2. I wish they do 3D above head view game. (I could manage if they wished to skip GOG, but if they skip steam I will brake something)

Next target : Beamdog ? :p

At one time I might've cared, but in recent years American/California RPGs have taken a backseat to Europe & Eastern Europe. The best modern RPGs are Expeditions: Viking, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Divinity Original Sin 2, and of course The Witcher 3 - all of which have a strong unifying vision and do something fresh with the genre. By comparison Californian studios are dedicated to making a really bad version of the Infinity Engine games, with self-congratulatory fanfic tier characters and content so incohesive and fragmented, it's like they've got 24 head writers pulling it in every direction.

/rant

Ouch. Lots potential down the drain apparently. Well, maybe the majority of the devs form to a new independent company. As of now the Obsidian and InXile brands are too damaged to trust any future works from. :(

While it is highly likely we will no longer see any GoG releases from there studios ever again, I always hold out hope.

I've sent messages to both studios and Ninja Theory, that has also recently been acquired, thanking them for giving gamers a choice and in not choosing to punish legitimate users with DRM.

And asking them to consider raising those choices again with there new owners.

I think this would be more effective if I'm not the only one that's does this.

^ This. Anyone arguing over store-fronts needs to be reminded - This is the same Microsoft that cancelled multi-million title selling Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires, etc) because the style of play couldn't be dumbed down enough to fit XBox controllers. The same studio whose Quantum Break defaults ran at upscaled 720p on the PC for "platform parity" with the XBox... Expect future titles to not only not be here on GOG, they probably won't even be on Steam either. See Age of Empires Definitive Edition for an example right now.

"Microsoft Technologies" is the agenda reveal here. It's all about pushing XBox sales, forcing further W10 adoption amongst older gamers and trying to reassert DX12 as the "dominant" future gaming API after cross-platform (and better optimised) Vulkan has been stealing its thunder and enabling games to be easier ported to Linux / PS4. The ultimate worst case end goal would be abusing their control over W10 and forcing UWP / DX12 to become the "Win32" / DX11 replacement by gradually deprecating older DX. Eg, first "test the waters" by removing DirectPlay support from W10, then gradually DX7-9, then DX10, then finally DX11) and end up requiring games devs to use only DX12 / UWP to finally depracate "Legacy" Win32/64 apps (also to force people onto newer MS Office versions). Whether they'd be legally allowed to get away with it I don't know, but there's no question MS haven't thought long and hard about the fact W10 is one potential giant kill-switch for all older applications / games waiting to happen, not in the immediate future but certainly perhaps in 5-10 years time.

In a hindsight it's not a surprise inXile has been sold. It was somewhat clear that Fargo was betting big with Bard's Tale 4, especially when it was said he put far more money into it than what they got from the Kickstarter. It also explains some of the baffling design choices of the game, as they were trying to make it more easier to approach for people that didn't know the old series.

Note, that I'm not saying I hate BT4, far from it, as I do consider it to be the best game in the series, as the old ones haven't really aged at all well. Even the remasters are too grindy for my tastes. But at the same time, I do understand why the design decision made for the game turned off many people and it is also a game marred with rather amateurish design choices that do make you wonder what kind of a mess the development was for the game (save points, no sorting in the inventory, creating a character only after a tutorial segment, the severe technical issues of the game etc.).

It's not a bad idea to buy Obsidian and inXile games on GOG soon enough, because when the current agreements expire Microsoft will probably pull them out of sale here. I hope GOG will provide some good sale on these games in the upcoming months. There's no chance that the next games made by these studios will be released as DRM-free. Next games will be Microsoft Store exclusives only, which drops my interest in them to zero. Of course we can forget about isometric RPG's.

Yeah, that's true, but GOG can try to negotiate a better sale price. I'm not saying it's easy.

RIP Obsidian