An vegan store can no longer call themselves vegan when they start selling mass produced meat, even if it's only from under the counter. They cannot in good conscience promote the vegan idea, teach people that eating less meat is good for their health and the planet's, and that animal suffering is a thing.

When GOG starts to make money from DRM'd games - even if it's only a section hidden in the client - they'd be hypocrites to further promote the DRM-free idea, to let people know how bad DRM is. They're condoning a bad practice, they become part of the problem.

I usually don't wish any ill on other people, regardless how much our opinions differ, but for the sake of GOG and DRM-free I hope these plans fail so hard that whoever made this decision has to go and is replaced by somebody who actually understands the values GOG was founded on and acts accordingly.

I think it was a mistake from GOG to brand Galaxy as a GOG product. That is the root of their problems. They should've made Galaxy.com or whatever and promote it as an alternative way of installing games, not necessarily tied to GOG. Then nobody would have a problem with it. However as things are GOG has a distinct identity crisis and has a lot to loose and nothing to gain. The crowds that buy from Epic don't care about DRM and DRM freeness. Nor do steam users. Actually many of them argue fervently about the need for DRM to keep games out of the hands of dirty pirates. So catering to that crowd imho is the wrong move from GOG. Luckily I have backed up all my catalog for the chance that GOG goes belly up after the Galaxy fiasco which gets bigger and bigger.

Those fine gents here, have fast reduced themselves in the exact same league. The content removal of GTA had been about songs, soundtrack part. Here, the Witcher 3 itself nonetheless, had content removed retroactively, song/soundtrack part also. Where 's the good old guarantee; "you buy it, it stays yours/you keep it"?

Another lie, is offering uncensored games, falsely tagged as "in progress" inside the wishlist. There is a growing even, list, naming titles sold here with various form of censor applied, some even affecting gameplay experience (fallout 1/2).

Complete packages/full compilations, anyone? Dungeon siege release lately, was not the collection, the kind of which GOG used to deliver in the old days.

GOG took many wrong turns, not just one.

P.S. In the good old days, the forums were moderators-free, too. Some charismatic people nagged and even blackmailed gog to stop bying here, unless they implemented this pestilence... Enjoy the results! Trolled by trigger happy, triggered mods

The only way I can possibly see GOG escaping the most (not all) of the moral dilemma they've caused themselves is to curate the Epic titles to only include DRM-free games. And in DRM-free I mean games on Epic which in no way require the Epic client (or other online authentication) to run after being downloaded - which is not much different to GOG's current Galaxy-based delivery system. These titles exist: as a follower of the EGS freebies and maintaining my own personal list of client/online dependence (and of course see AB2012's list here on the forum), I can point out quite a few titles fitting this description. And some of them are not currently available on GOG, so there would be no overlap. Forget PCGW's list, it's a guide but not entirely accurate.

It's a slightly less worse situation if this was done, but it would require an agreement with Epic to delist titles on offer the moment the DRM status changes.

If they did this, maybe this would satisfy most of the users here insisting on DRM-lite product, but it'll never satisfy the FCKDRM crusaders here. And you'd never explain away the fact that they're "in bed" with a company who uses aggressive tactics and of course sells DRMed content.

THAT could work, to be honest. Axiom Verge, Batman Arkham titles, Celeste and others, especially those confirmed to be DRM-Free and already being gifted there for free, would do! But only so long as they include offline installers. Celeste was also supposed to be here, had even been advertized in a gog video, but was scrapped for unkown reasons.

Most games in my gog library are epic höhö!

Nah joke aside, I just hope that like some ppl mentioned GOG only sells the drm-free games from epic or its something about a partnership.

Otherwise it would be hypocrisy at it´s finest.

TBH I like GOG mostly cause of the game selection and good curatorship instead of the open floodgates with hentai banging simulators from steam and like the way galaxy handles my installations, but a pact with epic seems like the first step into hell for me! -.-

List with games without dependencies would be good. Somebody needs to compile it, though. Somebody tech-savvy too. I barely understood the dependency thingie, save the fact it is unsanitary for DRM-Free fans.

I think the misunderstanding is the other way around. I haven't read anyone who said "OMG! GOG is going to remove all your offline installers for existing games tomorrow!". I have yet to read a serious response though to the entirely valid observation that if GOG makes non-GOG games sold on Galaxy so easy and transparent that publishers don't want to do dual DRM-Free GOG / Epic releases and just go Epic-only (because it saves them time & money not having 2x versions of the same game on the same store each requiring a different patch / update mechanism / achievement recoding, etc, when they can do 1x Epic version for 2x stores), that's clearly going to result in a reduction of "native" DRM-Free games here, for a reason that ends up being beyond GOG's control with GOG accidentally trapping themselves into a long-term decline into being a key reseller with a fancy front-end. It's the simple reality we've already seen with the Humble Store reduction of DRM-Free builds over time, at which point hand-waving and attempts to dismiss it as "fear-mongering" comes across as more wishful-thinking / panicked damage-control based denial than 'wisdom' by those wrapped up a little too closely in "meta-clients will save the world!" marketing fluff.

As SpikedWallMan said, what if Valve release Steam 2.0 in 6 months time that does exactly the same thing? There seems to be this staggeringly naive vision that GOG will succeed in "taking on Steam" via a meta-client and that there will be no response. GOG Moderators are posting personal visions of "seizing 20% of Valve's business" from making a meta-launcher. Does anyone seriously believe that Valve will sit back and let that happen without simply "updating" their API's in a way that break Galaxy's future integration (or specifically blacklisting Galaxy)? "We made a product that requires our competitors API's to remain friendly and are gambling our entire future business model on this" along with "Steam is so big that they really have no reason to (stop us stealing their customers)..." has to be the most mind-bogglingly naive thing I've ever read here.

All it would take is for Steam 2.0 to introduce encrypted API connections, eg, requires "handshaking" or Steam creates private / public encryption key pairs and then gives public keys to every official Steam key reseller partner (eg, Humble, GreenManGaming, Fanatical, etc) but specifically refused one for GOG, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to permanently break Galaxy integration without harming Steam key resellers, causing "I use Galaxy as a meta-launcher" crowd to desert it in droves. It's actually quite disturbing that no-one at GOG appears to have thought of this...

Totally valid. Steam and GOG's other competitors are watching and they're aware that GOG is spending an extraordinary amount of effort and money on the Galaxy bet. Either they have plans in motion to counter the new client on even grounds (meta client vs meta client) or they could just deny GOG integration by updating the API at the most opportune time. Steam for instance could drag it out and play games with GOG's devs if they wanted by shifting their API so often it causes frequent DOS to Galaxy/Steam integration users. Or they could button it up properly in one go and weather the storm of a minority of angry users. They could afford to do any of this. Can GOG afford the bet they're placing?

Currently, there are these forms to communicate / get data:
- steam web api ... you have to generate a personal key for the most things you want to access, see https://steamapi.xpaw.me/
- steam developer API interface: you have to be a registered partner with Steam and/or a developer. For this form of communication you have to drop some money to get encrypted access(see also https://partner.steamgames.com/)
- web scraping, alongside handing over full credentials for your Steam account; this method is heavily throttled by Valve to counteract DDOS / slow down web scraping in general.

Guess which method is utilizied by the GOG Galaxy integration plugin (the third one). The only thing Valve has to do, is just reducing the allowed requests per IP per 5 minutes (they come from where GOG Galaxy is running) and the integration plugin will have even more trouble functioning as desired.

Uh,..very doubtful. Can you explain how you are reaching that conclusion?

Consider the following:

GOG is apparently willing to sell DRMed Epic releases, so long as the sale is through the new Galaxy 2.0 client store app.

Developers are willing to release DRMed games on Epic, which if agreed upon will now also be purchasable through the new Galaxy 2.0 client store app.

So, where are you or anyone getting this conclusion that the same games will also get releases DRM-free on GOG?

The developer is effectively reaching "GOG the company"'s audience via being available on the "GOG Galaxy 2.0" app. For years people have been saying folks like me who want DRM-free offline installers are just an insignificant minority. So if the supposed majority of GOG's audience use Galaxy 2.0, then what incentive is there for developers to release ANYTHING on GOG.com DRM-free, since they can just release on Epic, agree for said Epic game to be sold through Galaxy 2.0, and call it a day.

Exactly.

But one has to consider why GOG was founded really ... and not just the hyperbole given out.
DRM-Free was (and is) a niche selling point, and also an attempt to prove a concept based on theory and idealism.
A different idea and selling point for a new store, that promotes a philosophy.

At the end of the day, if survival matters most, if the store matters most, then DRM-Free is disposable.

Can you please, please explain how you reach your conclusion that the chances are slim? What is their incentive to release games on GOG.com DRM-free if "the majority of people just want clients, you offline installer users and people speaking up about this move are a minority"?

Would you agree that if a developer releases a DRMed game on Epic that is purchasable through "GOG Galaxy 2.0" client store app, that they are able to access "GOG the company"'s audience simply by doing that?

Once you're done with the weird ad hominems, may I ask if you're aware that actors, particularly businesses, are capable of acting illogically?