There is a very fundamental, sharp difference between unified proxy launcher and unified proxy storefront (the discussion here is on a deal that involves the latter, and the GOG was generally implying to be working on the FORMER in the past).

(edit: changed "fine grained" to "fundamental" to make the premise more clear)

Are they now selling games with DRM or not?

Using quibbles to "technically" keep a promise ("It's not the gog.com store"), ... well - technically Bill didn't have sex with Monica either, so Hillary has nothing to complain about, no?

They already broke their promise. No Man's Sky isn't DRM free anymore but had DRM added via update. GOG knows that, but decided to accept it and to ignore any support tickets asking to remove that DRM from the game.

To you and to everyone that thinks / hopes this is a marketing / publicity stunt:

Even if it would be it would be extremely distasteful, it would push one line too many and people would have bad aftertaste for years, it would this time have actual negative impact since this joke isn't funny.
It's in fact so bad that basically...

It's "I'm gonna make this pencil dissappear" stunt...

*STARRING*

*Lau* as *tencent*
*That "Chechen" guy* as *CDPR financial department*
*That Italian Guy (Maroni)* as *loyal GOG consumers caring specificly about lack of DRM*
*Rest of the audience* as *"various undisclosed companies with 'special funding'"*
*Joker* as *whoever made the decision (about this deal) in GOG company*
*the guy at the receiving end of the pencil* as *GOG company / GOG company future credibility / level of loyal consumers' trust*
*"Gambol"* as *T. Sweeney*
*grenades* as *future GDPR complaints*

*Batman* as *Steam / Valve*

(this is satire and is not meant to offend anybody)

This is THE nightmare variation for the future of gaming. If that ever happens, I will go to piracy exclusively without any second thoughts.

This is one more reason we need a Lite version of the Galaxy app that deals with GOG content only. I want absolutely nothing to do with Epic.

You can play it without the launcher

Not even piracy would help in that case...... there wouldn't even be local files for anyone to crack at all.
That would be the single worst thing that could ever happen in gaming history.

But you won't get all single-player content. To get the living ship, you must register your game online through Galaxy.

Sure, it's only a small part of the game. But it is DRM on part of a single player game. In other words: another broken promise. So if you want a 100% DRM-free store, you have to move somewhere else now. GOG gave up on that distinction. Sure, they still sell DRM-free games. But so do Steam and Epic. So there is nothing to set GOG apart anymore.

If you don't enable Epic integration in Galaxy you won't have anything to do with Epic, same for Steam, X-Box or the other integration, you can even disable Gog integration if you want.
This update concern enabling games purchasing elsewhere to be activated on Gog, as in purchasing Gog key. As in the opposite direction to how the Epic stuff will work as it will be Galaxy that will activate purchases on Epic store.
That's basically the same thing as it is today, only peoples that will see those games are Epic customers that have enabled Epic store integration on Galaxy (So only a small percentage of the Epic market share), so if publishers wants to access the full Gog market share then they will still need to release the game on Gog proper.

I note i some articles on this, that Epic is a tester for other storefronts (presumably steam at least), therefore I would give up any hope in the future of games available elsewhere coming here drm free. No developer is going to go through the hassle of drm free if they can release on steam, and then sell to gog customers without doing anything else. That is the real issue here, not the immediate effect but the future possibilities.

Bethesda did release Prey 2017, Dishonored series, and other games that were laced w/ Steam client-app and/or other DRM other there right onto GOG way later.

They probably needed money; hence why they probably got bought by Microsoft, after that disaster of Fallout 76.

I also would guess that other dev's and/or companies that might want to support that fan-base that doesn't buy games laced with DRM and/or games w/ forced client-app's (from places like Epic, Steam, etc) - they might bring their stuff way later to GOG just to get those missing sales that always eluded them from that DRM-FREE crowd.

While I do use many stores like Epic, Steam, etc etc - one of the annoying things is they often do NOT note what games are currently DRM-FREE over there. We have to follow threads over here on GOG and check PC Gaming Wiki's over to find out if said game has No DRM over on those stores.

Yeah, that's basically how the moderator framed it too, and it's a case of looking through rose-colored glasses.

It doesn't look as pretty when framed this way:

-Until now, selling a DRM-free game on GOG.com was the way to reach GOG the company's audience.
-Now, selling a DRMed game on Galaxy from Epic is another way to reach GOG the company's audience.

So, for a DRM-loving developer/publisher who puts their game on Scheme and Epic, then agrees to bring it to "GOG" via selling in the Galaxy 2.0 store's tab for Epic, they would not be reaching GOG the company's full audience HOWEVER they would be reaching more than they would have otherwise, because without providing a DRM-free release they would not have, until now apparently, reached any.

I don't think you understood my post, if you think that I thought it could be a publicity stunt..