The youtube video explaining the fix updates its comments regularly with the latest values, but, yes, that's why I said that I would prefer a "real" solution and have this option enabled by default by HG or Gog rather than having peoples manually update their saves.

Yeah I know, but my main concern though remains point number 2: I just hope this will never happen, but who knows.

Being less convenient in specific rare situations does not mean DRM. Can you download an offline installer? Yes. Do you ever need internet or a GOG account every again to play it? No. Hence, DRM free. And no other store is offering you that for every game, or ever will, I can tell you that.


You say you're not accusing GOG of betrayal, but then you immediately say they are purposely adding online only content to offline games? Listen... GOG didn't do this, the developers of No Man's Sky did. They decided to add some perk content for logging in and playing online, despite the vast majority of the game being playable offline and DRM free. GOG didn't choose to do that, the developer did.

The questions are: 1) Is this DRM?, and 2)What should GOG do about it?

The answers are very subjective, but I would at least answer (as I have before) that delisting a game already sold for years and probably killing future support for owners is a much trickier proposition than people are acting like it is. I would also say if that online content were simply not offered on GOG, people would also complain about that and say things like "second-class customers!" and whatnot. There's no pleasing everyone.

Simplest solution would be to make that content available offline in the GOG version, but GOG can't just force them to do that. Hopefully they are trying to persuade them to.

We're still talking about content that's purely for imaginary cosmetic reasons and doesn't add anything substantial to nor subtract from the single player experience, right?

So, basically, following this precedent this is how every publisher can DRM their game on GOG:

1. Offer the game DRM-free
2. Introduce an update with new content that only now really turns the game into what it's supposed to be
3. Also introduce DRM or other online-only features in the same update
4. GOG can't do jack shit to you because you can hold people who already bought the game before "hostage".
5. You now have yourself a DRMed game on GOG

I mean, if it works in this case, why not in a more egregious one? Either the rules apply or they don't. If we're to follow your logic then it's better GOG simply outright abandons the pretense of DRM-free games with fully offline single player. At least that will be an open and clear move, instead of introducing this backdoor "well, what can we do? just use Galaxy, wink wink" option.

There is really nothing complicated about this situation, like you keep insisting. It's actually very simple. Nothing you bring up - how long the game has been here, updates, how minor the gated content is - none of that makes it complicated. Because DRM-free offline single player is supposed to be the rule. Not "DRM-free offline single player at release and for some time after that", not "DRM-free offline single player with the exception of non-essential content". Just "DRM-free offline single player". So none of that other stuff factors into this. At all.

I agree. While it's definitely unfortunate for people who already bought the game here, DRM-free is supposed to be a principle. If you allow exceptions to something, it stops being a principle and becomes a guideline. This issue (and any similar issues in other GOG games) needs to be fixed or the game needs to be removed.

Frankly, there are plenty of second-class versions of games on here that should have the same done. It ruins the integrity of the store if customers have to check community-managed spreadsheets to make sure they aren't getting an inferior product by buying here or that their "DRM-free" game is actually 100% DRM-free. If someone wants to sell their game here, there should be a clear rule: Either it's DRM-free and has parity with the Steam version (not counting things like soundtracks that are entirely separate from the game itself) or get out. This isn't supposed to be a dumping ground for developers who don't actually care about their customers.

Regarding the use of the word betrayal, can we agree from the outset that it was you yourself that introduced this term into this discussion?

Also, I am well aware that gog did not introduce this state of affairs, but who cares about that? Well, users on this forum for one, pointing out that gog should care: that's who.

Gog have a duty of care when it comes to allowing users to purchase games from their store: if those games can be viewed as directly breaching gogs only remaining core principle, then it is up to gog to clarify their position, not you or I.

In the absence of clarification from gog, I think most people would be wise enough to make their own minds up about what is actually going on here.

I accepted that there were going to be multiplayer aspects that would never be available with GOG copies since so many developers make them dependent on the steam toolset. But single player should never be pruned down.

Since i do not own No Man's Sky, i have a couple of questions about how this stuff is actually implemented.

1. If i understood it correctly, you can earn a bit of this new currency while offline, correct?
2. Are all the items you can buy with that currency visible/buyable in offline singleplayer?
3. Are the items you can buy more than "just" cosmetics?
4. How much stuff can you buy with the amount you can earn offline?
5. You can hack your savegame to get more currency?

Additionally: The fine print on the store page apparently differentiates between just being online, and having Galaxy active. Is that really the case that some online features do not require Galaxy, but just an active connection? If yes, does the game connect automatically, or does it ask to connect? Can you actively disconnect while in game?

Depending on the answers, the solution would be simple: Just remove the teasing with small amounts of currency, and the ability to see what you cannot buy, from singleplayer. That would put this on par with many other games here with somewhat more clearly advertised "Galaxy-only" online features.

Those people should be aware that most of the content they released goes ways beyond "fixing broken promises", and for a while now.
Calling the game "in-dev" is half-true. It's not true in the sense that you get an incomplete game. The release version would have been "complete" if it weren't for all the stuff they promised and then didn't have. I didn't pay any attention to those promises - I saw the screenshot, read a short description, bought it and was happy with it. If it weren't for the forum I wouldn't even know about all the drama.

But of course all the people who followed the game, expecting all the stuff that was promised being in the game when it was released, had every right to be majorly pissed off. I guess I was lucky I didn't start the game with those expectations.

Nevertheless, for a while now every version was a "complete" version. If they had stopped there, it would have been fine.

It's true in the sense that after every update they announce they will continue to work on the game, expanding it further. And actually this stopped me from playing too. Especially since they sometimes decide to improve the planet generation, making it even more cool, yes, but erasing you bases (you get your resources back at least, but it's work to rebuild nonetheless). The last updated prevented this by adding new planets instead of modifying the existing ones, but they can't do that every time or it'll get ridiculously crowded in space.

That "only now" is way past.

They didn't introduce DRM from my point of view. Again - there are no "digital rights managed" in this game.

And of course every dev is free to add features, even online only features, to their games in updates. Aren't devs allow to introduce new MP modes, new MP maps, younameit?

Aren't we talking about a feature that is 100% single-player compatible, except that you need to go online to access it?

This isn't a new MP mode or MP map, this is like making E1M9 available (in single player) only after you've played online. Oh, so these features are in fact accessible without an account & galaxy authentication (or savegame hacking)?

IIRC 150 quicksilver during one of the main missions. There it stops.
If you stay offline, no. If you go online once, the game thinks you in theory could earn quicksilver, and shows them.

The thing people are miffed about is the Void Egg. Having this triggers a mission, which will in turn lead you to have a "Living Ship".
Once you have this ship its AFAIK not much different than a normal ship from a gameplay point of view.

I think only one or two small decorations for your base. Could be wrong, but certainly not much more.

Not sure, but I think so.

I'm not sure here. I it may be that without Galaxy NMS still tries to contact the HG servers to upload discoveries. Real MP gameplay requires Galaxy, at least I think so. Multiplayer can be toggled in the option menu on the fly. I theory you could also "pull the plug" while doing MP stuff, and the game keeps running, any other players will simply disappear, bases which aren't currently downloaded will not show up, player bases with are already in your game's memory should stay until you leave.

Could work for players who stay offline all the time.
As I explained further above, the game has no dedicated singleplayer or multiplayer mode. If you enable online play only once, the game has to remember that in theory you could play online stuff any time. And it does, by showing the full inventory of that store.
This wouldn't help with the problem that offline players also want to do the Living Ship mission.
As I explained above, every feature of NMS is 100% single-player compatible. How else should it work? Should your ship disappear when you go offline? Should the mission to get it simply fail?

In my eyes: More like adding a bonus level to the game, but only giving it to you after winning 10 deathmatches as a reward. Yeah, I would call that a stupid decision too, but I would still not call it DRM.

If it were truly DRM, savegame hacking wouldn't work, because the info was stored on their servers, not on your machine. Like all the MTX-fuelled game do it.

Then every feature should be 100% accessible in single player. Well that's exactly what I said. The secret levels in doom are essentially bonus levels (especially e1m9 which is leftovers from early development). And now we have a game that locks these levels behind online access. This is an artificial restriction, and if online play isn't available to you for whatever reason, then they have used a mechanism to prevent you from accessing the bonus level in the game.

The fact that you don't care about the bonus level is of no consequence. In principle, it's no different from (say) restricting play time to no more than 2 hours without online access, or locking all but the tutorial and first "demo level" until you've been online. The only difference is the scale of the restriction. What it is is still what it is: an artificial online restriction for what is fundamentally single-player content. Contrary to popular misconceptions, DRM does not require storing anything on servers. It just requires restricting the user's access artificially. And there are lots of locally implemented DRM schemes, from certificates and pluggable authentication keys for enterprise software to things like HDCP which are meant to ensure you can only view a protected video stream on a device that doesn't let you copy or save it. Or PDFs that don't allow you to copy or print them. Every DRM scheme can be cracked one way or another, some of them trivially, some of them with a lot of effort.