In principle I would then count everything that is locked playing offline as not part of the single player game. Which in turn would be a very short and shitty game I would not buy. And if the game had been advertised as having all that content available in offline SP, I would call it cheating.

Also, the Living Ship is not simply unlocked by going online (that would be DRM indeed). You only get it as a reward for doing "community missions".

Oh nice. Now GOG can start selling very short single player games. "Online access required to play." Just 100% single-player compatible content you need to go online for. They don't even need to call it DRM. Effin genius my bro.

I have two questions regarding your statement.
- What do you do, when there are things you don‘t agree with and you want to change them? Knowing that just posting here in the forum alone never interested GOG in any way?
- When is it enough for you to take actions (whatever they may be)? One game having drm? Two games? Ten games? How many is too much for you?

This was not a description of this incident, but of a hypothetical future one, in which a publisher uses this "loophole", meant to showcase what your and Velvet's "logic" leads to.

Why am I not surprised you "misunderstand" an argument again.

So, basically you have no counterarguments and are just going to stubbornly keep repeating the same thing. Ok, great talking to you.

Could be there already games like that here on GOG. And yes, it's important to point those out and warn people about it. And yes, if they hide the fact that they require online play for the full experience, or even lie about it, they shouldn't be here at all.

I'm fine with games here that have only rudimentary SP parts and which are more focused on MP, even if MP nowadays sadly means "client" (that's another discussion), as long as that - small as it may be - SP part works DRM free and offline as promised, and everybody is aware they're getting an MP focused game. Think something like UT or Q3A.

+1, and let's also remember that the rule should go further and be "100% DRM-free" meaning not only 100% DRM-free offline single player but also, DRM-free multiplayer. 100% DRM-free is the standard to be featured on FCKDRM.com. I realize that with modern games especially, it is incredibly rare to find ones that don't DRM their multiplayer, but I think to have same content available offline with LAN and bots is an acceptable compromise. After all, there is NO reason games need to have DRM in order to have online multiplayer, other than conveeeenience and developer laziness/publisher data-mining.
You can tell us that, but you would be incorrect. Heard of ZOOM Platform? To say nothing of FireFlower Games and others which iirc may not provide an "offline installer" but do provide an exe. What GOG has is the largest selection of DRM-free big releases, it gets games those other stores can only dream of.


What do you have to say about the point that the groups of unsatisfied customers are not equal? In other words, pleasing one group of customers goes towards demolishing the branding of the store. Wouldn't that group of customers be a better one to please on such an issue, in the long run?

When your argument is conflating adding online-only content in patches and DRM, there is not much to misunderstand. That's arguing in bad faith really.
You wrote: To which I say, they may, of course add online-only features, but not DRM because that are completely different things. And silly me was thinking you were tieing this to NMS, because this thread is about this game.

And yet you somehow managed it.

Hence "DRM or other online-only features", rather than just "DRM".

And so we're not supposed to discuss the obvious implications of this precedent for other publishers and games? Would you care to introduce some other arbitrary limitations on the thread to aid your cause?

DRM is hardly limited to cloud-only content, nor does the ability to "gift" yourself stuff offline via save game editors or Cheat Engine mean that DRM checks aren't DRM. Eg, the Steam version of Deus Ex Human Revolution is DRM'd as are related pre-order bonuses (now treated as "bonus DLC"). It's the easiest thing in the world to "gift" yourself the same extra 10,000 credits via Cheat Engine that are normally unlocked by the Steam client's DRM check for the DRM'd Tactical Enhancement Pack DLC / Pre Order Bonus. But even if the base game were DRM-Free on Steam and ran without the Steam client, if you still needed the client running to unlock access that "bonus content" via Steam's DRM, it doesn't stop being DRM just because you can cheat an alternative way around it via unofficial means or declare the content "unimportant". A DRM check via a client that otherwise gates off some content if DRM check cannot be made simply is what it is - DRM. Whether people "like" that or deem it "important" is a completely separate (and highly relative) argument.

Re-reading the thread it's obvious that the inane dumbing down of the definition of DRM (an eligibility / content access verification check that unlocks access to something whilst simultaneously blocking access if that check can't take place) into "DRM isn't DRM if I say it's not a big deal if it's minor content / only cosmetics / is DLC / bonus content and not base game", etc, is what most people are calling out as BS more than the specific NMS issue in particular (which could be the same honest mistake that Deus Ex:MD made). Many people care less about NMS as one single game in particular and far more about the bigger long-term picture as to where GOG will be in 5 years time if "bait & switching" in DRM'd DLC or locked "service" content into a previously DRM-Free base game advertised and sold as such becomes the next "normalized" slippery slope on a DRM-Free store.

One week is all it took to fix Deus Ex:MD's similar issue. Because of an "outrage mob" kicking up a fuss. People aren't saying what they're saying to be dicks, they simply want GOG to remain a store that sells quality DRM-Free products, not pave the way for future mediocre half DRM'd "services" where entire full blown expansions packs could end up DRM'd and online-only and justified by waving the Magical Word Redefinition Wand of calling everything that could run offline "online bonus content" purely by linking it to some absurdly trivial "reward" unlock action performed online:-

"Congratulations! You picked a cup up off a desk in an online mission! As a reward, this unlocks the 80hr-long totally-not-an-expansion-pack online bonus content that requires a totally-not-DRM'd always-online client to run it's authentication check even though there's no reason it couldn't run offline. And this is fine because we added it in a patch!". Opening the floodgates to this stuff is intelligence insulting as hell on an obviously DRM-Free store.

Well, OK. But then UT and Q3A have distinct single player experiences totally split from the multi-player part, which in my book is perfectly fine.

Adding multi-player content with repercussions to the single player experience is not something I'd get behind no matter how hard they try to market as a "community focused game experience". In these cases I feel like the devs are trying to lure you over to multi-player and single-player is just a facade for that.

Not saying that's not a technically valid way to design games, it's just not what this grumpy old gamer would spend his money on or condone.

Now if devs ever want to add stuff on top of the single player experience to enhance it with optional multi-player elements, sure, why not. For example, having a multiplayer version of a single player boss battle is fine if it caters for more players and doesn't somehow tie back in to your offline experience, detracting from it, but just scales it seamlessly (much like Torchlight 2 does for multiplayer co-op).

Again, stuff like "we added this cool stuff that you could technically get in single player too if we wanted to, but we made it so you can only get it by trying out multiplayer" is bad for players IMHO, regardless if you see it as DRM or not. Sure, it acts as a means to a purpose for developers, we can at least agree to that, but let's not hide behind pleasantries and marketing BS.

Funny how some people are making up excuses for this kind of bullshit.

Interesting reflection. And some valid points.
But I'll not add any more arguments. The fact is that DRM in videogaming is increasing. And if GOG decides to go through the DRM'd path it's their doom. There's no way they could ever try to compete with steam, epic or the future streaming services.
I guess it's for GOG to decide if they want to continue making a business or not. At least - yet - one can still backup the DRM-free installers before everything goes to waste.

EDIT:
Reading some of the comments and seeing the arguments and evolution of the case I'll wait until the end of next week to see if GOG gives a statement about the topic (I don't think they will, though :P )
So far I don't really have a stand on the issue, as I've never even played the game.
GOG could (should?) indeed stop selling the game in case the devs refuse to fix the issue. But - as some folk have stated here - it could give a bad sign to other devs. Let's not forget that, in marketing terms, GOG has very weak leverage on the videogame market. Many devs are refusing to sell their games here because of the hassle of making DRM-free version of their games.
Not an easy situation for GOG, this one.

I think we should not conflate real DRM with a stupid decision HG made. Yeah and I completely agree this should be fixed and also it sets a bad example for other publishers and games. I however doubt any malicious intent on the side of HG or even GOG.
When NMS came out in its messy state, GOG offered refunds. When the MP was delayed on GOG while it already worked on Steam, GOG offered refunds, even to players like me who had hundreds of hours into the game.

DX:MD is a "finished" game, so GOG could fix that. NMS still gets updates, so it's up to HG to fix the issue.

That's a matter of what you want from a game I guess. Seamless MP also means, if you get your ship damaged in MP, it's still damaged when you leave MP. It simply works this way.

There are games like that, but NMS didn't even have MP at first, and it took a while until the GOG version had it. Like I wrote, it's a single player game with some tacked-on optional MP stuff.

Yeah I agree. That's exactly the situation as I see it. But people seem to want to burn me along with Hello Games because I think it's not really single player DRM (it's currently, and sadly part of MP in my eyes, and MP is DRM'd without a doubt) and I don't think the game should be delisted for this.
Offline players have every right to complain though, even if it's a bit like "I only got a truckload of content for free, while online players got a truckload plus one candy bar". In this, I can get behind "principle", and that's why I was suggesting a thread like "Games that treat offline players as second class citizens", calling out such bad practices.

Not if the Einstein-Rosen bridge that connects SP to MP has a repair station along the way, where they also give you a complementary back rub beside a ship repair. My point being, it's ultimately up to the developers how to handle things - there is no explicit reason for having a connection between multiplayer and single player if they don't want one. To that point I agree with some people saying your are ultimately trying to make up excuses where no excuses can be made - and I'm not really sure why you're doing it, but I won't judge you for it.

I'll throw a bucket of water on you if the fire gets too big :). Hello Games, however... I have a hard time believing they did not know what they were doing. They may have underestimated its reception or the impact it would have on their offline player base, but I have no doubt in my mind it was intentional. To that end they probably deserve at least a light prod with a pitchfork :)... beside other repercussions if they decide that's the way they're going to keep doing things moving forward. Which would be disappointing, but not something we or GOG ultimately have control over. As Breja suggested, GOG could (and maybe should) delist the game in protest, but I doubt that they will.