My concern here is we're referring to online-only features, which would be of equal interest to offline players, as being "bonus" content. Other posters have referred to this as "rewards". It implies that players need to be given incentives to go online, as if being online and competing with or against other players is not enough incentive as it is.

Multiplayer is about community and will attract those who seek that type of environment. Trying to force single/offline players to become part of that multiplayer ecosystem is probably never going to fly since they're a different personality type. Some people get a kick out of knowing others are watching them. Some get creeped out instead.

They offer "community missions", so of course completing them has to yield some kind of reward. If that reward was "bonus content" like I assumed at first, I'd not be happy with it, but I could - grudgingly - live with it. But it turned out you don't actually have to do community missions to earn these rewards, you can get them in offline play just fine. You only have to come online exactly once, to enable them. That is really the only requirement (or: hack the save game). And that is really bullshit.

No, we can't, because we do agree here (as I said multiple times). The line between one single multiplayer reward and hiding a crapload of content behind an online account is pretty thin. That's a line that GOG obviously needs to draw. They have to decide what would be okay and what would be too similar to DRM. They need to decide what is a "complete enough" singleplayer experience.

Again: If Hello Games would patch out the seamless multiplayer and put singleplayer and multiplayer as seperate entries in the main menu, these items would suddenly become multiplayer exclusive and the "DRM" would be gone without removing any kind of DRM. No one would gain anything by that. Quite the contrary: Players who play singleplayer 99% of the time and just enabled online to get this ship, suddenly can't use it anymore. No DRM would be removed. Just the option to hop in and out of multiplayer with the same save file.

Or Hello Games could patch that whole Quicksilver stuff, making it unobtainable in singleplayer. Wouldn't change a lot, but it'd "remove the DRM".

Again it's subjective, because in some sense everything in the new patch is "bonus content" compared to what you originally bought. I'm not even agreeing with what they did though, any kind of online only content that would work just fine in singleplayer is bullshit. My point is more... is it DRM? I don't think it's clear cut that it is. Is it in violation enough to earn an immediate delisting and removal, even if that impacts existing owners? I don't think it's clear cut at all that it is.

These are the questions involved, not "is this bad or not."

But that content is a reward for "community missions". Community = online. And DRM for online gaming was always okay with GOG (see below).

See? That's the whole problem here. It's not "a bunch of people" who decided DRM in multiplayer is okay. It's Good Old Games (the store that was before "GOG") who decided that, when they allowed CD keys from the early days on (I think Dungeons and Dragons games were the first games with CD key?!). They always said: singleplayer needs to be 100% DRM free, multiplayer is a different thing.

It's not a problem when singleplayer and multiplayer are clearly seperated, with different saves, inventories and content. But it suddenly becomes a problem with NMS, because multiplayer is seamless and you don't have different saves and inventories. It's a problem because you can get multiplayer "exclusive" content (content that you only can GET in multiplayer) that you can keep in singleplayer.

As I said, we have to see things from GOG's point of view on "DRM free". GOG was always okay with CD keys for multiplayer, as long as the singleplayer was DRM free. Later they were okay with third party accounts for multiplayer, because DRM in multiplayer is DRM in multiplayer. So "fully DRM free" on GOG means "no DRM in singleplayer".

And here we are again. The ship isn't singleplayer content. It's a multiplayer reward that you can use in singleplayer. Stupid decision, yes. But with two seperate entries for singleplayer and multiplayer in the main menu, the ship wouldn't be available in singleplayer anymore. And that would really remove the DRM (GOG's definition of DRM)?

We totally need to have a discussion if this should be allowed on GOG or not! In NMS we're talking about a stupid "Hey! Let's make people try our online stuff by giving them a cool ship as a reward!" design decision. But what happens when other games start to put more and more content into their seamless multiplayer, starting to cripple singleplayer for it? There needs to be a clear line, because seamless multiplayer is where games are going. And DRM free singleplayer doesn't mean shit when 50% of the content are locked behind an online account.

How are you concluding that it's a multiplayer reward?

Has anybody posted outside the forum about this matter?

Right. A circle has a start and an end.

A downward spiral will spiral infinitely without spiraling itself into a stop...

That's what I thought too, until TerriblePurpose corrected me. It would be true if you could acquire quicksilver only in the MP part.
But as it stands, you can quicksilver in single player just fine.

So essentially all you have to do is go online exactly once, to fully unlock the quicksilver item store. And then you can farm your quicksilver off that Space Ice TerriblePurpose described further above until you can afford the Void Egg. No MP required at all for that.
The only real MP reward is getting quicksilver easier, because in pure SP it's rather rare.

So it's the qs item store which has a rather silly, and easily bypassed form of DRM if you will. And it affects single player, not because of the seamlessness of MP in the game, but because MP isn't at required to get the stuff from the store. It's a weird situation.

Another thing that complicates this is the fact, that we're talking about purely optional content added for free in a patch. And not even in a patch that mends some promise they made earlier, it's really something extra, at least for people who've owned the game for a while.

New buyers on the other hand might get the wrong impression that the Living Ship is part of the completely offline SP experience. And I don't see any indication in their announcement (https://www.nomanssky.com/living-ship-update/) that an online connection is required.

I said quintessentially, because there is nothing inherently multiplayer about that content, and indeed it works fine in single player after you've gotten your pass through the DRM once. The fact that someone just arbitrarily decided to disable certain items in a shop when offline and made some drop very rare in single player doesn't really make the locked content any different from normal single player content. Honestly if we're following GOG's arbitrary made-up definitions of DRM-free then anything might be DRM-free. The only reason we're having this discussion at all is because GOG allows DRM and calls it DRM-free. Now they have to draw the line. They set themselves up for this, knowing that a lot of games have multiplayer exclusive content.

That's why I'm not really taking part in this discussion, because it is so absurd. A game with DRM in multiplayer is never going to be fully DRM-free unless that DRM is removed. Playing tricks like adding separate menu items for offline/online modes and disabling content in one mode can only work if you're trying to weasel out of a shitty situation caused by stupid definitions. As you said, doing this does not truly remove any DRM at all, it's at best good for maintaining a lie.

If we want a clear line, then that line is NO DRM at all. All content is accessible by players without having to seek permission from GOG's or third parties' services. Yeah, that's the danger when you define DRM in multiplayer = no DRM. It doesn't even need to be "seamless", just call it multiplayer.

This would never be a problem if GOG just meant DRM-free when they say DRM-free.

+1

-1000

It's a league game. Right, Walter?

Reminds me of Two Worlds 2 and the Echoes of the Dark Past Part 1 & 2 expansion, which adds online multiplayer content to the offline singleplayer experience of the base game.

The difference being that you're given the choice to add DRMed online multiplayer content to your offline singleplayer experience. In Noman's Sky's case you don't have a choice and it's forced into the base game by ways of an update.
In the end the content of the update is still optional but the game overall is kind of tainted by the forceful inclusion of DRMed online multiplayer-only content.