I'm talking about developers who are releasing games on GOG at all. Again, the vast majority of them already support DRM-free multiplayer, and a bunch more would support it if GOG removed their DRM. None of this means having to start from scratch. Also the few that require third party services generally don't actually depend on them for much. Adding a way to bypass that and form a game directly between players is hardly starting from scratch. It's comparable to adding the options menu and making keys rebindable, if that. Again, most games here already have DRM-friendly multiplayer. But for whatever reason (actually I can guess: control, drm), the publisher wants you to first log in with their (or GOG's) service. Removing that login check and allowing a direct connection between players is hardly more work than cutting out DRM. It doesn't take much resources. Adding the DRM in the first place required way more resources. That is not true at all for most games here. Very few games here have multiplayer spread deep into their design. But some still have DRM. Sorry, I don't see any evidence of that. Old school multiplayer isn't gone at all but these games today require you to authenticate with third party services before they let you connect. That's not a big thing to work around. Yawn, please let's not talk about MMORPGs and other such games that aren't here today and aren't coming here tomorrow. That's a complete straw man. Let's talk about games that are actually here but require third party authentication for no good reason. For example, Torchlight 2.

It seems that NMS offline installers have been updated to version 3.03_Origins_64766
https://www.nomanssky.com/2020/10/origins-patch-3-03/

If anyone has the game installed through offline installers and has the patience to investigate if this changes anything on the "online activation" issue, please do so.
Thanks in advance.

Just checked, no change.

Thank you for checking it.

So this was updated and still doesn't resolve the DRM issue?

This isn't a good look for you GOG, this game should be delisted til HG get their shit together.

When GOG were informed about the issue, more than two weeks ago, their reaction was to add the following line to NMS's game page:

"The game features online components introduced in updates (SYNTHESIS, BYTEBEAT, LIVING SHIP, EXO MECH, CROSSPLAY, DESOLATION and ORIGINS) that require Internet connection."

which to me implies that they have pretty much resigned, willingly or not, to it being part of the game. I have not heard of any indication that there is any plan to change that.

From my POV, it's the same thing as when GOG removes XP and Vista from the list of a game's supported operating systems. They don't do it because they plan to work on re-adding this support in the future; they do it because they don't plan to do so.

Sadly I have to agree with that assessment.

They removed XP and Vista because those two OSes were, for all intent and purpose, dead, you cannot really expect them to continue support those OSes when even Microsoft stop supporting them. For the line they added it makes sense for them to do so, when the game was originally released four years ago it didn't include any online / multiplayer features, those features were added recently so it make sense to update the game page to reflect that.

Concerning the main issue, two weeks is not that long, they need first to evaluate what exactly is the issue, whenever it is just peoples complaining that the online multiplayer is online (which I guess happen quite often) or if it's really a part of single player that is locked behind an online requirement, then they need to discuss with HG to find a solution and finally HG, if they agree to, needs to implement it.

I believe you didn't understand my analogy. I was not complaining about why they removed XP/Vista support at all. I was just stating that for the most part, when GOG finally makes a change to the game page, it usually --- with some exceptions --- means that they are done with the issue, not that they are actively trying to improve it. That's all.

I certainly hope you are right.

But that is the direction where the modern multiplayer support is heading and what got me dragged into posting in this thread in the first place was the same old arguments about DRM'ed multiplayer on GOG which always seem to boil into similar absurdity like one side accusing the other for not caring about "sports" at all if they disagree that (all) sports would become better if we would agree to limit all sports equipment to what ancient Greeks had available.

At least with sports I could have a far easier time to get such an accuser to either specify what kind of sports they are talking about or if they really are advocating that even biking should be done by running, whereas with multiplayer the all or nothing camp can always pretend that fixing foundational design decisions in modern multiplayer would not take too much time and effort to fix even long after a developer has finished implementing their design.

Anyways, we should focus on what can be done within reason (no major changes to core multiplayer design) and try to predict any worrying future threats from new online features like for example the on the fly multiplayer support within the single player mode possibly introducing the pressure to encrypt savegames as an attempt to prevent cheating which I would hope that we would all agree to demand that we should be allowed to at least decrypt our saves for a permanent single player only mode and preferably also allowed to play less public decrypted multiplayer with our friends.

Unless you are prepared to constantly set the computer's clock back to a point you made a back up image of your OS, restore it from that image and start a new game each time the DRM forced you do the previous steps while being offline all that time, I would not expect to be able to fool any DRM designed by someone with even a fracture of my imagination and that is assuming that you don't have any other partitions with "future" timestamps revealing what you are doing...

But that's not the issue. I'm not talking about these games! I'm talking about games that have very traditional multiplayer *with* DRM. These games aren't gone, these games are still being released. I take issue with their DRM, and you go on and on some other imaginary games that aren't here. You're 100% missing the point.

To make an analogy: suppose game developers get too lazy to implement rebindable keys (and I complain about that). Well yes, some of them are already that lazy. You can argue that that's where modern games today are headed because consoles blah blah yada yada and analog sticks and motion controllers yada blada. That's 100% irrelevant when these games are actually released for PC and actually support keyboard & mouse input.

This is the situation now. That someone someone is making augmented reality games or MMORPGs (and fwiw there's no reason you can't make a MMORPG without DRM) is no justification for games here today having DRM on their multiplayer, just as someone making console games for Wii is no justification for PC games not having rebindable keys.

And fwiw I don't agree that's where modern multiplayer is heading. It's just one new thing on the market, and that doesn't mean everything that came before is obsolete. Just as the mobile hype doesn't mean PCs are now obsolete. MMORPGs were a new thing two decades ago, doesn't mean the forms of multiplayer that existed before are gone.

This is a total bait and switch. If people put up with it more is sure to come. Looking at you Baldur's Gate III.

I don't think he meant modern games as in service style games, he means multiplayer in general.

You are right, but, you see, some people in this thread --- myself included --- find it hard to forget that GOG started as a company that positioned itself as standing against exactly these kinds of modern trends, such as single-player DRM (which is very much the direction modern gaming is headed) or multi-player DRM (which is also very much the direction modern gaming is headed) or regional pricing (which is again very much the direction modern gaming is headed), etc. Some of us --- myself included --- would have wanted GOG to continue maintaining those original stances of anti-single-player-DRM, anti-multi-player-DRM, anti-regional-pricing, etc. But I'm sure we're just being silly. We'll get over it and embrace "the direction modern gaming is headed", DRM, Galaxy and all --- or not.