I'd say the event stuff in Dying Light and the free packs count, if the quicksilver items from No Man's Sky are supposed to count. The files contain items from Steam-exclusive packs (Chivalry weapon pack, both Left for Dead II packs, and the Unturned pack) that are free but we don't have access to them normally. Some event Items can be obtained by playing singleplayer but you can't participate in events without being online. Battletech has exclusive emblems, decorations, and a couple of other things that can only be accessed by playing online, if you paid the extra for Initiate of the Order. As soon as you log out of your Paradox account, those items disappear. They disappear even if you only play singleplayer.

Do either of the King of Fighters games with a Galaxy Edition have online-only characters?

Also, I just remembered that Hybrid Wars still requires you to be logged into your Wargaming account, in order to access one of the characters. You'd think they'd have fixed that right before or after the game was removed.

Well, at least they don't sell that game anymore.

But I agree that stuff disappearing from a single player game when one isn't logged in to a third party account is DRM. Even if it only affects cosmetics, it's still an online requirement for a single player game which shouldn't exist on GOG. But the quicksilver quest lines and the void ship in NMS are more than cosmetic. They are relevant additions that are only available through online registration.

By the way, no update on the "talks" with Hello Games yet. Not that I expect that GOG will actually do anything about the DRM.

They'll get back to us on that right after they announce the winners.

Heh! Thanks for the chuckle. :-) Soon(TM) indeed!

Oh, funny, finally a reply, if it can be called as such, to the support ticket I sent about this:

"Apologies for the late reply.

I understand your concerns, yet cannot provide any comments regarding this situation.
Please rest assured that your feedback has been forwarded to the appropriate GOG team for further investigation."

It's more of a boiler-plate response. Most support stuff simply goes down the response tree and just issues whatever standard answer most suitable to the question being asked which means that answers are always generic and unspecific. You are right though in the sense that such responses are purposefully non-committal because they are pretty much always pre-formulated by a legal team in the first place to avoid accepting any legal responsibility for an issue

Now I got the very same meaningless reply. And afterwards the issue was marked as 'solved' by GOG, which quite clearly sends the message, that they don't intend to do anything more about it.

So with this it is official: GOG isn't willing any more to force developers to remove DRM from single player games. For multiplayer that has been the case for a long time now, but now DRM on (parts of) single player games is officially nothing that GOG sees as a problem. In other words, the era of "100% DRM-free" is officially over.

This is a very disappointing response. It seems that GOG are keen to sweep the whole thing under the carpet with as little fuss as possible. 'DRM-free' on here seems to be now merely a convenient marketing slogan, rather than something the owners of the site truly believe in and are willing to stand by. I have lost a lot of respect for GOG and CDPR due to this incident.

In future, I will be very careful to check that games I buy on GOG do not include DRM, including in multiplayer. Also, previously, I had been trying to buy games when they are not on sale, because I believe in GOG's DRM-free mission and wanted to support them. I will now stop doing this and will aim to buy games at the deepest discount that I can.

By the way, this wishlist request has not been marked as 'completed', or even 'in progress':

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/remove_no_mans_sky_unless_the_drm_is_removed

And yet I'm sure people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ will still deny it.

It's over, and I just wish GOG had enough decency to at least admit it and remove that "DRM-free home" stuff from the main page. That response is basically "fuck you" in corporate speak.

Not surprising. 'In Progress' would mean that they are willing to do something. But closing a ticket as 'solved' without doing anything about the problem shows, that GOG isn't willing to do anything. So they won't mark that wish as 'in progress' either.



Exactly. And yet they will keep advertising 'DRM-free' as marketing slogan until someone sues them for false advertising.

How about a "DRM-free home*"?

*mostlly DRM-free, with a curated selection of not-DRM-free games

This reminds me of a local fiasco with a company that was selling "cactus juice" and had to eventually replace it with "apple and pear juice with cactus flavoring". I guess a "DRM-free flavored games" wording is not impossible, but I doubt they'll ever ditch the term.

Well that's that. I can't take GOG closing a ticket relating to still-present DRM as any sign other than "we've given up on our principles, our goal to be a competitive platform or even being honest with our userbase".

Oh, there's more. Asked them to at least not mark it as solved when it's not, and got one more reply:

"We did our part in forwarded the case to the appropriate team.
I'm afraid there's nothing else we (Support) can do on our side in this situation. I hope for your understanding."

And was "solved" again.

We all know they will not remove the game from sale.