Oh, you want to play offline? We have a product for that, it's called the Xbox 360.

That is exactly why I don't see any good coming out of this Microsoft acquisition, other than perhaps less harassment at the office.

Microsoft loves DRM, always have. I'd rather Embracer Group bought Activation, then there may be some chance of seeing more games on GOG, especially if they made a deal with Disney to release older Marvel games.

That's your opinion. You have to be in the mood for a silly and very linear shooter, but I have enjoyed plenty of the CoD campaigns. Mostly the ones made by Infinity Ward and Raven. Lumping them all together and writing them all off seems like an elitist humble brag to me, no offense. The reaction to the Ubisoft attempt made them cancel that program though, and other than Activision the rest of the singleplayer games released since then do not do this. That's the entire reason I took note of it.

P.S. I was speaking about the industry as a whole, not the GOG forum. Also if you think anywhere near most GOG users never buy Steam games then you're being quite silly.

If you want to play offline single-player COD games, there's THAT other option.

Well, Hitman GOTY - I think if a game with that amount of online-only content was released, there'd be a similar backlash. (I'm not sure if GOG would react unless the gaming press got wind, but raising a ruckus is probably how they'd get wind.) I probably can't justify "My Rewards" but currently it's not enough for me to boycott especially since I don't buy many games and only buy them on sale.

We'll probably have to agree to disagree though. (I'm not interested in arguing.)

The Schemeliers by Schemen King :P

I doubt Activision would even care about something like Black Ops Cold War DRM at this point, they just wouldn't want to bother removing it.

That's the case with a lot of DRM. I had to activate Dead Space 2 not long ago to replay it, and do you really think EA cares about DRM on that game? They just don't want to bother removing it, it takes man hours which means money which means ignore it.

Thanks for confirming my argument.

As I said already:
the majority of gamers (even those on GOG) support the companies that use these requirements/methods (always-online, lootboxes, IAPs, etc., etc.) for their games, by purchasing these games, regardless of these requirements/methods.

So, that "tempest in a water glass" that you want to break loose here on GOG, is sweet, but meaningless.

Edit:typo

I think there's an obvious difference between online activation and always online, and I think plenty of people have made it clear that difference matters. Hence why Ubisoft stopped doing what they were doing and no one else tried it until recently. Apparently Activision also stopped it for Crash Bandicoot, and likely only get away with it for CoD and Diablo because they are such online focused games.

So like the Joker you can claim all day long the convicts will blow up the other boat, but oh hey look people do care and make that known and always online for singleplayer is still rare. Who woulda thunk it, the boat didn't blow up.

To me it sounds only logical that if a person doesn't mind launching their Steam/Epic/GOG Galaxy gaming client online and/or their game doing an online verification every time they launch game, they wouldn't mind that much even if the game required an internet connection for the whole time they play the game. At least if that always-online means only that the game checks every now and then that it is online, and not requiring a constant uninterrupted internet connection, which is what e.g. streaming gaming requires.

I guess the game publishers' "frog and the boiling water" experiment worked on the gaming masses, they got them to accept that an online connection is needed for all their games, including single-player campaigns, because why not? "Who is not online all the time anyway?".

The most logical reason why people haven't raised an uproar for their Activision games requiring always online is because they haven't even noticed it as they are always online anyway, and if there has been an internet outage, it has caused all kinds of problems for them like social media, Netflix and possibly even their gaming client not working right, so some games also failing to work offline goes unnoticed in such an upheaval.

I think at this point caring about being able to play offline needs a bit of an activist mindset, like caring that you can play your games also in the future when the service/store from which you bought it, is no more. I guess most gamers don't care to think ahead like that, or even think their service (e.g. Steam) is eternal and will be with them for the rest of their lives.

Well I think you're being quite silly since there's a massive difference between having to be online at install and having to be online constantly so if your internet ever goes out you can't play. How can you not see a MASSIVE difference there? You guys are so weird, everything is black and white to you.

And again, people do care, since they stopped Ubisoft from doing it and also got it removed from Crash Bandicoot. As I said above the difference seems to be CoD and Diablo being very online focused games.

With the sheer volume of attention-grabbing events, processes, & people nowadays mostly everyone is too distracted to keep track of what they think is important.
That and the homogenized dross that passes for games now —— anything that will distract the gamer whilst they commute / kill time waiting for something else / etc. —— means that few care if they never see the current crop of derivative games again. (Stugeon's revelation is turbo-charged by risk-averse business practices that seek to duplicate previous hits and also helps to explain the lack of affection.

For the rest of us, as well as collecting games, for future-proofed play we're behoven to collect hardware and obsolete OSes, too, to ensure the games will still play.

Yeah no arguing necessary :)

That's true about that game and its perhaps unique amount of gaming media coverage, but for any game to me there's really no difference since in my view DRM is not a sliding scale. To me it's better viewed as an "either-or", as in "either the game does have DRM, or it doesn't". The levels of DRM or the annoyances of such are not really a factor to me. For example, if a game on Scheme had Schemeworks DRM, plus Denuvo, plus some other layer, it doesn't really make a difference to me compared to a game that "only" has Schemeworks DRM. Once there is any DRM, the game is DRMed to at least some extent which means it is worth skipping in favor of purchasing DRM-free games instead of the DRMed (to whatever extent) game. Likewise I couldn't care less if Activision-Blizzard has a one-time online activation or continuous online activation, as in my view it shouldn't have any such requirement of either sort.

LOL at "The Schemliers...".
Well I think you (and the masses who, very unfortunately, share your perspective) are okay with ONE online requirement, so what's the problem with MULTIPLE online requirements? If one has already confirmed they are okay with "online requirement" as a concept, then what does adding a later online requirement really change things any? I think the concept of ANY online requirement (other than what is unfortunately needed to purchase and access games initially, since you "reasonable" "moderates" helped cause the effectual death of physical media) is silly in a world where games have already been shown to NOT need such a scheme and where many individuals still do NOT have the means to comply with such a scheme even if they were willing to do so.

I'm not gonna keep debating this, it's way too dumb.

I think it sucks.

However, I've long since accepted that until enough people have gotten burned by this (which will eventually happen though it might take a while: how many consistently successful 30-40 years old companies supporting the same product line are there?), my choice to have consumer rights respected means that I won't have access to most of the gaming landscape.

Thankfully, the gaming landscape is so humongous that even the fraction of it that I have access to, given my predilections, includes more games than I'll ever have time to play in my lifetime.

That being said, it does work best if you don't get too attached to specific franchises that you may have gotten familiar with in the past. Best to just let it go, embrace change and look forward, not back.

Call of Duty is dead. Mourn it and move on. There will be other absolutely wonderful games to play.