Activision released the previous few Call of Duty games on Steam today. I like a quick little Michael Bay style Call of Duty at times, and Black Ops Cold War looked neat 'cause of the 80's setting, so I grabbed it. Ends up even for singleplayer you need to be always online.

I looked more into it and apparently ALL Activision games the last handful of years require this. I feel like that doesn't get enough attention? I remember when Ubisoft tried that crap the whole world lit on fire over it. Granted it's 10 years of internet progress later, but didn't the principle matter at all?

Shame.

They have been doing this since the reboot of MW. It was so bad that a bug on the PS4 would not let me play the PS4 version single-player. No matter what I did, the game would say I needed to purchase the campaign. A physical game I bought was locking me out of playing it. Not even sure the issue was fixed.

They've been doing this always-online requirement in Battle.Net client-app games that you can solo since Diablo 3 PC version.

They did remove always-online part of Crash Bandicoot 4, though - since there was a big stink over that one.

Call of Duty, and Activision. Say no more, poor game quality and design lol. Probably because most people, like myself, simply don't care about those games which mostly include nothing new other than a new map and maybe, if you're lucky a new gun.

Most people playing CoD these days were playing purely for the online side, offline? Not so much as the offline was left hollow at best.

If these games were on GOG, you could be sure that all hell broke loose.

But Steamlers hardly care anyway.

I think lack of surprise may be more the nature of the company - as in after Diablo 3, "Don't you guys have phones?", the hundreds of workplace harassment allegations, loss of 3rd party sponsors for their Overwatch esports events (due to staff harassment lawsuits), multiple staff walkouts (due to staff harassment), rumours of infringed patents and unpaid royalties, a possible SEC investigation into insider trading, trashy subsidiaries like King (Candy Crush Saga) that sued The Banner Saga devs for using the word "Saga" (claiming they 'owned the word') then removed the game Pac-Avoid from their website after admitting it 100% ripped off another developer's game), and of course flogging the same 2003-era game to death over & over long past its sell-by date to the point many of us are sick of hearing the words "Call of Duty", the only thing I can say is "Does anyone seriously expect anything positive coming from the Activision-Blizzard 'family'?..."

Best outcome - Microsoft wastes $68bn acquiring AB to use as ammo in their XBox vs PS 'exclusive' tribal p*ssing contest, all their future Activision XBox exclusives flops badly, the value of their IP plummets, Microsoft sells them off, and New Activision Blizzard company is placed under new management that isn't Bobby "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games" Kotick...

You answered your own question: it gets practiced for 10+ years now.
Of course nobody is complaining about it anymore.
It's old news.
And I also remember how people who initially complained loudest about the "always-online" requirement, were later found to play the game(s) in question, so...

Internet outrage always comes in form of a flash: it's bright and hot...but it burns only for a moment.
Then everyone wants to play the newest shit - and that's the end of the story.

The usual complainers are mostly a very vocal minority anyway - the vast majority of gamers simply buys and plays the games, whether they're "always-online" or not.

Btw: Why should people here on GOG get on the barricades over this?
It's not like it affects us.
Or- to word it differently: the fact that they released the games with "always-online" requirement, affects us only insofar that we now know, we won't see them getting released here (anytime soon).
I see no point in crying over spilled milk. (YMMV, of course)

I'd love to see all of the COD campaigns at all times be able to work offline and come over to GOG. Who wouldn't? [shrug]

Also, would love to see Diablo 3 PC version come to GOG and work offline too.

Play DRMed games, win DRMed prizes. I'm not sure about that actually, given how many users make excuses for DRM/DRMlike/online requirements in games here even in instances where there is NO justifiable reason to the customer ("My Rewards"). But you're definitely right about the "Steamlers" (lol). How the hell can they be outraged at online requirements when their store enshrined an online client requirement over nearly all of PC gaming? It's the same as when they're butthurt about Epic having a game. What's the difference, you don't care about online requirements and client requirements. "Muh convenience" is getting to the point of truly pathetic.

That's actually German that sneaked into my post (we are GOGlers). I guess in english you would say steamies?

Oh that makes sense. Wasn't trying to come off as mocking or anything, mind you. In English, I think one would just say "Steam users" but could choose to refer to Steam users using made-up words such as "Steamgoers," "Steam-ites," "Steam-izens," etc. Which is what I thought was happening with Steamlers until you corrected me.

As for "Steamies" probably not, given the connotation of, e.g., a steamy romance. :p

They've been Online-Only since Diablo 3. D3 did not need to be online-only for SP and the console versions aren't.
They can all go bankrupt for all I care. Microsoft buying them is not gonna change a thing, since Microsoft has been itching to go online-only for a decade now too.

I derived it from Trekkies :)

But now that you mention it, Steamler is better!