So Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War has been announced to be coming to GOG, which is great, except for this part:

"Please note: cross platform multiplayer is not supported and only available with other GOG users."

It's there at the bottom of the game page:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/warhammer_40000_dawn_of_war

Now the original game back in the day used Gamespy, which obviously isn't a thing anymore, so some kind of new solution needed to be found to play multiplayer. I get that. However I don't think limiting the multiplayer to just being able to play with other GOG users is the way forward here.

This is a real time strategy game that THRIVES on its multiplayer, it's the primary reason anyone would want to buy these games because the single player campaigns are for the most part pretty lacklustre.

Limiting the multiplayer to only GOG users is going to severely hamper the game and is going to make the playerbase even smaller than it otherwise would be. It's going to be almost impossible to find a match against other players. The game is already available on Steam with an established multiplayer community, so there's really no appeal to buying the GOG version in that sense. If you want to play multiplayer, which the majority of your potential customers will, then the Steam version is the obvious no-brainer.

PLEASE, work with Steam on this one and make the multiplayer of the GOG version of Dawn of War cross-compatible with the Steam version's multiplayer. This will increase the online playerbase, result in more sales of the GOG version, and increase the overall enjoyment of the game.

Agreed.

Galaxy-only multiplayer isn't viable, so games that use that might as well have no multiplayer at all.

And multiplayer is an essential feature of the Dawn of War games.

Instead of cutting corners and giving GOG customers a gimped version with a non-functional multiplayer feature, they need to do the actual work and implement full Crossplay multiplayer with Steam.

But I'm sure they won't.

Especially not after they gimped the Space Marine game in its GOG release by removing all its DLCs and multiplayer elements, and yet it was still the number one seller on GOG for several days anyway, despite having been gimped.

Rewarding them for gimping games, by buying those gimped games, will only encourage them to continue to double-down and keep gimping future games too.

I'm pretty sure they know all that, and shouldn't exist if they don't.

No doubt there are sound reasons for it being the way it is ... either too much work right now or beyond GOG's control ... something to do with the publisher and or Steam etc. As regards 'sound reasons' I am only referring to GOG's side of things, and not excusing the fault of others.

P.S. I may be wrong, but at times I am very suspicious of game providers to GOG, who may well be using GOG as an advertising platform and deliberately double dipping via eventual discontent from GOG customers, who then go on to buy a second copy at Steam etc. And Steam of course, don't have to bother working with GOG. In fact they are likely better off not doing so ... even with some financial incentive.

The decision to make cross-compatible multiplayer is entirely on SEGA and Relic Entertainment. Both GOG and Steam can only provide tools to implement features. Which, as far as I know, doesn't include cross-platform multiplayer. If you want a good example of cross-compatible multiplayer games take a look at WH 40K Gladius Relics of War - it doesn't use Steamworkshop or GOG Galaxy for multiplayer.

If you want to play with other players on Steam just consider to get a copy there. There are other options that will allow you to use LAN or Direct IP multiplayer, just like in old times before SEGA switcher to restricted platform MP. But they would require you to revert the version of the game or to use the fan-made third party app.

Would be nice if GOG could also restore the LAN version of multiplayer (which would enable you to play it with whomever you want using VPN services until the end of IPv4)... but sadly I doubt they will go to such lengths. As a brother in frustration, let me just say this. As long as it doesn't bring some form of money to the developers/publishers, they don't add it, which has overwhelmingly been the case with LAN multiplayer in the last decade.

Yes, I also doubt that GOG even allowed to do that. And unfortunately SEGA is not tend to do any effort in this direction either.

I absolutely agree. I am a huge fan of Dawn of War 1 - it's one of my all-time favorite games. However, the multiplayer is an essential part of the game and I would not buy it on GOG if the MP is locked to Galaxy. No way.

Couldn't care less now and won't care less in the future about multiplayer in any game for that matter, and for me singleplayer - even if in some cases it's barely there and just added as an afterthought - will always be the preferred way to play games.
Thus I'd pick up Dawn of War even if the multiplayer portion wasn't there at all.

That said, I'd be of course in support of re-instating the original LAN functionality for a feature-complete as possible re-release on GOG, I just somehow doubt that this would be something that's either allowed by the current rights holder of the netcode for example, and/or feasible from a technical as well as financial standpoint.

Agreed with you on this one. As long as single player works, multiplayer will always only ever be a "nice to have" to me.

But I'm saying that as a person who has probably thousands of hours across all the Unreal Tournament games and multiplayer is maybe like 0.5% of it.

edit: I should say I'm absolutely in favor of GOG's DoW release being cross-platform, I'm just skeptical that will be the case. With all due respect, you're in for a rough time if you keep worrying about things you can't really control. might need therapy or medication or something like that

Including DRM-free multiplayer would be great, but it wouldn't solve the problem caused by lack of cross-play. Even if DRM-free play were fully supported, 99% of players would still be still be using Steam. Thus, Galaxy crossplay with Steam is more important if you actually care about finding people to play with.

Ideally there would be both. DRM-free for the principle of the thing and crossplay for practicality.

There is a mod - dowonline, which I believe allows for cross-play between the Steam and physical disk versions, by redirecting to a user-maintained server. Hopefully it they will be able to update it to work with the GOG version. (ideally, the GOG version of the game would be compatible with it out of the box and not locked to Galaxy)

Wasn't one of the main selling points of Galaxy Steam crossplay? I wonder whatever happened to that...

Most devs are too lazy to implement that.