Kyousuke.: This also has raised a few other concerns:
- Is this middle finger made solely for GOG/galaxy users? Because if this crap applies only on our side and not steam, we are facing the same bullshit that happened with battletech, with pre-order items being locked behind paradox account for the gog version, while steam didn't have this issue;
- Since tw3 had many free godies in gamea in form of mini-dlc, what will they do this time around, lokc all of them behind this "my rewards" crap?
Apologies for the foul language, but it seems that GOG is desperately trying to fail their loyal customers over and over.
I smell heavy monetization.
As of now I simply see no other reason for GOG to stubbornly refuse to just create offline installer file for the goodies in question.
How I see it now is that they are TRYING to come up with some outrageously silly excuse to NOT give people offline installer for the sake of not having the same argument (with users) when they decide to monetize the game by creating in-game store where you ACTUALLY pay for those "items not changing singleplayer experience" cough modmessage cough.
Also I have one entirely new concern. It may be an obvious one but I guess it didn't hit me until now:
TW3 had physical discs and you could install it without registering ANYTHING on GOG *. Essentially the physical release itself was DRM-free *.
Now, CP2077 allegedly DOESN'T have any storage media in physical release.
That effectively means there is only one way of getting DRM-free release ** - regardless if activated from external (for example originating from box) key or bought directly - only on GOG.
* Now I just thought of interesting question. Let's say we get a physical release of game Z that has GOG key in box and no storage media in it.
Would that release be seen as FULLY DRM-free? For simplicity let's assume that the game in question is ACTUALLY fully DRM-free on GOG itself (no NMS, no gwent, no CP2077, insert-future-BS-case-name-here case).
On one hand you actually get DRM-free files WHEN YOU ACTIVATE THE KEY. Effectively it's "DRM-free after download" (as opposed to including actual DRM-free release on discs). At that point imo it doesn't differ too much from "DRM-free on Steam after downloading/installing ***" (since there is PLENTY of ACTUALLY DRM-free games on Steam that are so AFTER INSTALLING). At which point the files you got from Steam don't differ in any usuability related way from GOG ones for the same game apart from install process - from GOG you would just get "official fancy installer" - on Steam you would just download it once and then backup the files yourself.
A lot of people are heavily biased in regards to this debacle. Personally I have more and more doubts over time. I keep gravitating every so more towards actually harvesting DRM-free releases files from Steam (and ESPECIALLY seeking alternatives to GOG, such as Playism).
*** I will not go into details but you can actually download game files on Steam without actually installing them. Tho on technical and end result level it doesn't differ almost at all from just installing them. (the way it's done is only really useful for small fraction of heavily technical Steam users and even then there is rarely a reason to actually do that that way)
* I don't know if that release was globally available. But you could just obtain the discs and you would have fully DRM-free game there.
** Well, considering "THE 'my rewards' DEBACLE" is a thing, we ALREADY have proof that CP2077 is NOT *FULLY* DRM-free. Ironically, there could be NO way of obtaining FULLY DRM-free copy of CP2077 now that this BS surfaced.
And inbefore someone or mod steps in saying (again) "these items are minor part of the product and don't change experience" (which is a lie btw) - no, it really doesn't matter how big DLC is and how much it is seen as worth by the developer - as long as it's a part of a product or an extension of functionality of a product (which means ANY DLC, even mesely ingame t-shirt extends functionality of the product), if it's advertised as DRM-free, then if it's behind a walled in Garden then it's NOT *FULLY* DRM-free.