Dedicated servers, LAN, P2P/direct connect are all alternatives. Divinity: Original Sin 2 does this really well, for example. I've never understood how most about everyone on here always is like "multiplayer obviously needs DRM because it's multiplayer."

Drm on multiplayer make sense if you want a ranking system and anti-cheat, but it should not be mandatory to play in multiplayer. They could simply have both option available. They choose not to do that, so they have to accept that their game is not drm-free. Drm-free is not a marketing term without meaning (GOG take notes), it's a characteristic that is either true or false and can be clearly estabilished.

The bit I played was fun - gameplay and story (not the most innovatie but good enough) wise.

But the problem is that the game feels unbelievable laggy. Not the graphics itself but the user interface and everything around it. And be prepared for extensive loading times. The cutscenes take really long to load despite being still images with a little bit of animation. And when the cutscene is finished it needs the same time to load the next map.
I've spent more time watching the loading screens than actually playing....

Then you click the start button, you hear the sound but nothing happens for a second. And just when you get nervous and want to click again, something happens. This behavior is consistent, even in the main menu.
Like you try to adjust a slider for volume or brightness - the slider does not follow your mouse. It lags behind and jumps to a position where you mouse pointer was half a second ago....

Think indeed. By this logic, Lara Croft should have been male... and Samus Aran, and Chell, and Heather in SH 3, and Ms. Pac Man, and Faith Connors, and Jade, and Konoko, and Amanda Ripley, and....

GOG should have informed it's customers that some games may contain 3rd party DRM and change their warcry from "No DRM" to "No DRM with some exceptions" I am not upset being I already have an Paradox acct and it was not difficult to get up and running. I think all parties should be aware that times have changed and even GOG cannot get all games w/o some form DRM. I believe GOG did state that wherewhere way back being it is trying to keep up with Steam and what is offered today. I am happy for the games I do own that are from GOG that do not have no DRM. But GOG should let the customer know when an product has DRM upfront so the customer do not get blindsided and not after purchase.

What's happening to GOG?

They are botching one thing after the other.

For anyone interested, here's the devs response on the question why content is locked behind a paradox account: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/254070830?t=00h44m53s

The last GOG pillar is crumbling. How fucking sad.

Well, for up-to-date games we have Steam and for DRM-free we have Pirate Bay.

Trust me, they are not. I had second attempt at Uplay and it is terrible as it was before. They haven't fixed anything at all! So, as long as such thing like Uplay, Origin or Steam exist - GOG is still looking much better than they.

Transcript:

HBS:
We needed a system to unlock the rewards that we have promised and committed to and the Paradox account turned out to be a good system for us to do that. As far as online vs. offline, though, what you need to do is login to associate your account[.] Basically, you get your code in and we can unlock that stuff. Once you're there I'm pretty sure if you wanna play in Steam offline mode[,] your game state has been unlocked, you're fine to play it offline, if you prefer that.

P&P:
So [...] you have to log in once and then, more or less, you're good to go, from that point forward.

HBS:
I believe so.

HBS2:
And then the whole Paradox account system, you gotta understand as a small game developer with limited resources, right, when somebody says to you, "Hey, by the way, we have this system that does everything you want", it's a good idea to say yes.

Gog "warcry" has always been DRM-free for single player, for multi-player it depends of the games but there is no guarantee.

And it's nothing new, we have games that have been on Gog for literally years that require online activation, third party account, etc... for be played online

He is not quite right. There was a few dozens fiction books released for this Battletech universe and there was no difference between male and female pilots - all of them was presented in almost equal proportions. Especially in Clans. In IS this was slightly different, but even there was no discrimination based on pilot's gender. There was problems with fat boys and girls because they can't stand the heat. :)

I'm mainly a lurker on these boards, but this kind of discussion drives me crazy, so I have to give my two cents.

It seems like most discussions here these days revolve around what is and isn't DRM. I hate DRM. I detest it. But multiplayer has for years been more and more considered to be a service. Should companies offer LAN and peer play? Yeah, they should. But these days, with profit margins being low, sales impossible to predict and the number of LAN players so low, it's one of the first things to drop off of the priority list. Handling server and net code on the client side is more development time, more testing and more issues post launch. I get it. I don't like it, but I have come to terms with this aspect of the industry not changing simply because it's not going to. Some companies will offer it but they will be few and far between.

All of the talk about whether games which use only Galaxy or hosted servers for multiplayer should be listed here is the talk that scares me. The only chance that we have of ever pushing the gaming industry into believing that DRM-free is an acceptable approach is to show that people want DRM-free games. If we eliminate 90% of games that have multiplayer (and are DRM free on install, play, campaign, skirmish, etc.), then the industry will continue to believe that DRM-free isn't a selling point. And that will significantly restrict the number of games I play even more than it currently does. I would have never experienced games like Dying Light. I just can't get behind that.

More and more publishers and game makers are coming onto GOG because of things like Galaxy for multiplayer. That expands the number of games that I am willing to pay for and play. And that's a good thing in my eyes. To be fair, I don't play multiplayer a lot (I do on occasion), so maybe I'm being too dismissive, but I want to have a good selection of games. I want DRM to be annihilated. I don't want to restrict games that show up here because of multiplayer.

I get why people are griping about the multiplayer stuff. I really do. And I probably won't change anyone's opinion with this. But I care about DRM-free non-social gaming and I want that to take hold in the industry. I want DRM to go away completely on that front, and the only way that happens is to get DRM-free in more hands and show companies that they lose sales if they don't sell a DRM-free game. Maybe that's unrealistic, but we are slowly chipping away at that as we are seeing more and more publishers coming on board because of the presence of GOG.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers, but merely pointing out a point of view that seems to be rarely expressed here.

Because we (males :) ) like women and have no problems with looking at them or talking with them? :)