If I read that apology right; they're apologising for the consequences of their actions, not for those actions themselves.
Like: I apologise for causing you pain when I kicked you in the face. Nothing wrong with kicking people in the face... only when they complain that it hurts...

I'll not look to much into words... I did not forget they make the mistake either.
I'm still boycotting gog right now and my previous wishlist full of games will not be bought on gog.
I'll just wait 3-4 months to see if they screw up again, if they don't I will go back to buy things here but still looking into any possible warning of new move to make us accept drm.
They will need a lot of time to regain my full trust.
Right now I'm just glad we, as a community, were able to win against always online DRM. A small victory but it's still a victory.

Yep, I've been working for a huge multinational for many years. When you want to get some things done, you'd better set it into motion before you know what you want. ;-)

Must be in the EU, or parts of it.....in the US, such is legal in certain instances(including removing of DRM to make use of one's own backups/games if/when needed).

Thank you GOG, this was the right choice. Though in my opinion the game in it's state should never have made an appearance here in the first place.

first of all, i appreciate that you have acknowledged the situation and have done the right thing.

on that score i applaud you.

however, this is just a half-apology.

what worries me is that in this communique there is no suggestion that you won't do this again. unfortunately, and i hope you understand my reaction, it's basically impossible to trust you going forward.

it is incredibly frustrating that you've gone one step forward again.

there are a handful of things that i think would help the situation:

-- first, it's probably instructive to explain how this situation happened in the first place. while i don't expect complete honesty on this score [because i think - mainly - that you thought you could sneak one by your user base and you won't tell us that], it would be important to know exactly how this all happened.

-- second, i think it would behoove you to guarantee - going forward - that you won't do this style of thing again. there are too many cases - already - of gog promising one thing and then delivering another. drm free is part of the bedrock of your store. it's the ONE THING you should probably not falter on.

-- second.two, from that perspective, i think it would be VERY HELPFUL if you put down in words EXACTLY what constitutes drm to you, so we can know, going forward, what we're actually getting when we're buying a game on gog. unfortunately, if you do this, i suspect you'll sit down with a lawyer and we'll get a weasel-words definition of drm so you can sneak stuff into the store again, but hey, at least there'll be SOMETHING we can use as a basis going forward.

-- second.three, and from there, it makes sense to actually USE the game cards properly. that is: the game cards should properly reflect what's going on under the hood with drm [if you're going to "define" drm as some wonky definition where it's necessary to actually know what's going on with each release.

either way, this is a semi-good apology. one step further and you would have been there. my boycott holds, but i absolutely appreciate that you told us what you've done [so far] with hitman. more communication going forward would be greatly appreciated.

Did you read the wikipedia article that I shared (and/or its references)?

Best possible response. I'm sorry it had to be this frustrating and glad to see this turned out well. you have my greater respect for this GoG, and the people who stuck with this all the way to show how passionate the community is on this.

I am a bit peeved at the people proving my point in that nothing is enough for their outrage.

"Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective."

the key in Europe is that you don't really know what you are doing while removing drm. You just used a software you found online and happened to remove the drm ... It wasn't your goal remove the drm (wink wink).
You (the person) did not carry out the knowledge and they need to demonstrate the "reasonable grounds to know" part and you can say that you are not pursuing that goal (removing the drm).
Of course if the copyright holder decides to prosecute a customer who only removes the drm from unshared purchased items (not something many sane people would do), they will still have to enforce it against privacy law (much harder if there is no piracy in place), and (as I said) they will have to prove that you removed the drm on purpose.
I still prefer drm-free, but I think there is nothing wrong with removing drm, it's not 100% legal but it's not piracy and if they really try to force something like that it will be the time when they will need to change that law (born to avoid piracy not to prosecute customers).

you can hire someone to remove the DRM for you. You don't have to do it yourself, a trusted individual is enough. You have free right to modify or contract the modification of your own files. If EULA weren't ignored then hiring someone to fix your computer would be a crime(Windows has a "cannot modify" EULA to)

Don't often put much stock in wikipedia for obvious reasons....but I do trust references more than them.
That said, I am pretty certain that archiving(and stripping DRM if needed to accomplish said task, and perhaps also to continue to use a product one has bought/paid for if the DRM hampers/prevents such) is legal in the US....despite what wikipedia may say.

(and even if it isn't, somehow, then it's still much more moral than sailing the seas)

Wot? o.0

Also: lol

You've got me figured out! Amazing! I bet you knew about my chainsaw wielding after reading the first word.

This rhetoric phrase comes to mind; "Are you really sorry that you did something bad, or are you just sorry you got caught in a storm?"

We have no idea if it really was GOG's own decision to take down the game or if it was IOI's. Just like when they had server problems recently they are all out on "filled corpo fluff" (just like almond oil essence and too much sugar in cakes) just to seem transparent and available when they really aren't, but I'm glad regardless. Time will tell if it comes back, hopefully, in a complete non-DRM package, or nothing at all.

Also, a crack is by definition a mod (a piece of software and/or files designed to modify another software) so it's basically pointless to argue whether it's legal or not.

And a crack and an emulator has very different methods and approaches. A crack directly removes or circumvents the DRM in one way or the other on the game, while an emulator (like what's being used for some Denovo games that haven't had a crack release yet) are often emulated indirectly without changing the actual game, just "tricking" it a bit. Can be an emulated activation server (like KMS for Windows activation) or straight up emulating a whole platform (like Switch or PS).

Thank you for removing it. I love this platform and I hope the commitment to actually selling games that people can actually own stays!