I think you may have misunderstood me.

You say this is "outright treachery". So will you stop buying here? Because I did, 10 months ago.

Complain to GOG not IO. Losing all of GOG as a client is not only a bigger impact, but GOG themselves will be more vigilant towards DRM if we hold them to those standards.

If GOG stays with the offline installers for the other 50%, yes. It would be really sad having that high of a percentage of DRM'ed games, though. I know what you mean. There shouldn't have any percentage at all. When one DRM'ed game gets to the store, than the store itself cannot be considered DRM-free anymore. Just a store that have a majority of DRM-free games, and that can change over time. If we can get more classics with offline installers alongside having the ones that are already being sold here, as a consumer, I would be happy. I'm still itching to get those Star Trek games asap! But when we see DRM-free and DRM'ed games happening around here, I start to think why there's need for this store at all, as we know that on Steam there are games with no DRM. As I said above, I don't want GOG to be sometimes DRM-free. I started buying here because of the premise of it being exclusively DRM-free. And if that is not happening anymore, well.. it makes me wonder.
Answering your other question (sorry for talking this much!!), I buy on itch.io and Steam too. The thing with Steam, for me, is that I'm a consumer there since 2007, and never had any kind of problem to access my games. So, in my perspective, Valve built some trust over time. I know that can change (as we are seeing here), but almost 14 years with absolutely zero problems is something to celebrate.
Don't really like Epic, though, never bought a game there. Just don't feel the need, especially with all these years with Steam. Most of the Epic exclusives get to the other stores in 6 to 12 months with a nice price and with a ton of bugs already fixed. The store itself was not built to last, as Sweeney is just desperately trying to compete, doing whatever it takes. Financially, that doesn't look good in the long term.

That's very interesting. Thank you.

From 2009 to 2020, I bought nothing outside GOG. But on January this year, I completely stopped buying here (in boycott). And on May, once I realised you can download and install steam games without the steam client (which I won't use, just like galaxy), I began buying DRM-free games there instead.

I think what bothers me most is that GOG totally knew that this was going to be a shitstorm, and they went ahead and did it anyway.

For me, there are three pillars that keep GOG's roof from collapsing:

1. The biggest one is DRM-free.
2. Making old games compatible.
3. The work they do convincing publishers to sell their games here.

Lately they've been working hard with pickaxes, trying hard to take down their biggest pillar, possibly believing that the other two pillars are strong enough to keep the roof up.

GOG, that is so god damn risky.
Worse yet, those pickaxes weren't doing the job fast enough, so now you've brought in a flippin' bulldozer.
Why? Why are you so bound and determined to see this misguided experiment through?

Are you trying to compete with Steam? Epic Games Store is trying that very thing. They've thrown hundreds of millions of dollars around, and they are still finding it massively difficult, if not impossible.

You've managed to carve out a distinctive niche in the business, and up until this day, I was proud of you.

I'm a fairly dedicated user of GOG's services, as I believe games and other software should be DRM-free in the inevitable event that online services tied to them close down.

The latest three Hitman games are singleplayer games tied heavily to online services and are the biggest potential victims of such a fate. When these games come to GOG, they should be fixed to allow access to all the features and functions that people enjoy playing and replaying these games for. Not being able to unlock and enjoy content offline for the purposes of replayability completely nixes the ability to enjoy this game and the point of GOG.

I understand if we can't get silly, useless things like leaderboards and the like, but outfits, weapons, devices, missions, and etc. should be made fully available for players to unlock without being tied to a form of DRM.

Otherwise, this isn't even the GOTY edition, it's barely even the base complete game. How this was allowed to happen on GOG is deeply disturbing for a game enthusiast such as myself.

intrestingly.
i assume the majority of GOG users know why they are here.
i've brought also some users to GOG but everytime with the DRM-free argument and i'm curious on GOG's reaction about this shitstorm because a lot depends on this.

I have to say I am confused by GOG customers who don't care about DRM. Why even bother with this store if you don't care about DRM free gaming? You might as well just use Steam in that case.

Ideally, complain to both, IO for pushing a DRM'd build to GOG, and GOG for allowing the build to be published here.

That's very easy to predict based on how they've always reacted to stuff like this in past debacles, namely:

1. Downplay the issue and spin-doctor the DRM as being "not DRM," and then, after that doesn't fool enough customers, and thus fails to work

2. Completely ignore the backlash for the rest of eternity, say nothing more about the issue ever again, and pretend like everything is fine & dandy.

I'll just say this move makes me deeply concerned in what the direction the store is going. First on my mind was "X4: Foundation" with some compaign parts requiring online, now this, only bigger and worse. The whole promise of GOG is to ptovide DRM Free games, not that... What next, will a new game include full-blown Denuvo on top of alike online requirements to access content? No thanks.

In my view, the game should be fully removed, the publisher/devs fix it to save locally and then brought back.

And despite it being a "best seller" today I can't imagine it's some fountain of cash either. It's not a big new AAA exclusive or something that might make that risk worthwhile. It's a 5 year old game Epic gave away for free a year ago.

but i think in this case we have a new dimension.
as long as im not sure, my consequence of this wil be that i never will pre-purchase a game again and also i will not recommend GOG anymore to other people.
i've also purchased many games here (much more than in any other store) just to support GOG because of their DRM-free policy. maybe i should also reconsider this.

But you don't own any games here...