tfishell: Technical perspective question:
what does GOG need to do to un-DRM Hitman GOTY content? Would it be similar to what was done for Deus Ex Mankind Divided's originally-DRM'd content? Are there game-content files they need IOI to give them or is this more of a "authenticate with a server" thing?
If GOG were to "do the right thing", is the only reasonable option to remove the game, or is there likely a way to un-DRM the "Escalation missions, Elusive Targets, (and) user-created Contracts"?
Gersen: I would say there is three possibilities :
- Unlock all the unlockable by default
Probably the easiest and the "most likely" I would say. You wouldn't be able to do the Escalation mission, Elusive targets & co but at least you would have the sandbox experience with all the unlockable weapons, costumer and starting points. Personally I would have hoped that they have done that by default.
Now remain the question of the importance peoples give to Escalation and Ellusive, personally when I played the game on console years ago, I didn't really cared about them honestly, for me the interesting part is to terminate the mission target using different strategies, different methods, not to kill some random NPC, using a toothbrush, while dressed as a maid. But that's just me other might disagree.
- Make the Escalation mission, Elusive targets playable offline and unlock all the content.
For escalation it should be possible, for Elusive targets it might be harder depending how IOI did it on their side. The issue as I mentioned earlier is that Hitman 1 is a dead game, it's unlikely IOI will spend any time on it when all the content of the game can be played in Hitman 2 or 3.
- Make all content playable offline
Same than the previous one but also including a way to save meta-progression offline, IMHO the most unlikely to happen, at least for Hitman 1
trynoval: It's 100% possible to make
EVERYTHING offline. Including making offline build-in generator for timed events, publish pack of user-generated content from Io servers, and allow users to record and share new user-generated content. IOI are original developers of the game, and can easily do that.
All of this is doable. And
we should not settle for anything lesser than that. It's a 5 years old game, that's already sold everywhere, and was given away at EGS for free.
GOG doesn't need to do anything. The only GOG's job is to curate games that are coming to the Store and prevent DRM sneaking in.
I have a great example how such features can be 100% offline:
Recently release roguelike Noita has online challenges mode and some leaderboards, technical data collection. But developer is respecting it's users, so they allow to disable those in the game. And when you disable those, you get offline daily challenges generator, identical to online one. It's not really that hard to make such services offline. :)
Thanks for the responses.
Gersen: - Unlock all the unlockable by default
Probably the easiest and the "most likely" I would say. You wouldn't be able to do the Escalation mission, Elusive targets & co but at least you would have the sandbox experience with all the unlockable weapons, costumer and starting points. Personally I would have hoped that they have done that by default.
Now remain the question of the importance peoples give to Escalation and Ellusive, personally when I played the game on console years ago, I didn't really cared about them honestly, for me the interesting part is to terminate the mission target using different strategies, different methods, not to kill some random NPC, using a toothbrush, while dressed as a maid. But that's just me other might disagree.
Approx. how much of the game would still "exist" without "the Escalation mission, Elusive targets & co"? 75-80% or more?
I'm actually not necessarily against keeping the current version that has "Escalation missions, Elusive Targets or user-created Contracts"
as long as there's a version that has, like, 80+% of the single-player content DRM-free. Options.
