i don't think a lawsuit is the right way to attract publishers here but it would be the way to loose them finally..

If that's the shape we're going to get their games in, it really makes no difference if we drive them all away.

You mean few b*tchy devs who wanted to get negative public attention? I've seen those stories.

Fuck them, then.

If people are so desperate to play those games, steam is a better store to do it. Same DRM nonsense and cheaper.

It is very easy technically. Unlike with Deus Ex: MD, IOI is dev studio that made game engine and those games. So they have full-time hired programmers who know perflectly own code. All it takes is couple of programmers to change game's code.

Yes, at least GOG's claim "DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play" is false advertising.

Sure, you can start the game offline, but for the majority of it, an online connection is required to play.

Thanks for the clarification, as I don't have, or plan to have this game polluting my HDD so I can only go by second-hand info!

Just noticed that it's back up prominently displayed on the front page again, seems as they're really backing this release regardless of the fallout here...

I do think GOG have been very poor with regards to communication. The backlash of this release should have been an obvious outcome to them. CDPR and GOG used to set the standard for putting the customer first, in the last 12 months they are acting more and more like EA and Ubisoft. They know how passionate we are about DRM Free and yet they thought this was a good idea, I am completely baffled by the logic or lack thereof.

CDPR - Actively outright lied about the performance of CP2077 on original XB and PS4 and did everything possible to keep that quiet. They chose to release a game that was completely unfinished, its still bad on PC.

GOG - Are really crossing the line in what they define as "DRM Free" infact, its outright lying. Hitman, I think will be the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of people here. Depending on how they resolve this, bearing in mind we haven't even had an acknowledgement in 3-4 days about this, I may stop spending my money here and accept that my catalog of DRM Free is now as complete as it will be.

I didn't think I'd say this but I really feel like I have lost complete trust in both!

I'm glad there's the same DRM for the GOG version as my Steam version. My DRM protects you, your DRM protects me.

How many of us have watched things get worse and worse and just continued buying regardless over the last few years? If people want change around here they have to act. Letting shit slide and looking the other way accomplishes nothing. It says to GOG that it is okay to ignore it’s customers, it is okay to not care about the quality of the services provided, it is okay to just keep up their bad behavior in general.

DRM contained within supposed DRM-free games
Parity between Galaxy and the offline installers
The offline installers
Highly questionable curation
GOG’s communication with the community
Lying to customers
Broken website

I will say that GOG doesn’t have to do anything to rectify these issues if they do not wish to. However, they started with a standard of quality that the older users have come to expect and are now squandering and abusing it.

Dev's probably do not want to re-work their game to work from a huge market (Steam and/or Epic) to an unfortunately much smaller market (GOG). And this is going to be a continuous problem, as proprietary stuff exists for each platform - and especially if games get released first on say bigger platforms like say Epic or Steam...and then get ported over to GOG.

They can't just copy & paste say games from Steam to GOG w/out much muss or fuss, if say they decide to lean into Steamworks for stuff (Cloud Save, Achievements, Multiplayer, etc) in that version...and then bring the game to GOG.

GOG has Galaxy, which has also their own set of this stuff - which I'm sure they'll have to re-code and re-work, to support a GOG version properly.

I'd also bet the vice versa is true, if a game starts say on GOG Galaxy with those features for Galaxy (Cloud Saves, GOG Galaxy Achievements, Galaxy Multiplayer, etc etc)...and then they bring the game over to Steam. Then, they have to re-work the game to bring it onto Steam, to utilize Steamworks & all of those features.

We need middle-ware again, like GameSpy - but something that'll actually stick around....so that dev's can have a game on both GOG and Steam - and eh, they don't have to re-work code to support prepriatary systems like Steamworks and/or Galaxy. This way, they ain't wasting time on having to do a version for every store, every time the games gets updates on one store, but then needs to get an update on another/

And honestly, games should have built from the ground-up into their engine profile support to save games locally on the PC - multiple player profiles offline; Achievement support in-engine OFFLINE; save games while offline; and stuff like that.

But, let's be real here - as games get more DRM'd, it's likely in a few years, when support is cut...they'll just re-release and remaster the game again so they can try to get us to buy it again. I mean, c'mon - when's Skyrim and GTA5 getting another re-release, right? ;)

I bet it's real easy for old games like say Quake 1, 2, 3, and 4 and any of their expansions (if they have any) to bring from say retail to GOG to Steam to Bethesda Store to Xbox for PC Store say whatever w/out much porting - as none of this in the old days had say Achievement stuff; online-only stuff; and whatnot; that stuff wasn't really even a thing. They could just bring it over to each platform, bare-bones style - without any of the non-sense.

Nope, I'm pretty sure I have another way of affecting them, and that is by not buying anything from a store I'm not satisfied with.
And while it definitely isn't much there probably are thousands or tens of thousands customers who also didn't like another new low for Gog. Losing one customer can easily be brushed off. What if 30% of their customers get up and walk away? Would that be easy to ignore? Can they afford to lose that much?

In fact, I'm pretty sure it is a much more attainable way to affect them than buying shares. Because even if thousand customers thinking alike bought CDP shares there still wouldn't be an easy way to let the board of directors know that those tens of thousands of 0.0001% shares all want Gog to go back to being DRM-free.

There is also the problem that, with each boneheaded decision, customers will leave and stocks will fall. In this course they're taking, by the time anything could be done all those shares would be worth much less than when they were bought. I don't know about you, but I don't like burning my money and I have better stuff to do with it.

If it bothers you so much why are you in this thread? Just to be contrarian? To offer useless advice?

Thanks for the follow-up, mrkgnao. I was hoping GOG would release an unlock patch (firearms, melee weapons, explosive/distraction devices, emetic/sedative/lethal poison vials, electronic lockpick, outfits, starting and hidden stash locations, Professional difficulty...) following the backlash.

Your comment is #718 in this thread.
This thread consists mostly of comments, that are made by the very same users, over and over again.
So, I dare say (without actually checking - but please, feel free to do so for yourself), that this thread features maybe 80 to 120 different users.
That isn't even a droplet in the ocean that is GOG's actual userbase.
You dreaming of GOG losing 30% of their userbase over this (admittedly: embarrassing) release, is ridiculous (sorry, if you think of this word as too harsh - but that's how it is).