MeowCanuck: Because they're extremely selfish and shortsighted people. Achievements are superficial and temporary and will only last as long as GOG is still around. Meanwhile asking for achievements on the basis of "platform parity" only dissuades rational gamedevs from releasing more of their works DRM-free here. Decades from now when GOG is long defunct, none of this shit will matter as much as having a tangible offline backup installer.
If achievements are important to you, go back to using Steam.
No one is being "selfish" for wanting feature parity and equality for GOG customers.
On the contrary, the publishers/devs are being "selfish" by not giving GOG customers those things in exchange for their hard-earned dollars.
It's not like they are giving away the game for free out of the goodness of their tender loving hearts. No, instead, they are charging real money for it.
And they are charging the same price on GOG for a feature-removed version as they are charging on Steam for a non-feature-removed version. That's a scam. That's an outrage. The money which the GOG customer has to spend
rightfully entitles them to receive an equal product as the same amount of money would buy if it were purchased from a different store.
People like myself are not going to "stick with Steam." I almost never buy from Steam in the first place. Demanding feature parity is not equivalent to being accepting of DRM infestations. It's quite possible to want feature parity
and DRM-free games.
And even if I did buy from Steam, I still wouldn't buy games from Steam that treat GOG customers like second-class citizens anyway.
Instead what will happen, is devs who do that are not getting any sales on those games, not anywhere, not ever, from those of us who object to mistreatment. And they will also get justly criticized for this nefarious behavior which they choose to do.
As for devs who won't release games on GOG because they can't be bothered to give GOG customers an equal version: good, great, wonderful! They are doing the world a great public service by not offering a gimpy stripped-down version on GOG.
GOG shouldn't even allow non-feature-parity-having games onto its platform in the first place, unless there is a
legitimate technical reason for why a feature has to be removed, which the devs being lazy and/or unethical wouldn't qualify as being one.
As for what will happen "decades from now," that's all speculation. GOG may still be around in decades.
Many of the Achievement-enjoying GOG customers may not still be living on earth in decades from now.
Therefore, to accept unjust treatment and being ripped off, now, in the present, the moment in which we are actually currently living, in hopes of
possibly receiving a worthwhile tradeoff for it decades into the future, that would be extremely ludicrous.
eiii: I appreciate all developers which give us vanilla versions of their games on GOG and do not integrate shop-specific online features. That's the best way to preserve games and how DRM-free games should be delivered.
No it's not. Those statements equate to a non-sequitur. Including Achievements in no way diminishes the "DRM-free-ness" of the games that include them.