That's just speculation. No one of us can know which games we would and would not have gotten, if GOG stayed true to their original principles.

About the rest of your post: Let's agree to disagree.

It's not speculation. We KNOW games would have not have come to GOG without Galaxy. GOG has stated this. What we don't know is which games. That we can speculate on.

The fact that we would have missed games is reason enough to say that Galaxy has benfited GOG users even non Galaxy users.

Galaxy doesn't have anything to do with GOG dropping their core principles, though. They could have still made Galaxy, an optional client, and kept their core values in tact. Sure, those core values would have meant less games in almost every case, but that's something that some of us here would be proud of, and the train of thought behind that is that if these devs want to use GOG they have to play ball, and eventually they would. That's what we were betting on. I don't think GOG fought hard enough and gave it enough of a chance. But i'm done speculating on this now. I will now just be a consumer, no longer a supporter, and I will no longer have any emotional attachment, because that was probably misplaced in the first place. I wanted to believe that GOG was something more, like they claimed, but that was just a sales tactic possibly, or maybe just, as you say BK, things change. Money is nice, and people want more of it. I'll hold onto a lot more of mine now, that's for sure.

I'm apt to agree here. GOG has never made a secret of letting devs put their games up here with online-restricted multiplayer. This is just the first example of a game being offered on GOG that is specifically designed to be an online multiplayer only game. Seeing as it's CDP's own game, it's not a huge surprise it's being pushed here.

There are certainly arguments to made here that Gwent abandons their 100% DRM-free policy, and as such shouldn't be sold here, but for me personally, the red line of adding DRM or an online requirement to single player content hasn't been crossed, so I don't see a reason to go down the slippery slope of GOG doomsday talk. The day GOG does that or makes Galaxy mandatory is the day they become little more than a Steam clone in my eyes.

Just my two cents.

(Still not thrilled about the adware-like inclusion of Galaxy in some of the installers though. Just throwing that out there)

Humble is notorious in my book for having one-time DRM-free releases that are abandoned by the developer shortly after initial rlease on Humble. Sure they have a friendly support department, but I always get a "Sorry, we are unable to solve this, because the developer won't release a fixed version"
That's why I don't see a lot of value in their DRM-free releases. Sure it may be DRM-free, but if it is a unfinished buggy product, it still doesn't attract me. I think it would be in the best interest of the ethical integrity of GOG to part ways with their mother company CDPR. After all, it's CDPR that consistently introduced the shitty practices first. Regional Pricing, Pre-orders, and now even the bane that is in-game purchases, whether they be micro or macro and Free to p(l)ay. DLC was actually asked for by the game community in a poll, so I can't fault them for that.

Amen to it all.
I've been on GOG for some years now and I'm still amazed to the reactions of some people here. I've read many appaling things on this forum along the years.
It seems that many people have an absolutely wrong idea of what GOG really is. GOG is first and foremost a store. It's gotta make money or it will close. Yet, many seem to see GOG as a sort of institution or museum or even their own personal space.

I still remember, four or five years ago, the outrage of some forum users when GOG started selling new indie games. They wanted GOG to keep selling "good old games" only and saw the selling of new games as a "treason to the GOG ideals" :P

Jesus... Gwent is an MMO. Of course it's got DRM all over it. If you don't like Gwent and GOG or whatever just stop buying here and go install Half-Life 2 and shop on Steam or pirate games, FFS!

Good thing that usually the "silent majority" are the ones who keep the businesses afloat.


EDIT: I'll never forget how it was GOG who stopped my piracy days and mad eme give money to the devs again. If the publishers, like SEGA keep enforcing the Ultra-DRM policy (Denuvo) or if GOG imposes Galaxy as mandatory to play their games, I won't even bother to protest. I'll just return to pirating games.
Piracy will never end. And all DRMs eventually fall.

In the end, it's GOG and the publishers call to decide if they want to keep getting my money or not.

You're far more "foaming at the mouth" then most people you're criticising :D

Look, when GOG started out it's principles were it's selling points. That's what made GOG a thing in the first place. And what the community you are now so angry at was built on. You can't rationally expect people to not give a shit about those principles being abandoned one by one.

And it's not just about this "motherfucking card game" as you put it. It's about the way GOG's been pushing Galaxy, about the way people who don't use it became second-class customers, about GOG's permanently god-awful communication with us and many other things.

GOG right now doesn't even have the decency to make a statement like this:

"We know that releasing GWENT on GOG can be seen by many of our loyal, long time cutomers as compromising our DRM-free policy. You are not wrong. because it's an important investment for our parent company and an important part of the Witcher franchise that has been for years one of the pillars of GOG's catalogue we simply cannot not release GWENT on GOG. However, we assure you that this is a one-time exception and we hope that you can appreciate the circoumstance, and we will do our best maintain your trust.

Sincerely
GOG.com"

Instead we're left to guess whether the single player part of Gwent will be playable offline because even that can't be simply stated around here any more.

Sounds like you like Blizzard! Their games, they're all "online services" so it's okay that they're all DRMed, it's not really DRM, because it's online service. They never meant for it to be an offline experience...

Poor rationalization.

I don't really undertand where you got that idea from the section you quoted. As far as I know, Blizzard DRMs all content regardless of multiplayer requirement. There is no part of Gwent that could be played by yourself. It all requires an online partner. If there were a component of Gwent that you could play by yourself, and it still required an internet connection, I would not be ok with that.

You're free to disagree with me, but you're misrepresenting what I said.

I was referring to Gwent in its current state, but if Thronebreaker launches with an internet connection requirement, I'll happily take up a torch and pitchfork with the rest of you.

Anyone else having trouble purchasing from the ingame store? It keeps saying "Transaction in progress".

Looks like I finally caught the attention of GOG down vote brigade. Knew they would come soon enough, but that fact that this is upvoted says all we need to know about how stupid this community views things like DRM and Micotransactions.

GOG already sells microtransactions. Has for a long time, way before Gwent existed. People typically associate microtransactions with pay 2 win or Free 2 play games. But this is wrong.

Microtransactions can be DLC, but not all DLC is a microtransaction.

Microtransaction simply means a small amount of content for a small price. Weapons packs, skin packs, outfit packs, ect are all microtransactions. It can be purchasable within the game or outside of the game

For example Grim Dawn has microtransactions on GOG. Is this now DRM too?

This is why this statement is so asinine. Yes a game can use DRM to facilitate microtransactions, typically this means they are protecting the game from players unlocking content without paying that already exist in some form in the game. This is usally what F2P games do, but that doesn't mean all microtransactions must use DRM. That's crazy.

Please educate yourself on the difference though... here is a good article on it .

The most famous microtransaction of all time wasn't even in a F2P game or purchasable within game... it was horse armor from Obivion.

Thank god indeed. And thank god they usually stay away from this toxic forum too.

What the hell, i keep trying to post something here but it never goes through? It was a pretty long but this shorter one seems to have no such problems.

Edit: Is there a character limit, cause i can't seem to be able to post it all, posting only 2 of the 3 paragraphs works. Here goes:

Wow, people are fucking retarded! A multiplayer game needs to connect to a server you say? Stop the presses! What exactly do you expect, LAN only? Or do you prefer it to be just single player? The AI in card games and in games in general is bad to terrible and the only way it can be challenging is by cheating. Single player experiences a la Shandalar can be great, but that game was not great because of the AI. So you pretty much have to have a client-server design for a game of this type, even if you add some PVE content to it.

And the claims of P2W are ridiculous if you compare Gwent to other card games out there (i'm looking at you Hearthstone). Gwent is quite generous with it's cards. As long as you can get the cards just through playing and that doesn't mean some ridiculous amount of grind that is not P2W as far as i'm concerned. But there are always people that bitch about this as long as there is any payment option for anything except purely cosmetic stuff.

These days DRM simply means "things i don't like"....