And we have another cause of death:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/preload_cyberpunk_2077_today_cfffe/post117 It is amazing with what carelessness GOG allows the foundation of his existence to decay.
Truly astonishing.

Meh, just your usual entropy. noting new.

Unfortunately I don't think it's astonishing anymore. Just sad. They are so desperately trying to be a small and irrelelvant copy of Steam that they forget what their core selling point was. Who knows. Maybe there is more money in being a loyal key-reseller for Epic than there is in being loyal to their own customers.

In any case, the decision to ditch DRM-free has been made long ago and has been implemented step by step. All employees that actually cared either left or were fired. What remains are blues that are muzzled and a support that doesn't care and a management that wants to make Galaxy mandatory as fast as possible, as if that would magically create more revenue for GOG. I guess we will see whether they are right or whether GOG will go down the drain just like their promises.

Yep, this. I can't even get angry at this stuff anymore. I guess I still care enough for it to bring me out of my (partially) self imposed exile from the forum for one evening, but not enough to argue and rant like I did all the previous times. I'm not sure if even "sad" is the right word. I feel like we've passed that. "Sad" is when someone breaks their principles the first time. When they do it as a matter of course and give you a knowing, shit eating grin while they're doing it, it's more pathetic than anything else.

The utter silence and perceived absolute indifference to the community's criticism is actually the worst, as far as I'm concerned.
Only reinforces the feeling of being the frog from the eponymous metaphor and the temperature just a few centigrades away from actually becoming unbearable.
Feels bad man.

This was all but certain as soon as GOG created Galaxy, it just goes to show, DRM-Free cannot survive in today's market. Which angers and saddens me, perhaps its time to find a new hobby or stick to older video games, but who knows how long they will even be playable...

Addendum:
I give it maybe 1 year minimum to 4 years maximum before Galaxy becomes mandatory and installers are removed.

Also the fact that GOG has not bothered to respond to this thread and ignore it, REALLY pisses me off, GOG has shown once again how much they ignore, disregard and simply don't give a fuck about this forum, though if you posted this on the r/GOG subreddit, it would have been deleted within a few minutes.

There is a good chance they will always be playable in Linux, via Wine, if they are today. I have never heard of compatibility of a Windows game with Wine reducing due to an update. It can still play Windows 3.1/95 games from 25 years ago.

No, they don't care about what their user base thinks - we're not telling them what they want to hear. The DRM-free crowd is now considered an inconvenient minority, rather than a loyal, core user base. They probably see us as being more trouble than we are worth.

1. Not fan of linux, for a variety of reasons that are off topic to the purpose of this thread but thank you for the tip.

2. That is the feeling I am getting myself that we are the inconvenient have-nots who get in the way of massive profits and money, I expect soon the words "drm-free" will soon be a bannable offense here.

I have been silently watching Gog break their promises but at least they were bringing us DRM-free games but this Cyberpunk2077 DRM move has moved them in same slot as just another store that I might buy a game if it is DRM-free on there and doesn't need a client.

Its sad to see a business not understanding what is its customer base and assuming anyone would choose Gog over Steam or Epic store beside offline installers and DRM-free

As any change, we have a nice story to tell our kids before it was corrupted by greed.

Doesn’t make sense to say rip drm free if all games are drm free what gog is selling and this will stay that way because nobody would buy games here anymore so don’t be paranoid

If true, this point needs to be emphasized more, because nearly every time we point out concerns on this forum, some folks tell us that GOG won't take feedback on the forums and that wE sHoUlD jUsT uSe SoCiAl MeDiA to tell them. Frankly if a business has data available to it such as user forums, it would be embarrassing not to monitor it for feedback...positive and negative.

But they aren't. Their own game Cyberpunk 2077 isn't 100% DRM-free. And there are other games sold here, that aren't DRM-free. Look here:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1

And let's not talk of multiplayer games. Those haven't been DRM-free anymore for years now. Cyberpunk was just the last straw proving that those other cases aren't accidents, but that DRM and mandatory Galaxy is the direction GOG wants to go.

Going back to Steam could also in the long run make things worse, if GOG sees less people getting offline Downloaders and more people using Client based stores they may believe that people don't care about offline components and adjust there services and marketing to get more people back here.

While I am disappointed CDPR would choose to keep some (cosmetic?) DLC behind the online account and client, I am still somewhat hopeful that this will be available later with offline installers as well. Eventually at least when the CP2077 GOTY will be released (hopefully freely available to those who have bought the base game + DLCs before, similarly how we obtained The Witcher 3 GOTY "for free"), and I expect the GOTY version will include these preorder bonuses as well.

If not, and even the GOTY version will keep some single-player content, if it is mere cosmetics, locked online, then shame on CDPR and GOG. I guess I can live without the cosmetic DLC, but still disappointing.

Maybe some GOG user will prepare some simple zip file for offline installer users that adds the missing cosmetics to the offline-installed game, but in practice that would be piracy (as people who are not eligible to those bonus items could access it too), and of course it would be better that GOG would add them offline anyway.