It won't stop with this.

I got it totally wrong and I apologize to you as well ... Yes you should be able to access this content you paid for without using Galaxy from your library and no doubt about it.

I am also able to better appreciate your and some of the other's arguments and worries why this could spell trouble. On the official website it says they are planning to add more rewarads. It's reasonable to suspect that first it's going to be DLC no one really needs to paid for DLC going Galaxy only. They could even go so far doing this with other IP in their catalogue. Other developers might follow their example which would be really bad ...

It's hope and pray I guess ... :)

What we actually need now that GOG accepted that they are no longer a DRM-free store is the ability to filter games in the search:
- DRM-free
- Galaxy required for multiplayer only
- Galaxy required
- Epic required
- Steam required
- etc.

Humble Bundle already has such a filter, that makes it easier to only buy DRM-free games there than it is on GOG.

And the only possible reason for doing this is to "test the waters" over a future DRM-only strategy.

This happened when EA released Dragon Age: Origins. There was an outcry over it having online activation, so they released it with a CD-check only. But the DLC required online activation. And hey presto, due to the comparative lack of complaints on that, their future releases all required online activation.

I don't think the cases highlighted in the original post signify the end (or even the beginning of the end) of GOG's DRM-free policy (though the preload nonsense over Cyberpunk 2077 suggests to me that the game itself may be lacking enough to require such desperate over-hyping). However to require activation for part of a game, even content that would be considered highly optional, is the start of that slippery slope.

GOG staff admits that it doesn't really care about drm'ed content in their games
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/post413

personally, I feel like GOG is losing the competition with other gaming platforms/stores and pretty much forced to go with the flow, i.e. DRM is an industry standard and GOG is apparently hoping that DRMing games will increase its revenues.

Yes, they clearly aim at increasing their revenue by relaxing their standards and accepting DRM-ed games too. In small steps, of course, because they don't want to alienate too many customers at once.

However, I think in the long run they are shoveling their own grave. They have given up their last quality of distinction against other stores. So there is no reason to shop here anymore and the only way they can compete with Steam and EA is via price. But they don't have the financial backing to do that.

I disagree. To me, the great irony of this is that GOG seemed to be winning the battle for DRM-free. Just look at some of the big-name games GOG has managed to secure DRM-free in the past year: Horizon Zero Dawn, Control, Metal Gear Solid, Batman Arkham series, to name just a handful. They have been persuading more and more large developers to release DRM-free.

As long as they are making money, they are not 'losing the competition'. No, this is not about 'being in the black', it is about greed, pure and simple. They are willing to give up their hard-fought victories against DRM in the pursuit of higher profit margins. It is as if Frodo gets to Mount Doom and, just as he is about to throw the ring into the fire, he turns round and puts it on himself, choosing to become the next Sauron. It is clear now that the purpose of GOG's DRM-free principles was as a stepping stone, to allow it to build up a position of power, at which point they would be able to cast of their inconvenient moral pretenses and move towards being the next Steam.

Without DRM-free, GOG has nothing. It is doomed and has no future. They certainly won't be making any money from me. Back up your games!

I disagree with this sentiment in form only. They were genuinely about gamers and pro-consumer environments. As they started to grow, the paradigm started to shift, and when they became publicly traded, it's been all about maximizing profit for investors. Going public was probably one of the worst moves from our perspective because CDP stopped caring about the end users in order to feed their investor problem. The investors are the customer now, and we are but part of the product, designed to churn out money for the machine by continuing to buy their hyped crap. They ended up in the same place, but I don't think the tenets of "one world, one price" and "Drm-Free" have been just stepping stones, but rather genuine desires that have been getting left behind in the name of surviving as a business as they grew.

Ok. Yes, it's possible Frodo had good intentions when he first set out for Mordor, but was corrupted along the way :-)

Not all heroes. Sam resisted the ring. :-)

The name of growing as a business, not of surviving as one. There's no evidence they couldn't have survived on indies and crowdfunded games that backers requested DRM free builds of and old games requiring custom fixes for modern systems, with the bigger titles they could land on top of that being bonuses, if they wouldn't have had the development costs of Galaxy, the maintenance costs of Gwent and would have aimed to do just that, survive while sticking to their values and maybe pull on the direction of the industry at least a little bit while at it, not chase the profit and growth targets and support the much larger team coming with their ever higher ambitions and the hunger of shareholders and CDP.

Sure, but once CDP went public, it became survival. They had to meet quotas and grow a certain amount to avoid investors pulling out and destroying the business. in that phase, growth and survival are one and the same.

Is this the one?