Time4Tea: Why should that matter? So it's ok if a game comes onto GOG DRM-free and then the developer introduces DRM via a sneaky patch several years later?
Because it's not something existing that was locked behind a DRM, as in it's not a Dev adding a DRM stealthy after X years as you said, but the dev adding a whole new feature that didn't existed before, on a game that had a ridiculously high number of new features added for free over more than four years.
So yes I was more lenient about it because of that. If it was a game released on day one like that I would have been a lot less.
Time4Tea: So what? Non-cosmetic content is non-cosmetic content. Do you see this is precisely how slippery slopes happen? First, we have people arguing that cosmetic content doesn't matter, then the next step is people like you arguing that 'minor' non-cosmetic content doesn't matter, because it's only a little bit better than the regular, non-DRMed content.
I said optional content, cosmetic is just an example of that but not everything, in Dying Light case it's basically the same weapon with a different rarity color and some different stats and it's all random, it's just that when playing some of the online mode you have a very small chance of having a gold rarity to drop and can also be used in SP. But you can play SP for hundreds of hours having billions of weapon drop and not getting a gold drop once every X million years instead of a legendary won't really change anything in the experience... therefore optional.
Time4Tea: This is why I absolutely reject
ALL these attempts to normalize and justify any level of DRM, including cosmetics. If we give an inch, they
will take the mile.
The line has to be drawn somewhere. And, when I draw a line, it stays right where it is.
That's fine, but then I would say that Gog probably never was the shop you were looking for. As I mentioned they already had games with some optional SP content removed / not available on the Gog version for years.
Time4Tea: Sorry, but why should the length of the SP game matter? That is totally, utterly irrelevant. It seems you are intent on doing whatever mental gymnastics you can muster to justify and defend the presence of DRM on GOG.com. No. Single payer content is single player content, period. The length of it does not matter.
I mention length as a example as to why Gog probably considered that Absolver single player part had enough content to qualify it as having a single player part and not being just a "multi player-only" game.
Time4Tea: Regarding your point that there may not have been a change in policy with GOG, you may be right. I suspect the downward slope started when CDPR went public.
No, the whole "going public" is just a basic easy scapegoat, before it was publishers, now it's shareholders, later it will probably be CEOs, etc....
It started when Gog started selling more recent games, with old games there was no issue, the games didn't had any DLC and the MP was either totally dead or using LAN. But with recent games started the issues of DLCs, regional pricing, optional content, etc... and Gog had the choice of either remain as strict as before on all those subjects and die and loosen / remove some of their rules while keeping the DRM-free part for the core SP part of games and sell recent games.
Time4Tea: The question is: given that knowledge, what are you going to do about it?
The same things I am doing since 2008, continue purchasing DRM-free games on Gog like before, if someday they stop being DRM-free then I will stop and you will be able to add me to your boycott list.
Lifthrasil: OK. So you are arguing now, that Absolver IS a single-player game too. As such it should be DRM-free. It really is a binary thing. Either it is DRM-free, including all Techniques and weapons that you can use in singleplayer, or it isn't. When I have to go online to learn a technique or earn some loot, that I want to use in the single-player game, the single player game isn't DRM-free.
That's the thing,
you can play Absolver from start to finish (i.e. the single player part) offline with nothing locked down.
It's just that, once you finish the single player story you can continue playing, online, to level up your character, lean others technique, all that to prepare for PvP.
Also note that since its release Absolver had a DLC that was supposed to increased the amount of single player content (i.e. offline) but I finished the game before that and I haven't replayed it since so I don't know what this DLC added.