What would be helpful would be to have a grass roots movement of people who appreciate the significance of maintaining control over our lives with respect to economic interaction with entities that have only their own interests at heart. At present, we have no say in how the future is shaped, which is alarming because human beings are now viewed as digital entities, not just biological entities. There has never been a time where this matters more than it does now, with respect to gaming, and every other aspect of our lives. "DRM-Free", IMO, is far more significant than most people realize, so perhaps we should consider a movement for the purpose of disseminating the information that demonstrates why control is far more important than convenience.

^This aged like tofu left in the desert sun.

Anyone have a guess as to the odds of any of the request list that @Time4Tea put up will be substantially addressed? It is 10 months on and I haven't noticed any change of direction from GOG, unless you count the wrong direction via the Hitman fiasco.

Can't disagree.

The only reason I would conclusively boycott GOG any year is when GOG Galaxy becomes Steam-lite. When you absolutely cannot play any of your games until they are authorized by GOG Galaxy. I don't mind having to launch through GOG Galaxy to access certain functions like online multiplayer, but it is bothering me a lot that they are beginning to normalize having to launch the game through the GOG Galaxy to access DLC. Can anyone say this is the inevitable path GOG is going? At this rate, I might as well start prioritizing Steam again and only reserving purchases at GOG for...well...Good Old Games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As it stands, I currently use GOG Galaxy on several of my personal computers to easily download and manage games. One is for modern or high-spec requirement games, the others are for classics best enjoyed on a CRT or my travelling laptop that cannot handle high spec games. All of them are logged into my GOG Galaxy account without any issue. GOG Galaxy does not randomly requests to be authenticated to GOG because my laptop has been offline for too long much like Steam does. I love GOG Galaxy. I dropped Playnite as soon as they released the library integration feature. That can quickly change though, because again, the moment GOG Galaxy is required to even launch a game I will drop the platform until they regress to their original model.

Don't know what direction GOG is headed and whether it will be a bearer of the drm-free torch another decade from now, but if they don't, their main achievement will still have been twofold:
- Having shown empirically that drm-free is a viable model, for larger games in particular
- Having brought like-minded individuals together in a community (something they may very well be regretting now, I'm not sure, but either way, its done)

Otherwise, while I try to keep myself modestly informed and not be too stupid, I know maybe just a little more than average about ownership laws and I'm not much of a salesman or a leader for that matter (my personality will not win anyone over). I know myself well enough by now to know that the main contribution I can possibly make to such causes is technical (ie, software).

My personal theory on that is that they'll make Galaxy as close to necessary as their established community will allow them to without imploding (as long as it remains a significant part of their user base), but we'll see.

The problem with that is that, once it gets to that point, it will be too late to do anything about it. Many of us can see the direction the site is clearly going in: the heavy focus on Galaxy, the neglect of the offline installers, the deal with Epic, the pattern over the past several years of GOG becoming increasingly apathetic towards DRM-free and repeatedly 'testing the waters', to see how much locked content they can get away with.

If we can see where the site is headed and that direction is not a good one, surely the time to take action on it is now?

GOG's never done that.

On the contrary: GOG, consistently, either:

a) loses money or
b) makes barely any profit, so little that a new business owner would have to be insane to consider starting a DRM-free store, if their goal for doing so is profit.

The only way it would make any kind of sense to open a new DRM-free store would be for a rich billionaire to do it for philanthropist reasons, out of their love for the principle, while knowing full-well that he'd be taking a loss on the project every year. But that wouldn't realistically ever happen in real-life.

These points I've mentioned in this post are also surely the driving force catalyst for why many of GOG/s customers and/or former customers are angry with and/or boycotting GOG.

The rising DRM-creep and other such debacles with GOG are, for the most part, the byproduct of GOG taking desperate measures in an attempt to increase their profits to a viable level.

On the other hand, if it were the case that GOG had always been highly profitable whilst sticking to its core principles, then in all likelihood, these desperate measures and the DRM-creep and other problems that came along with them, probably never would have emerged on GOG.

I'm not so sure this is the case, or, at least not the way you seem to frame it here. Going beyond GOG for a moment, it seems to me that what these companies want most is control over products. For example, we have seen how when we got Diablo and Warcraft here, they sold like gangbusters. Meanwhile, people were apparently locked out of Diablo II recently because of some online requirement
(https://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2021/10/21/diablo-2-still-down/). You would think given how much Diablo I and the Warcrafts sold here, it would be a no-brainer to bring Diablo II and Warcraft 3 here. Total easy money. Yet they are not here. Why is that? You could substitute these Blizzard games out for other choice companies too.

I have posted numerous times on these forums to say without any sarcasm or joking that if we could get DRM-free releases of certain titles, I would be willing to pay beyond full price. I said recently if Rockstar brought the GTA trilogy here I would be willing to buy them EACH at $59.99. To have an effectively ownable digital version of this stuff is worth way more than the typical prices imo. Granted, I know not everyone would agree or buy it but you know if they did something like release GTA III here tomorrow at $20 it would rocket up the best seller list. The fact that companies have the option to (arguably) "price-gouge" like this if they were to bring a game here for us to "pay the DRM-free tax" to buy it, and yet they STILL pass it up for their precious control, is beyond telling.

Most of GOG's moves appear to me designed to lock people into their proprietary client ecosystem. While one could argue this is profit-motivated, I think it is a different and worse sort of motivation compared to how you seem to frame it as "we don't want to release a DRMed game, but we know if we do it'll sell and it keeps the lights on for another month". I think we can debate whether or not that would be considered acceptable or not, but if the strategy is less that and more "come on guise we just really want more of your money so accept these anti-consumer practices already" I don't think there is much justifying it.

Agreed. I think it is less about making a profit now for them and more about strategizing on how to squeeze every possible dollar out of their ips in the long term (less about honest labor, more about chess-like rentierish, everflowing, self-maintaning, and ideally evergrowing stream of income), even if it is a raw deal for the customer (it is not about fairness or social good, it is about maximizing profits).

Basically, they'd rather sell a game at 0.25$ a month forever than make 60$ now. And if they can, they want to sell it to you at 60$ now AND ALSO pay 0.25$ a month forever (if not right now, at the very least keep the possibility of it alive). Or you now, sell it to you at 60$ now, re-sell it to you at 30$ in 5 years, another ​15$ couple of years after that and then finally stream it for 0.25$ a month forever. Mix and match. And its not just the game developers (usually larger ones), the platforms are in on the action wanting to maximise their cut too (sometimes in cases like steam, against the interests of many of the developers who created the original source of value in the first place).

Its an urge that we all have to various degrees. We feel it when we play games. But we just can't behave that way in real life.

I firmly believe that solely participating in this thread is taking action in the form of protesting. As long as people keep voicing their thoughts on the matter or the opinions of fellow protesters, we're letting GOG know they've taken steps that have caused much concern. I think outright boycotting GOG might only lead them towards making the decisions we're speculating they're heading towards.

You overestimate GOG's care for anything on the forums. Only when it is accompanied by monetary loss do they care. Otherwise they happily ignore us.

I am strictly singleplayer and I mostly run older games- so far GOG is the only major store where I can trust I'll be able to actually play the game on one of my (2003-20015) PCs.

1. GOG attempting to release Devotion was a very dumb idea and I'm shocked anyone in CDP gave it green light at that point in time - should have sneaked it in after several months.
2. Gwent and other competitive online multiplayer games are just more convenient for devs and players for use with Galaxy / Steam / PSN / whatever client it's on right now.
3. I don't own Cyberpunk since my PC is too old, can't comment on this one.
4. There are several cases that are more obnoxious and several that are "acceptable" for me - never had any problems with FEAR, and I dn't see what is a problem with playing as "guest" in Age of Wonders III (maybe because I stil didn't play it). I was looking forward to Absolver but the way it was designed to play is unacceptable for me. As for Hitman I played first chapter on PS4 when Square gave it away - liked the gameplay but hated the progression style so I would't buy it anyway.
6. If they want some leftoves then let them - it plays nicely with "we are all part of one galaxy" pitch.
7. They giveaway additional games on Galaxy? Last time I noticed one was betatesting online for Alen vs Predator years ago.
8. I don't really update my games unless I notice there is something seriously wrong with them so I never really noticed lagging updates.

So yeah. Aside from obviously online singleplayer games like Hitman or Absolver (that should be de-listed form what I heard) I don't really have any problem with GOG and I don't really plan to cut my spendings. I'm a simple man - I see game I like - I buy it (after reserching if I'll like it and checking out price history).
Besides where would I go? Back to Steam where I"ll have to crack my games after they pull the plug on 7 same as they did with XP? For me the only store I can go to aside from GOG is (dying) phisical market on consoles or Itch and neither scratches the spot GOG scratches.

I would not pay more than full price (I assume you mean MSRP) than someone willing to pay for what essentially amounts to a service. Developers would not have to pay for useless DRM (nearly always hacked or bypassed) which would lower the production cost. Games never became cheaper as downloads versus buying physical copies in a brick and mortar store anyways. That aside, I would certainly pay a fair price (subjective) for a fully DRM free game......that is why I use GOG. GOG is becoming a disappointment, why we are in this thread, and I want them to return to their original beliefs (statments) in regards to DRM free.

If GOG wasn't making the decisions that is affecting their bottom line it would not be an issue. It is not incumbent upon players to continue supporting GOG if they are going down the path of "as much DRM as we can get away with". If this leads to lower sales and lost revenue the fault lies with GOG. If they continue in the same direction at a faster pace and their sales decline by comparison, again they will only have themselves to blame. I have said before that no one in this forum wants GOG to go under, if we did we would not worry about voicing our concerns and simply leave. I, and I assume the majority of the rest in this thread want GOG to thrive and stick to DRM free that they built their brand upon.

They showed there's a market for DRM-Free games, but that market is chump change in the grand scheme of the game industry. At a different time/place it might have proven to be a viable business model, but not in the here and now, hence the birth of Galaxy -- which probably should have been called Damien. ;p