Yes, because it is.

That's pretty simple.

I feel like the attempts to explain away DRM in defence of GOG's Hitman release have required more effort than GOG put into looking into what Hitman was and how it works. You can't build the foundations of your company on No DRM to the point you literally say 'FCKDRM' then welcome DRM into your store. I have no doubt there's probably a lot of mental gymnastics going on behind the scenes to explain how 'well it's not THIS EXACT kind of DRM' but the fact is DRM is DRM, no matter the type or implementation of it. It's DRM. This really isn't that hard if you abandon all pretence and connection to a company/brand/service and look at it straight.

I honestly feel like there's a lot of people out there who think Multiplayer = the only DRM and have no intention of ever looking into SP titles that contain DRM in various forms. You can take a horse to water, but you can't stop it from downing itself.

You don't have to work with hypothetical when there are actual examples to work with. Before I go into any detail let me answer your question first. If a game has an Online/MP component to it and asks for an active connection, creation of an account to be able to play the MP-portion, I got absolutely no problem with that.

What I absolutely refuse to accept is when parts of a game are locked behind a client, a GOG account, an additional account on the developer/publisher website. This is Titan Quest, Offworld Trading Company and many other games sold on GOG.

I also can't accept games like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous asking for an active Internet connection without which the game refused to start. It is a single player game but there is Unity analytics (which you can opt-out) and other components demanding a connection. I complained about this and for other reasons had to refund the game.

The worst example for me are games like OtC, again, where there is Single-Player-Online content, where there are Challenges and User created content, that's not accessible without Galaxy. This is reason for my not purchasing that game in the first place. Others like Mini-Metro or Desktop Dungeons, both offer content, which is again locked behind the client! This is totally not acceptable and those games are still sold as DRM-free.

To define DRM how I understand it is any content that I got the right to use, because I paid good money for it, but can't use it without additional pieces of software - Galaxy in this case. The game has the client code, there are remote servers which I should be able to access to, with an active account on the publisher or developer website. That's what I paid for.

Yes, there have been many discussions how Galaxy isn't DRM. Yet on the other hand no one has yet been able to explain why it should be needed in the first place. What does it offer justifying the demand to use it? Titan Quest, a very old game, Grim Dawn and others, why lock away MP content, when there are games like Fields of Glory II, of which I know you need to grant access else the game will not start, where you need an account on Slitherine's website, and from there you are able to enjoy everything this game has to offer?

The bottom-line of it is that I do accept the following things: Creation of an account on an external website to access MP content, games with Online components asking for access to the internet.

I don't accept the need to use Galaxy without good reason, single player games without online MP or even LAN demanding internet access without which they refuse to start. I just tried 80 Days again, one such title which simply crashed when access was blocked by firewall and, surprisingly, now it can be blocked and the game runs just fine. Dead simple really.

If it was possible to hold GOG to their DRM-free policy, yes, even Galaxy would have to be questioned. What else does it do that Hitman doesn't? Minus maybe demand to use Galaxy to be able to connect to IOI to enjoy everything this game would have to offer. The only thing setting it apart from whatever may have existed for a very long time without being questioned or broadly discussed is that there is almost as big a backlash as was the case with that one cosmetic item offered by CDPR/GOG for Cyberpunk 2077. For which there still is no explanation why they did this in the first place.

Edit: To understand why for me locking away content/MP behind Galaxy equals DRM is because GOG's only function should be to sell fully functional, DRM-free games It is not their duty to promote use of their client by enforcing use because content that could otherwise be accessible and should is locked behind it. Developers on the other hand are free to use it for Achievements is where it should end. DRM thru the backdoor in other words without being so obvious.

In a wider sense of DRM, obviously yes. There is no guarantee that the internet will be available or continue to exist in its current form.

Interestingly, Defcon suffered from a form of this, although it tried to address the local network rather than the internet. If it couldn't find the local network (e.g. because you were using a firewall that didn't distinguish between LAN and internet access and stopped the game from phoning home) it would stop you from playing.

Over time, the definitions of words change - these days, crypto is much more likely to refer to so-called cryptocurrencies rather than cryptography - so DRM being considered to include requiring an internet connection in general rather than to a specific site or server does not surprise me. Indeed, my definition of DRM would definitely include this.

That would be the expected way to do that (even if it's translated via Google Translate, though said translation would not be a good translation).

However, some developers don't do the expected reasonable thing, and instead do strange things like this that feel like clearly the wrong solution.

One could look at something like Oblivion not letting you name your saves for this; saves are identified only by number, rather than name, which doesn't really work in a game where you could realistically make hundreds of saves (it was more reasonable back in the days when console games had 3 or 4 save slots).

Or you could look at various kusoge that gets even basic things wrong; on the RPG side there's Hoshi wo Miru Hito, Ultima 5 NES, and apparently Lunar: Dragon Song, which get some of the most basic things wrong. (Note that it's only the NES version of Ultima 5 that I'm talking about; if you're interested in Ultima 5, play literally any other version.)

Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining the actual meaning of the OP.

P.S. I think, you meant drowning instead of downing. :P

Maybe I meant frowning? #TrapCard

Yes, and unreasonable things should be fixed.
I've read through your posts - your mistake is that you don't understand technical matters of video games. So just leave it to those who do. ;)

I'll quote for you a good explanation on Hitman(2016) multiplayer component. To write it even simpler, it's a 100% singleplayer game with "online" systems being made to serve as online DRM.

What is the point in making a distinction between malice and incompetence when the end result for us as customers is the same?

Arbitrary restrictions on the usage of products we paid for.

So let's make a correction then: No to DRM and no to incredibly stupid online integrations and entirely arbitrary system condition checks.

All of those are obstacles that paying customers should not have to deal with.

I'd say it's bad programming. DRM always includes an authentification process. If a user account is needed for the game, THEN you can consider it DRM.

First a question: how would your "checks if internet is present" work? Would it just ping the default gateway, or how does it decide whether internet is available or not (without checking that certain online server is online, as that would be more than just checking whether the computer is online)?

I wouldn't necessarily call it DRM (because it doesn't try to limit whether you are making playable copies of the game, and doesn't e.g. try to check that many people are playing the same purchased game), but I would consider it as similar nuisance and a reason not to buy the game.

That is a bit similar case than what e.g. Rise of Nations and/or Rise of Legends (retail) games had. You could install those games to your PC, but the only official way to update the game was to update it from within the game, letting it to connect to the publisher's update servers, and download+install the updates from there. (EDIT: Well, not quite I guess, as those games expect certain update servers to be online, not just internet in general...)

So when those official update servers went offline, you could install and play only the (buggy?) non-patched version of the game. That is not DRM where it tries to restrict making copies of the game or playing it on several computers at the same time, but it is very inconvenient and makes the game gimped if and when the publisher is no more. I generally see it as a way to try to prevent people making playable copies of a game (or other product), that allow several different people to use the same product at the same time.

With CD copy protections it tried to make it harder by burning playable copies of the game, current online DRM schemes rely more on user accounts, ie. the game is tied to one online account in a service so you first have to have an access to that online account, and then the service might e.g. limit that only one person (using that account) can play the game at a time.

Other variations too, like e.g. DEFCON (even on GOG) uses multiplayer keys and doesn't let two people play multiplayer at least against each other, or online, in case they share the same multiplayer key.

If the game required, without any good reason, that you have a Chrome web browser, or certain PDF reader, installed before the game would work even offline, would that count as DRM? You could still call it "arbitrary control", even if it isn't really trying to control whether you are making illegitimate copies of the game, and/or several people are playing the same purchased game, even at the same time.

Having said that, such meaningless restrictions that may make archiving of the game pointless, while not necessarily actual DRM, would still be a nuisance for me not to want to buy the game. And in case of Hitman, I agree GOG should have understood that people consider it limiting in a similar way as DRM (well, not quite, if several people really still share the same game and play it, as long as they have a connection to some server).

EDIT: Well, now I can think of one point where I could actually consider it DRM (meaning if it relies on certain server to be online). While the publisher can't control whether people are making playable copies of the game, the publisher can still prevent everyone from playing the non-gimped version of the game at all.

So in that sense you can call Hitman's online requirement also DRM. A very crude form of DRM, an on/off switch to all players, not just those who try to play illegitimate copies.

It is still different from OP's scenario (generally just requiring an internet connection for no good reason), but as some have said, such theoretical situation is kinda meaningless if we can't come up with real-life examples of it.

It's all about control. DRM-free is analogous to democracy.

This.

DRM was the first iteration of the distributed authoritarian paradigm, whereby publishers could project power into the purchaser's game to retain control of their products after their sale. Ever since the first digital copy of a book was rendered people have been trying to limit this limitless medium —— Adobe have been trying to create fixed-term digital readership since they first began. (I still have Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.05 installed, since it is a stable version that doesn't automatically check online to see if there is a later version. Later versions of Adobe have bloated document control checking fucntionality.)

As noted earlier, online gating seems to be the go-to method for implementing this now.
Exactly.

It is the game implementation of totalitarianism: "We control the horizontal and the vertical, and We will determine if and when you, the user, can play the game."

Don't forget that data is the new oil; it is arguably more valuable to know by who, when and how a game is played than to prevent unauthorized gaminng, since this data will provide guidance when creating the next iteration of control.
You are correct, this is not a mechanism to manage the buyer's right to access digital assets, sensu stricto. But I would note that this is a distinction without a difference.
QFT.