Hello!

I'm a bit new to GOG and I was wondering about anti-cheat bundled with games. I understand that some games (such as Doom 3, Quake 4, Far Cry 2 and MoH: Pacific Assault) originally came with anti-cheat for their multiplayer modes. In the case of all four of the games I have mentioned, that anti-cheat was Punkbuster. Seeing as how the GOG versions of some of these games do not feature multiplayer, would that also mean that all files related to any anti-cheat the game featured were removed as well?

I apologize if this question is inappropriate for this forum. I attempted to search for an answer here and elsewhere on the internet but was not able to receive any clarification, so I saw fit to ask here myself.

Why would it be inappropriate? I think that's a good question. Now I'm curious, too. :-)

In general most games here are disproportionately single-player focussed and GOG's DRM-Free guarantee applies only to single-player. For some games like you mentioned that formerly contained PunkBuster for a multi-player component, if it would prevent the game from starting, then either the protection is removed (during the process of compiling it for GOG), or the developer may replace the anti-cheat .dll with an inert dummy file that doesn't actually do anything. GOG's general policy is guaranteeing that single-player modes are DRM-Free which often means removing the multi-player bit completely (eg, Bioshock 2) and this in turn usually means removing whatever related anti-cheat was attached to it anyway.

About the only problem game I've seen is FEAR 1 where the old SecuROM was removed for the main game but only partially removed in the two expansion packs. Doing things like having Process Monitor open would trigger it (as if something was blocking the game from starting upon detecting "Debug Tools" running). Someone filed a support ticket and GOG replied:-

"The game is DRM Free, the message you are seeing is caused by an anti-debugger protection, we will not be removing it as it is not DRM and it is not interfering with the game when Process Monitor is not present. Process Monitor being an optional software can be closed before launching the game."

... but as some of us pointed out in the thread, that makes no sense given the game has its own internal cheat codes. It remains unfixed to this day and above reply is as close as you'll get to an official statement specifically about anti-cheat (rather than general DRM) that they'll remove it if it acts like DRM / blocks a game from running but won't if it doesn't. The good news is, this particular case seems to be an extremely rare exception / accidental oversight. For many older games, the Multi-Player components are removed anyway (eg, old servers long closed down).

Just unsure of how the forums here are categorized lol, that's all. I see, well thank you for the very informative post!

I suppose then I may just need to find out for myself should I decide to purchase any games like that in the future; Perhaps I'll make another post at some point detailing my findings if I happen to accumulate a decent chunk of these types of games haha.

It is good that there don't seem to be too many issues present even if any of these games do still contain any form of anti-cheat or leftover files, though. I'd assume that if the multiplayer component was removed or limited to LAN only then the anti-cheat would be removed as well, but who knows. I guess there's only one way to find out!