Reply to the Anti-Hacking Suite Stuff, from some posts ago:

Are anti-hacking suites needed? I'd say in private games and/or anything via TCP/IP - nope. If it's say you and some friends and whatever - and say you're running mods or whatever - fine, you all can do what you want w/ the game. As long as y'all are the same page, cool. Play how you all see fits. If that whole crew's fine w/ running mods, cheats, whatever - who really cares?

Of course, if there's leveling, saves, progression involved here in any of this stuff - that's fine for that game and those servers and offline when modding. Like how Diablo 2 handles it - saves for central-server play is one thing; everything else (modded w/ friends, offline play solo, etc) is its own separate stuff too.

Back to Achievement: at that point - up to say dev's and pub's, on Achievements - likely, on if they say have duplicate Achievements w/ one section for Modded and another section of the same Achievement for No Mods.

Now, if you're running on say a game's central server run by the developers/publishers and there's Achievements there and it's a "Non-Private" Server - this is where it gets really dicey. Achievements and stuff's earned normally by playing the game, as intended - so, at this point anti-cheat stuff is necessary on these servers. On these servers, everybody supposed to be playing fair.

Thing is: any anti-cheat stuff's DRM IMHO, as it still manages what players do and can't do, even if they are cheating or not; and/or modding or not.

Also, if EasyCheat or any Anti-Cheat stuff causes my game to not boot - yep, it's DRM. And with Linux, this can and will happen....until these companies update their stuff for Linux. Of course, without this stuff - the game would likely boot.

Before Achievements, MMO's, and all of that stuff - you would run into servers say running heavily modded say Quake 2 w/ say mods like Freeze Tag, equipment mods, and other interesting game mods. I miss that kind of fun stuff.

Achievements, monetization of DLC's/Expansions/Etc, not releasing SDK's, and other stuff really changed that scene big-time, for better and/or for worse.

EDIT:
Reply to the stuff on Warcraft 3 & multiplayer; Denuvo's two forms; and some of my thoughts on LAN/TCP-IP:

Can't speak on Warcraft 3, as that's been backlogged for what seems like forever.

Is there LAN/TCP-IP support there? B/c more games in this era should do that and get away from doing only central server stuff, even if it might (unfortunately) disable Achievements by going LAN/TCP-IP (b/c say they can't and shouldn't regulate what you can do for cheating and/or modding in those kind of private games. I do feel in many games, if a game feels you are modding a game or whatever - there should be separate Achievements sections for Modded and Unmodded, as long as modding's allowed (yes, I think it should be; mods keep the game and its community alive with more longevity).

One thing, though, about Denuvo: Denuvo has two programs now. They have the Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM system; and they also have Denuvo Anti-Cheat.

You might not agree - but to me, they both are DRM. They both are managing what I can or cannot do, whether it's w/ the game-files (Denuvo Anti-Tamper) or any sort of cheating/modding stuff when doing while doing MP in a game (Denuvo Anti-Cheat).

EDIT 2:
Design on MMO's, always-online, etc:
Companies can hide behind the "oh, it's a design thing; it's always online" - but I'm not one to buy any of that stuff. To go always online, they are often cutting out the piracy crowd. They are making sure people buy their game, create an account, and play online - that's DRM in itself, as you have to play online period on their servers.

I can literally solo Diablo 3 and RoS no problem. I've played most of first big section of The Secret World all by myself self and basically didn't do any of the multi-person missions purposely. I do need to get back to that and work on the 2nd major area/world...and get FURTHER.

When you have companies like Square who are literally working on a Dragon Quest X: Offline Edition to one of their old MMO's and actually are re-working the game to play offline - yeah, I can rest my case here. It's really up to the dev's and/or pub's, if they are willing to keep their once-MMO and all of its assets, game-world, content, and its legacies alive...by going the extra mile, to make sure it's can work offline, be re-balance, be re-worked, add bots/AI, or whatever.

The length of your posts (and the miffed tone in which you write them) is a tremendously precise indicator that your emotional state is the basis for your somewhat entitled responses.

It's actually quite disrespectful, because you do not seem to respect that others opinions differ from yours, while at the same time demanding they respect yours.

About the bolded part "On top of that early 2020 saw a wave of attention on The Witcher series from the Netflix series which caused a huge sales boost for The Witcher 3":
According to my interpretation of https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/05/consolidated-financial-statement-of-cd-projekt-capital-group-for-q1-2021.pdf#page=27 the CDPR game sales of GOG in Q1 2020 were actually less than the CDPR game sales of GOG in Q1 2021:
Consolidation elimination Q1 2020: 3 795 KPLN
Consolidation elimination Q1 2021: 4 726 KPLN
So estimated GOG sales of CDPR games in
Q1 2020: ~5421 KPLN
Q1 2021: ~6751 KPLN
(The assumption here is that GOG selling CDPR games appears to 70% in CDPR numbers and to 100% in GOG numbers so the 'Consolidation elimination' needs to remove the overlapping 70% to give a correct sum for CDPR + GOG combination. Not sure how/if GWENT figures into that though.)

Edit: And for Q2/H1 comparison its similar: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/09/consolidated-financial-statement-of-the-cd-projekt-group-for-h1-2021.pdf#page=22

I'm glad to see this.

It was an odd move to release Hitman 2016 anyway. Hitman 2018 and Hitman 2021 have technical improvements and can play the levels from Hitman 2016. The EGS exclusivity for Hitman 2021 should be up fairly soon (January 2022, maybe sooner depending on contract terms and dates) and there are mods for Hitman 2021 that (if I understand correctly) should be able to provide a proper offline experience. IOI should be able to achieve the same.

And IOI, if you release Hitman 2021 here (which I hope you will), please be fair with the pricing. No 300% DRM-free tax.

do you really need an explanation? if your "confusion" if truly genuine, it is because you are using logic and "norms" to try and understand "policy". they (IO) are not doing what you want not because they technologically can not, rather because they do not want to - for reasons. reasons like if they do this for hitman 1, that will "kick the lie reasons' from under the remaining two and any future ones. they always stated things like: "we must use online features for many things in the game, to protect from piracy and to make sure scores and shit are legitimate" ..if they "now" (doesn't matter how many years later) make a genuine and OFFICIAL truly drm free version, just by doing so, it makes them "liars" or "great exaggerators" to many, including current customers of #2 and especially #3. as i am sure you know, many gamers around the world actually do like and prefer drm free games. however, most, decades ago now, "accepted" (mainly due to low will power) drmed game and services like steam. so "now" they are actually upset and outraged if/when a drm free game comes to gog (especially a AA/AAA type) because they then, among many feelings, feel they are missing out on the "best/better" version. so at that time, they actually "hate" others having "clean" copies and turn on the company doing that.

okay, so the above is one reason. another is that by doing so, they do and/or may give away certain drm/copy protection secrets that might/will make newer/future hitmans easier/quicker to crack. that is actually somewhat factual. of course if hitman 1 & 2 are drm free, cracking 3 has to be easier for serious groups. they can see what and how between versions. this is not new, and should not be a truly "good enough" reason, overall. this is one of those "shared" reasons.

another half reason (half, because it only happens IF they use "cloud" shit for SP stuff) is that once they go that way, they do get a lot of telemetry data that they would normally pay for years ago. you get so much customer data that you can even make money selling some of it. it can even become another "revenue stream". they often (always!) use reasons like; "hey this is really great for you the customer. if we see too many people having issues in a level we can make it easier." point being, that data collected from having/forcing ALL players require online accounts/usage, even if in some cases not initially for drm reasons, it then becomes too valuable to ever have offline versions again.

finally, and this has been officially (over time) stated by both IO and other companies making games that deliberately use online connectivity for single player parts and bonuses. they do it because they KNOW piracy exists and even their protected games are cracked. so this way, they want to show paying customers that :"hey, yes we know pirates are playing the game you paid good money for, but rest assured they are not getting the "full experience". they are missing out on _______" so if AT ANY TIME the official company releases a proper drm free version, their ENTIRE policy is revealed to be fraud or fraud like. it's a catch 22. if IO (et al) start embracing gog, they are immediately exposed as liars, frauds, shits, scumbags etc.

i know you know this, deep inside, but now you will not be able to ask such silly questions. and if you continue to act "innocent" that's on you. i'm actually more "peeved" with users who ask why, when in 95% of cases they know why, or they ought to.


tldr; the real reason some companies, those that love fucking single player content into cloud space, can not fully embrace drm-free, is because if they do, their entire company policy is exposed for the fraud and outright lies it is.

One would think they'd prioritize one of their biggest customers, tho.

My two cents: it's not the "apologists"(which seem to mainly be those with different levels of what they choose to accept) that are the problem

The thing is, the game companies that add DRM to their games would very likely do such things even if more people were less tolerant of them. The main thing that affects change in such regards is(as shown in this case) enough people complaining about and criticizing such things, and in the proper places(YT, social media, other gaming sites, etc).

I agree that companies will try to push through anti-consumer practices regardless of backlash; however, I believe they do it with the educated guess that there will still be enough customers (and/or enough "whale"-like customers such as with microtransactions) that they can "get away with it". Where the apologists come in is in expressing direct or indirect acceptance of these companies' behavior. If enough apologists buy the DRMed products or even just influence others to buy/remain silent in criticism/etc, the likelihood of the company "getting away with it" is higher. I think in one of the first staff messages we have a hint at the answer: the flood of bad reviews clearly influenced something.

I'm not sure how much the media coverage did or didn't do. I was a little disappointed many tended to focus on the controversy of censoring reviews, rather than DRM. What we really needed was a mass campaign against GWENT and against the first Galaxy online connection requirement when they sprouted up years ago. In this topic alone you will find many messages of people trying to rationalize that this release was unacceptable because it has singleplayer DRM on a large portion of content. It's dismaying how far the standards have slipped.

To me, we shouldn't need all these qualifiers. If a game has DRM on any portion, no matter how trivial, it should be fixed.

Good to see you back on here :)

Mayhaps, but the influence of "blind consumers" is very likely to be far greater than a few people being ok with some things here and there.

In the end, though(as I said & as we saw with this issue), it doesn't matter as much how many "apologists" there are....but how much of a stink is made when a company makes a decision.

I'm guessing it played a pivotal/important part.....note how this issue got resolved in a better manner then say the Devotion decision, which had far less outside(beyond gog forums) coverage and criticism.

Should be, but we all know there's a better chance of swine levitating, and that's a good part of the reason why I hold the current stance I do on handling any bought DRMd games.

Yeah, it's good to be back. :)

Yeah I don't think we entirely disagree, but one things for certain, plenty of stink was made, enough to cancel out the DRM reeking in this release :)

That it did.....now if only gamers would make as big a stink every time such decisions were made by GOG & other game stores/companies. :)

Letting the community down seems to becoming a habit with your company. ""Asking for forgiveness instead of permission"" is sounding like more like a company mission statement and motto for CD Projekt Red then anything else now.

I am having a hard time trusting your company anymore.

Don't forget they still have not offered any detail whatsoever as to how this release came-to-exist here in the first place.

offered money...they took it....hoped nobody was paying attention......

...