pathanreynn: They are not making you do anything, unpatient child.
If you wanted to play NEXT as soon as possible, you could have just bought it on Steam
vostok7: But I don't want to buy it on Steam, I already bought it on GOG. I would think GOG would want to keep me as a customer, no?
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EDIT/UPDATE: The GOG version includes the 1.5 patch--only thing you miss is the multiplayer component! Very nice! I am downloading now! __________________________________________________________________
It's up to you, completely. GOG is not a game developer--it is a DRM-free game dis
tributor. HELLO GAMES makes all the patches--GOG simply makes them available when HG makes them available to GOG.
OK--do you want DRM? Do you care about DRM? If not, you can get the DRM version right now from Steam. Apparently it must be a really complicated DRM scheme since HG said it would take them until the end of the year to do a DRM-free patch for GOG.
Your choice.
Here is what I think: STEAM DRM is usually fairly trivial in that all it does is check to see that Steam is connected and running and that you actually own the copy through Steam that you want to play. Either that, or it is one HELL of a DRM scheme...;) I think that HG is deliberately doing this since all of their in-house code is DRM-free already--BUT, they don't trust DRM-free distribution so they want to give the STEAM version a few months to sell out *before* they move the DRM-less version to GOG.
So it is Hello Games "screwing" the GOG customers--has nothing to do with GOG, which would be happy to distribute the patch if only HG would give it to them. I don't really understand a lot that HG does and says, I'll admit. But it doesn't sound like they have given a reasonable answer as to why they are delaying the DRM-free patch to *their* GOG customers. Being *small* has nothing to do with it--absolutely nothing. Either HG is ready to release the patch in the same manner that *all other game developers, large & small* release their patches, or they aren't. Period.
OK, there is one other possible answer to the question as to why HG is doing this. It's barely possible that the current code is *RIDDLED WITH BUGS* and will take a *LOT* of patching after today's release--indeed, I think this is more than likely, actually, and that HG anticipate a few months of bug fixing before they want to turn it over to the DRM-Free GOG customers. That's possible, too.
Hopefully, this will give you something to think about--I was all set to buy it on GOG right *now* but I can't tell whether the NEXT version of the game is what I'll get, sans multiplayer. I personally don't care at all about multiplayer for this game...;) I wish people would do a much better job describing and marketing this game--HG doesn't do a good job of that, frankly. I would not be surprised at all to find the GOG itself is *confused* by what HG is doing or *not doing* as the case may be!
So is NEXT only the multiplayer component, or is GOG distributing NEXT sans the multiplayer component, which HG will make available later in the year? If all I will miss for awhile is the multiplayer component I will buy the GOG version, including single-player NEXT right now. I'm just not going to buy the Steam version because I don't want to be tied up with DRM of any kind and I want my own personal installable game copy for my backup--which STEAM doesn't give me, either. Right now I'm in limbo because of the spotty way HG is handling this!