Well, GOG have said they are aware of the hidden DRM issue but I've heard no update from them yet. It's been going for some time so I recommend you raise a support ticket and point this out just in case they've forgotten about it or put it on a backburner. The more people that raise a support request for it the better, but I don't own the game myself, yet, which is mainly due to this issue.

I did the workaround outlined above - DaemonTools - then sent them feedback about this issue. Mostly my posting here was just to point out there really is a scenario where this would come up and it's not something unusual.

Was going to buy this from GOG today but after reading this post will look elsewhere. It's a real shame because I think in many ways GOG is the best site out there but their poor customer service has stopped me from using them for all my games...

Any news if they fixed the hidden DRM?

Doesn't look like it, but at least it seems there's a work-around listed above.

I run this in CrossOver Games 9 on OS X, and had the same error. With the mention of the "missing" CD-ROM drive above, I made an adjustment to the Wine Config for this game, adding a D: drive and mapping it to CD-ROM type, and Tropico 1 now works! Daemon Tools should work on a real PC, though.

I will necro this post real quick just to make clear, that the problem seems to be fixed.

I'm playing Tropico 1 + 2 on my Netbook with no problem whatsoever ...

Unfortunately, it would appear at least for some that the issue has not been solved. I just downloaded the current GOG version and tried to install it on my netbook and received the "insert disk" error. I was led to believe that this had been fixed by GOG...very disappointed.

Indeed, I had this problem under Wine (in Linux) until I added a fake CD drive, so I suspect that the bug is basically unfixable...

Just downloaded the game today and I'm having the same problem. However, I noticed that when I made a shortcut to Tropico on my desktop from Tropico in the list of programs under the Start-button, I can click on that and it works. Not an ultimate solution but at least the game is playable now.

I'm kind of baffled though that, If I'm looking correctly, this problem hasn't apparently yet been fixed while the problem is around for over more than a year now. Is that correct?

This kind of problem probably cannot be fixed without access to game source code, which GOG doesn't have.

Besides, under game requirements it's clearly stated: CD/DVD drive (or emulated drive),