No DRM has only one purpose, verifying you bought the game, and stopping you playing that game if you did not pay.

Everthing people are saying about the Cyberpunk 2077 Rewards, are totally valid complaints, except the DRM claim.
Does the reward stop you playing the game, because you did not pay for the game? No therefore it's not DRM.

Is multiple Brick&Mortar (or online) Store exclusive Pre-order bonuses, an awful business practice, damn right it is.
The "Times Exclusive" Tomb Raider: Last Revelation Level, or the Gold edition Bonus levels for TR 1+2+3 come to mind, none of which come with the GOG release, and must be obtained off site.

If you condemn Publishers for the awful business practice of locking content behind a paywall
Equally the free Cyberpunk 2077 Rewards, behind signing up for GOG, and downloading via Galaxy, I agree 100%.

Egregious as such practices are, they are not DRM, as none stop you actually playing the game, with any form of DRM ownership check, so condemn the business practice, for exactly what it is. a shitty business model, not what it isn't DRM.

General Query, that could change my opinion on of Cyberpunk 2077 Rewards, and Galaxy as well.
Can you add any copy of Cyberpunk 2077, you haven't bought to Galaxy, as if a non GOG game?
This would need to be done by someone that never bought it on PC, to be sure no cross account checks can be made.
If yes, can you add the rewards to that, unpaid for copy of the game.
Can you then access those rewards in game, and equip them on your charcater.

If it passes ALL these tests, neither Galaxy, or Rewards can be considered DRM, because no game ownership checks were done.
I already know the Cyberpunk 2077 game itself is DRM Free, but can't test these Galaxy queries, because I own the game on GOG.
Owning the game on another store that has never been linked to Galaxy should be enough, but to be totally sure, for the DRM absolutist Test,never owning the game is needed
Steam DRM free "purist" check:
New PC, Fresh OS install, no Steam install, No "Steam API.DLL"). Just the game, if it runs, it's DRM free.

Store Clients are NOT DRM, but they can come with optional (for Devs) DRM (Steam/Origin/Etc.).
Only Ubisoft's Store Client forces DRM use on Devs, but Ubisoft's Store Client, only sells games Published by Ubisoft, and all made by Ubisoft owned Dev Studios.
As far as I can tell, because of the Ubisoft wide use, The DRM could be part of the client, not each game, I can't double check that now, since I've deleted my Ubisoft Account, throwing all the 17 Ubisoft Games I owned off my PC
I won't get them "Free" on principle, Ubisoft has gone all in on Microtransactions, without Guillemot's disgusting NFTs on top.

I'm done with that Publisher, until Yves Guillemot, and his family are gone, and the systemic dev abuse is actually addressed.
Even then each game must meet my minimum requirement of No Microtransactions, before I ever consider buying a game.

So it's not that I don't agree that walling off exclusive content is wrong, and needs to stop, I do, but calling it DRM, when it's a different issue just muddies the waters, and leads to threads like this arguing over what is, and isn't DRM, instead of the correct issue.

Common DRM mistakes.
Store Clients are not usually DRM, see my Ubisoft reference, for a possible exception to the rule below.
Each game must have DRM file(s) with he game on PC, systemic hardware solutions only work on consoles with fixed hardware.
Exclusive Content is not DRM, it's a separate shitty business practise.

Stop calling shitty business practices DRM, just because they are shitty, but no ownership check occurs.
DRM is ownership verification, that stops you playing a game, nothing more, nothing less.

No it does not and hasn't done in years. Please stop this incessant thread crapping with novel sized posts where you shout your personal beliefs louder and LOUDER and demand adherence you're simply not going to get. You've already been called out for that by multiple people above. I'll repeat what the creator of the thread said in post 779, (in bold because you clearly ignored it when Lifthrasil himself posted it):-

"It doesn't matter a bit what you personally define as DRM. This is a list warning about games that contain DRM-ed single-player content. The list specifies what portion of the game is locked behind what kind of DRM and everyone is free to make up their own mind whether that is bad enough for them not to buy the game. Or whether they are OK with it." and from the first post "I will also include instances of 'soft' or 'only cosmetic' DRM, that don't really affect the gameplay. So everyone is free to decide for themselves whether the DRM (or not-really-DRM) reported is bad for them or not."

Meaning it's a thread for listing what single-player games force an online connection for ANY reason for people who care 100% of the (single player) content they paid for working offline in the long run in a post Galaxy situation. If you don't care and simply want to argue over your obsolete 1990's-era definitions or even attack the existence of the thread (that others find useful) simply because you like arguing over labels, then you're on the wrong thread. Unless you have something to contribute to the actual list and not just attack the existence of the list, take it elsewhere.

Shorter this time, so that maybe you'll understand it: please take this discussion somewhere else!

no game on steam is DRM free, all games there are affected by the install-time DRM, the steam itself
sure, it can be pretty easily bypassed by using alternative clients or installing one time and backing up the game directory, but that's not DRM free
it's an equivalent of a CD-KEY, a primitive and easily bypassed install-time DRM, but a DRM nonetheless

It might be worth adding to the entry for Saint's Row 3 Remastered that the offline installer was reported as broken over a year ago and it has not been fixed by GOG?:

<unfortunately I cannot post a link due to low rep, but there is an active thread on the forum discussing it>

it surely impacts the DRM-free status of the game, if it doesn't work properly without Galaxy?

Thanks for the warning! I'll check out the discussion and then add it to the entry.

As a long-time Gwent player I think I need to say something about this. Yes, it is true that this game needs an "external" account and this can be called DRM-related thing but Gwent is focused on PvP play so it should be quite obvious that it needs some secure way to transmit the game data between players.
Also, I wouldn't highlight that "microtransactions" thing so much as you did. Yes, they are present, but I can say that they are completely not needed to play the game on the competitive level. 99% of microtransactions are only about different skins and some of them give a *slightly* faster progress - I played a long time without any purchases and it still was very easy for me to be among the players with the highest ranks. In my opinion Gwent's microtransactions do not give any visible advantages to the player so I wouldn't call this game as microtransaction driven one from the player's point of view.

Why is the section about MP DRM in the SP DRM thread is a question, but you can't deny that microtransactions ARE the sole reason for GWENT to exist, it's how it makes any money, regardless of how much it can be argued that it is or isn't "pay to win". And, either way, the point should be that microtransactions exist in the game, and those also imply DRM.

Yes, they do exist, but reading this combined with "the worst offender" title can be very confusing for the reader.
For me, the main source of DRM-like thing in Gwent is just PvP not some paywall - and this kind of DRM is fully explainable and exists in almost all games with online multiplayer mode.
Yes, Gwent uses microtransaction to fund its development and tournament rewards but average player do not need to pay anything and still is able to play at the highest possible ranked level. Many games uses microtransaction in terms of paywall, Gwent can be free all the time, as most of things to purchase are just cosmetics.

I've heard this argument before and in my opinion, it misses the point. I fail to see why DRM being 'explainable' or 'necessary' by virtue of the game design should somehow disqualify it from consideration as DRM or justify its presence on a 'DRM-free' store.

GWENT, and other games like it, are quite welcome to exist. Somewhere else (preferably in a parallel universe).

No. There is nothing confusing about that. Gwent IS the worst offender against the former DRM-free tenet of GOG and it only exists for the sake of micro-transactions. And only for their sake the DRM is necessary. Multiplayer does not require DRM or tying the game to an account.. No matter how much DRM apologists try to claim that. Micro-transactions, however, do require DRM. And as such Gwent goes against everything that GOG used to stand for and it should not exist in this store.

Update on Northgard:

You can now select your opponent in single player mode without Galaxy. Not sure when it happened but I went back to play Northgard and single player skirmish is so much better now with far more options.

That is great to hear! Thank you for the update!


It's always nice to shorten this list!

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. Easy Anti-Cheat installation.

Possible to disable (reviews quote):
Game may be launched without Easy Anti Cheat by using -noEAC launch command or GOG Galaxy option.

Thank you for the information. But EAC alone, especially if it can be disabled, isn't really DRM. Still, owners of the game should be informed about how to disable it. It's a shame that one needs to read the reviews to learn how to disable EAC, and that one doesn't have the option, not to install it.