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I'll be interested as well, but I don't think that it is a bad thing so to speak. Both CD PROJEKT and Michal have high values when it comes to DRM-Free and open gaming. Gog is mostly supported by it's backers and game revenue, I don't think that will change. I don't see the co-founder who created both the studio and the storefront performing a pump and dump on GoG. If anything we may end up seeing a more heavy push into DRM free areas now that it's detached from the game studio. Additionally CD Projekt's reason seems fully valid. It makes sense they would rather focus more on making games than distributing. Distributing games is no easy task, let alone maintaining an entire storefront that most of the corporate world dislikes due to the core principles of the storefront (I.E the push towards support and DRM-Free).
It could be bad but, I'm not going to be super concerned until actual evidence ends up on the ground for it.
The most benefit-of-the-doubt read on this that I've got is that, as a publicly traded company, the small margins GOG operates in might not be worth CDPR's time when they can get higher margins for the same investment elsewhere. Adding some of my own hopium and conjecture, based on the "Why is Michał Kiciński doing this?" section of the FAQ, I hope this means a semi-near future of closing up the last few gaps in GOG's DRM-free promise.
One of my biggest pet peeves with GOG is how it handles multiplayer. Some games add a warning when multiplayer is only available via LAN and direct IP connections. I need a warning when the opposite is true, because if it relies on GOG Galaxy or some other server, it's just DRM by another name. To their credit, this warning is usually there, but I've come across a few games' store pages that left it to the imagination, and I'd have to go to the forums link to find someone complaining about it to be sure. Other games, like Doom 2016, just omit multiplayer from the GOG version entirely, because they can't even fathom how to make multiplayer work in a self-hosted way.
What I'd like to see (I'm a programmer, but I'm not deep in the world of gaming software engineering) is for GOG to provide a drop-in multiplayer server that can serve as a self-hosted version of GOG Galaxy's multiplayer functionality, so that even if the developer doesn't see it as financially viable to ensure their game's multiplayer lives on, GOG can do that for them and make any online game LAN-able. If that's possible. In my head, it sure seems possible.
GOG Galaxy only handles lobbies, matchmaking and relaying connections to the host. So even if they provide a way to self host it, if the game uses dedicated servers to host sessions it still wouldn’t work if the game devs don’t provide the server runtime binaries. Only games that can host a session on the client would work without the server runtime.
If they're using GOG matchmaking to find dedicated servers, then those binaries are in our hands already, as far as I know. Feel free to provide a counter example if you know of one. The whole point of using the store's infrastructure is that the developer doesn't have to pay for it, and I've never heard of a store that offers hosting for bespoke dedicated servers for different games.
Matchmaking is nothing more than a user database query. That database sits on GOG's servers and the only thing GOG does is put users into a lobby and then send that data back to the clients so the game can show it to the user. And then when the game starts GOG connects the clients to the host. So developers don't have to setup their own lobby and relay server. That host can be another client, then the developers don't have to pay for anything, or a dedicated server which the devs have to provide and pay for themselves. And in case a game only does multiplayer with dedicated servers then clients do not have the server binaries unless the devs provide it.
I know how it works. Do you know of a game on GOG with dedicated servers that the company is paying for that also uses GOG's matchmaking to find those dedicated servers? Because at that point, they may as well run the matchmaking themselves and open up the possibility for cross play, and I can't imagine what value they'd get from GOG's services. For instance, I'm pretty sure I'm hitting GOG's matchmaking servers for the likes of Star Wars Battlefront II, but all that's doing is registering player-run servers that it then connects me to.