I went to play Grim Dawn with some friends last night. And when I tried to run it after patching it. It now requires I run GOG Galaxy and login and launch it from there.
What the hell!!!!!
The only reason I purchase from GOG is to avoid having an app track everything I do.
IT is supposed to be DRM free I should not have to run anything that is connected to GOG ever.

Remember when GOG Galaxy was just a download and update tool. Now I might as well get my games on Steam because at least there service is better.

Oh and try to open a ticket with support at GOG. That is a load of crap. There BOT has a script and if you don't want to go where the script takes you well sucks to be you cause there is no other alternative.

Bruh, you want to run multiplayer mode so you need to go through gog galaxy. I have no trouble playing Grim Dawn singleplayer without galaxy

That is something advised in the store page

Multiplayer Notice: Please note that GOG GALAXY is required to access Multiplayer.

Local Area Network (LAN) does not require GOG GALAXY.

If it makes you feel any better, you can disable gameplay time tracking, achievements, and cloud saves. Say the problem is of type "other" twice. See the bottom of my complaint post for the exact wording.

Galaxy was never just for downloading and updating games. Your thinking of GOG downloader. You can play Grim Dawn without Galaxy Single Player or using LAN MP.

A lot of games sold by GOG have their multiplayer mode gated behind some DRM. That’s a sad state of things, and GOG is very careful not to advertise it too openly, but it has been this way since the beginning.

In response to the internet access for grim dawn multiplayer. this has not always been the case. I know this because when I first bought the game I didn't require it. the internet hosting service is not done by GOG or by Steam. Sorry it is Crate not CD Projekt, the makers of the game. And they don't require it so this is something GOG has added in one of the patches.

So sure let them slip shit in a little at a time until they are as bad as Meta or any other data tracking company.

Thank you Ice Mage for giving me the code to crack their shitty support.

The Internet Hosting of the game is done by Crate Entertainment, the developers of the game.

Also, the multi part was added in Build 20 of the game, in 2014, previous to that the game probably only featured LAN

I'm pretty sure Grim Dawn has some data tracking build in it. So do most Video games engine such as Unity.

there is a difference between performance trackers to improve a game and GOG tracking my accessing the game at all. Because Crate has no idea who I am and they don't care. They care about my performance and my hardware.
GOG on the other hand is using any way they can to track what I play when I play my age and demographic information all the other BS that Meta, Alphabet, Steam, EA etc. track to make money off of me. This is the information they don't have any right to have. And its why I don't agree with DRM or any other tracking information of any kind. Because If you don't know it that is how most hacking and other malicious attacks are done. Is by companies harvesting your information and saying they wont ever give it out then they get there data breached cause they only think about security until after its to EFN LATE.

I played the game in multi-player not too long after it's original release... and multiplayer already required Galaxy unless you were using LAN. So I don't know what version you please.

Grim Dawn does not require Galaxy to play SP, including for LAN-based multiplayer. It does accept Galaxy for Internet multiplayer (if you don't want to use a VPN connection or such). Grim Dawn's Internet-based multiplayer always required middleware. Fortunately, the awesome devs at Crate made sure it still had direct connect (LAN). [I was a crowdfunding backer, followed development, played immediately on release, etc.]

Syphon72: Don't accept "most games do" as an excuse. Even if it's true, it should still be disableable and be opt-in. It's been ages since I've re-installed a fresh GD copy (I've been steady with keeping it), so I don't remember if it was opt-in, but it sure is easily toggled. But, as was said, there's a difference between a specific game doing things internally, and external software doing things.

OP, there's a major difference between Steam and Galaxy for multiplayer. There's even arguable reasons that Galaxy-multiplayer is better than "each title does their own Internet multiplayer" (for future deprecation and development of drop-in replacements). Fortunately in Grim Dawn's case -- which I wish were universal -- there's LAN play also included.

If it's noted in the game page, I think it's fair, but it really shouldn't be a requirement to use Gog's multiplayer client rather than any other clients.

I don't own the game, so I can't check it myself, but apparently it features both - LAN and online-MP:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grim_Dawn#Multiplayer_types

So, my question is: have you actually tried running a LAN session?
Or did you - by mistake - choose online-MP (as your screenshot suggests)?

The latter option - naturally - requires an online connection.
The first option does not.
(and I want to reiterate: I don't own the game, and therefore can't check it out myself. Apologies, if the LAN option has indeed been removed/deactivated retroactively - that would render my post moot, of course).

Edit: just in case https://www.gog.com/forum/grim_dawn?search=multiplayer

@Braunyar
Have you tried to roll back to the version that supports LAN only and then disable auto updates?