GOG needs to make it clear on a game's shop page if it does not support crossplay.
It is not acceptable that customers have to search the forums and hope for forum posts by the developer to find out if they can play with Steam users. This is currently the case with Ashes of the Singularity and maybe other games as well. It sets a very disturbing precedent that worries me about the future of GOG. It is very anti consumer and anti transparency what is happening here. It goes against the spirit of GOG and your own promises and marketing.

To stay true to your own spirit I wish GOG would enforce Crossplay, meaning: require the developer of a new title to enable crossplay with Steam (or whatever platform) buyers. If the developer is so stupid as to fracture his multiplayer community that's one thing. But for GOG to sell a game at full price without warning that will only have crippled multiplayer is on GOG's accountability. Let's face it, the Steam version is going to sell a lot more and thereby it's going to have a lively multiplayer community. (Especially since the publisher is selling the Steam version himself, so if you buy the game anywhere but on GOG, you get the Steam version.) So GOG's version is going to have crippled multiplayer, so you should put that as a warning on the shop page. And if you were really honest, you'd sell the game at a lower price.

And if the publisher / developer wants to sell the game at full price, make him enable crossplay.

Really?
We needed a second thread about this?

Crossplay is an optional extra that is clearly down to the developer to implement. We have some games that do already, we have many more that don't.
The game you are currently ranting about, isn't even finished.
Let's say that again, it's not finished. It's not feature complete. When it get's an official release it may well include crossplay.

Until then, if you want to play multiplayer; go buy it on Steam.

The rest of us will enjoy a DRM-free single player experience.

Is there a full moon or something?

Did the groundhog see his shadow and promise six more weeks of dickheads?

I'm fine either way. GOG can mention whether the game supports crossplay or not, if they consider it worth it. I am also fine GOG selling games at full price even if they don't have crossplay.

Just like I don't expect Valve to mark in Steam games whether the Steam players can play with GOG players, but they are free to mention that if they want.

This is an interesting thread in that n the "Blow/Braid/Witness" thread people are condemning GOG for not letting developers like Blow to have more control over their game's pricing, sales etc., like they possibly can do on Steam. Yet, in this case someone is actually suggesting GOG should control more how much publishers are allowed to charge for a game on GOG, as in "no crossplay, you can't sell it at full price".

I guess it is kinda hard for GOG to both let publishers have more control over pricing, and dictate to them how much they are allowed to charge on GOG, at the same time. :D

I like the idea of adding more information on the store page of a game (like if it offers crossplay and more). Perhaps some tags would be a good solution. For example for crossplay, multiplayer only with GOG Galaxy, servers for multiplayer aren't available anymore, multiplayer on LAN available, achievements and so on.

This is a far more sensible suggestion. It does look like GoG are working towards this with the new features filters they've added, so hopefully they might flesh that out and add more things you could search by.

And I think it should not be optional. That's my point. It being optional is making Galaxy a closed system, which is not in the spirit of GOG. That argument doesn't work since this shortcoming is neither listed on the shop page nor is crossplay promised to come at a later date. Don't act as if GOG is being transparent about any of this and as if the developer is promising anything. You're making GOG appear more customer friendly than they are and you are using Early Access to make it appear as if any criticism is mute, because whatever is missing WILL be added later. See, now we're being honest. If you want multiplayer, buy it on Steam. It should say that on the GOG shop page :)

I do think it's important to mention whether it supports crossplay or not, not in the least because honestly, before this game I had no idea it was even an option, I just figured every game that used Galaxy would work with crossplay.

Until Galaxy has a thriving multiplayer community, a game using crossplay or not is incredibly important information imo as for games that have a clear multiplayer focus that could mean you're buying a dead game from the getgo because there simply may not be enough people to play with.

Heck, fast dying multiplayer communities are already a worry on Steam, for some games it never even gets off the ground, let alone if the game's restricted to the GOG community only, who until recently have been a community that was mostly single player focused (and no doubt still is).

That's fine, but clearly it is. Just like Achievements are. If GoG removed every game that had non crossplay multiplayer then they would probably lose half their catalogue.

But it does. Yes, they may not implement it, but they might. You don't know until the game is 'finished'. You're buying a game that is still in development and you can't expect all the promised features will be there or will work, so complaining that it's missing something at this stage is pointless.

Of course it's not going to say that on the page. But the majority of the customer base here on GoG is interested in single player, not multi player so if that is what you're looking for you are probably in the wrong place.

Best option for now might be a GOGMix ("Games that support Crossplay"). I also agree more official info on game pages should be added, though.

I support this. After all, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was also heavily into crossplay.

they should enforce cosplay

However, GOG is promising more than Valve, that's why we as customers have legit reason to expect more from them than from Valve. GOG is based on marketing around being DRM-free, offering an open and optional Galaxy client and being customer friendly in oppostion to Steam, Uplay, etc. So we can expect them to be DRM-free, to Galaxy being open and optional and GOG being transparent and honest. To be honest, me mentioning the price is rhetoric. It's about them enforcing their own rules and being honest to their own marketing. So if a developer won't comply, GOG shouldn't sell the game at all. Yet, if they HAVE to sell the game (well, they don't) then it should be cheaper, since it is as if they're selling a crippled version. I mean in this thread you already have people saying there's no problem, since they can play (drm free) singleplayer and they don't care about the crippled multiplayer. Well, ok, let's go with that argument for rhetoric's sake. My follow up is the price question: if you are basically only getting the singleplayer version of the game on GOG, why do you have to pay full price?

I guess this is about Ashes of the Singularity multiplayer that does not support Crossplay again?

Look the issue with Stardock is that they don't seem to know (or maybe they don' want to know) anything about gogs Crossplay system. I understand that game is effectively dead for multiplayer since its bound to gog client multiplayer. As said talk to Stardock about enabling Crossplay here.

what will you cosplay as then ?