5 ms·

GOG's Preservation Program Is the DRM-Free Store Refocusing on the Classics

161 points by m463 2y ago

morjom 2y ago
"Refocusing" when it has been up since 2008.
- Moru 2y ago
  > Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program.
  - morjom 2y ago
    I really should RFA before I comment. Apologies.
benoau 2y ago
This is a good initiative to make it easier to run old games and simplifying the effort involved in making them fit modern monitors and operating systems. I hope we see them more focused on preserving access to the games too, they've talked before about how until copyright is reformed we need to use the justice system to inherit accounts and the games in them, hopefully some of their efforts are focused on that reform especially now that the EU is investigating whether we should "own" our digital libraries.
- buran77 2y ago
  In the case of transfer of ownership there's little GOG can do (legally) except lobby. But from a technical standpoint access to the games is guaranteed by the DRM-free part. You can have the binaries free of encumbrances, effectively owning the game (binary). Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
pjerem 2y ago
Once upon a time, I loved buying my games on GOG, most of the time at full price. But then I’ve been burnt more than I should by developers who then forgot that this platform exists and go all in on their Steam customers : cross play ? That’s for Steam. Announcement of mods support ? … on Steam Workshop ! The more recent example in my mind is Timberborn : I love this game and I bought it on GOG because I want my games as DRM free as I can. Boom, they recently added offcicial mod support … on Steam ! But ! I must say once again : Big up to Satisfactory devs who announced that they won’t support Steam Workshop to not harm their Epic customers. We have a good old semi official community managed mod loader (ficsit.app) and the modding community is thriving as much as it would on Steam workshop. I just want to add : I have nothing against Steam, it’s one of the companies I still consider to be great (as a customer at least) and I have a huge Steam library. My issue is more with the developers selling their games on all the platforms then making anything non Steam second class citizens. And it’s especially infuriating with games who launches only on Epic Games because they have negotiated a temporary exclusivity (which was the case of Satisfactory, but for once they managed it well) and then release a Steam version with more features.
- puzzlingcaptcha 2y ago
  Patches are also often delayed on GOG compared to Steam (usually by a couple days, but in extreme cases even weeks). Achievements and changelogs are sometimes neglected as well.
- danielskogly 2y ago
  There's a spreadsheet[0] named "Games that treat GOG customers as 2nd Class" that is being semi-regularly updated where you can find out about this. I've also made a Firefox Add-On[1] that uses this spreadsheet to add the data while browsing GOG.com. [0]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zjwUN1mtJdCkgtTDRB2IoFp7PP41fraY-oFNY00fEkI/edit?gid=0#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zjwUN1mtJdCkgtTDRB2I... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/gog-2nd-class-helper/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/gog-2nd-class...
- tpoacher 2y ago
  kudos to you for writing to the developers to complain then!
kostuxa 2y ago
I bought a MacBook Air for my wife, I hope she will find something there)
krige 2y ago
I don't know. I wish for them to succeed but as someone who's had a GOG account since before it officially launched, I have seen them claim to refocus on classics at least twice before, with meager effects. It's gotten bad enough that some games ostensibly under GOG's mission are actually better off on Steam and I don't think it's entirely on the publisher. The examples chosen to hightlight the program on gog's own page for this initiative also do not fill with confidence. If you read between the lines it turns out that for instance it took them five years (!) to fix a crashing HoMM3 intro in a language they added, and likewise they only checked if Diablo/Hellfire even works on win 10/11 yesterday, years after they started selling it. More power to them, if they keep at it, but I don't see anything to get excited over yet.
- its-summertime 2y ago
  Not crashing, just the intros don't get played. Considering the intros and how stilted they are, it was probably thought to be a feature. - - - Verifying in this case means they are marking it in the store as expected to run on such platforms. Different concept from "can run on those platforms"
- izacus 2y ago
  Which classic games are better on Steam than they are on GoG?
  - krige 2y ago
    Septerra Core for instance, last I checked (2022) gog required quite a lot of searching and effort from the user (missing files, recompiled exe), while Steam version works out of the box. FEAR: Extraction Point also ran somewhat better off Steam IME.
- indigoabstract 2y ago
  Hmm, this is kind of off-topic, but I'm unable to skip the intro on the HoMM3 I own on GOG. Not that I play HoMM3 often, but I'm still kind of pissed off because they won't fix that.
drumhead 2y ago
I think I've bought all the classics I want from GOG already. Their biggest selling point is that you own the games you buy from them it's not a licence like steam.
- mxfh 2y ago
  It's still a license, just more lenient and more customer friendly. Would like to know what their income stream percentage is, for being an sink for third party platform game keys from Prime Gaming (vs Epic store, Steam being suspiciously absent). Seems like the only time I visit GOG these days regularily. --- ... “GOG games” or “GOG videos” respectively and when we talk about them all together they are “GOG content”. 2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'license') to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on. https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User...
  - keyringlight 2y ago
    On one hand it's a language thing where people are used to using words like "buy" when they exchange money for an item/service, on the other I really wonder how many think through the implications of what would happen if they bought easily reproducible software/media as they buy a physical thing.
  - npteljes 2y ago
    It's not really a license, since you buy the files, and get the files, and off you go. The license is for actually using the GOG infrastructure to get the files. It's like buying music on Bandcamp.
    - graynk 2y ago
      The fact that you get the files does not mean it’s not a license. You can download Windows 10 ISO from microsoft.com and it will boot just fine too. There’s no license _verification_ in the files you’ll download - yes. You’ll be able to always install and play what you’ve downloaded - also yes. But _legally_ you don’t _own_ them.
IseardMi 2y ago
I have flip-flopped between GOG and Steam for many years. This has correlated with my use of Linux and Linux's support for gaming. When I first learned of GOG and I was still primarily gaming on Windows I tended to choose GOG over Steam since I prefer their DRM-free games. However since it became much easier to game on Linux (thanks to Proton and the work of Valve), I tended to start buying more on Steam since it was so much easier to get games working through their platform. Since Heroic launcher came out I have now switched back to primarily buying from GOG again.
- tpoacher 2y ago
  The big difference is being able to download games / installers locally and expect them to work without having to first sign in to an account. you can only do that with gog, not with steam ps: however, there have been a few games where multiplayer features required a gog galaxy instance, which I don't agree with given their whole no-DRM spiel
  - nottorp 2y ago
    The problem is convenience; I've been using Steam streaming quite a bit lately, for example. Plus you get Linux/Proton too on Steam [1]. And the Deck if you're into that. I used to go to GoG first but convenience is winning lately :( [1] I remember, but can't provide links, that CDProjekt/GoG got called out for their bad "port" of Witcher 2 to Linux/Mac. Guess what, instead of improving things with 3, they simply dropped any pretense of official "ports". Not good for cross platform customers...
    - onli 2y ago
      https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTY5ODM https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTY5ODM reports on the reception of the witcher 2 port. https://www.pcworld.com/article/416185/broken-promises-games-that-never-made-it-to-steamos-and-linux.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/416185/broken-promises-games... mentions the missing, but shortly promised witcher 3. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-witcher-3-didnt-come-to-linux-likely-as-a-result-of-the-user-backlash-from-the-witcher-2.9940/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-witcher-3-didnt-c... would be the source for the witcher 3 being cancelled because of witcher 2, but the article is down. Might have never been true. Edit: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2017/07/the-witcher-3-didnt-come-to-linux-likely-as-a-result-of-the-user-backlash-from-the-witcher-2/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2017/07/the-witcher-3-didnt-co... is the new link, so the article wasn't retracted.
mlindner 2y ago
I used to like GOG until they tried to force you to launch games through their own launcher instead of them being their own standalone applications.
- danielskogly 2y ago
  To my knowledge you can still download all offline installers without needing to ever use their launcher. That being said, their launcher, GOG Galaxy[0] is amazing, and allows you to get a full overview of your games library across several services like GOG, Steam, Epic, etc. all in one place. [0]: https://www.gog.com/galaxy https://www.gog.com/galaxy
- izacus 2y ago
  That's not true at all - the games are still downloadable from the website and every single one of them is a standalone app. Which game are you talking about?
  - anilakar 2y ago
    Not forcing but aggressively pushing it. At one point in time the offline installers were quite well hidden; nowadays they can be easily found under the "install with GOG Galaxy" button.
  - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
    There was a period when GOG was using what can only be described as dark patterns to trick people into installing Galaxy. I made a post about it on Neogaf at the time. Mostly to my surprise, it looks like the post is still there complete with my screenshots: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/gog-is-now-using-adware-esque-tactics-to-trick-users-into-installing-gog-galaxy.1421328/ https://www.neogaf.com/threads/gog-is-now-using-adware-esque... However, this was in 2017. Today, it is very easy to download your GOG purchases without ever touching Galaxy, and I am very appreciative.
  - robrtsql 2y ago
    That's basically true. One recent 'exception' that happened to me is that, shortly after Baldur's Gate 3 was released, the offline installer would give you a different, older version than what you would get if you installed the game through GOG Galaxy, which led to some difficulty and confusion when trying to play with friends.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
n2dasun 2y ago
Still hoping for Black & White

161 points by m463 2y ago

morjom 2y ago

"Refocusing" when it has been up since 2008.

Moru 2y ago
> Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program.
- morjom 2y ago
  I really should RFA before I comment. Apologies.

benoau 2y ago

This is a good initiative to make it easier to run old games and simplifying the effort involved in making them fit modern monitors and operating systems. I hope we see them more focused on preserving access to the games too, they've talked before about how until copyright is reformed we need to use the justice system to inherit accounts and the games in them, hopefully some of their efforts are focused on that reform especially now that the EU is investigating whether we should "own" our digital libraries.

buran77 2y ago
In the case of transfer of ownership there's little GOG can do (legally) except lobby. But from a technical standpoint access to the games is guaranteed by the DRM-free part. You can have the binaries free of encumbrances, effectively owning the game (binary). Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

pjerem 2y ago

Once upon a time, I loved buying my games on GOG, most of the time at full price. But then I’ve been burnt more than I should by developers who then forgot that this platform exists and go all in on their Steam customers : cross play ? That’s for Steam. Announcement of mods support ? … on Steam Workshop ! The more recent example in my mind is Timberborn : I love this game and I bought it on GOG because I want my games as DRM free as I can. Boom, they recently added offcicial mod support … on Steam ! But ! I must say once again : Big up to Satisfactory devs who announced that they won’t support Steam Workshop to not harm their Epic customers. We have a good old semi official community managed mod loader (ficsit.app) and the modding community is thriving as much as it would on Steam workshop. I just want to add : I have nothing against Steam, it’s one of the companies I still consider to be great (as a customer at least) and I have a huge Steam library. My issue is more with the developers selling their games on all the platforms then making anything non Steam second class citizens. And it’s especially infuriating with games who launches only on Epic Games because they have negotiated a temporary exclusivity (which was the case of Satisfactory, but for once they managed it well) and then release a Steam version with more features.

puzzlingcaptcha 2y ago
Patches are also often delayed on GOG compared to Steam (usually by a couple days, but in extreme cases even weeks). Achievements and changelogs are sometimes neglected as well.
danielskogly 2y ago
There's a spreadsheet[0] named "Games that treat GOG customers as 2nd Class" that is being semi-regularly updated where you can find out about this. I've also made a Firefox Add-On[1] that uses this spreadsheet to add the data while browsing GOG.com. [0]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zjwUN1mtJdCkgtTDRB2IoFp7PP41fraY-oFNY00fEkI/edit?gid=0#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zjwUN1mtJdCkgtTDRB2I... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/gog-2nd-class-helper/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/gog-2nd-class...
tpoacher 2y ago
kudos to you for writing to the developers to complain then!

kostuxa 2y ago

I bought a MacBook Air for my wife, I hope she will find something there)

krige 2y ago

I don't know. I wish for them to succeed but as someone who's had a GOG account since before it officially launched, I have seen them claim to refocus on classics at least twice before, with meager effects. It's gotten bad enough that some games ostensibly under GOG's mission are actually better off on Steam and I don't think it's entirely on the publisher. The examples chosen to hightlight the program on gog's own page for this initiative also do not fill with confidence. If you read between the lines it turns out that for instance it took them five years (!) to fix a crashing HoMM3 intro in a language they added, and likewise they only checked if Diablo/Hellfire even works on win 10/11 yesterday, years after they started selling it. More power to them, if they keep at it, but I don't see anything to get excited over yet.

its-summertime 2y ago
Not crashing, just the intros don't get played. Considering the intros and how stilted they are, it was probably thought to be a feature. - - - Verifying in this case means they are marking it in the store as expected to run on such platforms. Different concept from "can run on those platforms"
izacus 2y ago
Which classic games are better on Steam than they are on GoG?
- krige 2y ago
  Septerra Core for instance, last I checked (2022) gog required quite a lot of searching and effort from the user (missing files, recompiled exe), while Steam version works out of the box. FEAR: Extraction Point also ran somewhat better off Steam IME.
indigoabstract 2y ago
Hmm, this is kind of off-topic, but I'm unable to skip the intro on the HoMM3 I own on GOG. Not that I play HoMM3 often, but I'm still kind of pissed off because they won't fix that.

drumhead 2y ago

I think I've bought all the classics I want from GOG already. Their biggest selling point is that you own the games you buy from them it's not a licence like steam.

mxfh 2y ago
It's still a license, just more lenient and more customer friendly. Would like to know what their income stream percentage is, for being an sink for third party platform game keys from Prime Gaming (vs Epic store, Steam being suspiciously absent). Seems like the only time I visit GOG these days regularily. --- ... “GOG games” or “GOG videos” respectively and when we talk about them all together they are “GOG content”. 2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'license') to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on. https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User...
- keyringlight 2y ago
  On one hand it's a language thing where people are used to using words like "buy" when they exchange money for an item/service, on the other I really wonder how many think through the implications of what would happen if they bought easily reproducible software/media as they buy a physical thing.
- npteljes 2y ago
  It's not really a license, since you buy the files, and get the files, and off you go. The license is for actually using the GOG infrastructure to get the files. It's like buying music on Bandcamp.
  - graynk 2y ago
    The fact that you get the files does not mean it’s not a license. You can download Windows 10 ISO from microsoft.com and it will boot just fine too. There’s no license _verification_ in the files you’ll download - yes. You’ll be able to always install and play what you’ve downloaded - also yes. But _legally_ you don’t _own_ them.

IseardMi 2y ago

I have flip-flopped between GOG and Steam for many years. This has correlated with my use of Linux and Linux's support for gaming. When I first learned of GOG and I was still primarily gaming on Windows I tended to choose GOG over Steam since I prefer their DRM-free games. However since it became much easier to game on Linux (thanks to Proton and the work of Valve), I tended to start buying more on Steam since it was so much easier to get games working through their platform. Since Heroic launcher came out I have now switched back to primarily buying from GOG again.

tpoacher 2y ago
The big difference is being able to download games / installers locally and expect them to work without having to first sign in to an account. you can only do that with gog, not with steam ps: however, there have been a few games where multiplayer features required a gog galaxy instance, which I don't agree with given their whole no-DRM spiel
- nottorp 2y ago
  The problem is convenience; I've been using Steam streaming quite a bit lately, for example. Plus you get Linux/Proton too on Steam [1]. And the Deck if you're into that. I used to go to GoG first but convenience is winning lately :( [1] I remember, but can't provide links, that CDProjekt/GoG got called out for their bad "port" of Witcher 2 to Linux/Mac. Guess what, instead of improving things with 3, they simply dropped any pretense of official "ports". Not good for cross platform customers...
  - onli 2y ago
    https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTY5ODM https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTY5ODM reports on the reception of the witcher 2 port. https://www.pcworld.com/article/416185/broken-promises-games-that-never-made-it-to-steamos-and-linux.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/416185/broken-promises-games... mentions the missing, but shortly promised witcher 3. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-witcher-3-didnt-come-to-linux-likely-as-a-result-of-the-user-backlash-from-the-witcher-2.9940/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-witcher-3-didnt-c... would be the source for the witcher 3 being cancelled because of witcher 2, but the article is down. Might have never been true. Edit: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2017/07/the-witcher-3-didnt-come-to-linux-likely-as-a-result-of-the-user-backlash-from-the-witcher-2/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2017/07/the-witcher-3-didnt-co... is the new link, so the article wasn't retracted.

mlindner 2y ago

I used to like GOG until they tried to force you to launch games through their own launcher instead of them being their own standalone applications.

danielskogly 2y ago
To my knowledge you can still download all offline installers without needing to ever use their launcher. That being said, their launcher, GOG Galaxy[0] is amazing, and allows you to get a full overview of your games library across several services like GOG, Steam, Epic, etc. all in one place. [0]: https://www.gog.com/galaxy https://www.gog.com/galaxy
izacus 2y ago
That's not true at all - the games are still downloadable from the website and every single one of them is a standalone app. Which game are you talking about?
- anilakar 2y ago
  Not forcing but aggressively pushing it. At one point in time the offline installers were quite well hidden; nowadays they can be easily found under the "install with GOG Galaxy" button.
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  There was a period when GOG was using what can only be described as dark patterns to trick people into installing Galaxy. I made a post about it on Neogaf at the time. Mostly to my surprise, it looks like the post is still there complete with my screenshots: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/gog-is-now-using-adware-esque-tactics-to-trick-users-into-installing-gog-galaxy.1421328/ https://www.neogaf.com/threads/gog-is-now-using-adware-esque... However, this was in 2017. Today, it is very easy to download your GOG purchases without ever touching Galaxy, and I am very appreciative.
- robrtsql 2y ago
  That's basically true. One recent 'exception' that happened to me is that, shortly after Baldur's Gate 3 was released, the offline installer would give you a different, older version than what you would get if you installed the game through GOG Galaxy, which led to some difficulty and confusion when trying to play with friends.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

n2dasun 2y ago

Still hoping for Black & White