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Blizzard's pulling of Warcraft I and II tests GOG's new Preservation Program

239 points by Tomte 2y ago

jimbob45 2y ago
My guess is that they’re trying to do it temporarily to boost sales for the WC bundle they’re in as a bonus perk. Blizzard, however, lost the assumption of goodwill by their customers years ago and resultantly, this will not be taken well.
- yupyupyups 2y ago
  Mainstream gaming is borderline masochistic. We keep hearing influencers and journalists talking about the various ways games companies screw over their customers. Yet, here we are, and Blizzard is alive and well, and the complaining continues. Is it that gamers like getting abused or is the drama exaggerated?
  - 9x39 2y ago
    The highly passionate crowd is usually just outnumbered by the growth of the market, maybe: new people every year either age in or are drawn in. At the same time, maybe people do like being abused even if they won’t admit if it means going back to the brands that gave them the dopamine hits early on. There aren’t enough substitutes out there for most to walk away.
- definitelyauser 2y ago
  To be fair, Warcraft does need a remaster. Have you tried replaying it? You can't even RMB to move units, you need to click the move icon then select where. Warcraft 2 does not (imho), and last time I tried it, Warcraft 2 BNE still worked just fine, so that's probably getting shut down now.
mdtrooper 2y ago
Well, I remember the "Cease and desist" to FreeCraft project in 2003 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus
- vanderZwan 2y ago
  On the other hand, the project still exists and the engine has been modded to play these games, although apparently Warcraft 1 in particular is still a buggy mess: https://stratagus.com/ https://stratagus.com/ ... but perhaps more people will try to help out fixing those bugs, purely out of spite.
proc0 2y ago
Well I bought WC2 already and have the files. That's the best part of GOG, you can just make your own backup. I think with hard copies going away, the ability to make backups of what you buy should be protected by law, at least for software that is no longer supported (of course one side effect is that all games become services, but there have been single player games recently that prove it's still a good business model). We have seen enough cases of how digital copies are ultimately a way for companies to "erase history", so to speak, and this is detrimental not just to consumers but the wider culture. Hard copies was a way to guard against this, but ultimately it is all software anyway, and digital copies should provide a way to truly own what you buy (if it's a one time buy product).
- lrem 2y ago
  For a very long time “hard copies” were just a physical precache of the download. What you actually paid for was the online store code inside the box. I’ve stopped buying boxes after the second one like this.
  - Aachen 2y ago
    The software I bought on CD/DVD was never like that unless you mean needing to contact some activation server. As far as I know, things like the Switch game cartridges are also real (presumably with a similar asterisk). The only annoying things are these installers nowadays you download for e.g. Chrome or, a bit longer ago, Flash, not so much the things sold as copy to own (resellable) I wouldn't discourage people from buying owned copies, especially when they can find an option free of DRM
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - lrem 2y ago
      CD? Sure, that was entirely in the good era. But the last two games I bought on DVD (something forgotten from EA I think and the nice Mass Effect Trilogy boxset) were what I described - store codes printed in the box, can use the attached physical media to save on downloading time.
not_your_vase 2y ago
[flagged]
hipadev23 2y ago
I’m really confused what venn diagram they think exists with sizable overlap of “wants to play war1 and war2 again” and “doesn’t mind a greedy company killing off old products to funnel users to re-releases” No thanks Blizzard, my soundcard works perfectly.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  Oh, believe me, there’s plenty of those.
- Macha 2y ago
  WoW seems to have passed its local minimum, partly due to no longer being a single game anymore with classic and the seasonal editions. I can see them thinking remasters are a way to get a few more tie in franchise sales from those players, maybe somewhat cheaply. Throw in a tie-in mount/whatever for WoW and you'll have players buy it without any intention of actually playing it.
Refusing23 2y ago
It's no wonder seeing as they just released the remastered version. though it can still be picked up for free on various abandonware sites and archive
maeil 2y ago
Interesting how GOG is willing to take such a hard stand of this and fight Blizzard on it, when they immediately pulled the Taiwanese horror game Devotion for political reasons [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horror-game-pulled-from-sale-again-after-backlash-in-china https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horr...
- fwipsy 2y ago
  I guess it's not a principled stand in favor of free speech. They just want to sell games. The CCP can block them in China; Blizzard can't.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Maybe they don't feel that opinionated over free speech, which is easy when coming and living in a society where that's a given; however, they may feel much more opinionated about businesses fucking their customers over and doing the usual business shenanigans. In a way, this issue is GOG's whole shtick - selling games without DRM bullshit.
- shakna 2y ago
  Scale of difference between being threatened by China, and threatened by a company within America, though. There's nothing surprising about bowing to a government to keep their citizens as customers.
- cocacola1 2y ago
  > But shortly after release, Chinese players found a poster hanging in the apartment that serves as the games’ setting that said “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron”. > Almost 10,000 negative reviews soon flooded the game’s review page. The developer, Red Candle Games, posted an apology saying it was “purely an accident” that the poster was left in the game. 10,000 negative reviews is wild for something so banal. I can't imagine defending a politician over what might be the mildest insult ever conceived.
  - 2y ago
danielskogly 2y ago
Link to GOG’s announcement: https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_from_gogwhat_does_this_mean_in_regard_to_the_gog_preservation_program https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_fro.... Worth noting that even if it will no longer be available for sale, they will still keep it updated for people who already bought it.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems. That's not worth much. They don't even maintain the games that are still for sale on GOG. Try playing Tales of Monkey Island; most of the cutscenes won't run.
  - danielskogly 2y ago
    Tales of Monkey Island is not part of the GOG Preservation Program as far as I can tell[0]. This policy update is for games part of the program. https://www.gog.com/en/game/tales_of_monkey_island https://www.gog.com/en/game/tales_of_monkey_island
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      They have another policy specifying that they maintain the games they sell. They don't sell as-is, they warrant that the game will run appropriately. But we know they don't honor that policy. What would you conclude?
      - izacus 2y ago
        Why the heck do you think it's the stores job to employ developers to maintain games for you forever? How do you think that actually works out? For games that are sold for usually less than 15 bucks?
3eb7988a1663 2y ago
If you only read the headline, GOG is still selling both games until December 13th. Now, I have to weigh the calculus: do I buy the games just because, knowing there is basically zero chance I boot them up? What if that was Blizzard's end game -to drive scarcity?
- MrDresden 2y ago
  Had similar thoughts, but in the end decided that having the option of playing some of my favourite games from childhood was worth more to me than any spite I have towards Blizzard. They have shown themselves to be bad curators of their own catalogue, so I bought a copy to avoid having issues during some possible future point when I just want to experience some nostalgia.
- waveBidder 2y ago
  like other game companies (cough Nintendo) their old library is viewed as direct competition with their current set of games/subscription products. also wotmrth remembering that Blizzard is now a Microsoft property.
  - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
    They aren't wrong, modern games have no chance against good old Bomberman.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > like other game companies (cough Nintendo) their old library is viewed as direct competition with their current set of games/subscription products. That's nothing special to game companies. All entertainment companies are the same way. That's why they push for longer and longer copyrights. Copyright is what protects Disney from having to compete with its own past work.
    - hyperman1 2y ago
      Microsoft in the XP era said their main competitors were windows 98 and office 97.
spiritplumber 2y ago
Well that's $15 that are going to GOG instead of Blizzard.
- akimbostrawman 2y ago
  they still get that 15 - gog cut
- xandrius 2y ago
  Do you think GOG can sell anything without a license of sorts? Otherwise what's the difference of paying for piracy?
  - Macha 2y ago
    I'm sure GOG are legally covered in what they're doing (it's also not the first time, they had a dispute with bethesda over unlisting the classic fallout games for years). Blizzard's given them a termination date of the 13th, so they're allowed sell until them, and probably contractually Blizzard had to give them some amount of advanced notice.
soulofmischief 2y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259040 > there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes Fuck DRM and fuck Blizzard. Kudos to everyone involved in games and film preservation during this hostile era.
llmthrow102 2y ago
They've also now launched the Warcraft 3 "remaster" twice, and it's still in a worse state than it was 20 years ago. First they did less than half the job, cut budget, and launched missing major features from the original project, with only some terrible new models to show that look decent up close, but bad from the overhead RTS view. Then they did a relaunch where they did lazy AI upscaling of old models and icons that don't actually look any better, added some realtime shadows that don't fit with the style of the game, and called it a "Warcraft 3 2.0". Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM. I buy all games on GoG when I can, especially classic games, but new ones as well. It's so nice to just have a collection of DRM-free installers, and be able to support a company that does right by the classic games.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM. Oh, Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs. I tried AoE 3 on Steam (demo). It was a total disaster. Downloading was slow and then the game: At the first start would not let me build barracks (no suitable place found). At the second start it was hard to found the baracks again (all icons look the same - Windows style enshitification) but the peasants will not harvest berry bushes.(bugs) They made the UI much worse. The playground is round. The icons look the same so one has to look at tooltips to build a house. All in all a crappy experience. I guess i will stick with AoE 2.
  - fifticon 2y ago
    my child insists, reasonably, on playing minecraft, so we must endure the microsoft launcher ui stewardship for mc. what a hot mess of bloated bureaucracy-software-dungheap. It is as if even their installer has an installer and a loadscreen. Consider if you, gosh, want to continue PLAYING EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS LAST NIGHT. The launcher design response: ouh, i did NOT expect that! Please wait while we reauth and 2FA and sync your account and download and reinstall your game client.. wait a minute.. hmm, on second thought, Im not SURE we can just let you continue the game from "last night"..? oops, no wait.. WE CAN?! I swear there is more code in, and people assigned to, their crappy bloated launcher, than to the game itself. Ironically, their store features are so buggy I often dven cant manage to buy their DLC theft-as-servjce stuff.
indigoabstract 2y ago
Hmm, if anyone wants to play them or add to the collection, buying them from GOG instead of Blizzard should be a pretty easy decision.
dusted 2y ago
wow, the remaster looks like a 00s flash game..
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Blizzard [...] has asked GOG to remove its non-remastered, DRM-free $15 bundle of those games from its store on December 13. > GOG [...] suddenly finds itself with a new policy to figure out. So GOG is putting the Warcraft I & II Bundle on sale (discount code "MakeWarcraftLiveForever" for $2 off) and is letting folks know that if they buy it before December 13, they will keep access to it after the delisting, complete with offline installers. That's not a new policy. That's their existing policy with no changes. Though they're giving the company much gentler treatment than they used to. When Duke Nukem got pulled, GOG put it on giveaway.
- etiam 2y ago
  They've worked a fair bit at it already and if they intend to keep maintaining it indefinitely without possibility for further sales it could be nice to actually get money for it at this point. Also, I'm not sure what they might be obligated to pass to the copyright holder per copy? Maybe it's not a proportion of the sales price in this case?
propoganda 2y ago
Still have the original war2bne disk. The change from war2 to war3 was, back then anyway, monumental. We couldn’t wait. All sorts of rumours but more than that - realities. Great things have come out of war3 of course, but damn did we jump on it with the gleam in our eye. Blizzard is no longer the company that we once knew, and what was once clear is now a distant shadow.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Really sad that nothing in the genre has changed since war3. People still play DotA forks and successors, but the RTS genre kind of ended with wc3.
9x39 2y ago
On one hand, companies sometimes add value with rereleases of older catalogs: resolution updates, new multiplayer infrastructure, new content, etc. On the other, huge companies that could do better throw out an AI upscale, more or less, and that seems to be what this turned out to be: https://youtu.be/KZ9Ac4WVW6Q?si=9Wzjxl0Mkh4t3nMG https://youtu.be/KZ9Ac4WVW6Q?si=9Wzjxl0Mkh4t3nMG Too bad from a company that was once one of THE names in game development and often delaying shipping until the product was ‘right’.
brobdingnagians 2y ago
It used to be exciting when a Blizzard release was coming out. Now it's just scary and a bit depressing when they announce something. I was excited all the way up through Overwatch 1, then the WC3 remaster and Overwatch 2 were awful. If they only messed up new releases it wouldnt be so bad; it's the incessant fiddling and worsening of what was good. Even of games that weren't meant to be "live service" games. I already have WC2 on GoG and this preservation program commitment makes me think I should start ramping up buying other games from my childhood with GoG.
- 946789987649 2y ago
  Even World of Warcraft which used to be seamless in terms of issues, has had increasingly more and more obvious bugs. A sad state from the "Blizzard polish" of yesteryear.
  - EugeneOZ 2y ago
    Try playing WoW with a new account. The initial mission has incredibly ugly graphics (much worse than the main game), a flat progress bar during loading (literally just a simple blue rectangle - no borders, gradients, or shadows, just something that a basic box(x, y, x1, y1) function would draw), and a yellow rectangle instead of a rope connecting your hero to a flying vehicle. It’s not a 3D bar, just a 2D yellow rectangle that looks like a censorship block on the screen, and you’re supposed to imagine it’s a rope hanging from a helicopter-like vehicle. I understand it’s an old game, but these parts seem like pure laziness. I’m sure this laziness costs them a lot of players who leave the initial mission in disgust and never get to see the beautiful parts of WoW.
    - xandrius 2y ago
      Same applies to many MMOs, even GW2 and FFXIV are terrible at the beginning, compared the current content.
  - burmanm 2y ago
    World of Warcraft has never been without issues. When it launched it was full of bugs, servers kept crashing (but they did refund a lot of gametime back then) and so on. And every expansion was just a nightmare start, without being able to get to the new zone, servers again crashing. You just have golden memories of a state that never happened. Game wise, WoW has gone forward a lot since DF (the disaster of SL taught them something) and is actually in a lot better state than before. Sure, it has bugs, but it's also a massive game. And they do keep fixing a lot of bugs with quite good response time these days instead of what it used to be.
PeterStuer 2y ago
I remember when Blizzard was a company run by gamers that loved gamers. These days it feels like a company reigned by 'modern' HR that despises gamers.
bilekas 2y ago
Blizzard seem to be burning a lot of bridges and goodwill they've built up over the years. It's incredible what GoG is trying to do, for a profit of course but all the same. The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy, yet if it will squeeze an extra few pennies out for shareholders, it seems like the right move. The games industry really seems to be turning into the snake that eats itself. I'm just grateful for the indie scene still being a thing.
- thayne 2y ago
  > The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy The solution is to dramatically decrease the length of copyright, so that old games (or other software) can be obtained legally (and modified) even if the original maker no longer sells it.
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    Or just pirate it like we did for the last 30+ years… Copyright is broken and has failed it’s purpose - I have no hope that we can fix it in my lifetime.
    - vanderZwan 2y ago
      It's not like we have to choose between the two.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      The issue here is that Blizzard is well known to be cease-and-desist letter-happy, as SC1 modders found out even before the merger with Activision (IIRC).
    - r00fus 2y ago
      Copyright has been coopted by industry for a LONG time. Its purpose for the longest time has been to line the pockets of rights holders and screw everyone else.
- 2y ago
globalnode 2y ago
I used to think blizzard was one of the worst game companies for crushing dreams, but they've got nothing on funcom and sony. makes blizzard look like saints.
_the_inflator 2y ago
Classics are for casual gamers who enjoy fixed settings. Redesigns are subscription models that revive a working brand and keep players happy with a constant flood of new features. I understand Blizzard wants to decide what story to tell about its IP. On the other hand, many gaming veterans still want to feel and grasp the before of a remake rather than the after alone. GOG hit a sweet spot for me. It simply fulfills my early adulthood dream: "One day, I will play all my good old games on CD again. See you fellas!" GOG is Netflix for my earliest games. But this is not the reason, I buy games there. Why did I buy a W2 at GOG over a year ago? It was not nostalgia but a closed-game approach. All new "cloud" games are subscriptions in disguise. I liked the fact that game mechanics in W2 were mostly figured out, and you had to max out under fixed conditions: working on skills, not play-testing new civs. That's the main difference between tradition and pure entertainment. All major forms of sport have a fixed rule set, with some minor tweaking here and there to leverage these. I don't have the time nor will to grasp these changes. Age of Empires: Conquerors lost its appeal to me, because as a casual player, I cannot keep up with all the new addons. Years ago, when there were hardly any addons, I still benefited from my former RM 2000+ rating earned around 2000 at the MS ZONE and could play quite competitively online without any pro-gamer training all the time. Not anymore. Imagine Basketball being modified significantly every season. This is what Formula 1 does now, with a lot of drama and storylines way beyond the sport, and I lost interest.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  never thought i'd support bernie ecclestone in anything, but it's currently just stupid F1 drama bullshit every month. constant noise means i dgaf 99% of the time. bernie was right in his more limited marketing approaches.
monicaaa 2y ago
[dead]
mproud 2y ago
That being said, Diablo II: Resurrected is fantastic.
- torlok 2y ago
  So is StarCraft. I can't comprehend why the predecessor to their cash cow gets the "looks like it was upscaled with AI by an intern" treatment. The Warcraft II animations are objectively way worse in the remastered version.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

239 points by Tomte 2y ago

My guess is that they’re trying to do it temporarily to boost sales for the WC bundle they’re in as a bonus perk. Blizzard, however, lost the assumption of goodwill by their customers years ago and resultantly, this will not be taken well.

yupyupyups 2y ago
Mainstream gaming is borderline masochistic. We keep hearing influencers and journalists talking about the various ways games companies screw over their customers. Yet, here we are, and Blizzard is alive and well, and the complaining continues. Is it that gamers like getting abused or is the drama exaggerated?
- 9x39 2y ago
  The highly passionate crowd is usually just outnumbered by the growth of the market, maybe: new people every year either age in or are drawn in. At the same time, maybe people do like being abused even if they won’t admit if it means going back to the brands that gave them the dopamine hits early on. There aren’t enough substitutes out there for most to walk away.
definitelyauser 2y ago
To be fair, Warcraft does need a remaster. Have you tried replaying it? You can't even RMB to move units, you need to click the move icon then select where. Warcraft 2 does not (imho), and last time I tried it, Warcraft 2 BNE still worked just fine, so that's probably getting shut down now.

mdtrooper 2y ago

Well, I remember the "Cease and desist" to FreeCraft project in 2003 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus

vanderZwan 2y ago
On the other hand, the project still exists and the engine has been modded to play these games, although apparently Warcraft 1 in particular is still a buggy mess: https://stratagus.com/ https://stratagus.com/ ... but perhaps more people will try to help out fixing those bugs, purely out of spite.

proc0 2y ago

Well I bought WC2 already and have the files. That's the best part of GOG, you can just make your own backup. I think with hard copies going away, the ability to make backups of what you buy should be protected by law, at least for software that is no longer supported (of course one side effect is that all games become services, but there have been single player games recently that prove it's still a good business model). We have seen enough cases of how digital copies are ultimately a way for companies to "erase history", so to speak, and this is detrimental not just to consumers but the wider culture. Hard copies was a way to guard against this, but ultimately it is all software anyway, and digital copies should provide a way to truly own what you buy (if it's a one time buy product).

lrem 2y ago
For a very long time “hard copies” were just a physical precache of the download. What you actually paid for was the online store code inside the box. I’ve stopped buying boxes after the second one like this.
- Aachen 2y ago
  The software I bought on CD/DVD was never like that unless you mean needing to contact some activation server. As far as I know, things like the Switch game cartridges are also real (presumably with a similar asterisk). The only annoying things are these installers nowadays you download for e.g. Chrome or, a bit longer ago, Flash, not so much the things sold as copy to own (resellable) I wouldn't discourage people from buying owned copies, especially when they can find an option free of DRM
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lrem 2y ago
    CD? Sure, that was entirely in the good era. But the last two games I bought on DVD (something forgotten from EA I think and the nice Mass Effect Trilogy boxset) were what I described - store codes printed in the box, can use the attached physical media to save on downloading time.

not_your_vase 2y ago

[flagged]

hipadev23 2y ago

I’m really confused what venn diagram they think exists with sizable overlap of “wants to play war1 and war2 again” and “doesn’t mind a greedy company killing off old products to funnel users to re-releases” No thanks Blizzard, my soundcard works perfectly.

wiseowise 2y ago
Oh, believe me, there’s plenty of those.
Macha 2y ago
WoW seems to have passed its local minimum, partly due to no longer being a single game anymore with classic and the seasonal editions. I can see them thinking remasters are a way to get a few more tie in franchise sales from those players, maybe somewhat cheaply. Throw in a tie-in mount/whatever for WoW and you'll have players buy it without any intention of actually playing it.

Refusing23 2y ago

It's no wonder seeing as they just released the remastered version. though it can still be picked up for free on various abandonware sites and archive

maeil 2y ago

Interesting how GOG is willing to take such a hard stand of this and fight Blizzard on it, when they immediately pulled the Taiwanese horror game Devotion for political reasons [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horror-game-pulled-from-sale-again-after-backlash-in-china https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/17/taiwanese-horr...

fwipsy 2y ago
I guess it's not a principled stand in favor of free speech. They just want to sell games. The CCP can block them in China; Blizzard can't.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Maybe they don't feel that opinionated over free speech, which is easy when coming and living in a society where that's a given; however, they may feel much more opinionated about businesses fucking their customers over and doing the usual business shenanigans. In a way, this issue is GOG's whole shtick - selling games without DRM bullshit.
shakna 2y ago
Scale of difference between being threatened by China, and threatened by a company within America, though. There's nothing surprising about bowing to a government to keep their citizens as customers.
cocacola1 2y ago
> But shortly after release, Chinese players found a poster hanging in the apartment that serves as the games’ setting that said “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron”. > Almost 10,000 negative reviews soon flooded the game’s review page. The developer, Red Candle Games, posted an apology saying it was “purely an accident” that the poster was left in the game. 10,000 negative reviews is wild for something so banal. I can't imagine defending a politician over what might be the mildest insult ever conceived.
- 2y ago

danielskogly 2y ago

Link to GOG’s announcement: https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_from_gogwhat_does_this_mean_in_regard_to_the_gog_preservation_program https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_fro.... Worth noting that even if it will no longer be available for sale, they will still keep it updated for people who already bought it.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems. That's not worth much. They don't even maintain the games that are still for sale on GOG. Try playing Tales of Monkey Island; most of the cutscenes won't run.
- danielskogly 2y ago
  Tales of Monkey Island is not part of the GOG Preservation Program as far as I can tell[0]. This policy update is for games part of the program. https://www.gog.com/en/game/tales_of_monkey_island https://www.gog.com/en/game/tales_of_monkey_island
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    They have another policy specifying that they maintain the games they sell. They don't sell as-is, they warrant that the game will run appropriately. But we know they don't honor that policy. What would you conclude?
    - izacus 2y ago
      Why the heck do you think it's the stores job to employ developers to maintain games for you forever? How do you think that actually works out? For games that are sold for usually less than 15 bucks?

3eb7988a1663 2y ago

If you only read the headline, GOG is still selling both games until December 13th. Now, I have to weigh the calculus: do I buy the games just because, knowing there is basically zero chance I boot them up? What if that was Blizzard's end game -to drive scarcity?

MrDresden 2y ago
Had similar thoughts, but in the end decided that having the option of playing some of my favourite games from childhood was worth more to me than any spite I have towards Blizzard. They have shown themselves to be bad curators of their own catalogue, so I bought a copy to avoid having issues during some possible future point when I just want to experience some nostalgia.
waveBidder 2y ago
like other game companies (cough Nintendo) their old library is viewed as direct competition with their current set of games/subscription products. also wotmrth remembering that Blizzard is now a Microsoft property.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago
  They aren't wrong, modern games have no chance against good old Bomberman.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > like other game companies (cough Nintendo) their old library is viewed as direct competition with their current set of games/subscription products. That's nothing special to game companies. All entertainment companies are the same way. That's why they push for longer and longer copyrights. Copyright is what protects Disney from having to compete with its own past work.
  - hyperman1 2y ago
    Microsoft in the XP era said their main competitors were windows 98 and office 97.

spiritplumber 2y ago

Well that's $15 that are going to GOG instead of Blizzard.

akimbostrawman 2y ago
they still get that 15 - gog cut
xandrius 2y ago
Do you think GOG can sell anything without a license of sorts? Otherwise what's the difference of paying for piracy?
- Macha 2y ago
  I'm sure GOG are legally covered in what they're doing (it's also not the first time, they had a dispute with bethesda over unlisting the classic fallout games for years). Blizzard's given them a termination date of the 13th, so they're allowed sell until them, and probably contractually Blizzard had to give them some amount of advanced notice.

soulofmischief 2y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42259040 > there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes Fuck DRM and fuck Blizzard. Kudos to everyone involved in games and film preservation during this hostile era.

llmthrow102 2y ago

They've also now launched the Warcraft 3 "remaster" twice, and it's still in a worse state than it was 20 years ago. First they did less than half the job, cut budget, and launched missing major features from the original project, with only some terrible new models to show that look decent up close, but bad from the overhead RTS view. Then they did a relaunch where they did lazy AI upscaling of old models and icons that don't actually look any better, added some realtime shadows that don't fit with the style of the game, and called it a "Warcraft 3 2.0". Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM. I buy all games on GoG when I can, especially classic games, but new ones as well. It's so nice to just have a collection of DRM-free installers, and be able to support a company that does right by the classic games.

hulitu 2y ago
> Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM. Oh, Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs. I tried AoE 3 on Steam (demo). It was a total disaster. Downloading was slow and then the game: At the first start would not let me build barracks (no suitable place found). At the second start it was hard to found the baracks again (all icons look the same - Windows style enshitification) but the peasants will not harvest berry bushes.(bugs) They made the UI much worse. The playground is round. The icons look the same so one has to look at tooltips to build a house. All in all a crappy experience. I guess i will stick with AoE 2.
- fifticon 2y ago
  my child insists, reasonably, on playing minecraft, so we must endure the microsoft launcher ui stewardship for mc. what a hot mess of bloated bureaucracy-software-dungheap. It is as if even their installer has an installer and a loadscreen. Consider if you, gosh, want to continue PLAYING EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS LAST NIGHT. The launcher design response: ouh, i did NOT expect that! Please wait while we reauth and 2FA and sync your account and download and reinstall your game client.. wait a minute.. hmm, on second thought, Im not SURE we can just let you continue the game from "last night"..? oops, no wait.. WE CAN?! I swear there is more code in, and people assigned to, their crappy bloated launcher, than to the game itself. Ironically, their store features are so buggy I often dven cant manage to buy their DLC theft-as-servjce stuff.

indigoabstract 2y ago

Hmm, if anyone wants to play them or add to the collection, buying them from GOG instead of Blizzard should be a pretty easy decision.

dusted 2y ago

wow, the remaster looks like a 00s flash game..

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> Blizzard [...] has asked GOG to remove its non-remastered, DRM-free $15 bundle of those games from its store on December 13. > GOG [...] suddenly finds itself with a new policy to figure out. So GOG is putting the Warcraft I & II Bundle on sale (discount code "MakeWarcraftLiveForever" for $2 off) and is letting folks know that if they buy it before December 13, they will keep access to it after the delisting, complete with offline installers. That's not a new policy. That's their existing policy with no changes. Though they're giving the company much gentler treatment than they used to. When Duke Nukem got pulled, GOG put it on giveaway.

etiam 2y ago
They've worked a fair bit at it already and if they intend to keep maintaining it indefinitely without possibility for further sales it could be nice to actually get money for it at this point. Also, I'm not sure what they might be obligated to pass to the copyright holder per copy? Maybe it's not a proportion of the sales price in this case?

propoganda 2y ago

Still have the original war2bne disk. The change from war2 to war3 was, back then anyway, monumental. We couldn’t wait. All sorts of rumours but more than that - realities. Great things have come out of war3 of course, but damn did we jump on it with the gleam in our eye. Blizzard is no longer the company that we once knew, and what was once clear is now a distant shadow.

KeplerBoy 2y ago
Really sad that nothing in the genre has changed since war3. People still play DotA forks and successors, but the RTS genre kind of ended with wc3.

9x39 2y ago

On one hand, companies sometimes add value with rereleases of older catalogs: resolution updates, new multiplayer infrastructure, new content, etc. On the other, huge companies that could do better throw out an AI upscale, more or less, and that seems to be what this turned out to be: https://youtu.be/KZ9Ac4WVW6Q?si=9Wzjxl0Mkh4t3nMG https://youtu.be/KZ9Ac4WVW6Q?si=9Wzjxl0Mkh4t3nMG Too bad from a company that was once one of THE names in game development and often delaying shipping until the product was ‘right’.

brobdingnagians 2y ago

It used to be exciting when a Blizzard release was coming out. Now it's just scary and a bit depressing when they announce something. I was excited all the way up through Overwatch 1, then the WC3 remaster and Overwatch 2 were awful. If they only messed up new releases it wouldnt be so bad; it's the incessant fiddling and worsening of what was good. Even of games that weren't meant to be "live service" games. I already have WC2 on GoG and this preservation program commitment makes me think I should start ramping up buying other games from my childhood with GoG.

946789987649 2y ago
Even World of Warcraft which used to be seamless in terms of issues, has had increasingly more and more obvious bugs. A sad state from the "Blizzard polish" of yesteryear.
- EugeneOZ 2y ago
  Try playing WoW with a new account. The initial mission has incredibly ugly graphics (much worse than the main game), a flat progress bar during loading (literally just a simple blue rectangle - no borders, gradients, or shadows, just something that a basic box(x, y, x1, y1) function would draw), and a yellow rectangle instead of a rope connecting your hero to a flying vehicle. It’s not a 3D bar, just a 2D yellow rectangle that looks like a censorship block on the screen, and you’re supposed to imagine it’s a rope hanging from a helicopter-like vehicle. I understand it’s an old game, but these parts seem like pure laziness. I’m sure this laziness costs them a lot of players who leave the initial mission in disgust and never get to see the beautiful parts of WoW.
  - xandrius 2y ago
    Same applies to many MMOs, even GW2 and FFXIV are terrible at the beginning, compared the current content.
- burmanm 2y ago
  World of Warcraft has never been without issues. When it launched it was full of bugs, servers kept crashing (but they did refund a lot of gametime back then) and so on. And every expansion was just a nightmare start, without being able to get to the new zone, servers again crashing. You just have golden memories of a state that never happened. Game wise, WoW has gone forward a lot since DF (the disaster of SL taught them something) and is actually in a lot better state than before. Sure, it has bugs, but it's also a massive game. And they do keep fixing a lot of bugs with quite good response time these days instead of what it used to be.

PeterStuer 2y ago

I remember when Blizzard was a company run by gamers that loved gamers. These days it feels like a company reigned by 'modern' HR that despises gamers.

bilekas 2y ago

Blizzard seem to be burning a lot of bridges and goodwill they've built up over the years. It's incredible what GoG is trying to do, for a profit of course but all the same. The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy, yet if it will squeeze an extra few pennies out for shareholders, it seems like the right move. The games industry really seems to be turning into the snake that eats itself. I'm just grateful for the indie scene still being a thing.

thayne 2y ago
> The idea of not being able to purchase older titles in a legitimate way only encourages piracy The solution is to dramatically decrease the length of copyright, so that old games (or other software) can be obtained legally (and modified) even if the original maker no longer sells it.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  Or just pirate it like we did for the last 30+ years… Copyright is broken and has failed it’s purpose - I have no hope that we can fix it in my lifetime.
  - vanderZwan 2y ago
    It's not like we have to choose between the two.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    The issue here is that Blizzard is well known to be cease-and-desist letter-happy, as SC1 modders found out even before the merger with Activision (IIRC).
  - r00fus 2y ago
    Copyright has been coopted by industry for a LONG time. Its purpose for the longest time has been to line the pockets of rights holders and screw everyone else.
2y ago

globalnode 2y ago

I used to think blizzard was one of the worst game companies for crushing dreams, but they've got nothing on funcom and sony. makes blizzard look like saints.

_the_inflator 2y ago

Classics are for casual gamers who enjoy fixed settings. Redesigns are subscription models that revive a working brand and keep players happy with a constant flood of new features. I understand Blizzard wants to decide what story to tell about its IP. On the other hand, many gaming veterans still want to feel and grasp the before of a remake rather than the after alone. GOG hit a sweet spot for me. It simply fulfills my early adulthood dream: "One day, I will play all my good old games on CD again. See you fellas!" GOG is Netflix for my earliest games. But this is not the reason, I buy games there. Why did I buy a W2 at GOG over a year ago? It was not nostalgia but a closed-game approach. All new "cloud" games are subscriptions in disguise. I liked the fact that game mechanics in W2 were mostly figured out, and you had to max out under fixed conditions: working on skills, not play-testing new civs. That's the main difference between tradition and pure entertainment. All major forms of sport have a fixed rule set, with some minor tweaking here and there to leverage these. I don't have the time nor will to grasp these changes. Age of Empires: Conquerors lost its appeal to me, because as a casual player, I cannot keep up with all the new addons. Years ago, when there were hardly any addons, I still benefited from my former RM 2000+ rating earned around 2000 at the MS ZONE and could play quite competitively online without any pro-gamer training all the time. Not anymore. Imagine Basketball being modified significantly every season. This is what Formula 1 does now, with a lot of drama and storylines way beyond the sport, and I lost interest.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
never thought i'd support bernie ecclestone in anything, but it's currently just stupid F1 drama bullshit every month. constant noise means i dgaf 99% of the time. bernie was right in his more limited marketing approaches.

monicaaa 2y ago

[dead]

mproud 2y ago

That being said, Diablo II: Resurrected is fantastic.

torlok 2y ago
So is StarCraft. I can't comprehend why the predecessor to their cash cow gets the "looks like it was upscaled with AI by an intern" treatment. The Warcraft II animations are objectively way worse in the remastered version.

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