11 ms·

Good Old Games: gog.com and the DRM-Free Revolution

211 points by rubikscube 13y ago

shmerl 13y ago
It's great to see that there is a successful games distribution service which understands that DRM doesn't do anything good and only reduces the value of the product for the legitimate customers. I avoid Steam, but use GOG because of their DRM free stance. The only thing they lack is selling Linux titles. While many (but not all) of their Windows games work with Wine, in addition of course to DosBox and Scummvm games which are easily playable on Linux, it's still good to have native Linux titles too. There is a proposal for them to start doing it (you can vote on it since GOG is asking for feedback on this matter): http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games DRM free distributor with Linux games would make GOG an unquestionable preference.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Desura carries quite a few Linux games and they usually don't really have DRM. I recommend them. The only thing is: Most of games on GOG are really good, like, 5/5 good; but games on Desura are hit-or-miss.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    I know, I bought Trine there for example. But I rarely use Desura, I use GOG in vast majority of the cases, and now they have Trine there too, but not the Linux version. The proposal is for them to start selling Linux titles too. From their comments, it looks like figuring out the best way to support Linux is what slows the rollout of such feature.
programminggeek 13y ago
Treating your customers as humans is good business. Customers pay and pirates plunder. Software pirates will find a way to steal things they are unwilling to pay for. The smart companies in software will work to serve their customers and leverage the pirates for their one valuable quality - free marketing and distribution. Another way to look at it is the reason the F2P + micro transactions works is the same reason that shareware works, lower the friction to enjoy the product and make it easy to share. Sharing is valuable. Video game companies are so much hoping to stop piracy or used game sales that they forget that sharing a game with friends is free advertising and marketing for them. If League of Legends wasn't free, I probably wouldn't have tried it, but because it is free to play a lot of my friends have played, purchased, and enjoyed the service. Apparently Team Fortress 2 makes 3x more money as F2P than a traditional $50 boxed game. To me it boils down to getting your product into the hands of people who are willing to pay for it. If people aren't willing to pay for it without DRM, adding DRM won't make you more money, it will just piss off the people who were willing to pay you in the first place. I'm kind of surprised how many of my hardcore gamer friends are anti Xbox One already simply because of the way MSFT is going to handle used games and DRM. They're losing the hearts and minds of their core market.
- dwild 13y ago
  Selling game cheaply is good business, DRM has nothing to do with the success. Most of my games are on Steam (and most of games on Steam has DRM), I have 2 or 3 games on GOG. Only because they were cheaper on GOG when I wanted them. With a bad DRM you can easily lose customer but I don't think you actually lose customer if your DRM are well done. Also Team Fortress 2 make 3x more money for 2 reasons. It's Valve, which has a HUGE fan base, and they sell crate that contains a random hat, which can be sold for money to someone else (in the end it act like a lottery where people think they will be able to get a rare hat that will be sold for hundreds of dollars on the market). I don't think you can reproduce these two things on every game.
  - IanChiles 13y ago
    But in addition to steam games being cheap, steam has turned into an absolutely wonderful service, no more worrying about serial codes or patches or losing the discs. I have a lot of games on steam that I haven't been able to play yet, but bought because I know I won't lose them
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      > no more worrying about serial codes or patches or losing the discs So, Steam is better than the DRM you were used to before it. So much better that you prefer not to deal with the old DRM system at all... That's not exactly a point against "DRM does always annoy the honest clients".
    - voltagex_ 13y ago
      Except for games that use GFWL - the serial number has to be re-entered every time you install them, and they're tied to an email address you might not have one day.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    but I don't think you actually lose customer if your DRM are well done. In my view - no DRM can be well done, and some customers always will avoid DRMed services. So Steam loses some customers for sure. Many of them end up as GOG's customers naturally ;) Competing on DRM-free as a feature has its benefits.
rubinelli 13y ago
It's interesting that they are expanding from good old games and bringing in a lot of good indie titles as well. I see them growing as a credible, DRM-free competitor to Steam outside the AAA, $60 game market.
- shmerl 13y ago
  They don't focus on old games exclusively - there is no point to limit their options. They are working on bringing more old titles of course since that's their specialty, but it will only boost their service to add new titles as well. They are competing with Steam, and especially on the DRM free stance.
- L4mppu 13y ago
  They are not good old games anymore. They rebranded the site to simply GOG or GOG.com and nowhere in their site it says anything about good old games anymore. I remember TotalBiscuit talking about this in his video some time ago.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    As others pointed out, they still can be called "good old" in a sense of quality. I.e. even if the game is new, but it has the values of classic games rather than mass market junk approach, it can be loosely called "good old" :). GOG is known to pick really good games in general. See http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/continue_to_add_more_good_old_games http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/continue_to_add_more_good_o...
outericky 13y ago
The DRM argument will continue forever. It only hurts those who already want the product. Yes, maybe you gain a couple of extra sales, but you probably lose out many more because of all the extra hoops you make your legitimate customers jump through. Oh, and I just bought SimCity 2000. There goes all my free time.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  The main problem with DRM is that we can have culture lost forever. There will be some things impossible to purchase (in its own right absurd in digital age). But also with platforms dying we can have games and ecosystems lost for the future generations. After all PS2 has ended its run. Soul Reaver and some FF games enter public domain early next century. By that time they may have been lost forever. And it is a loss to humanity if you ask me.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    "The main problem with DRM is that we can have culture lost forever" That is just a side effect of the real problem with DRM: it takes control away from the owners and users of a computer and puts it in the hands of privileged third parties.
asb 13y ago
It's great to see GOG receive more attention. I will note that GOG hasn't stood for "Good Old Games" for quite some time now. It's not just GOG, with no official expansion. They are easily my favourite games retailer (I choose not to purchase DRMed digital media, so are one of the few available choices). Now that GOG are packaging up some of their releases of old games for OSX using WINE, I suspect it's only a matter of time before they support Linux officially. EDIT to add: the fact they offer the same price worldwide is also a massive point in their favour vs just about every other retailer (no insane price hike for Europeans or Australians).
mtgx 13y ago
Will GOG start making all their games Linux compatible anytime soon? (at least through Wine).
- shmerl 13y ago
  Feel free to vote: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games GOG are interested in feedback and demand. Note - this is not about Wine. Many of their Windows games already work with Wine, you don't need GOG's help to play them. As well as old DOS games which use DosBox and Scummvm. That's about adding native Linux titles to their catalog. For DOS games they wrap them into Windows installer and ship a Windows build of DosBox/Scummvm with them. There is no point in that on Linux, so you can use innoextract to unpack them without installing through Wine: http://constexpr.org/innoextract/ http://constexpr.org/innoextract/ Then just plug it into you distro's DosBox and Scummvm (some tweaks can be needed to the DosBox config files which they ship to adjust to the Linux filesystem syntax, but they are minor).
- mratzloff 13y ago
  Many of their older games are DOS-based and therefore work fine under DOSBox.
- xentronium 13y ago
  They've added mac support for some games relatively recently (mostly via dosbox gui wrappers), give them some time.
pdknsk 13y ago
I became a bit more wary of GOG when I learned they are incorporated in Cyprus.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Why? Buy your games, stash installers, they'll be with you forever. The whole point of no DRM is you not having to care where they are incorporated and whether they're ever going under.
- asb 13y ago
  Why? Are you also wary of digital sellers set up in Luxembourg for tax purposes (e.g. Amazon)? EDIT: GOG also claim that laws regarding signing international contracts are more favourable in Cyprus than Poland http://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_credit_card_companies_starting_charging_fees_for_gog_purchases/post7 http://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_credit_card_companies_st...
- GravityWell 13y ago
  This is the main point why GOG is great. Just save your install media and you can reinstall in 10yrs if GOG goes away, regardless of where GOG is hosted. The same is not necessarily true for Steam. I've also been getting tired of the lag in starting up Steam just to play a few minutes of a game.
  - tuzemec 13y ago
    Yeah, I can't remember when TF2 started for under 5 mins... :( I play like 3-4 times a month and every single time I've got steam update, tf2 update, long logging times and apart of that the steam client became really heavy on my (probably above average) machine.
    - GravityWell 13y ago
      I was going to mention some of those other things that have been bugging me about Steam over the years, and it's been getting worse and it seems more bloated. I didn't really understand GOG at first, but once I realized how it worked, I'm less enthusiastic about Steam. For titles available on both, I wish I could return the Steam versions and use only GOG :)
CodeCube 13y ago
WooHoo GOG!
speeder 13y ago
I am a fan of theirs since their beta period :) In fact, I like them so much I bought more games than I even downloaded... And The Witcher 2 is the ONLY game EVER that I pre-ordered, and the ONLY game EVER that I paid more than 30 USD, just because of CD Projekt sheer awesomeness. By the way, I created my GOG.com account to buy Screamers, I suggest you people do the same, very obscure, but very fun racing game (that needs quite a bit of processing power, it was released before Pentium was invented, and designed to only work in full graphics with Pentium! Very crazy stuff!)
- barbs 13y ago
  Just had a look at Screamer. Looks awesome! And Mac compatible too :D. Just thought I'd recommend a game that came out on GOG quite recently: Chaos Overlords. A unique turn-based strategy. A mac release is planned as well. http://www.gog.com/news/release_cha0s_0verlords http://www.gog.com/news/release_cha0s_0verlords
drdaeman 13y ago
Unfortunately, GOG's pricing seems too high in ahem less developed countries like Russia. While "one world fair price" policy sounds right and fair (and certainly has advantages, as I've heard there's a problem with EU vs US prices), it only works for countries with similar average incomes. For comparison (no games are on sale or other kind of promotion in either store): - Legend of Grimrock and Don't Starve (both have equal prices): 14.99 USD on GOG, 299 RUR (9.42 USD) on Steam; - Fallout 2: 9.99 USD on GOG, 199 RUR (6.28 USD) on Steam; - Deus Ex: 9.99 USD on GOG, 150 RUR (4.73 USD) on Steam. Not like $10 (~317 RUR, about two 0.5L bottles of a good beer) isn't affordable (it totally is, if we're talking about single purchase), but, still, paying 25-50% more than usual local market price feels quite significant in the long-term. Given that Steam's DRM is relatively unobtrusive and don't seem to bother most gamers, I doubt lack of DRM is significant to many consumers, compared to price.
- shmerl 13y ago
  GOG considered lowering prices on various titles (see their discussions). They also often have sales where you can buys games very cheaply.
- scott_karana 13y ago
  Can US customers buy games from the Russian Steam store?
  - Avshalom 13y ago
    No, but Russian customers can buy games from the russian store and gift them to US customers. Or at least they could I don't know if Valve has changed that yet. There is/was a pretty big black/grey market doing that. However Valve does consider it violating some ToS or something so if they think you're doing it as a business they'll take all your games and ban you for life.
    - drdaeman 13y ago
      I've heard they only ban you from (any) trading/gifting, not from Steam itself. Although I'm not sure whenever this is true or not.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
DRM is poison. It provides only negative value to the consumer by adding new restrictions and limitations. Valve seems to be one of the few companies to make use of DRM that understands this. Steam may be heavily encumbered with DRM but Valve has piled on huge loads of sugar to make it palatable, more and more each year. Steam is more than just a DRM system, of course, and it's all of the benefits of the Steam-platform which make up for the poison at its heart (at least for a great many consumers). Additionally, because of the track-record of steep price drops on old games and the occasional steam-sale they blunt many of the down-sides of DRM (such as lack of used-games). Some game companies only see DRM from the narrow perspective of a publisher concerned about "piracy" and feel entitled to dictate usage terms to their customer base due to feelings of ethical superiority. This is mistaken, and by abusing and misusing their customers they're destroying brand loyalty, which is perhaps the most important thing a company can have, especially one predominantly working in IP.
- dalore 13y ago
  Steam DRM can still be annoying if you're internet connection goes down and you didn't manage to start steam correctly in offline mode and then refuses to play until you do connect.
  - anonymousab 13y ago
    Last I checked you could edit a file to trick it. Still, the lack of a proper functional offline mode, after all this time, is ridiculous and a bit troubling.
    - dalore 13y ago
      Yes but when your internet is down, you can't search for this trick :(
- glurgh 13y ago
  Valve seems to generally treat its customers decently and to describe that as some sort of sugar pill with which they cram a supposedly 'heavily DRM encumbered' Steam client down your throat is a little overwrought. I've been on Steam since the release of Half-Life 2 in late 2004. I own, according to the client, 118 titles. I've never had a Steam-related DRM problem. The client itself has occasionally had quality problems, so have some (mostly non-Valve) games but I've not once felt the 'negative value' of Steam's DRM itself. It's getting close to a decade but I still have essentially unencumbered access to my copy of HL2 - I'd have surely lost the physical media by now. In 2007, I bought Portal which came in a bundle that included HL2 - I got an extra free HL2 license to give away. In 2010 I got a free copy of the HL2 OS X port and, were I the sort of person who enjoys the quixotic challenge of gaming on Linux, I could have grabbed my free Linux port just a few weeks ago. And that's just one game. If that's poison, don't take me to the hospital, please.
njharman 13y ago
I have more than 60 GoG games. Most bought during their awesome collection sales. I have nothing but praise for GoG and all my dealings with them. They are the answer to piracy in that they make acquiring and owning games easier, and better than pirating them. I've bought a few games from them I had illegal copies of. Why? No DRM, extra stuff, the "right" price and this... "The games are always remastered for modern operating systems as well, making them playable on new machines." I haven't even played some of those 60 games. Bought as part of "deals" and in some sense I'm happy to give money to GoG for being fair / awesome and my trust / desire for them to continue doing so and thriving as a company and business model. Being decent with customers, works.
- jjguy 13y ago
  I still have original install media for Wing Commander III, but bought it again just for the modern OS remastering.
- _feda_ 13y ago
  I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I don't think they "make acquiring and owning games easier" than piracy. In fact it's very easy to pirate gog games because of their anti-DRM stance so if a potential customer doesn't feel like paying the 5 bucks for a game, it's just a torrent away. Not saying GOG haven't done something wonderful but it's certainly not pirate-proof.
  - gambler 13y ago
    GOG makes games easy to find and you don't have to worry about malware. I'd say these two factors make it easier than piracy in practice.
danielweber 13y ago
Was the SimCity 5 launch really bad for EA?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  The publicity was horrible. Of course I would be stunned if even 5% of the gamers who were calling for EA's heads over it will abstain from buying the next game in their favorite series if EA is involved in it. Most gamers seem completely unwilling to boycott.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
bdz 13y ago
FYI: There are tons of DRM free games on Steam http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_steam/page1 http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st... The recently released, higly anticipated System Shock 2 is also DRM free. Easy way to test a game: Download it then close the Steam client. Run the game from the folder. If it starts = DRM free
- shmerl 13y ago
  Is it easily reinstallable/transferable on another system without using the Steam client as well? If yes, then it can be really DRM free. It's a bit ironical though, that the list of DRM free Steam games appears on GOG, while Steam doesn't mark in any way whether the game is DRMed or not :)
  - bdz 13y ago
    There is a backup feature so you can move a game between computers. I've used that but I guess there is no way to make a proper transferable backup w/o the Steam client.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      So if Steam goes out of business, or your account would be suspended, and in any other case when you won't have access to their client - the game will be nontransferable. That's one of the positive indicators of DRM.
      - bdz 13y ago
        If GOG goes out of business and you haven't downloaded the game before... Same story.
        shmerl 13y ago
        It's not the same story since GOG gives you the installers. If GOG goes out of business you can still use them, if you have them. You just should be diligent to back them up. Steam doesn't give you such option and you simply have no way to transfer the game in absence of access to Steam at all.
msc-o 13y ago
all they need now is the 'neverhood' ;)
jcromartie 13y ago
The big game publishers are probably foaming at the mouth over GoG taking off with no DRM and mostly decade(s) old computer games. I can only imagine it's a huge kick in the balls to EA, Blizzard, etc.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Some games on GOG are from EA. Example: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/clive_barkers_undying http://www.gog.com/gamecard/clive_barkers_undying More of those: http://www.gog.com/catalogue?search=Electronic+Arts http://www.gog.com/catalogue?search=Electronic+Arts
  - gordaco 13y ago
    And even more, a few weeks ago there was a really good sale of classic EA games at very good prices. I think this is the complete list: http://www.gog.com/promo/ea_weekend_promo_030513 http://www.gog.com/promo/ea_weekend_promo_030513. DRM-free Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, plus the expansion, Alien Crossfire, for about 2.50 USD (less than 2€). Yeah, it's easy to love GOG.
navs 13y ago
I'm glad GOG is getting some publicity. I much prefer them to Steam. The Steam client has always been clunky to me on all three supported platforms. I also don't like the social aspect. GOG gives me a downloadable game for easy transfer, gives me the ability to log in and re-download, their customer service is superb and it's pretty cheap. Come to think of it, I'd be more than willing to pay over the standard $10 for their games.
akavlie 13y ago
I think it's kind of sad that they mention "GOG.com" over and over without a hyperlink. The author links to two games on their site (Might & Magic and Night of the Rabbit), but not their home page. Why do old media companies avoid linking to sites they write about?
ajuc 13y ago
CD Projekt has figured it out in nineties. Everybody pirated games in Poland (the prices weren't adjusted for purchasing power, nobody did localizations [except pirates - Russian CDs with illegal bothed Polish-Russian localization of English games was on every street market for 20-30 PLN, when same game was 150-200 PLN and had no localization]). That was before CD recorders were available cheaply, so pirates were earning big money on that. CD Projekt somehow persuaded Bioware to let them do proper localization of Baldurs Gate, hired the best Polish actors for voiceovers (think Morgan Freeman hired by small publisher in USA when everybody knows nobody buys games), did all the coding by themselves, and priced the product reasonably. And it was (maybe still is) the single biggest hit on Polish gaming market. By order of magnitude. I'm glad they continue with that attitude towards customers.
praptak 13y ago
I remember one of the founders of GOG being a part of the ZX Spectrum scene in Poland back in the eighties. He was sort of a major hub in the sneakernet where cassette tapes where the packets, snail mail was the backbone and walking around was the local network. Piracy wasn't even a word, everybody was "obtaining" games. No wonder GOG "get" gamers - their experience with the market goes 30 years back :)
- ajuc 13y ago
  Well, it was legal then - the copyright treaties were only signed around 1994 IIRC. And nobody was selling stuff to Poland anyway in eighties (even if we could buy it).
  - praptak 13y ago
    Yeah, that's what I meant about piracy not even being a word - indeed there was no other way to obtain software back then.
asb 13y ago
Anyone know Polish and is able to summarise for us the key GOG.com-related figures from http://www.cdprojekt.com/resources/document/prezentacje/Wyniki_1_kwartal_2013.pdf http://www.cdprojekt.com/resources/document/prezentacje/Wyni...?
- ajuc 13y ago
  All data in PLN (around 0.30 USD), the first number is for 2012 Q1, the second for 2013 Q1. Incomes on sales: 17 680 000, 27 810 000. Profit on sales: 470 000, 4 070 000. Incomes on sales to external customers per division: - game development (CD Projekt RED): 1 500 000, 4 100 000. - digital distribution (gog.com): 5 500 000, 12 000 000. - publishing, distribution in Poland (CDP.pl): 10 400 000, 11 400 000. Result on sales to external customers per division: - game development (CD Projekt RED): +100 000, +1 400 000. - digital distribution (gog.com): +900 000, +2 700 000. - publishing, regular distribution in Poland (CDP.pl): -800 000, -300 000. Assets in 2010-2012, 2013 Q1: 1 100 000, 1 700 000, 2 500 000, 3 100 000. Debt-equity ratio: 2012 Q1 27%, 2013 Q1 19%.
  - asb 13y ago
    Thank you!

211 points by rubikscube 13y ago

It's great to see that there is a successful games distribution service which understands that DRM doesn't do anything good and only reduces the value of the product for the legitimate customers. I avoid Steam, but use GOG because of their DRM free stance. The only thing they lack is selling Linux titles. While many (but not all) of their Windows games work with Wine, in addition of course to DosBox and Scummvm games which are easily playable on Linux, it's still good to have native Linux titles too. There is a proposal for them to start doing it (you can vote on it since GOG is asking for feedback on this matter): http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games DRM free distributor with Linux games would make GOG an unquestionable preference.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Desura carries quite a few Linux games and they usually don't really have DRM. I recommend them. The only thing is: Most of games on GOG are really good, like, 5/5 good; but games on Desura are hit-or-miss.
- shmerl 13y ago
  I know, I bought Trine there for example. But I rarely use Desura, I use GOG in vast majority of the cases, and now they have Trine there too, but not the Linux version. The proposal is for them to start selling Linux titles too. From their comments, it looks like figuring out the best way to support Linux is what slows the rollout of such feature.

programminggeek 13y ago

Treating your customers as humans is good business. Customers pay and pirates plunder. Software pirates will find a way to steal things they are unwilling to pay for. The smart companies in software will work to serve their customers and leverage the pirates for their one valuable quality - free marketing and distribution. Another way to look at it is the reason the F2P + micro transactions works is the same reason that shareware works, lower the friction to enjoy the product and make it easy to share. Sharing is valuable. Video game companies are so much hoping to stop piracy or used game sales that they forget that sharing a game with friends is free advertising and marketing for them. If League of Legends wasn't free, I probably wouldn't have tried it, but because it is free to play a lot of my friends have played, purchased, and enjoyed the service. Apparently Team Fortress 2 makes 3x more money as F2P than a traditional $50 boxed game. To me it boils down to getting your product into the hands of people who are willing to pay for it. If people aren't willing to pay for it without DRM, adding DRM won't make you more money, it will just piss off the people who were willing to pay you in the first place. I'm kind of surprised how many of my hardcore gamer friends are anti Xbox One already simply because of the way MSFT is going to handle used games and DRM. They're losing the hearts and minds of their core market.

dwild 13y ago
Selling game cheaply is good business, DRM has nothing to do with the success. Most of my games are on Steam (and most of games on Steam has DRM), I have 2 or 3 games on GOG. Only because they were cheaper on GOG when I wanted them. With a bad DRM you can easily lose customer but I don't think you actually lose customer if your DRM are well done. Also Team Fortress 2 make 3x more money for 2 reasons. It's Valve, which has a HUGE fan base, and they sell crate that contains a random hat, which can be sold for money to someone else (in the end it act like a lottery where people think they will be able to get a rare hat that will be sold for hundreds of dollars on the market). I don't think you can reproduce these two things on every game.
- IanChiles 13y ago
  But in addition to steam games being cheap, steam has turned into an absolutely wonderful service, no more worrying about serial codes or patches or losing the discs. I have a lot of games on steam that I haven't been able to play yet, but bought because I know I won't lose them
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    > no more worrying about serial codes or patches or losing the discs So, Steam is better than the DRM you were used to before it. So much better that you prefer not to deal with the old DRM system at all... That's not exactly a point against "DRM does always annoy the honest clients".
  - voltagex_ 13y ago
    Except for games that use GFWL - the serial number has to be re-entered every time you install them, and they're tied to an email address you might not have one day.
- shmerl 13y ago
  but I don't think you actually lose customer if your DRM are well done. In my view - no DRM can be well done, and some customers always will avoid DRMed services. So Steam loses some customers for sure. Many of them end up as GOG's customers naturally ;) Competing on DRM-free as a feature has its benefits.

rubinelli 13y ago

It's interesting that they are expanding from good old games and bringing in a lot of good indie titles as well. I see them growing as a credible, DRM-free competitor to Steam outside the AAA, $60 game market.

shmerl 13y ago
They don't focus on old games exclusively - there is no point to limit their options. They are working on bringing more old titles of course since that's their specialty, but it will only boost their service to add new titles as well. They are competing with Steam, and especially on the DRM free stance.
L4mppu 13y ago
They are not good old games anymore. They rebranded the site to simply GOG or GOG.com and nowhere in their site it says anything about good old games anymore. I remember TotalBiscuit talking about this in his video some time ago.
- shmerl 13y ago
  As others pointed out, they still can be called "good old" in a sense of quality. I.e. even if the game is new, but it has the values of classic games rather than mass market junk approach, it can be loosely called "good old" :). GOG is known to pick really good games in general. See http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/continue_to_add_more_good_old_games http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/continue_to_add_more_good_o...

outericky 13y ago

The DRM argument will continue forever. It only hurts those who already want the product. Yes, maybe you gain a couple of extra sales, but you probably lose out many more because of all the extra hoops you make your legitimate customers jump through. Oh, and I just bought SimCity 2000. There goes all my free time.

venomsnake 13y ago
The main problem with DRM is that we can have culture lost forever. There will be some things impossible to purchase (in its own right absurd in digital age). But also with platforms dying we can have games and ecosystems lost for the future generations. After all PS2 has ended its run. Soul Reaver and some FF games enter public domain early next century. By that time they may have been lost forever. And it is a loss to humanity if you ask me.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "The main problem with DRM is that we can have culture lost forever" That is just a side effect of the real problem with DRM: it takes control away from the owners and users of a computer and puts it in the hands of privileged third parties.

asb 13y ago

It's great to see GOG receive more attention. I will note that GOG hasn't stood for "Good Old Games" for quite some time now. It's not just GOG, with no official expansion. They are easily my favourite games retailer (I choose not to purchase DRMed digital media, so are one of the few available choices). Now that GOG are packaging up some of their releases of old games for OSX using WINE, I suspect it's only a matter of time before they support Linux officially. EDIT to add: the fact they offer the same price worldwide is also a massive point in their favour vs just about every other retailer (no insane price hike for Europeans or Australians).

mtgx 13y ago

Will GOG start making all their games Linux compatible anytime soon? (at least through Wine).

shmerl 13y ago
Feel free to vote: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games GOG are interested in feedback and demand. Note - this is not about Wine. Many of their Windows games already work with Wine, you don't need GOG's help to play them. As well as old DOS games which use DosBox and Scummvm. That's about adding native Linux titles to their catalog. For DOS games they wrap them into Windows installer and ship a Windows build of DosBox/Scummvm with them. There is no point in that on Linux, so you can use innoextract to unpack them without installing through Wine: http://constexpr.org/innoextract/ http://constexpr.org/innoextract/ Then just plug it into you distro's DosBox and Scummvm (some tweaks can be needed to the DosBox config files which they ship to adjust to the Linux filesystem syntax, but they are minor).
mratzloff 13y ago
Many of their older games are DOS-based and therefore work fine under DOSBox.
xentronium 13y ago
They've added mac support for some games relatively recently (mostly via dosbox gui wrappers), give them some time.

pdknsk 13y ago

I became a bit more wary of GOG when I learned they are incorporated in Cyprus.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Why? Buy your games, stash installers, they'll be with you forever. The whole point of no DRM is you not having to care where they are incorporated and whether they're ever going under.
asb 13y ago
Why? Are you also wary of digital sellers set up in Luxembourg for tax purposes (e.g. Amazon)? EDIT: GOG also claim that laws regarding signing international contracts are more favourable in Cyprus than Poland http://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_credit_card_companies_starting_charging_fees_for_gog_purchases/post7 http://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_credit_card_companies_st...
GravityWell 13y ago
This is the main point why GOG is great. Just save your install media and you can reinstall in 10yrs if GOG goes away, regardless of where GOG is hosted. The same is not necessarily true for Steam. I've also been getting tired of the lag in starting up Steam just to play a few minutes of a game.
- tuzemec 13y ago
  Yeah, I can't remember when TF2 started for under 5 mins... :( I play like 3-4 times a month and every single time I've got steam update, tf2 update, long logging times and apart of that the steam client became really heavy on my (probably above average) machine.
  - GravityWell 13y ago
    I was going to mention some of those other things that have been bugging me about Steam over the years, and it's been getting worse and it seems more bloated. I didn't really understand GOG at first, but once I realized how it worked, I'm less enthusiastic about Steam. For titles available on both, I wish I could return the Steam versions and use only GOG :)

CodeCube 13y ago

WooHoo GOG!

speeder 13y ago

I am a fan of theirs since their beta period :) In fact, I like them so much I bought more games than I even downloaded... And The Witcher 2 is the ONLY game EVER that I pre-ordered, and the ONLY game EVER that I paid more than 30 USD, just because of CD Projekt sheer awesomeness. By the way, I created my GOG.com account to buy Screamers, I suggest you people do the same, very obscure, but very fun racing game (that needs quite a bit of processing power, it was released before Pentium was invented, and designed to only work in full graphics with Pentium! Very crazy stuff!)

barbs 13y ago
Just had a look at Screamer. Looks awesome! And Mac compatible too :D. Just thought I'd recommend a game that came out on GOG quite recently: Chaos Overlords. A unique turn-based strategy. A mac release is planned as well. http://www.gog.com/news/release_cha0s_0verlords http://www.gog.com/news/release_cha0s_0verlords

drdaeman 13y ago

Unfortunately, GOG's pricing seems too high in ahem less developed countries like Russia. While "one world fair price" policy sounds right and fair (and certainly has advantages, as I've heard there's a problem with EU vs US prices), it only works for countries with similar average incomes. For comparison (no games are on sale or other kind of promotion in either store): - Legend of Grimrock and Don't Starve (both have equal prices): 14.99 USD on GOG, 299 RUR (9.42 USD) on Steam; - Fallout 2: 9.99 USD on GOG, 199 RUR (6.28 USD) on Steam; - Deus Ex: 9.99 USD on GOG, 150 RUR (4.73 USD) on Steam. Not like $10 (~317 RUR, about two 0.5L bottles of a good beer) isn't affordable (it totally is, if we're talking about single purchase), but, still, paying 25-50% more than usual local market price feels quite significant in the long-term. Given that Steam's DRM is relatively unobtrusive and don't seem to bother most gamers, I doubt lack of DRM is significant to many consumers, compared to price.

shmerl 13y ago
GOG considered lowering prices on various titles (see their discussions). They also often have sales where you can buys games very cheaply.
scott_karana 13y ago
Can US customers buy games from the Russian Steam store?
- Avshalom 13y ago
  No, but Russian customers can buy games from the russian store and gift them to US customers. Or at least they could I don't know if Valve has changed that yet. There is/was a pretty big black/grey market doing that. However Valve does consider it violating some ToS or something so if they think you're doing it as a business they'll take all your games and ban you for life.
  - drdaeman 13y ago
    I've heard they only ban you from (any) trading/gifting, not from Steam itself. Although I'm not sure whenever this is true or not.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

DRM is poison. It provides only negative value to the consumer by adding new restrictions and limitations. Valve seems to be one of the few companies to make use of DRM that understands this. Steam may be heavily encumbered with DRM but Valve has piled on huge loads of sugar to make it palatable, more and more each year. Steam is more than just a DRM system, of course, and it's all of the benefits of the Steam-platform which make up for the poison at its heart (at least for a great many consumers). Additionally, because of the track-record of steep price drops on old games and the occasional steam-sale they blunt many of the down-sides of DRM (such as lack of used-games). Some game companies only see DRM from the narrow perspective of a publisher concerned about "piracy" and feel entitled to dictate usage terms to their customer base due to feelings of ethical superiority. This is mistaken, and by abusing and misusing their customers they're destroying brand loyalty, which is perhaps the most important thing a company can have, especially one predominantly working in IP.

dalore 13y ago
Steam DRM can still be annoying if you're internet connection goes down and you didn't manage to start steam correctly in offline mode and then refuses to play until you do connect.
- anonymousab 13y ago
  Last I checked you could edit a file to trick it. Still, the lack of a proper functional offline mode, after all this time, is ridiculous and a bit troubling.
  - dalore 13y ago
    Yes but when your internet is down, you can't search for this trick :(
glurgh 13y ago
Valve seems to generally treat its customers decently and to describe that as some sort of sugar pill with which they cram a supposedly 'heavily DRM encumbered' Steam client down your throat is a little overwrought. I've been on Steam since the release of Half-Life 2 in late 2004. I own, according to the client, 118 titles. I've never had a Steam-related DRM problem. The client itself has occasionally had quality problems, so have some (mostly non-Valve) games but I've not once felt the 'negative value' of Steam's DRM itself. It's getting close to a decade but I still have essentially unencumbered access to my copy of HL2 - I'd have surely lost the physical media by now. In 2007, I bought Portal which came in a bundle that included HL2 - I got an extra free HL2 license to give away. In 2010 I got a free copy of the HL2 OS X port and, were I the sort of person who enjoys the quixotic challenge of gaming on Linux, I could have grabbed my free Linux port just a few weeks ago. And that's just one game. If that's poison, don't take me to the hospital, please.

njharman 13y ago

I have more than 60 GoG games. Most bought during their awesome collection sales. I have nothing but praise for GoG and all my dealings with them. They are the answer to piracy in that they make acquiring and owning games easier, and better than pirating them. I've bought a few games from them I had illegal copies of. Why? No DRM, extra stuff, the "right" price and this... "The games are always remastered for modern operating systems as well, making them playable on new machines." I haven't even played some of those 60 games. Bought as part of "deals" and in some sense I'm happy to give money to GoG for being fair / awesome and my trust / desire for them to continue doing so and thriving as a company and business model. Being decent with customers, works.

jjguy 13y ago
I still have original install media for Wing Commander III, but bought it again just for the modern OS remastering.
_feda_ 13y ago
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I don't think they "make acquiring and owning games easier" than piracy. In fact it's very easy to pirate gog games because of their anti-DRM stance so if a potential customer doesn't feel like paying the 5 bucks for a game, it's just a torrent away. Not saying GOG haven't done something wonderful but it's certainly not pirate-proof.
- gambler 13y ago
  GOG makes games easy to find and you don't have to worry about malware. I'd say these two factors make it easier than piracy in practice.

danielweber 13y ago

Was the SimCity 5 launch really bad for EA?

jlgreco 13y ago
The publicity was horrible. Of course I would be stunned if even 5% of the gamers who were calling for EA's heads over it will abstain from buying the next game in their favorite series if EA is involved in it. Most gamers seem completely unwilling to boycott.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

bdz 13y ago

FYI: There are tons of DRM free games on Steam http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_steam/page1 http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st... The recently released, higly anticipated System Shock 2 is also DRM free. Easy way to test a game: Download it then close the Steam client. Run the game from the folder. If it starts = DRM free

shmerl 13y ago
Is it easily reinstallable/transferable on another system without using the Steam client as well? If yes, then it can be really DRM free. It's a bit ironical though, that the list of DRM free Steam games appears on GOG, while Steam doesn't mark in any way whether the game is DRMed or not :)
- bdz 13y ago
  There is a backup feature so you can move a game between computers. I've used that but I guess there is no way to make a proper transferable backup w/o the Steam client.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    So if Steam goes out of business, or your account would be suspended, and in any other case when you won't have access to their client - the game will be nontransferable. That's one of the positive indicators of DRM.
    - bdz 13y ago
      If GOG goes out of business and you haven't downloaded the game before... Same story.
      - shmerl 13y ago
        It's not the same story since GOG gives you the installers. If GOG goes out of business you can still use them, if you have them. You just should be diligent to back them up. Steam doesn't give you such option and you simply have no way to transfer the game in absence of access to Steam at all.

msc-o 13y ago

all they need now is the 'neverhood' ;)

jcromartie 13y ago

The big game publishers are probably foaming at the mouth over GoG taking off with no DRM and mostly decade(s) old computer games. I can only imagine it's a huge kick in the balls to EA, Blizzard, etc.

shmerl 13y ago
Some games on GOG are from EA. Example: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/clive_barkers_undying http://www.gog.com/gamecard/clive_barkers_undying More of those: http://www.gog.com/catalogue?search=Electronic+Arts http://www.gog.com/catalogue?search=Electronic+Arts
- gordaco 13y ago
  And even more, a few weeks ago there was a really good sale of classic EA games at very good prices. I think this is the complete list: http://www.gog.com/promo/ea_weekend_promo_030513 http://www.gog.com/promo/ea_weekend_promo_030513. DRM-free Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, plus the expansion, Alien Crossfire, for about 2.50 USD (less than 2€). Yeah, it's easy to love GOG.

navs 13y ago

I'm glad GOG is getting some publicity. I much prefer them to Steam. The Steam client has always been clunky to me on all three supported platforms. I also don't like the social aspect. GOG gives me a downloadable game for easy transfer, gives me the ability to log in and re-download, their customer service is superb and it's pretty cheap. Come to think of it, I'd be more than willing to pay over the standard $10 for their games.

akavlie 13y ago

I think it's kind of sad that they mention "GOG.com" over and over without a hyperlink. The author links to two games on their site (Might & Magic and Night of the Rabbit), but not their home page. Why do old media companies avoid linking to sites they write about?

ajuc 13y ago

CD Projekt has figured it out in nineties. Everybody pirated games in Poland (the prices weren't adjusted for purchasing power, nobody did localizations [except pirates - Russian CDs with illegal bothed Polish-Russian localization of English games was on every street market for 20-30 PLN, when same game was 150-200 PLN and had no localization]). That was before CD recorders were available cheaply, so pirates were earning big money on that. CD Projekt somehow persuaded Bioware to let them do proper localization of Baldurs Gate, hired the best Polish actors for voiceovers (think Morgan Freeman hired by small publisher in USA when everybody knows nobody buys games), did all the coding by themselves, and priced the product reasonably. And it was (maybe still is) the single biggest hit on Polish gaming market. By order of magnitude. I'm glad they continue with that attitude towards customers.

praptak 13y ago

I remember one of the founders of GOG being a part of the ZX Spectrum scene in Poland back in the eighties. He was sort of a major hub in the sneakernet where cassette tapes where the packets, snail mail was the backbone and walking around was the local network. Piracy wasn't even a word, everybody was "obtaining" games. No wonder GOG "get" gamers - their experience with the market goes 30 years back :)

ajuc 13y ago
Well, it was legal then - the copyright treaties were only signed around 1994 IIRC. And nobody was selling stuff to Poland anyway in eighties (even if we could buy it).
- praptak 13y ago
  Yeah, that's what I meant about piracy not even being a word - indeed there was no other way to obtain software back then.

asb 13y ago

Anyone know Polish and is able to summarise for us the key GOG.com-related figures from http://www.cdprojekt.com/resources/document/prezentacje/Wyniki_1_kwartal_2013.pdf http://www.cdprojekt.com/resources/document/prezentacje/Wyni...?

ajuc 13y ago
All data in PLN (around 0.30 USD), the first number is for 2012 Q1, the second for 2013 Q1. Incomes on sales: 17 680 000, 27 810 000. Profit on sales: 470 000, 4 070 000. Incomes on sales to external customers per division: - game development (CD Projekt RED): 1 500 000, 4 100 000. - digital distribution (gog.com): 5 500 000, 12 000 000. - publishing, distribution in Poland (CDP.pl): 10 400 000, 11 400 000. Result on sales to external customers per division: - game development (CD Projekt RED): +100 000, +1 400 000. - digital distribution (gog.com): +900 000, +2 700 000. - publishing, regular distribution in Poland (CDP.pl): -800 000, -300 000. Assets in 2010-2012, 2013 Q1: 1 100 000, 1 700 000, 2 500 000, 3 100 000. Debt-equity ratio: 2012 Q1 27%, 2013 Q1 19%.
- asb 13y ago
  Thank you!