- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.zip
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Much like with the French Monk Incident, gog… Kinda proves why this isn’t viable.
Rhetorical show of hands, who downloads every game they own on gog? Keep them hands up. How many of you then monitor every revision and patch and grab those too?
Yup.
But the good news is that if you want to play love theory in ten years when gog is gone? Just grab a torrent. Same as for the switch 3 or ps5.
I mean, I sorta do, but probably only because I’m already actually invested into an LTO8 tape archival system so I have cheap cheap archival storage to spare lol
But yea I see your point lmao
But still, it’s nice to see a company actually try to solve the problem
LTO drives are cheap? Tell me more…
Well to clarify I already invested into the “ecosystem” at idk about ~3k with the drive itself being like ~2k of that
What I mean is that I did that for other more important reasons, but since I already did the 12TB tapes themselves are what’s cheap and inconsequential so I’m able to throw my gog library on one as a “bonus” of my investment lmao
Yes, the “buy in” for tape is quite pricey unless you nab a deal. I’m never so lucky. The tapes themselves aren’t so bad. I am always on the lookout. With disks being too outrageous atm, I might renew my search.
Is your ass ok? You keep laughing it off.
It’s fine, unfortunately my duct tape expenditures are through the roof for reattachments lmao
What you gonna do in 10 years when all ISP blocks p2p to “protect the children”?
I mean, if you want hypothetical scenarios…
If people don’t want to backup the games they buy, well, that’s their problem, but DRM-free games are insanely easy to archive AND torrent (while all those other stores are actively fighting game preservation) and if no one is archiving, then you won’t be torrentingThe point is that unless you, as an individual, are actively backing up everything you buy and pulling all new updates (and understanding what changed nad if you want to keep the old version), then it doesn’t matter. And while I am sure you are a totally awesome person who backs up every single thing you bought, most people won’t. ESPECIALLY when a unity CVE is found and hundreds (thousands?) of games get a low patch notes update within the next three days.
Thus, for an individual, there is functionally no meaningful difference between:
- Having your own backup of the gog installer in its latest state (either with patches or having researched when it was safe to remove the older one) and installing it a decade later when it is no longer available for sale
- Having a disc based installer and ALL the patches and (…)
- A decade later when it is no longer available for sale, just going to your local piracy site to grab it
Well, except that there is. Because, as many of us who were part of the “abandonware scene” learned, it is shockingly difficult to play a game even two or three versions of Windows later. Let alone if you need to emulate it and your playstation’s worm gear failed or your NES has a loose capacitor or…
Nobody is saying to not use gog*. But GoG have a LONG history of using recent events in gaming as marketing (see: The French Monk incident…) and… if you actually sit down and think rather than just listen to the marketing, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
*: Because of this. GoG’s approach towards offline friendly DRM models is good. But maybe be a bit wary considering they sent nazi imagery to everyone on their mailing list (except those in Germany) and then, a month later, the CEO (?) released a non-apology FULL of dog whistles. Like… the competition is a libertarian’s wet dream so… yeah. But still.
Since you mentioned abandonware, that’s one of the reasons I hope GOG jumps at every opportunity to promote itself, and I hope gamers open their eyes, stop funding lease stores, and go for DRM-free.
What we call abandonware mostly isn’t really what the name says, they’re just in a mess of IP acquisitions, and no one is paying attention to them, but you probably have stumbled upon titles on abandonware lists that no longer have the download link because some lawyer somewhere opened a drawer and found they actually hold the rights to a bunch of things they have no intention of touching, but don’t want to let anyone else touch either (Dark Colony is one I’m hoping GOG manages to acquire the rights to. I actually have the original CD, but the installer itself doesn’t run in any compatibility mode after Windows XP. Luckily, it’s still possible to just copy the files from the CD and make a portable version with buggy menus and non-working TCP/IP though).
The GOG Preservation Program is very cool. As you know, backing up old games sometimes is not enough, so they are funding the restoration (and improvement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mqVEF-JRbE) of those games. And if you ever explored those DOS gaming sites where you can play online and that just run DOSBox in the browser, you probably have also stumbled upon games that won’t run properly or won’t run at all too, so even when GOG just bundles a game installation in DOSBox, it also goes beyond that: https://youtu.be/7-8Y-DRM1Hg?t=348
While GOG keeps its anti-DRM stance, I’m all for it, fuck every single other game store.
