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GOG asking for more donations from gamers with the new GOG Patrons program (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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While it hasn't been properly publicly announced yet, GOG Patrons is a new system launched by GOG to hopefully pull in more people to donate. This isn't the first time GOG have asked for people to donate, as back in June they added a donation form to the checkout page but this goes one step further.

The main point of the GOG Patrons program appears to be directly supporting their game preservations efforts as part of the official GOG Preservation Program. Not to paywall anything on the GOG store, just as an additional way to support GOG directly.

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[–] 59 points 1 year ago (6 children)

i like what they do but giving donations to a for-profit company that already sells stuff seems a bit silly to me

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    I tend to agree. They say it's specifically for the game preservation stuff, and maybe that's true. Most companies would create a separate non-profit with its own funding separate for such a thing (not that all those are necessarily great either). I like what GOG does in general and I think it's important they're there, but I don't have any intention of donating to a for-profit business based on the claims that they'll only do game preservation work with the funds.

    I'm not spending an era reading through all the terms & conditions, but at a quick glance I can't see anything in the legalese about what they can/can't use GOG Patrons funding for, so it seems like it's just paying the company monthly for a few extra perks and hoping they'll use that cash for something positive.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I'm not really a gamer, so I could be wrong here. However, TBF they're selling games cheaply, but I assume they're having to pay who-knows-what to license them (never mind their own staff to bring the games up to par with today's hardware). Maybe the IP owners have started turning the screws?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    idk that GoG does need to license them that way? I assumed they just operated as a storefront and take a cut of the listed price like Steam or Epic. As for having their own staff, usually these kind of things have a community solution already it just might be a pain in the ass. I assumed they were either getting permission from modders to ship their fixes, or they were basically using them as guidelines to make their own. Either approach would take their development costs down.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    Their Game Preservation Program (the thing the subscription is nominally for) is games that they maintain, so they probably do need to license them. And they do need a dev team to work on it, even if they do take advantage of things like existing community mods to make the job easier.

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