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"Game preservation only works if people care" As GOG doubles down on its commitment to saving old games, it's asking players "who give a s**t" to support its crusade (www.eurogamer.net)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 60 points 8 months ago

They do care. See archive.org for example.

Conflating care with the bottom line of your corporation is disingenuous.

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    [–] 76 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

    Oh man. I've supported gog from the beginning, always purchased there.

    Even if it was more expensive or late or downsides (especially to steam).

    Still, they didn't always hold up to the drm free standard they set.

    Then they come up with this, which to me sounds like 'give us subscription money for what we already did the whole time'.

    The Patrons initiative is particularly interesting

    No it's not! I care for the games. I want a drm free packaged version. You name the price, but keep all original features.

    I don't give a flying shit about any online badges or whatever. How could I know where the additional money goes? By my estimate I'll pay the subscription and your ceo gets more money but the games wont see any of it...

    Oh and spamming me with mails telling me how awesome it would be for me to be patron but completely without any real, tangible, non corpo speak reason to leaves a bad taste and kills a little confidence in you every time.

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago

    Same here.

    The whole things has a massive "grift" vibe, especially given that they're double dipping since supporters of their "Game preservation efforts" still have to pay for those games.

    Happy to keep on buying games from them in preference to from Steam, some even from the "Good old game" bucket, just not willing to assume a monthly monetary commitment to some black-box "trust us" which feels a lot like the "Charity as a business" shit from the most sleazy "charities" out there (you know the kind: the ones with CEOs paid massive salaries and were only a small fraction of contributions actually ends up in the charitable objective).

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Gog has been my preference for a few years now, but there's no way I'm subscribing to a patreon that gets me literally nothing. I honestly assumed at first you'd get something out of it at first, like a free game from the preservation program every month or something similar to Amazon Prime's giveaways. Its honestly cause me to start to re evaluate how much I purchase from them. Its kinda skeezy.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    What Patreon? It's just "patron" isn't it? What I see is the digital equivalent of a tip jar that shows up during checkout. Ignore it if you want.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I assumed it was a Patreon because of the name, but its still a for profit company asking their customers for donations in the form of a monthly subscription so they can sell you more games. You don't get anything tangible out of it, just a private Discord and a badge on your name.

    Its skeezy no matter how you spin it.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I see it as a tip. They made the game available, put in the work to make it playable on modern systems, and host it so I don't need to store it myself. Here's a buck.

    I tip a buck or two and normally purchase during sales.

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    • [–] 27 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    Old games rock. I recently played Prince of Persia; Warrior Within and there was no console update, game patch to download, daily login reward, update centre telling me updates I may have missed. None of that crap. Power-on, loading scree, game time, done!

    Modern games are designed like a full-time job that you pay to work for the company.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I recently replayed Warrior Within as well.

    I should say, there's still plenty of modern games that don't involve those kinds of things.

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    • [–] 16 points 8 months ago

    Its true, but also "please give the business more money" isn't exactly the thing anyone but business owners and shareholders want to hear.

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    [–] 52 points 8 months ago (20 children)

    Seems the new GOG owner doesn't care as they push AI use in the company

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  • [–] 34 points 8 months ago (15 children)

    Something tells me the "double down" is to distract from that fallout

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (14 children)

    I suspect so.... But not everyone knows so it's still worth mentioning.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (13 children)

    I know it, but I'm not sure why one would affect the other. I still get DRM free games on GOG that I'm not going to find on itch.io or elsewhere.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    Because supporting GOG now means supporting unfettered AI usage. If you disagree with such policies, the only way to voice that discontent is with your wallet.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    I suppose so, but even if that bothered me, it would still mean I'm not owning the games I buy when I shop elsewhere.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    Depends on the game. As I mentioned in another thread, there are many games on Steam which are DRM-free and do not require the client. GOG's advertising suggests they are the only method for getting such games, but as always, the devil is in the details.

    Mostly it comes down to how much you feel about one issue over the other, but I don't see how they can be unrelated if there's a monetary transaction involved.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    Considering games with no DRM can have it added retroactively, that Steam pushes updates I may not want with no option to decline, and that that wiki can't even load in its entirety without erroring out for me and comes down to user submitted data, GOG's DRM free promise is more than just advertising.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    Maybe. If you trust them, though now... I don't.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (7 children)

    The reason why this doesn't concern me at all is that the very nature of the business they run means that I explicitly don't have to trust them.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (6 children)

    Does it? What recourse do you have if they change their policy and you don't have local backups of your games?

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    If ownership is what you're worried about, why wouldn't you already have the installers downloaded and backed up?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Oh, I absolutely would -- I'm just making a point based on a previous statement earlier in the thread:

    Considering games with no DRM can have it added retroactively, that Steam pushes updates I may not want with no option to decline

    If the practice is that you need local backups on purchase anyway, then I fail to see the difference between non-DRM games on Steam and those on GOG. It feels like a different goalpost is being used depending on what service is being discussed.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    Undoing DRM-free quickly enough that I couldn't download my remaining installers would be speedrunning the failure of a company faster than Unity, but other than that, they can't take away what I and others have already downloaded.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Neither can Steam. Then the difference is down to those games on Steam which are not DRM-free.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    The difference is that even with the convenience of a launcher, I can decline an update that would undo DRM-free rather than manually copying every vetted DRM-free game on Steam to another directory every time there's a patch. And that's only to entertain this apocalyptic what-if that would never happen because it would trigger false advertising law suits that would instantly destroy the company.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    I leave my Steam update settings to only update on Play. This allows me to pretty easily review what is being patched in to any particular game and choose if/when to apply it (true that choosing not to apply means no longer using the Steam client for that game).

    It's also trivial on Linux to keep the Proton prefixes and game installs backed up automatically. This has the added benefit of making all game installs portable.

    Unfortunately GOG still has no official Linux client, though there are workarounds. The "apocalyptic scenario" would ultimately kill either company, so you're right to think it is moot.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Was there another incident besides the 2026 sales promo image? I was a bit disappointing of their "response" if you can could call it that. But I don't really see this as "pushing AI", as far as I can tell this might just be an intern who was given the task to make a promo image and did not care at all.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    They are hiring someone to advocate for us use

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    oof, found it. It is so weird seemingly every job listing for a software developer has the requirement of using AI nowadays. ITS NOT A SKILL, ITS MANDATORY TRAINING WHEELS. They will find worse programmers doing so, good ones can use AI if it makes sense you don't have to force it.

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    • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (17 children)

    Offer a good service and people will buy from your store, most customers either don't care about DRM or care somewhat but don't want to inconvenience themselves with a worse product for it. GOG have to catch up to Steam with stuff like family sharing and controller support for me to consider buying stuff there.

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  • [–] 24 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    Why do you need family sharing if the games are DRM free? If the kid wants to play a game from your account you just pass him the exe, what's the issue

    Controller support depends from the game, if you mean a controller remapper like steam, then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam. With heroic launcher you can add gog games in your steam list with a single click

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    You don't just pass the exe though, modern games are huge with a lot of files required. With Steam it's a 2 step process:

    1. I look in the tab in my library for games in my brother's account I have access to with family sharing.
    2. I download a game from the list.

    That's despite the fact my brother lives in the other side of the country, and it offers me all the Steam features I make use of like cloud saves as if my account had bought the game.

    With GOG it's

    1. Find the right webpage for my brother's games (you can't see them from within the GOG client for some reason.
    2. Ask my brother to download the installer
    3. Get my brother to send me the installer file over discord
    4. The installer is too big
    5. Say nevermind just give me your login info
    6. I try to login to his account with the GOG client
    7. Ask my brother for his 2FA authenticator code
    8. Finally login, and can download the game
    9. Remember to turn off cloud saves so you don't override your brother's cloud saves.

    Based on a true story btw.

    There's probably things we could've done that would've made it easier and less steps, but it still wouldn't have been just as simple as what Steam does, and I'm missing cloud saves and I'd have to do several of those steps again if I wanted the game on say my Steam Deck as well as my PC.

    then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam

    If I'm just going to use Steam or extra software to compensate for Steam features, I might as well just use Steam.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    you can login in heroic once and then install what you need, and disable cloud saves as default option

    with family sharing the DRM does not allow two people to play at the same time, don't ignore this huge inconvenience

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Can you use Heroic with multiple accounts? Because if not that's meaningless.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    No, but the workaround is to let the launcher use a different config

    We don't have plans to support multiple accounts, but you can still run Heroic pointing to a different config folder by using the XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/.config2 env variable. You could create a shortcut to something like XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/.config-user-1 heroic to open Heroic for one user and XDG_CONFIG_HOME=~/.config-user-2 heroic to open Heroic for another user.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Every solution that doesn’t need an external proprietary app is a better solution.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    For most people, that's not the case if the alternative solution is worse or less convenient.

    Every piece of free software that has ever attained some level of mainstream success and popularity has done so by offering a better product, not something worse with the excuse of "well at least we're not proprietary".

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    GOG allows you to download an unprotected installer. I don't think they will ever go beyond that in the name of fair use and big publishers are reluctant enough to release on GOG. You were about to use a 3rd party app anyway, Discord. Just use WeTransfer or another filehoster/cloud service to send the file. And honestly, logging into another account and download the file is not as bad as you say.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    See that's kind of my point, when we're on the 100th "oh just use this other external service/software", most users (myself included) are just going to stick to the simple solution that just works.

    Being able to just access family and friends games straight from my library without wasting all that time having to ask beforehand, manual downloads and file management/transfers and lack of cloud saves like it's still the 90s is worth whatever moral cost you associate with using a piece of proprietary software.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (4 children)

    Family sharing? You download the games they are installed for all users.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Family sharing isn't just for your local machine, I have family who live in the other side of the country.

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    • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    They have the opportunity to right their wrong of bailing on the StopKillingGames campaign, but they're likely more worried about appeasing the corpo publisher more than they are defending their supposed core mission.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    I don’t think they have even one game in their catalogue that StopKillingGames is about.

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  • [+] 9 points 8 months ago (6 children)
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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    And in principle I'm fine with an online store that only sells conventional, offline singleplayer games to not give a pickle about service games.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    There are a number of old LAN games there too. It's basically the only place I can feasibly shop for multiplayer shooters at the moment. The sad part is that I think the newest one is Crysis Wars, from 2008.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Of course, and many singleplayer games had multiplayer modes, that stuff wasn't necessarily separated.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    For a number of these, they're often games that had GameSpy servers or otherwise the online multiplayer portion of it was shut down, yet the game and multiplayer remain playable, and that's what SKG is about.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    StopKillingGames is also about keeping games with always online DRM (even present in many singleplayer games today) from rendering it completely unplayable, which would also determine if it could even be sold on GoG in the future.

    All of GoG's current catalog is only possible because the trend of always online DRM wasn't a thing yet, but going forward, we'll need SKG to ensure GoG is able to preserve newer games as they become old. If GoG cares about preserving games, then SKG couldn't get more in their wheelhouse. Yet they ghosted the organizer for it.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    Even on Steam I‘ve never bought a game with always online DRM. Is that really still a thing?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Yes, many games implement that. More famously The Crew (which was mostly a singleplayer game with a large campaign with some multiplayer tacked on) became completely unplayable after Ubisoft shut down the multiplayer portion of the game due to always online DRM. They only later patched the game to become playable in singleplayer again after the extreme backlash from the SKG campaign, which focused on The Crew as an example.

    There are many more singeplayer games either already killed, or currently at-risk of being destroyed. SKG keeps an up to date list of them here: https://stopkillinggames.wiki.gg/wiki/Dead_game_list

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    • [–] 36 points 8 months ago* (7 children)

    I care. Enough to abandon my qualms about AI usage? Not really, it just means GOG is not the answer.

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  • [–] -3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Do you not but games anymore then, or do you think steam is better?

    Though if you only play FOSS or self published games, that would be kinda based.

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  • [–] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I'm guessing by your wording that you're aching to bash Steam, so I'll preface this with: no corporation is ever going to get this 100% right; the world is drawn in greys, and only a Sith deals in absolutes.

    "Better" is not very useful without context. In the context of AI usage, Steam is better. In the context of GOG, their main claim about game preservation is "no DRM", but there is an important point often missed: lots of games on Steam also do not have DRM.

    I have no issues "buying" games on Steam which have no DRM. For others, I factor the DRM into the price I'm willing to pay for access. These tend to be larger titles anyway, so I'm not terribly worried about it long term.

    Long term game preservation? More about unofficial channels than relying on yet another corporation. GOG wasn't changing that before, and they definitely aren't now.

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  • [–] -4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    If you are ok with steam despite stuff like this then why is GOG somehow worse?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    What incredible hyperbole. It is superisleading to describe that as going "All-In on AI". It's a change to the disclosure rules Valve requires for publishers, not that Valve is using AI themselves like GOG is.

    I would prefer if they required disclosure of the use of any AI tools involved, but at this point AI has been so thoroughly shoved into every piece of software you can really just assume that some AI somewhere touched anything made after 2022. Generative AI is the bigger problem and this move focuses the attention on that.

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    • [+] 26 points 8 months ago (14 children)
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  • [+] -11 points 8 months ago (13 children)

    Do you feel you stand a chance in that fight?

    Once the technology is there, and competition embrasses it, very few companies will actually have the capability of resisting.

    In about 5 years I feel you're literally just not going to be able to buy new games, or you're going to abandon the idea of such boycotts.

    But im curious. Are you concerned about the loss of human jobs from a game quality perspective or a human well being perspective?

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  • [+] 16 points 8 months ago (10 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    This is a really important comment. Greatly appreciate you adding links to your points and I love learning more about the great scheme that is this bullshit misnomer called "Ai" when it is very much just an LLM.

    Now I can bolster my arguments against it with things like water and energy impacting the environment.

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  • [+] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Yep, I'm totally on board with what you're saying. I have no issue with Ai as long as it's being developed slowly, properly and with way more oversight than what's happening right now.

    I think we need focus on our natural resources and world way more too. Let's fully explore our oceans and like you said develop more environmentally sustainable solutions to energy generation and what not.

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  • [+] -8 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Hey everybody, new LostWanderer book just dropped.

    No but really interesting take, rather dystopian, but interesting.

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  • [+] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Makes me wonder what you see.

    No I don't see dystopia at all; dystopia is what leads to destabilization and revolution; neither of those are good for profits.

    Certainly it's possible, but Im not going to pretend like I can accurately predict what the future holds.

    What I'm not going to do is make up my mind that in the future this trend is incapable of producing new, fun, well made games. It just baffles me when I hear people say that they'll never touch a game that used AI; like a developer can generate placeholder art and that kills the game for them? What? I just don't understand this moral road block some people have.

    Certainly right now the human mind and our creativity is miles beyond AI, but I don't think it's impossible for AI to reach an equal level; and you better believe if it does it's going to rocket passed us.

    I would love to live in a world where I can just click a button and AI generates a new Skyrim, or a Witcher; although that's probably very far out, if at all.

    And I don't see job loss from AI as an exetential threat. I think the current lay offs in MOST fields are a mistake and they'll be rehired. Like everyone is already saying, currently AI is just another tool that can accelerate the game development process; and anything that accelerates that processes decreases the cost of production which in turn increased competition. And I think that's always a good thing.

    The entire energy and water issue you're raising is absolutely a non-issue for me. The model T got 13 miles to the gallon when it released; had no catalitic converter and basically zero safety features. Yet it was still a net benefit to humanity and was just a stepping stone towards the growth of humanity.

    Energy use is the hallmark of a modern society; there is absolutely no path towards advancing humanity without forever increases energy use. AI can use energy from renewable sources. Data centers need exactly zero water input if designed that way; and if their current water use is actually an issue then I'm fine with government regulating its consumption.

    That's my book I guess. Please don't quote every line I wrote and respect and to each individually; such an unatural way to have a conversation and I hate the internet for it.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Love how you called out the OC for "writing a book" but then go off like this.

    I think you're self-centred and need to read more into how big corporations take advantage of poorer communities by leveraging resources be it water, trees, or land and ravage them.

    The food industry for example has many of these cases like palm trees, deforestation, over fishing, etc. are all really strong example of this.

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    • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    GOG needs to copy Steam a bit more.

    Give us game based discussion boards, a mod workshop, and most importantly a friends notification system. Steer into the social experience of old games.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago

    game based discussion boards

    These already exist, every store page has a "Forum discussion" link. You can also go here and you should find the "game specific forum" section where you can search for whatever game.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Apart from the fact that all things you listed exist in one form or another on GOG, have you considered that there are people that prefer not having all those random bullshit social features in their game store? Stream may be more popular, but getting out of their niche and copying steam will alienate their fans without attracting steam users.

    Also fuck the workshop, it's the worst thing that ever happened to modding. It's a total pain in the ass to download and apply a mod that is only available there to any non-steam version. Additionally it produced a generation of gamers that is unable to trouble-shoot even the tiniest problem with the mods they applied.

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    • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Only games I bought from these guys are the games I can't get on Steam.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    For me it's the opposite.

    My preference is itch.io, then GOG, then Steam.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    The way I specialize is:

    • JAST USA for the rare occasion they have a game I want, and I don't want to bother with getting a patch.
    • DLSite for the robust catalog of R18 games that are outside of my government's snooping.
    • DMM (with some special browser cookies to even get in) if I want to be sure my government isn't snooping when I buy games.
    • itch io for free games or games made by small time creators
    • GOG for games released around 1995 - 2005
    • Steam for general purpose
    • Patreon if there's a particular paid early access game I'm looking for.
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    • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    "I care" ... "Sorry let me check my latest game download from limewire."

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    [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    DRM-free games is the main reason why I buy on GOG. Preservation is nice to have and donate to round up the price of purchase but I don't have money to become a patron. This feels important enough for me to care but not enough for me to put money every month in it. I'm glad people are doing it and that GOG exist.

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    [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    all this stupid publicity makes me feel dirty for buying there

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    13 comments in c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca view that post