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

arstechnica.com

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

#2
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.

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

#5
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.

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

#7
post #2

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.

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?

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

#8
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).

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

#9
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-horr...

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