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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

#21

Post by thaumasiotes »

waveBidder wrote: post #15
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #11

If you only read the headline, GOG is still selling both games until December 13th. Now, I have to weigh the calculus: do I buy the games just because, knowing there is basically zero chance I boot them up? What if that was Blizzard's end game -to drive scarcity?

like other game companies (cough Nintendo) their old library is viewed as direct competition with their current set of games/subscription products. also wotmrth remembering that Blizzard is now a Microsoft property.

> like other game companies (cough Nintendo) their old library is viewed as direct competition with their current set of games/subscription products.

That's nothing special to game companies. All entertainment companies are the same way. That's why they push for longer and longer copyrights. Copyright is what protects Disney from having to compete with its own past work.

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

#22

Post by 9x39 »

yupyupyups wrote: post #7
jimbob45 wrote: 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?

The highly passionate crowd is usually just outnumbered by the growth of the market, maybe: new people every year either age in or are drawn in.

At the same time, maybe people do like being abused even if they won’t admit if it means going back to the brands that gave them the dopamine hits early on. There aren’t enough substitutes out there for most to walk away.

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

#23

Post by thaumasiotes »

danielskogly wrote: post #10

Link to GOG’s announcement: https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_fro... . Worth noting that even if it will no longer be available for sale, they will still keep it updated for people who already bought it.

> Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems.

That's not worth much. They don't even maintain the games that are still for sale on GOG. Try playing Tales of Monkey Island; most of the cutscenes won't run.

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

#24

Post by danielskogly »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #23
danielskogly wrote: post #10

Link to GOG’s announcement: https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_fro... . Worth noting that even if it will no longer be available for sale, they will still keep it updated for people who already bought it.

> Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems. That's not worth much. They don't even maintain the games that are still for sale on GOG. Try playing Tales of Monkey Island; most of the cutscenes won't run.

Tales of Monkey Island is not part of the GOG Preservation Program as far as I can tell[0]. This policy update is for games part of the program.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/tales_of_monkey_island

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

#27

Post by thaumasiotes »

> Blizzard [...] has asked GOG to remove its non-remastered, DRM-free $15 bundle of those games from its store on December 13.

> GOG [...] suddenly finds itself with a new policy to figure out. So GOG is putting the Warcraft I & II Bundle on sale (discount code "MakeWarcraftLiveForever" for $2 off) and is letting folks know that if they buy it before December 13, they will keep access to it after the delisting, complete with offline installers.

That's not a new policy. That's their existing policy with no changes.

Though they're giving the company much gentler treatment than they used to. When Duke Nukem got pulled, GOG put it on giveaway.

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

#28

Post by cocacola1 »

maeil wrote: post #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...

> But shortly after release, Chinese players found a poster hanging in the apartment that serves as the games’ setting that said “Xi Jinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron”.

> Almost 10,000 negative reviews soon flooded the game’s review page. The developer, Red Candle Games, posted an apology saying it was “purely an accident” that the poster was left in the game.

10,000 negative reviews is wild for something so banal. I can't imagine defending a politician over what might be the mildest insult ever conceived.

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

#29

Post by jack_pp »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #11

If you only read the headline, GOG is still selling both games until December 13th. Now, I have to weigh the calculus: do I buy the games just because, knowing there is basically zero chance I boot them up? What if that was Blizzard's end game -to drive scarcity?

Drive scarcity? I was playing pirated WC3 20 years ago, on pirated battle.net. There's no such thing as scarcity for old games. They will forever be available as long as there are seeders.

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

#30

Post by hulitu »

llmthrow102 wrote: post #14

They've also now launched the Warcraft 3 "remaster" twice, and it's still in a worse state than it was 20 years ago. First they did less than half the job, cut budget, and launched missing major features from the original project, with only some terrible new models to show that look decent up close, but bad from the overhead RTS view. Then they did a relaunch where they did lazy AI upscaling of old models and icons t…

> Really terrible treatment of one of the best game series of all time, and being part of Microsoft hasn't helped. It would have been nice if Warcraft 3 got the same treatment as AoE2 or AoM.

Oh, Microsoft, the destroyers of GUIs.

I tried AoE 3 on Steam (demo). It was a total disaster. Downloading was slow and then the game: At the first start would not let me build barracks (no suitable place found).

At the second start it was hard to found the baracks again (all icons look the same - Windows style enshitification) but the peasants will not harvest berry bushes.(bugs) They made the UI much worse. The playground is round. The icons look the same so one has to look at tooltips to build a house. All in all a crappy experience. I guess i will stick with AoE 2.

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