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GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

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Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#121

Post by deafpolygon »

eterm wrote: post #19
embedding-shape wrote: post #11

From the FAQ: > Is GOG financially unstable? No. GOG is stable and has had a really encouraging year. In fact, we’ve seen more enthusiasm from gamers towards our mission than ever before. I'm really happy to hear this, as I always feared their hard stance on no-DRM would scare off publishers and developers, but seems that fear might have been overstated. This year I personally also started buying more games on GOG th…

I had the opposite takeaway. Companies with strong financial performance don't tend to use words like "encouraging". That is the language you get from companies that are in trouble and hoping for recovery. Talking about people's enthusiasm for their mission is just straight up dodging the question itself.

I had the same takeaway -- in fact, I think it's CD Projekt who hopes to distance themselves from GOG.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#122

Post by citrusybread »

pipes wrote: post #112

Gog is great and I've been a member since probably 2010. The one feature that would encourage me to buy more of their games is a "install into steam" script with each game. It's a massive pain in the ass making my gog games run on my steam deck. I keep meaning to write a script to do this to ease that pain.

Have you tried using Heroic? I don't use it on the Steam Deck so maybe I'm missing something, but I use it on desktop linux all the time and it's been seamless for me.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#123

Post by badsectoracula »

oriolid wrote: post #117
computerex wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People only pirate games because the publishers make it too painful to play games legally. I have pirated games that I own simply because it's easier to play. This pattern has been shown time and time again. When people pirate, it's usually due to a problem with the experience. People pay for convenience. Now a days a lot of people are pirating games because the quality of games has gone down the drain. Publishers ar…

I'm not completely convinced. When I was a teenager I pirated games because I didn't have money (and games were incredibly expensive back in the day). The people who I copied them from did it to show off their collection and connections, or just because they were my friends.

> I'm not completely convinced. When I was a teenager I pirated games because I didn't have money

Yes, but if it was impossible to pirate, you'd still have no money to buy the games, so in the grand scheme of things nothing would change.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#124

Post by HeavyStorm »

Telaneo wrote: post #107
georgeecollins wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but the model that Valve pioneered is the model that supports 90% of all commercial PC games made today, a higher percentage if you cut out MMOs and free to play games, which you certainly don't own. I love GoG and I have worked closely with a lot of people there on projects they are great. This announcement seems like good news. No one has to sell games on Steam. No one has to use a model where they "rent licens…

> They don't because too many people pirate games to make that a viable business. Given how many games on Steam are sold either DRM free (you can just transfer the files over to another PC and they just work) or functionally DRM free (Steam's DRM is trivially bypassed, so one step removed from DRM free), this doesn't really scan. Other than games with Denuvo and multiplayer games, DRM is a non-issue for actual pirate…

Also, many such games are on gog DRM free, and certainly pirates don't care where they get their games.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#125

Post by its-summertime »

dmbche wrote: post #115
sergiotapia wrote: post #46

I can't remember but there have been two games where the "it's your game, offline installer" promise was broken on Gog. Have they since come out to restate that promise? I always felt a bit sad that before I could just KNOW that it'll work that's gog! but since that time I always have to double check and by that point why not just use steam?

Can't find anything about those broken promises at a glance

Gwent comes to mind as an undownloadable game, which must be run from the first-party launcher, it is a free game (not counting in-game spending) which is always-online, so practically the antithesis of GOG

GOG and CD PROJEKT splitting up should ensure this is not going to happen in the future as much.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#126

Post by stego-tech »

I am wary of the long-term prospects of GOG, but then again, I've always been wary of that since they launched - and they consistently prove me wrong.

GOG remains my first choice when I go looking for PC titles. I think it should be everyone's first choice, if I'm honest, even if Steam currently operates in a relatively consumer-friendly way. Having those offline patches and installers is a freedom you just cannot match on Steam or any other platform, and they're highly relevant to households like mine where game sharing is being cracked down upon by major publishers (looking at you, Nintendo).

Keep on keepin' on, GOG. I'm rootin' for ya.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#127

Post by buran77 »

oriolid wrote: post #117
computerex wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People only pirate games because the publishers make it too painful to play games legally. I have pirated games that I own simply because it's easier to play. This pattern has been shown time and time again. When people pirate, it's usually due to a problem with the experience. People pay for convenience. Now a days a lot of people are pirating games because the quality of games has gone down the drain. Publishers ar…

I'm not completely convinced. When I was a teenager I pirated games because I didn't have money (and games were incredibly expensive back in the day). The people who I copied them from did it to show off their collection and connections, or just because they were my friends.

For people who have no money to spare for games it really doesn't matter if games come with DRM or not. They wouldn't afford them anyway so "for free" is the only option that matters.

For people who have money for games but don't want to pay, the presence of DRM matters very little. 99% of games are usually trivially cracked, especially if you are willing to wait for some days or weeks after launch (an important sales window for the publishers).

For people who have money for games and are willing to pay, DRM turns out to be maybe an inconvenience, but definitely a guarantee that they don't actually own the game. The game can be taken away or even just modified in a way that invalidates the reason people paid in the first place.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#128

Post by SXX »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83
dangus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is basically never. They have no incentive to do that except for extreme circumstances, and they have all the leverage in the world over game publishers. Delisted games tend to stay in your library for redownload. I never understood the cynicism for digital media, it’s been multiple decades now and the model clearly works. Obviously I prefer zero DRM but it’s also not a hard line requirement for me personally.

You never know, Gaben is getting older. Who knows what the next CEO of Valve will do?

At least with Valve we can hope its gonna be okay for 4 reasons:

1. Even though Gabe is formally CEO he from his own words was barelly controllibg company for years. He spend more time on his other projects.

2. Flat structure and and a small team. I know few people who has worked at Valve and while there are some downsides company of ~400 employees with a lot of internal power play is just more resilient than normal corporation. Many of people on the team are just rich enough already and they dont need to go and cash out.

3. From what is publicly known Valve is family owned basically since Gabe own major part of company. And while a lot of people would hate example of e.g Ubisoft its good example how family controlled business often sink before selling out.

4. It would be just hard to sell Valve and remove control from the team without destroying both company and gaming community goodwill.

Yet I fully agree that Valve just like other company can be sold off just for userbase and run to the ground.

Valve just have better chance to stay customer friendly than your overall VC/PE/BlackRock owned corporation with 10,000 employees and 50 for-hire top managers / board directors.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#129

Post by Mathnerd314 »

jamespo wrote: post #118
computerex wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People only pirate games because the publishers make it too painful to play games legally. I have pirated games that I own simply because it's easier to play. This pattern has been shown time and time again. When people pirate, it's usually due to a problem with the experience. People pay for convenience. Now a days a lot of people are pirating games because the quality of games has gone down the drain. Publishers ar…

No, paying nothing is very compelling for a lot of consumers, you can see this in many other areas of content as well.

Research from the University of Amsterdam’s IViR “Global Online Piracy Study” (survey of nearly 35,000 respondents across 13 countries) found that for each content type and country, 95% or more of pirates also consume content legally, and their median legal consumption is typically twice that of non‑pirating legal users.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#130

Post by rvnx »

jamespo wrote: post #118
computerex wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People only pirate games because the publishers make it too painful to play games legally. I have pirated games that I own simply because it's easier to play. This pattern has been shown time and time again. When people pirate, it's usually due to a problem with the experience. People pay for convenience. Now a days a lot of people are pirating games because the quality of games has gone down the drain. Publishers ar…

No, paying nothing is very compelling for a lot of consumers, you can see this in many other areas of content as well.

Before it was really expensive and difficult to get access to movies or music. Then came Netflix or Spotify. So money is the primary discriminator now, not access. And users without money would not bring revenue anyway
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