Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

gog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 574 posts

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

#351

Post by rkomorn »

Shacklz wrote: post #348
prmoustache wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the first person I hear that seems to care about that.

I typically think of myself (and try to act like) a rather rational person. The amount of hours of my life that I've done silly, mindless and occasionally annoying things because some Steam achievement required it is something I can't quite square with that. There's something oddly satisfying about getting them. It's certainly not a primary purchase decision factor but I've not bought games because they did not come…

This is yet another reminder for me that the world is full of different people.

I view achievements as one of the most annoying developments in games (and unfortunately some productivity software these days, in the shape of "badges").

They're yet another gamified growth/engagement pattern to contend with in life.

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

#352

Post by t-3 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #191
ekianjo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is much less endemic nowadays.

Yeah, because rather than pirating from cracxxxed.warez I can buy the game on Steam/GoG sale for $1.4.

Exactly. Games are just software, there's no real unit cost to factor in when setting minimum prices, just market strategy. Running sales with different levels of discounts is as close to optimal as possible $/customer without doing stuff like individualized pricing (which surely requires a vast amount of computing power and human effort to do at scale). Only the truly penniless or retro-game fans need to pirate nowadays.

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

#353

Post by Shacklz »

utopiah wrote: post #342
Fiveplus wrote: post #23

> Can I still download offline installers? Yes. This is the only line I was looking for. I stopped buying on Steam sometime ago because I realized I was just renting licenses. GOG is the only major storefront where I feel like I actually own the product. As long as offline installers remain a core tenet, I don't care who owns the company. That said, it helps that it's someone returning to their roots rather than a pr…

As a (theoretical) archivist, this, 100% As an actual gamer... why? I mean of course I agree that if I buy a game I should play however I want (assuming it doesn't degrade the game for others, i.e. no online cheating in competitive settings but modding is fine, including online if other players agree to it) for whatever long the agreement priced was (e.g. I don't think it's OK to get a lower price for a 1-day trial t…

As an avid gamer myself, I fully agree with your point. I guess in this thread there are a lot of people who, due to them being in tech, have a bit of a relationship with games but it's not really a big hobby. And as it happens, Steam has a few policies that trigger some intellectually motivated objections - nice in theory but practically irrelevant for gamers who play games on a regular basis.

As a matter of fact, in case the nostalgia itch really does hit, Steam actually enables a relatively easy 're-release' of old games that many publishers started doing - often with no further addition except the promise that it'll run on modern hardware/OS hassle-free.

I've re-bought games I've played in the 90s/2000s on Steam even though I already owned them and probably still have the CD lying around somewhere, but I just can't be arsed to go through the troubles of installing from them. Pay a few bucks, click a button and I'm up and running.

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

#354

Post by g-b-r »

101008 wrote: post #54

First time I heard about GOG. Is like Steam but you download the .exe installer (or wahtever format it is) from the game you purchase? Like Kazaa/Ares but paid? I love it to be honest, and I think that's how it should be, but how do creators (and GOG) fight piracy? What's preventing me from buying, getting the offline installer and then sharing it later? If I am wrong and GOG is something completely different, then l…

God, that's how today's kids see drm-free software?

As something hard to wrap your mind around?

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

#355

Post by phantasmish »

sallveburrpi wrote: post #155
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…

How is GOG a viable business if everything gets pirated?

1) Modern games are enormous and as long as services like GOG let me re-download my library it frees up literally terabytes of space on my disk array for pirated movies and other things that benefit far more from piracy than games do.

2) I don’t want viruses. I don’t want viruses more than I want to avoid paying $1-$20 for a game (as if I’m anywhere near caught up enough on my backlog of games from the last 40ish years for buying games at full launch-week price to ever make sense, lol, I do that like… once every several years, all the rest are very cheap)

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

#356

Post by t-3 »

Tarball10 wrote: post #239
afiori wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has been proven many times is that people overwhelmingly choose the least effort/risk option. A free Steam full of certified pirates games with official games updates would obviously drop sales but this is moot as it will never exist.

Isn't that exactly what companies use as justification for DMCA and DRM protection? Without those, you'd have sites full of pirated game downloads easily found through search engines. DMCA takedowns force those sites into shady corners of the internet, making them harder to find and riskier for the average user. And (effective) DRM makes users have to wait for a crack which may take weeks or months. The result is tha…

> you'd have sites full of pirated game downloads easily found through search engines.

That's literally the situation today. It is that easy. People still mostly don't pirate games though.

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

#357

Post by tommica »

dark-star wrote: post #275
Sayrus wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pirate Steam Games anyway. Stating that people pirate too much to make it viable is purely opinion and not based on numbers. Sure, for AAA games you get 2 to 3 months without a cracked version, but this stops afterward. For non-AAA games, the steam version is usually crackable from day-1.

Seriously, for cracking steam games, all it takes is to drop a single DLL inside the game's folder. It can't get simpler than that. Yes, that obviously only works for offline games, but yeah, cracking Steaam games is as easy as cracking any other game, maybe even easier

That is cracking, but one still has to download the files from somewhere before they can crack it. Finding legitimate files is still time consuming.

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

#358

Post by trinsic2 »

cogogo wrote: post #176
ninth_ant wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't because too many people pirate games to make that a viable business. This is an opinion, stated as if it’s fact. There are many factors contributing to the ongoing success of steam. Ease of access, a strong network effect, word of mouth from satisfied customers, a strong ecosystem of tools and a modding platform, willingness to work across many platforms and a variety of vendors including competitors, an…

I grew up playing pirated games on the Apple II 35 years ago. The fact that many people pirate is not an opinion.

It's an opinion that "Most" people pirate games and it's also an opinion that pirating games translates directly to lost sales. As Gabe said and I agree with him piracy, if it's anything a service related problem. You don't need DRM to overcome that. You just need to make a good product and respect you audience. The people that pirate for the wrong reasons will do it anyway and you don't gain much from restricting copies.

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

#359

Post by juped »

izacus wrote: post #228
JLO64 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polska is in Central Europe tho

Haha, we all Slavs keep telling that to ourselves, don't we? :P

Eastern Europe starts at your home country's eastern border. E.g., if you're Russia, it's Japan and Alaska.

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

#360

Post by Shacklz »

crtasm wrote: post #230
basisword wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I have pirated games that I own simply because it's easier to play. Can you share some examples of instances where the legal route is too difficult? I haven't felt this way in a long time. What are the changes necessary for you to purchase?

They say they own the game so presumably did purchase it. Not having to deal with Ubisoft/similar game launchers frequently forgetting my login, nagging to update itself, etc. is one reason I might choose to run a cracked copy.

Ubisoft launcher being so bad that people prefer the cracked, launcher-free version should go down in the history as example of some of the worst product-management there is.

I'm totally in the same boat; I've not bought several Ubisoft-games I was interested in playing because their launcher is such a cancer (if anyone from Ubisoft is on HN: What on earth are you guys smoking?).

I'm too lazy to bother with pirating games these days (I have more games than time to play them anyway), but younger me would've certainly went to the high seas to circumvent their ridiculous insult of a game launcher.

Post reply on HN