501–510 of 574 posts
Completely anecdotal, but… I spend quite a bit of time reading and writing tech history. I am not academic in this pursuit. I read old newspapers, magazines, websites, books, and interviews. Take some notes along the way, and then write an article. Usually, each article is a short history of a company that made significant contributions to the industry. For companies that still exist today, the end of these are artic…
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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.
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I wouldn't listen to Paris Hilton talk about computer hardware, and I wouldn't listen to Gamer Nexus talk about who has the hottest hair in Hollywood. Flip those around though, and that's different.
I gave it a 20 minutes try, since it seems not just one person is convinced this Gamer Nexus isn't just another influencer. They seem knowledgeable about hardware, I give you that. But then when they start going into markets, economies and geopolitics, that's when I start roll my eyes, and continuing listening to that is like taking hardware advice from Paris Hilton. Again, don't let influencers give you the idea tha…
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It doesn't prove that DRM free is not a viable business. I also grew up pirating, but I haven't been pirating games for more than 10 years now. A few bucks costs much less to me these days than a headache with finding a cracked version and installing potential malware on my computer. Not even talking about supporting the artists and developers. Gabe is right that piracy is a service problem. If you have proper easy i…
The first game I ever sold had no DRM, it was distributed by cassette tape. I did very well making games for CD-ROM, up until CD burners got cheap. There's nothing stopping anyone from making a business selling DRM free games. I think you can get original DRM free games on itch.io. There are probably other places. GoG is great, but they don't typically sell new games. If someone thinks they can make high production v…
Many big studios/publishers avoid gog indeed, but others don't, and definitely a lot of new DRM-free games come out there all the time. Maybe it is because of the types of games I want to play, I usually I have no trouble finding them there, with some notable exceptions of course (souls games, outer wilds).
Both clair obscur and Baldur's Gate 3 (goty 2025 & 2023) were in gog since the beginning (bg3 already since its beta). They both definitely sold very well, despite(?) that. All Larian and Obsidian games get there as they come out, as are quite many CRPGs in general, not even counting CDPR's ones. A lot of great/popular indie titles appear in gog around the same time as they do on steam in the last years.
GOG is not just for old games.
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I’ve followed a couple indie game developers over the years who started with lofty ideas about selling DRM free games. As soon as they add an online component of any type (e.g. a leaderboard for ranks or high scores) they’re blown away by the number of connections coming in because the number of people playing the game is so much higher than they would have expected from sales alone. If you’re the kind of person who…
I've got gamer friends who live in countries / situations where ten dollars is an exorbitant amount of money. Buying a new release at 60+ just isn't a realistic option for most of the population. So what should they do? Go back and change where they were born? Abstain from participating in modern culture? Or reach out and take the thing which is free?
And they can’t even wait for them to go on sale? They need to buy them right at launch, at their full $60 price?
> Or reach out and take the thing which is free?
It’s not free. It has a price.
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They can't control the licenses rights for some assets like music that can expire and become undistributable. You may not know it until you install them on a new computer n years from now.
I find even just the possibility of this happening frankly insane - if the current licensing or copyright system allows something like this, the we need a new one.
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I’ve followed a couple indie game developers over the years who started with lofty ideas about selling DRM free games. As soon as they add an online component of any type (e.g. a leaderboard for ranks or high scores) they’re blown away by the number of connections coming in because the number of people playing the game is so much higher than they would have expected from sales alone. If you’re the kind of person who…
The question is, how many of the people who pirate a game would instead buy it if pirating is not an option? How many of the people who would try a new game by downloading a pirated copy will actually continue playing it, instead of just trying a bunch of different games, in which case they would prob have refunded anyway? The mere fact that X number of pirated copies are downloaded and executed does not mean that X…
I don’t think this is as much of a question outside of social media attempts to justify piracy. If only 10% of the pirates would buy the game, that’s still lost sales.
The social media justifications for piracy always assume that the only reason anyone pirates a game or video is because they either couldn’t afford it or wouldn’t buy it anyway. The same arguments were made when Netflix clamped down on account sharing: Everywhere you would find predictions that Netflix would suffer as a result, people would start cancelling their accounts, and they’d regret the decision. Yet the opposite happened and they had more users sign up.
> There is a lot of misunderstanding here about who and why downloads pirated games.
I agree with this statement, but in the opposite direction. The misunderstanding is the mental gymnastics that go into painting all pirates as all poor individuals who have no money and therefore no choice but to pirate games. The reality is that piracy is just a choice of convenience and taking something for free because they can. People from all tax brackets do it.
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The 30% cut is standard, and was so at retail even before Steam existed IIRC.
And the cut can't be lower? The rush to defend Valve's monopoly is so weird since HN usually hates fat cat billionaires. Valve is raking in so much money as a middleman that Gabe Newell has ~$1 billion worth of yachts alone, in addition to the rest of his wealth, yet gamers want Valve to keep on bleeding them and game studios?
Yes, almost like there's an actual difference between Valve and typical other corporations? Ha ha just kidding, it must be random internet nonsense, definitely not worth applying any brain cells to!
The simple reality is that Valve is just a lot nicer to their customers in terms of behavior and utility than the overwhelming majority of companies, and that means many people cut them more slack for other things. People are willing to forgive a large cut if it feels like you're actually trying to provide an ever-more-useful service, rather than coasting on the bare minimum.
Steam isn't just a little bit better than competing stores/platforms, it's MONUMENTALLY better, and the gap is probably increasing rather than shrinking over time, because other stores don't look like they're even trying in comparison.
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I think a lot of people pirate for a lot of different reasons. I don't pirate games anymore because I just play PS5. But I definitely did so as a teenager because I was broke, not because the experience of buying games was bad. Now I'll pirate if providers make it hard to do things right. I know I never "have" to pirate, but my wife once "bought" a movie on Amazon. A few years later, she was no longer able to access…
Or, just don’t play the game. I don’t mean to be flippant, but why waste time on software employing shoddy practices? Wordle and Apple’s mini crossword-minis are sufficiently stimulating and quick. My tolerance for software like that is very limited. It’s almost an immediate long-press and uninstall.