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GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

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Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, a buyout is probably not discussed & agreed upon in a matter of days. Probably.

Yes, agreed. I’m still wondering where the co-founder got the 25M dollars. Also if he just had separated GOG (and buy his shares) before CDPR going public in 2009, it would have been much cheaper. At that time GOG only was a plattform for good old games.

> I’m still wondering where the co-founder got the 25M dollars.

From sales of millions upon millions of copies of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 games?

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#63

Emphasis added: > The GOG Preservation Program is our ongoing effort to save classic games from being lost to time. That means working to secure rights , fixing compatibility so they run hassle-free on modern systems, and even rebuilding missing features so the experience is the best you can get, while staying true to the original. It still baffles me how the "rights" to a game (or any IP) can be a thing when the com…

Yeah, but it's a bit depressing when one buys a game (Lego: Lord of the Rings), but it promptly crashes and there's no response when one asks:

https://www.gog.com/forum/legor_the_lord_of_the_rings/crashe...

(there are other forum posts about other crashes)

So, when I had some money left over at Christmas, I got a couple of Lego games for my Nintendo Switch instead.

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#64
post #42

Emphasis added: > The GOG Preservation Program is our ongoing effort to save classic games from being lost to time. That means working to secure rights , fixing compatibility so they run hassle-free on modern systems, and even rebuilding missing features so the experience is the best you can get, while staying true to the original. It still baffles me how the "rights" to a game (or any IP) can be a thing when the com…

That's how copyright law works. There's no "use it or lose it" provision. Once you create something it is yours, and others only get rights to it 70-100+ years later.

That's only how it works since 1992/1998. Prior to 1992, you had to renew your copyright explicitly after 28 years (for another term of 47 years). 1992 made that renewal automatic. (1998 extended it by 20 years).

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#65
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That distinction doesn't really exist. You have to pay employees. You have to pay for equipment. You have to pay for office space. And the countless other costs of running a company. There's no way they can realistically say "this particular dollar we got from you was used for exactly this purpose".

Every company I've ever worked for can do this so it seems logical that so can GoG. Every department has a budget.

A budget that is influenced by the budgets of everything else. If you have $100 in free 'foo' money for 'foo' efforts, suddenly you do not need to fund 'foo' from your general fund and you can move those dollars you would have otherwise used for it to instead be used for anything else you want.

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#67
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See all the remasters and remakes that didn't happen because they weren't legally able to. We are worse off as a society that enforces artificial scarcity on ideas than we would be if we returned to a world that did not have such bogus laws (not that long ago, but beyond the memory of anyone alive).

I think it's reasonable to argue something like, "some IP protection is good, but too much is bad, and we probably have too much right now." It would be impossible to calibrate the laws so that the amount of IP protection is socially optimal, but we can look at the areas where the protection is too much and start there.

It's not impossible at all. We should do 5 year copyright - 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing.

Copyright is granted to media creators in order to incentivize creativity and contribution to culture. It's not granted so as to empower large collectives of lawyers and wealthy people to purchase the rights and endlessly nickel and dime the public for access to media.

Make it simple and clear. You get 5 years total copyright - no copying, no commercial activity or derivatives without express, explicit consent, require a contract. 5 years after publishing, you get another 5 years of limited copyright - think of it as expanded fair use. A maximum of 5% royalties from every commercial use, and unlimited non-commercial use. After 10 years, it goes into public domain.

You can assign or sell the rights to anyone, but the initial publication date is immutable, the clock doesn't reset. You can immediately push to public domain, or start the expanded fair use period early.

No exceptions, no grandfathering.

There's no legitimate reasons we should be allowing giant companies like Sony and HBO and Paramount to grift in perpetuity off of the creations and content of artists and writers. This is toxic to culture and concentrates wealth and power with people that absolutely should not control the things they do, and a significant portion of the wealth they accumulate goes into enriching lawyers whose only purpose in life is to enforce the ridiculous and asinine legal moat these companies and platforms and people have paid legislators to enshrine in law.

Make it clear and simple, and it accomplishes the protection of creators while enriching society. Nobody loses except the ones who corrupted the system in the first place.

We live in a digital era, we should not be pretending copyright ideas based on quill and parchment are still appropriate to the age.

And while we're at it, we should legally restrict distribution of revenues from platforms to a maximum of 30% - 70% at minimum goes to the author. The studio, agent, platform, or any other distribution agent all have to divvy up at most 30%.

No more eternal estates living off of the talent and creations of ancestors. No more sequestration of culturally significant works to enrich grifters.

This would apply to digital assets, games, code, anything that gets published. Patents should be similarly updated, with the same 5 and 10 year timers.

Sure, it's not 100% optimal, but it gets a majority of the profit to a majority of the creators close enough and it has a clear and significant benefit to society within a short enough term that the tradeoff is clearly worth it.

Empowering and enabling lawyers and rent seekers to grift off of other peoples talent and content is a choice, we don't have to live like that.

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#68
post #44

Seems weird to ask for donations for game preservation without pledging to release the games under an open license. Why would I give you money so you can go buy a game and then turn around and sell it back to me?

Also weird not to have an easily accessible list or some kind of plan to show which games will be prioritized.

Just a vague 20,000 game list which may or may not have games that I am interested in.

Also seems like Patrons should get access to the games that are preserved, at least after some point of contributions (e.g. after $60 were accumulated in donations over a period of time)

I would gladly pay 2x or 3x that amount if I knew I would get access to this game library hassle-free in the future.

Good idea overall, "meh" execution so far.

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#69
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be cool, but they probably only get rights to sell the games, not full ownership of all rights.

So we pay more. Many owners of very old good, but mostly forgotten, games must know that the rights are basically worthless anyway.

The IP hoarders are waiting for the day you'll be able to do a 1-shot remaster with AI and put the game back up on Steam again.

Not that it is any guarantee that it would sell at all or be successful.

Re: GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable to argue something like, "some IP protection is good, but too much is bad, and we probably have too much right now." It would be impossible to calibrate the laws so that the amount of IP protection is socially optimal, but we can look at the areas where the protection is too much and start there.

It's not impossible at all. We should do 5 year copyright - 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing. Copyright is granted to media creators in order to incentivize creativity and contribution to culture. It's not granted so as to empower large collectives of lawyers and wealthy people to purchase the rights and endlessly nickel and dime the public for access to media. Make…

> 99% of all commercial profit of all media is collected within 5 years of publishing.

If that were true of music, companies wouldn't be buying back catalogues for (upwards of) hundreds of millions[0][1].

[0] https://apnews.com/article/music-catalog-sales-pop-rock-kiss...

[1] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ranked-biggest-music-catal...

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