Piracy

[AaronOfMpls]

11 hours ago, RedHeadAngel said:

What is GOG? I've seen it mentioned a few times, but I don't know what it is.

It's a game store kinda like Steam (owned by CD Projekt, the way Valve owns Steam), but everything on it is DRM-free.  The name originally stood for Good Old Games, as its original mission was to make older games available legally again.

[RedHeadAngel]

13 hours ago, AaronOfMpls said:

The name originally stood for Good Old Games, as its original mission was to make older games available legally again.

I'm guessing that didn't go to plan?

[Pickysaurus]

2 hours ago, RedHeadAngel said:

I'm guessing that didn't go to plan?

I'd say quite the opposite. GOG were successful in preserving the older games so they've also started offering newer games like Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate, etc. 

[LenaWolfBravil]

2 hours ago, RedHeadAngel said:

I'm guessing that didn't go to plan?

Why not just see for yourself?

[LenaWolfBravil]

1 hour ago, Pickysaurus said:

GOG were successful in preserving the older games so they've also started offering newer games like Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate, etc. 

They even convinced Bethesda to release a Steam-free version of Skyrim!

[zixi]

3 hours ago, Pickysaurus said:

Baldur's Gate

BG3 presumably? BG1 and 2 *are* old even by my standards...

re piracy - It might be quite difficult for some people to realise it's a crime. It might not 'feel' like it.

I know of someone who bought a house; it was an old and historically interesting house and it was 'protected'. They proceeded to whip out the kitchen and bathrooms, put in different windows and a huge patio and they dug up the extensive gardens. Eventually the authorities caught up with them and the cost of putting the house back to its original state was too much for them - they had to sell. The house wasn't theirs to do with as they pleased but they hadn't realised that. They weren't bad people - it never dawned on them what buying a house like that really meant. The software or video or book or knitting pattern or even plant that you think you own, isn't really completely yours either and for some people, the difference between that and their new jeans is difficult to understand...

It needs either more education or a different way of handling the issue. I know which I prefer.

[AaronOfMpls]

Indeed.  I own a lot of books, and legally I'm mostly free to do what I want with them -- write in them, re-bind them, chop them up to turn into art projects, etc.  But I don’t own their content; I didn't write or illustrate them, nor have I bought the rights to that writing or illustration.  So I'm mostly not allowed to copy them.

And much like that historic house (which it pained me to read about), I wouldn't be surprised if conditional sales are possible here too -- like if I bought a historically valuable copy of a book, where a condition of the sale is that I sign a contract to keep it intact and preserved.

[RedHeadAngel]

8 hours ago, Pickysaurus said:

I'd say quite the opposite. GOG were successful in preserving the older games so they've also started offering newer games like Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate, etc. 

Cool. When @AaronOfMpls said it was their "original mission," it sounded like he was implying it didn't work out.

[RedHeadAngel]

8 hours ago, LenaWolfBravil said:

Why not just see for yourself?

Because it doesn't interest me.

[AaronOfMpls]

On 9/24/2024 at 11:00 AM, RedHeadAngel said:

Cool. When @AaronOfMpls said it was their "original mission," it sounded like he was implying it didn't work out.

Yah, I probably should've mentioned them broadening to include new games once they were successful with old games.

And they still add older games from time to time, as rightsholders are tracked down for permission, and games get patched to run on modern computers or in modern emulators.  (Their parent company CD Projekt started out by making official Polish localizations of other companies' games, before they launched CD Projekt Red to develop their own (especially the Witcher series), so they have a long history of patching games.)