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GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive
- Y_Y 9mo agoA noble goal, but I'd be shocked if they manage to compete in the preservation realm against Good Old Piracy™.
- freehorse 9mo ago"Good Old Piracy" does not (always) help much with incompatibilities arising from running on new machines/OSes.
- master-lincoln 9mo agoFor those old games emulators do the job
- qwertfisch 9mo agoYes, very old DOS-based games from before 2000 can be emulated perfectly. If you have a modern computer, even the later SVGA 3D games running in protected mode are no problem (using 100–200k cycles/ms in DOSBox). In fact, today’s graphic possibilities and available monitor resolutions make it possible to accurately and aesthetically simulate an analog CRT monitor with its scanlines and aspect correction (DOSBox Staging). But of course you can just use big sharp pixels.
- freehorse 9mo agoThat makes total sense for eg DOS/gameboy/arcade games and the like, but is it ever that simple for PC/windows games? And there are many different issues that I have experienced when running older games myself, even if they can technically run, eg with ultra-wide and higher dpi monitors. What I also like in this project is that they also share logs with what they worked on each game, eg for the resident evil series [0] [0] https://www.gog.com/blog/resident-evil-1-2-3/#:~:text=RESIDENT%20EVIL%20Preservation%20Log https://www.gog.com/blog/resident-evil-1-2-3/#:~:text=RESIDE...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- danparsonson 9mo agoSpeaking personally I'd rather pay a few dollars than risk my PC getting Good Old Virusy, which may or may not be a real risk, but is certainly an idea that puts me off pirating software.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo agoThis is why "social" piracy is a good thing (?? arguably, let's not get into the ethics), e.g. torrent sites with comments and a reporting and voting system.
- presbyterian 9mo agoFor many older games, I've been in the habit of running them inside VMs for this very reason.
- Y_Y 8mo agoNot only is this a sensible idea, it's also just a fancy way of running in an emulator like you would for another game. Now I'm wondering if you could put e.g. a Windows virus into a Gameboy game, such that if someone did the opposite of what we're talking about and ran it "natively" then they'd be infected. Afaik this kind of native execution as an alternative to emulation is being done via recompilation projects - see e.g. NES - https://andrewkelley.me/post/jamulator.html https://andrewkelley.me/post/jamulator.html N64 - https://deepwiki.com/Zelda64Recomp/Zelda64Recomp/3.1-recompilation-system https://deepwiki.com/Zelda64Recomp/Zelda64Recomp/3.1-recompi...
- paxys 9mo agoIf you find a playable version of an old game on a piracy site chances are that it originated from GOG.
- zamalek 9mo agoPiracy isn't only a matter of money, it can also be convenience or outright accessibility (no way to purchase the item legally).
- lucraft 9mo agoTerrific thing! The FAQ should state explicitly that patron money will only be used for preservation, not put into GOG general revenue, if that is indeed true.
- greatgib 9mo agoTheir FAQ is not really clear on that, my feeling looking at this page is that it is more like: this money goes directly in the pocket of GOG, so by helping us to generate more money for us, you are helping (indirectly) the preservation of games as it is what they do. But I saw nowhere in the FAQ explicitly that this subscription money will only be used to the "active act" of preserving other games.
- paxys 9mo agoThat 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".
- RavingGoat 9mo agoEvery company I've ever worked for can do this so it seems logical that so can GoG. Every department has a budget.
- wewtyflakes 8mo agoA 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.
- freedomben 9mo agoEmphasis 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 company has essentially abandoned it. Like take the Resident Evil example FTA: Launched in 1996, 2000-2023 not available (i.e. not for legal sale). I am a bit of an extremist wrt IP laws, but that just seems so crazy to me that we would provide a legal system to "protect" IP that isn't being used and is just being (essentially) hoarded.
- greatgib 9mo agoBasically it is the problem with GOG also, I think that if you do nothing the game is Abandonware and I don't think that anyone can go after you to use it pirated or whatever, and even distribute it. Maybe it is shady, but something like that if there is no commercial activity and the IP violation is not enforced for some many times, it can be considered that you are responsible for this and there was no legal way for the user to be able to use the software. But if GOG comes and the restore the "commercial activity" of a game, actively selling, even if no one buys, then you can't say that it was commercially abandoned, and that will postpone of that much that it will be on GOG the legal claim of "having the IP active".
- ndiddy 9mo ago"Abandonware" is not a legal concept. It's basically shorthand for selective IP enforcement. Essentially, it's saying that if you're illegally distributing a game or piece of software that the original publisher is no longer selling, it's probably fine and they probably won't go after you due to legal action being expensive for something that has little to no impact on the publisher's revenue. > if there is no commercial activity and the IP violation is not enforced for some many times, it can be considered that you are responsible for this and there was no legal way for the user to be able to use the software. That's somewhat true for trademarks. If you don't consistently enforce a trademark, then the person you're suing for trademark violation can use that as an argument in court. However, it's not true for copyright (such as someone illegally distributing a game you own).
- AdmiralAsshat 9mo ago> Why introduce a membership now? Is GOG in financial trouble? Glad they put this into the FAQ, because that was certainly my first thought, although I'm not sure the answer really assuages my concerns. You have to admit that the combination of "Original founder buys back GOG from CD Projekt" and then "GOG introduces patron tier" soon thereafter does suggest a company in some financial hardship.
- qwertfisch 9mo agoThe patron program was introduced weeks (or even months) before the buyout of GOG.
- jadedtuna 9mo agoTo be fair, a buyout is probably not discussed & agreed upon in a matter of days. Probably.
- qwertfisch 9mo agoYes, 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.
- izacus 9mo ago> 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?
- lenocinor 8mo agoIndeed. I regularly have to remind myself that The Witcher 3 is 8th on Wikipedia’s list of all-time best-selling video games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
- jon-wood 9mo agoSo let me get this straight, GOG, a privately owned company, wants me to donate money to them so that they can buy the rights to games in order to sell them to me?
- embedding-shape 9mo agoSimplified, but yes, more or less correct. I'm a patron of theirs, and see it more or less as a donation (obviously isn't, in the eyes of the tax agency).
- 999900000999 9mo agoYeah my first reaction was, what the heck is is this ? Now I can imagine having specific campaigns. Let's say they need $50,000 to release an upgraded port of Shining Force. Cool, I might be open to pre-ordering it at $25 so they can see if there's enough interest to proceed. But why am I going to literally just donate to a private company. I think the entire world has gone mad, there's not even a real product here. It's not like for that $5 a month they give you a random game or something. They just want money.
- 1313ed01 9mo agoI would be happy to donate to campaigns to buy old ip (video games, but also music, movies, old tabletop rpgs etc) to then slap an open license on and release for free. Seems like a good investment for the future, to get as much content as possible away from rights hoarders. I am also happy to buy more old games from GOG than I ever have the time to play, so they already get my money. Not so sure about this patreon thing though.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo agoThat's what it looks like. I kind of get it, as there's no guarantee that a game they make available again will sell enough to cover the costs - it's as much a preservation effort as a commercial one. For a lot of games it's just a matter of configuring dosbox and packaging it, I can't see how that would be very expensive. But for others it's a lot more involved.
- intexpress 9mo agoThis patron thing seems weird. GOG should just accept preorders for games that aren’t available yet. And use that money to make the game available.
- rpdillon 9mo agoThe problem with this is that the game might never become available. Taking pre-orders in the hope you can obtain IP is sketchy at best.
- bigfishrunning 9mo agoSo structure it like Kickstarter, where if we don't get X dollars and secure the rights before X date, everybody gets their money back. Some insurance like that for the customers would make it a lot less shady
- lostmsu 9mo agoI would sign up if they promise to release the games they get with the money into public domain.
- bo1024 9mo agoThat would be cool, but they probably only get rights to sell the games, not full ownership of all rights.
- 1313ed01 9mo agoSo we pay more. Many owners of very old good, but mostly forgotten, games must know that the rights are basically worthless anyway.
- antisthenes 8mo agoThe 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.
- egypturnash 9mo agoHonestly I find GOG's whole mission of "update old games for modern Windows" kinda weird when I compare it to what people who want to play old console games do: they just fire up an emulator. Running a virtual Windows machine sounds like a much easier solution than individually patching every crusty old executable to run on the modern OS, and re-patching every single one of them when MS rolls out yet another new graphics/controller system a few years down the line.
- 1313ed01 9mo agoTheir DOS releases are fantastic. I install the games, then copy the files to my virtual C: directory for DOSBox-X and know those games will always Just Work and I will never have to reinstall anything or mess with configurations. Some games I also copy to my phone to play in DOSBox in Android. To repeat myself from old threads, it would be awesome to have something like a WindowsBOX, like DOSBox but emulating (probably) Windows 98SE, fully open source. GOG could use that for old Windows games and never have to modify the games themselves. I would be happy to support GOG developing an emulator like that, rather than making old games run on new Windows.
- egypturnash 9mo agoReally I'm surprised nobody's done "WinBox" yet. Proton kinda covers that except it runs in Linux, not Windows. I dunno how it handles old Windows games as I've got zero nostalgia for those, my Steam Deck mostly runs modern stuff from small teams.
- ConceptJunkie 9mo agoReactOS has been around for 20+ years. You can run some old games on it, but it's hardly at the level of WINE and projects based on it.
- jeditobe 8mo ago30 years ^)
- ekianjo 9mo agoStill no word of Linux support. GOG is an everlasting source of disappointment
- bigfishrunning 9mo agoLots of games on GOG run on Linux; not sure what you're asking for here
- izacus 9mo agoGoG games run just fine on Linux through Proton. GoG Galaxy too.
- ekianjo 8mo agoThat's not what we call official support.
- lizardking 8mo agoInstall Proton and use the Heroic Games Launcher. Works on my machine™ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
- paxys 9mo agoSeems 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?
- antisthenes 8mo agoAlso 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.
- binary132 9mo agoSeems sus. I’d be happy to help fund a classics restoration trust if it was more transparent, but this just looks like a branded cash grab.
- oliwarner 8mo agoWait, what? Subscribe for £4 a month to fund a for-profit company so they can buy rights to patch up old games I used to play so I can... Buy them again? I've bought Resident Evil twice before guys, I'm not paying £7.99 to get another copy. I get that there's some service provision —maybe even some first party dev work— but patrons should either be the product and these games get released for free, or the price of the game should recoup the hassle of licenses. What am I missing? It seems like they're trying to double-dip.