???'s about state of Abandonware and sites like GOG.com

[Russka]

Is anyone here a little upset about sites like GOG.com? I feel they are repackaging games just as they were released back in their day, and making profit from little work. For most of those with technical knowledge, they are offering little more than a lazy fee. I don't want to write a DosBox script for CASTLES  from interplay, etc.

I feel my only real complaint would be that they are offering little to the old pc gaming community that it cannot do itself, while resurfacing copyrights that I would assume will not benefit the original creators of the IP for the games. In my eyes gog.com is only a business modeled to profit from the work of the original IP team, to offer little of what is needed by the community, and to tighten the reigns for large businesses who bought out copyrights (EA) and continue to shit out games like Dungeon Keeper Mobile.

 
Thoughts?

[kkmic]

Well, if you already own a old game, you don't need to give any money to GOG.com & Co. just to play it, as you can do an easy search and figure out how to set up DosBox.

However, if you do not own a game you want to play, you need to buy it from somewhere, right? In this case, it is preferred to get it bundles with a tested DosBox setup - not quite everybody who likes old/classic games knows how to setup DosBox, or even what is it all about.

While it may seem that GOG.com & Co. are selling old repackaged stuff for shiny new $$, that old stuff is not quite free for everyone to take. It was made by someone, and someone still has property rights on it. While that someone may not track copyright violations & stuff, that does not change the fact that the old games sold by GOG.com & Co. are still someone's property.

(BTW, GOG.com has several free games in it's catalogue, but they are free because their creators either made them free from the start, or the owners re-released them free later on)

But I feel that is nothing wrong to pay for someones brilliant work, no matter how old is it. Yes, GOG.com & Co. makes a profit out of it, but considering that some of those games are hard to legally buy elsewhere and also considering how little you pay for a game to own FOREVER (no in-game payments for these titles), I believe it is worth it and I find nothing wrong in GOG making a small profit out of it.


What bugs me is that GOG.com does not own the majority of the games they're selling (except for the Witcher series IIRC), and the copyright holders for a lot of the others are not the original creators of the game, meaning that you may end up paying a company that has nothing to do with the creation of the original gem you're buying.

[pkrcel]

GOG.com is simply to be commended since it is an ABSOLUTELY NO DRM company.

I think there's not much left to say, they do a wonderful job and I eagerly paid them for a couple games that I so badly needed to be "repackaged".

Summing up on the OP, one can also pirate any stuff and warez the hell out of the market after all, so why bother to pay ANYONE?

"Abandonware" has always sort of been a strange field, cause LEGALLY one could not download ANY copyrighted material unless the copyright owner writes that off and let it for free (as kkmic already said), thou a widely accepted exception was "if it no longer commercialy sold, it is okay to download it", not a really clean one actually.

GOG capitalized on a powerful niche and does a STRENOUS job of looking for legally distribute copyrighted material no matter how "ancient", ready off the shelf for your newest platforms (DosBox runs also on non windows plaforms).

all in all a good deal for the player, IMO.



EDIT:

What bugs me is that GOG.com does not own the majority of the games they're selling (except for the Witcher series IIRC), and the copyright holders for a lot of the others are not the original creators of the game, meaning that you may end up paying a company that has nothing to do with the creation of the original gem you're buying.

It bugs me a bit too, but in that case the Copyright was either acquired by merger, bought from the original authors or got through a tender by foreclosure.

Hardly a GOG fault nor problem, and in any case it's only right you pay those right amid the law;
.....thou on a more philosophical wave....I also am a bit bothered about that, but I still think that its a good deal for the players.

[yrizoud]

In my opinion, gog.com has lots of merits :
- tracking down actual copyright holders. It's not trivial to identify them after so many editors or game studios went bankrupt.
- get deals with the copyright holders. If they were not interested enough to bother, the game would stay unavailable, impossible to distribute legally no matter the price.
- provide technical adjustments to modern hardware. Pentium 4 fixes, patches to fix W95 incompatibilities with XP or 7 or overflow bugs for users with with large disk drives or memory.
- care enough for the players and future preservation by having a NO DRM POLICY. Buy once from gog.com, play forever on any of your future computers, transferring from one machine to the next.
- discover hidden gems. I thought I knew all about retrogaming/abandonware, ever since Hall of the Underdogs, but GOG which made me discover the best game I played this year.

[Solarius Scorch]

Sorry for being grumpy, but highlighting no DRM policy as a big positive is akin to: "I went to the grocery store today and not only they had what I needed, but they also didn't kick me in the crotch! What a wonderful place to buy from!"

[Russka]

I can agree with most of the sentiments here. In hindsight I would pinpoint my 'butthurtness' as knowledge that most original creators of the game may not receive any benefit from this new niche company.

[Warboy1982]

i think in many cases these games are considered "abandonware" in the most literal sense of the term, like the parent company no longer existing. meaning that short of sending the original developers a personal cheque, there's no real way to get the money into the right hands.

how much do you think Julian Gollop gets for each sale of XCom and TFTD on steam? i kinda suspect nothing.

it's the convenience that you're paying for. the convenience of getting an unmodified version of the game from a reputable source, with no chance of infection. having the DRM removed is a bonus. it's not like going shopping and getting not kicked, unless every other store in town has a mandatory nutsack kick with purchase, it's more akin to buying a pre-jailbroken iphone. the inherent cancer that was already present in the product has been removed in the repackaged version. again, this convenience is what you're paying for.

i mean, it's not like you can go down to the local EB games and grab a copy of commander keen.

[pkrcel]

i think in many cases these games are considered "abandonware" in the most literal sense of the term, like the parent company no longer existing. meaning that short of sending the original developers a personal cheque, there's no real way to get the money into the right hands.

That's a big part of the case in favor of GOG, since it enables users to legally get a copy of the game when they find out. a yzroud said it's not always that easy to follow the trail.

how much do you think Julian Gollop gets for each sale of XCom and TFTD on steam? i kinda suspect nothing.

I am kinda sure about that, and even thou he prolly deserves today every penny, it's kinda normal that who invested the big buck gets the most bang for it.

Sorry for being grumpy, but highlighting no DRM policy as a big positive is akin to: "I went to the grocery store today and not only they had what I needed, but they also didn't kick me in the crotch! What a wonderful place to buy from!"

Are you saying that you prefer Steam? 

EDIT: seriously thou, a NO DRM policy IS to be commended in my views....MOST of the shops around do kick you in the privates, to use the same metaphor, even for the same titles sold, and I see this as a bonus as well.

[yrizoud]

Videogames are considered more and more a temporary medium : Unless the studio keeps re-investing money (yearly re-release and permanent ad campaign, extra content...), it's expected that the game's value drops to zero in 3 years.
The success of GOG says "Look game creators, if you make a quality game and choose to be paid by royalties, you can keep earning money 10 years after release".

[TaxxiDriver]

Everyone said something worthwhile to think about. Just wanted to add one more thing: in the perspective of economics, the game that has been modified so that it can be run pleasantly in current computer systems is a totally different product compared to the old one which refuses so hard to be run in these days' computers. In my country, there are some decent old games which many old gamers eagers to play again. But since those games do not get a lot of attention worldwide, they don't seem to be revived in current systems, unfortunately. In this point of view, some considerate old gamers rather envy the well organized community such as GOG. I really don't know much about GOG, but just from what they are doing, I think they deserve more love.

[yrizoud]

TaxxiDriver : There is also forum for running older games here: https://www.vogons.org/

[TaxxiDriver]

TaxxiDriver : There is also forum for running older games here: https://www.vogons.org/

Wow.

Whole bunch of information. Very impressive  Thanks a lot! I was always curious about the Openglide stuff so maybe I should check...

(searching)

[pkrcel]

I also think that GOG and DosBox (which is well covered in Vogons) have formed a partnership so there might be a (little) money spill to DosBox creators for enhanced support, or something along these lines....

[Mr. Quiet]

I'll just leave this video of LGR buying old DOS games at thrift stores very intriguing.

https://youtu.be/eSj0u1akD-8