Can confirm for both Gog and steam I have always had access to the original fallout which went missing off store fronts for a number of years
trying not to cry
cry a lot
give those people some cookies !
bursts in tears
Just make sure you download them and back them up yourself because they certainly can revoke your ability to download them from their servers, is what they are implying here.
Sure, just like other brick and mortar stores can refuse to give you backups of a DVD you own.
As long as the installer works offline this is just as good. It’s up to you to store it in whichever format you prefer so that you don’t lose it - hard drive, thumb drive, DVD…
If you nuke your computers hard drive with the installers of your games, or you step on your blu rays with games and break them, then you lose access to them. As it’s always been, no matter the format?
Luckily there are some friendly people with eye patches and peglegs on the internet backing them up for you.
“It’s not piracy, it’s federated backups!”
Good luck finding a semi obscure 15 year old game on the high seas.
Will they also help during a zombie apocalypse? Asking for a friend…
Yeah, like when you buy a physical copy of a gane, it’s up to you to make sure you keep that copy somewhere you can find it again, assuming it hasn’t started decomposing.
Well yes, of course. They sell you an installer and it’s on you to download it. That the servers could be turned off at one point in the future because the company doesn’t have money any more should be clear. It’s on you to save the installer on your own hard drive, not the companies!
For those willing to do a bit of CLI work there are even tools to pull your whole library automagically. Just make sure you got the space for it. Sitting at just over 1.5 TB here.
licensing issues
I understand that the buyer doesn’t lose the de facto ability to install the game from a local copy of the installer, but is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG’s end? I’m not saying it is, I’m just curious.
is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG’s end
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that no, you can’t. When you buy the game, you’ve obtained a perpetual license to install and play that game, similar to what you’d have if you bought the game on a disk. You can lose your ability to download the game, that isn’t guaranteed to be unlimited or perpetual, but installing it via the installer you downloaded, and playing it once you do, are forever. (This is in contrast to something like Steam, where you rely on their servers granting you permission to install the game, and that permission can be revoked.)
How is backing up an installer from GoG different in any way to backup a game folder in Steam?
Both can be copied to a different computer and used to run the game offline forever (unless of course the game has DRM, in which case both suffer from the same problem).
Right, if you download the offline installers, then they can’t stop you from doing whatever you’re going to do with it but you don’t own them. Legally, you can’t sell them, transfer them to someone else, etc.
There are other sections that make the lack of ownership by you clear and that you still have to abide by the publisher’s/developer’s licensing agreements but Section 10 states the situation outright:
Section 10 of the GOG user agreement says:
GOG content is owned by its developers/publishers and licensed by us.
Did people think they meant something else? Or was it more that they didn’t really elaborate and folks didn’t know quite what they meant?
I think they are clarifying due to what has happened with Ubisoft. They’re also using it as an opportunity to spread the word farther that they won’t do the same thing.
It’s too clarify that in their case the games you buy on their platform don’t require anything in particular to install (just the install file that you can download from their website directly and back up for later use), contrary to all other major stores.
Okay gog sucks but this actually makes me wonder if I should dry them again anyway.
What aspect of GoG did you find sucked?
Their software. I don’t want to go to a site and download a game to find an actual functional launcher (and file management, etc) somewhere else. GOG galaxy is terrible on windows and doesn’t support Linux, despite the overlap between their philosophy and Linux users.
Steam isn’t just a store. It manages my large library with no work on my part, including reasonably high quality tags to make it easier to find games for whatever mood I’m in. It completely seamlessly handles Linux support on almost all of my games, while giving me all the freedom I need to make changes in the rare cases their out of the box setup has issues. It has an exceptionally high quality input mapping tool that is done per game and has a large catalogue of user generated control schemes. It handles simple modding for a lot of games that don’t need anything too crazy. It handles cloud saves so invisibly between devices that I almost never have to think about it.
I will (and have) pay for a game on Steam when I have it on GOG for free, if I actually want to play it. I’ll eventually be self hosting almost all of my other media, and have taken steps in that direction, but I definitely will not be doing so for games. Steam is just too much better than any third party options.
To be fair GoG selling point is that it doesn’t use any external software, it tries to emulate the old disk feel.
Personally I identify much more closely with GoG philosophy, i.e. mostly no DRM, manage the games on my own, etc. However I use Linux, and Steam has been investing into it so I’ll keep giving them my money (the input management is indeed great, but not enough on its own for me).
So what’s the problem about using third party clients like heroic game launcher ? Or did I understand the first line of your post wrong ?
Heroic is just as terrible. None of the alternative ways to manage game libraries support any of the large list of features that Steam does that I rely upon to make PC gaming a comfortable experience, and that list was far from comprehensive.
Until there’s an open game library management tool in any way comparable to Steam, DRM free has no value to me. I’m willing to (and want to, for the things I haven’t yet) self host movies, ebooks, audiobooks, TV shows, etc, because you can get a functional experience with them. I am not willing to do so with games because you cannot.
Steam makes millions of dollars for Valve. They can afford to put a lot of work into making it impossible for anyone to ever catch up to them. If you will never use anything else until it has feature parity with steam as well as having other upsides compared to it, you are never going to benefit from the other upsides.
What upsides?
A. Many games that are DRM free on GOG are also DRM free on Steam.
B. Most of the games that are only DRM free on GOG are old, out of date builds that don’t get bug fixes and updates.
C. Even if both of those weren’t true, DRM free isn’t worth a terrible UX and no features. If GOG had feature parity for everything Steam does except big picture mode, big picture mode alone would outweigh the outrageously small chance that Steam somehow removes access to my games.
But they’re not just not at feature parity. They’re like 2 out of 10 software. Better than Epic’s 0 of 10, but still really bad.
GOG is pretty good because of this. I check in there if I’m considering buying something on Steam. There might still be compelling reasons to buy on Steam, like I bought Parkitect on Steam because a review on GOG specifically called out how the mods really only work well on Steam, but I’m at least checking first and maybe Wishlisting the game on GOG. I have fairly reasonable trust in Valve while Gabe is running it, but I feel like I can have longer trust in keeping copies of installers myself.
