NGL This feels disingenuous coming from GOG, Yes, you can keep the installers, but you do NOT own the game.
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
850 points (95.4% liked)
Games
32114 readers
1523 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Okay steam, if its just a digital license and not ownership.. Then surely you'll be significantly lowering prices, Since you charge full ownership prices for games, not license prices.. Right?
load more comments
(17 replies)
Now can we get proton support for GoG that is as convient and reliable as it is in Steam?
Remember when they said Galaxy would get linux support? That didn't happen, and that promise got quietly retracted...
That said, Heroic is unofficial but has worked quite well.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(17 replies)
I like GOG and I like steam too. While it is true that GOG can't take the offline installer from me, this does not make it true I can play the game forever since many games are dynamically linked to libraries that may not be available in the future. This happened to me with games I just had bought. Steam also dynamically links to libraries but what I like about the way they are doing it is that these are part of the base installation so as long as you keep these files, the games should keep working. Nothing being perfect, I think they both try to do things in their own way and try to convince us that it is the best one.
All online storefronts doing business in California will soon be forbidden by law to lie to customers with words like "buy" when they really mean "license". GOG is no exception.
https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab2426
My understanding is that GOG is an exception to this. Here is a quote that I got from an Ars Technica article
California's AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer "permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet." Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms "buy, purchase," or related terms that would "confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good." And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that "the digital good is a license" and link to terms and conditions.
Since GOG does offer permanent offline installers that can be used without an internet connection, GOG's sales are exempt from this new law.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Doesn't steam have a clause to the effect of "if we go out of business, you'll get X period to download your games so you can manage them yourself"?
Even if that's not the case, the drm is very easy to crack.
I don't know if it's a clause but Gabe said it at one point. Is that legally binding though? It wouldn't surprise me one bit that whatever VC eventually buys steam and then runs it into the ground would have no problem changing the user agreement to whatever suited them....
I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document
And yes, if a VC buys out steam I'd be horrified, but it's structurally resistant to that. It's largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society's problems
It's not legally binding, since it isn't part of the user agreement you review when buying games on Steam.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Doesn't owning something mean you can sell it? That doesn't apply to GOG, though.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Even DRM-free, all digital purchases are still just a license, legally speaking.
Pragmatically speaking, they can't forcibly take the bits off my hard drive. But it also bears pointing out that these days most games on Steam don't bother enabling Steamworks DRM either.
load more comments
(1 replies)