GOG's Preservation Program Is the DRM-Free Store Refocusing On the Classics (arstechnica.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk. Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp.
GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol. "We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products," writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales and marketing at GOG. "If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (we've been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years)."
What kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I'm glad to see the Jagged Alliance games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and the Wing Commander series (particularly, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date. [...] [I]f you see the shiny foil-ish GOG badge on a game, it's an assurance that GOG has done all it can to bring forward a classic title. It's important work, too. "Preserving" games doesn't just mean locking a stable media in a vault, but keeping games accessible, and playable.
GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol. "We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products," writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales and marketing at GOG. "If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (we've been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years)."
What kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I'm glad to see the Jagged Alliance games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and the Wing Commander series (particularly, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date. [...] [I]f you see the shiny foil-ish GOG badge on a game, it's an assurance that GOG has done all it can to bring forward a classic title. It's important work, too. "Preserving" games doesn't just mean locking a stable media in a vault, but keeping games accessible, and playable.
Not bad, but DOS/Windows games only, apparently. (Score:2)
I see they have what appears to be the DOS version of Ultima 6, but I would prefer the Amiga version of that one. There are several classic games of this era which had arguably better Amiga ports, and it would be nice to see some of the same preservation effort applied to them as well. Am I wrong, do they actually have some Amiga titles buried in this catalog too, or not?
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I thought the Amiga port of U6 was the bad one?
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Maybe that's a bad example, I don't recall clearly. In many cases it's highly subjective, like one of them will have better music but the other will have better graphics. In some cases there's a clearly superior one across the board though, and often it's the Amiga one, especially for the earlier titles.
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Oh, you're probably thinking of the C64 port, which was significantly more stripped down than either of those two.
Re:Not bad, but DOS/Windows games only, apparently (Score:4, Insightful)
if it wasn't for the corruption of copyright, all this would be already in the public's domain
this is the inevitable result of classism and market corruption
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I see they have what appears to be the DOS version of Ultima 6, but I would prefer the Amiga version of that one. There are several classic games of this era which had arguably better Amiga ports, and it would be nice to see some of the same preservation effort applied to them as well. Am I wrong, do they actually have some Amiga titles buried in this catalog too, or not?
1.) Is not only DOS/Windows, there are some Mac and Linux (even native linux) gam,es too.
2.) As for amiga, any games that use SCUMM VM can handle amiga games fine. If an amiga version of such a game is the superior one, there is no technicall limitation for GoG to use that version, perhaps licensing, but that is a whole other can of worms...
Re: Not bad, but DOS/Windows games only, apparentl (Score:4, Informative)
For GOG, offering Amiga games implies distributing and supporting an Amiga emulator, and this might be a non-trivial task, particularly if they never distributed Amiga titles before.
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With Amiga the ROMs are still copyrighted and you'd need to license them legally (which is cheap - I can't remember how much, but I licensed them years ago for a very modest fee) so if GOG sold an "Amiga add-on" package they could include the fee.
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From memory the Amiga ROMs are currently licensed to a few different companies, so GOG could probably obtain such a license to distribute them. I have no idea what the terms are though, they might want too much money for it to be worth it.
For emulation, WinUAE works great and isn't difficult to bundle so you double click and it launches the game. You can even script stuff so that it runs at maximum speed while the machine boots, and then goes back to 100% speed (the same as a real Amiga). The emulation is e
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> DOS version of Ultima 6, but I would prefer the Amiga version of that one.
Why? VGA 320x200 @ 256 colors with an 18-bit Palette + Roland MT-32 is vastly superior to the Amiga version.
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Amiga ROM's are not Public Domain. You will NEVER see the Amiga, Mac, or Atari versions of any game on GOG.
You will only see:
MSDOS versions of games using an out-of-date version of DOSBOX, that is actually NOT running optimally.
It is possible for GOG to do these too, but I have not seen it:
Apple II/C64 versions that were written in BASIC that are running on a "native" BASIC interpreter, for which only I think one exists for the C64.
VM's versions of games using SCUMMVM. So some games that have the same game
Linux (Score:3)
>"and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date."
Hmm, I went there: https://www.gog.com/en/games?s... [gog.com] and chose Linux and it showed me 2,379 Linux games. Granted some are duplicates, and others are "soundtracks." If I check the "Good Old Games" tickbox, then I see the "19" mentioned. So what are all the other thousands?
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Probably just the ones that haven't been personally verified by their staff, or have been checked and Proton bugs were found.
Wary of this (Score:3)
I'm wary of this. The last thing I want is my newly-compatibilised GOG game to run on Windows 10 but lose support for 7. What I want is GOG to spend equal effort getting the older titles running on their original target systems, then -XP or 7- specifically, with modern Windows support following naturally from those OSes. Some of the GOG titles like Jazz 2 won't install on their original destined OS (200 mhz pentium) because the GOG installer doesn't support Windows 98. That's not good.
And definitely they should always keep the full update history of every item available in a dropdown on the GOG -website- interface, not Galaxy. The last thing I want is GOG to make my GOG library -not- work on the computers I already own in pursuit of compatibility with computers I don't.
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If there's a version of software on GoG you want to preserve, grab it and archive it locally.
Re: Wary of this (Score:2)
A couple of years ago, I bought something from GOG. I didn't like the installer, so I went and downloaded the same game again from a p*rate site. In the end, I got the game exactly as I wanted it, plus I could play it legally, plus my conscience was happy. A win-win-win.
Maybe fix what you already have? (Score:2)
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That's a publisher decision. Plus it's nearly impossible to get a Unity title without telemetry now. Though most of those titles should run without an Internet connection.
You can still store and copy offline backups, meaning no actual DRM is present.
Re: Maybe fix what you already have? (Score:1)
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No, you can't copy and store Denuvo or Steam guard titles. You at least need the Steam client software to run the stuff. Example: Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous has Unity telemetry (which I firewall) and you can run it without Galaxy or an Internet connection.
Re: Maybe fix what you already have? (Score:1)
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Then what's the point? If you don't even phone home you can't run the local copy. Plus I don't think you can store installers + patches like you can with GoG. You need a fully installed copy that's much harder to back up.
Yeah I get it, you don't like the telemetry. If GoG didn't allow it, they wouldn't get anything new except a few rare titles and a lot of shovel ware. Everyone reports on the titles with telemetry. Avoid them if you so choose.
Re: Maybe fix what you already have? (Score:1)
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What games were these?
Warcraft 1 and 2 just got remastered (Score:2)
Synchronistically Warcraft 1 [battle.net] and Warcraft 2 [battle.net] got remastered and are available today. You can gift them but you can't gift the Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest [slashdot.org] which includes 5 games.
To be precise (Score:3)
To be precise, GOG don't just list software that publishers have stopped selling. GOG get the rights to abandon-ware, update the installer file, then bully all the abandon-ware sites into deleting their copy. I suppose, it's great that someone is making old software DRM-free, available and compatible.
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Could you elaborate on that at all? I've never heard that before - not saying not happening, just curious.
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I don't think it's coincidence that game disappeared from independent repositories (IIRC, that included the Internet Archive, at least one time.) simultaneously. If GOG has rights to software, they can use the DMCA against other people who happen to hold the software.
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Did they actually bu
Good amount of Mac games, system too new.... (Score:2)
Good Old Games (Score:2)
Almost like there was a clue in their name as to their original mission/purpose.