Class action lawsuit material, if there's ever been one... 😠

> game libraries

...of Alexandria, if Ubi has their way

This sounds familiar. Many years ago my family opened a bank account in my name. When we went to access it recently we found the bank had closed it due to inactivity and taken the money. It wasn't a lot, but still, WTF? How is this legal?

The enshittification of digital services continues...

Anything that requires you to connect to the internet in order authenticate will fail at some point. This is why I mistrust digital storefronts, with the exception of GOG.

GOG allows you to download the game's offline installer, copy it over to your local storage device, and then use it at your leisure forevermore. No internet connection is required after that initial download, and there is no DRM either.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-24, 16:59:

Anything that requires you to connect to the internet in order authenticate will fail at some point. This is why I mistrust digital storefronts, with the exception of GOG.

This is why I treat digital collections as rental libraries. No reason to get attached to it, because it will all disappear at some point.

It's Ubishit. All their good games came before Ubisoft connect and nothing good came after. They are doing you a favor but if for some reason you didn't crack "your" games like you should have been doing then you should be logging in to all of your online accounts regularly.

After Steam dropped WinXP support which really hurt many of my old games on the platform, I've gone out of my way to only buy on GOG

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-24, 16:59:

Anything that requires you to connect to the internet in order authenticate will fail at some point. This is why I mistrust digital storefronts, with the exception of GOG.

GOG allows you to download the game's offline installer, copy it over to your local storage device, and then use it at your leisure forevermore. No internet connection is required after that initial download, and there is no DRM either.

I think this has been going around on Reddit recently:

By the way, you absolutely should archive your games even if you buy them on GoG. Recently when Epic messed with the older Unreal Tournament games as well as Saints Row IV, they got updated on GoG too and I think the only offline installer you can download now is for the updated ones.

In my case, I lost money on Steam, their reasons are their problem, not mine, I paid. In Square Enix too, I simply can't download the two games I had bought, possibly because they aren't available anymore.
It could have been worse.
Hopefully GOG doesn't go over to the dark side, There I have a lot more to lose.
But none of this is new, abuse is common once they have enough users that they don't mind losing a few "crazy" ones.
I was going to make a more explicit comment, but it's useless to expect users of those platforms to worry about this and it's not worth thinking about, just don't use these types of platforms anymore.

Regardless of whatever advantages they may have (and there are some), it's clear that the push for digital game/media stores, streaming and the whole "software as a service" thing has never been about convenience for the end user or trying to enhance whatever product they put out. It is, and has always been, about control and NOTHING else, any positives about the whole thing are just side-effects.

These companies are not only looking for customers to pay several times to re-purchase the products they already own, but more importantly they want you to know who's in charge. It's kind of sadistic when you think of it.

Hoping wrote on 2023-07-24, 21:09:

Hopefully GOG doesn't go over to the dark side, There I have a lot more to lose.

Download the installers and keep them archived, preferably with backups.

GOG is my favorite too and the only digital storefront I use but you have to be realistic. They've struggled to get any big sellers on their platform for years and have been releasing shoestring budget shovelware in increasing numbers since they can't get anything else while starting to hold NSFW (not suitable for work = nudity/sex games) sales.

I'm not too sure how well they are holding on financially and they could end up doing something less great just to stay afloat. It's also entirely possible that they are financially ok but could still go down the drain because "just look at how well these hentai games are selling, let's do more stuff like this!"

Sombrero wrote on 2023-07-25, 04:18:

Hoping wrote on 2023-07-24, 21:09:

Hopefully GOG doesn't go over to the dark side, There I have a lot more to lose.

Download the installers and keep them archived, preferably with backups.

That's also what I'm doing, but I also download CD images from archive.org or similar sites, of the GoG games I've purchased, as "secondary backups".

Sombrero wrote on 2023-07-25, 04:18:

GOG is my favorite too and the only digital storefront I use but you have to be realistic. They've struggled to get any big sellers on their platform for years and have been releasing shoestring budget shovelware in increasing numbers since they can't get anything else while starting to hold NSFW (not suitable for work = nudity/sex games) sales.

I'm not too sure how well they are holding on financially and they could end up doing something less great just to stay afloat. It's also entirely possible that they are financially ok but could still go down the drain because "just look at how well these hentai games are selling, let's do more stuff like this!"

From my POV as a customer, there is nothing wrong with GoG so far, but I'm concerned it will screw its customers at some point in the future, which seems to be inevitable for every corporation. As a company grows, its founders --who usually have entrepreneurial mentality-- will be inevitably replaced by those with corporate executive mentality, and that's usually when us consumers get screwed. Steve Jobs was probably a narcissist, but at least he still attempted to please Apple customers with innovative products. But after Jobs (entrepreneur) was replaced by Cook (corporate executive), then Apple started doing things like this, this, and this. Anyone remember Full Throttle? I have worked in both large and small companies, where the small ones are typically managed by their founders/owners. And based on my experience, the archetypes of Malcolm Corley and Adrian Ripburger are more real that I originally thought.

In any case, GoG is the only online PC game store I have account on. Never interested in Steam, and never interested in Ubisoft either. DRM has always been my biggest turn off from the very start. What happens at Ubisoft today doesn't surprise me at all, it's been expected.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-07-25, 04:18:

They've struggled to get any big sellers on their platform for years and have been releasing shoestring budget shovelware in increasing numbers since they can't get anything else

Not a huge surprise. AAA publishers has an obscene DRM fetish. Probably the managers just gobble up DRM company marketing, because it's been shown several times DRM has minimal to no positive effects on sales. I just read a couple of days ago Denuvo wants to pay some "independent" reviews to show their DRM doesn't throttle gaming performance.

It doesn't help GoG, but I think 95% of AAA games are mediocre or worse anyway and I have no interest in them regardless of the platform or the existence of DRM, while most of the good AA titles come to their platform.

My problem is that Steam offers really great baked in Linux compatibility, while GoG is only "working" on their Linux client for over half a decade at this point nothing to show for it. Not to mention an actual compatibility layer for the games themselves. The games generally run alright through Lutris, but it's far form the same level of support Steam offers.

That's why it didn't hurt me Steam ends W7 and 8 support. I've no intention of going back to Windows with my Steam library to begin with.

Somewhere down the line the only old games that will be playable will be ones with original media that didn't have crazy copy protections on the media, and pirated copies. This would only be for single player games as pretty much every online game will have the servers shut down. New games are all online downloads or ones where you need updates to make the game playable (newer consoles). The only stuff that will be collectable will be stuff sold before the internet took over in gaming for both PC and consoles.

I prefer GOG for buying games plus a few from Steam but EPIC and the rest were mostly free. Even GOG isn't perfect because they keep updating games for newer OS which will break compatibility with older OS and hardware you probably wanted to play the game on to begin with. So, you have to be a complete software library download before every major OS/DirectX/programming tool release and archive it.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-24, 19:38:

By the way, you absolutely should archive your games even if you buy them on GoG. Recently when Epic messed with the older Unreal Tournament games as well as Saints Row IV, they got updated on GoG too and I think the only offline installer you can download now is for the updated ones.

I have a physical copy of Unreal Anthology, which is a collection of all Unreal games up to and including UT 2004. But yeah, I do download and backup all of my GOG offline installers.

Sometimes, a music license may expire or some such, and they might be forced to alter an existing game to comply with that. Not sure if that ever happened on GOG, but I remember there being an uproar back when music was removed from some GTA games on Steam.

This is one of the reasons why I started getting more into physical games as of late. In particular, I like the bargain bin releases like Sold Out, since they are cheap, and usually have the PDF manual and the latest official patch on the disc. For all the great things about GOG, there is also a downside to their games in that they are often pre-patched with fan fixes and wrappers so that they can run on modern hardware. Not so great if you want to play them on a retro rig.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-25, 05:33:

I have a physical copy of Unreal Anthology, which is a collection of all Unreal games up to and including UT 2004. But yeah, I d […]
Show full quote

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-24, 19:38:

By the way, you absolutely should archive your games even if you buy them on GoG. Recently when Epic messed with the older Unreal Tournament games as well as Saints Row IV, they got updated on GoG too and I think the only offline installer you can download now is for the updated ones.

I have a physical copy of Unreal Anthology, which is a collection of all Unreal games up to and including UT 2004. But yeah, I do download and backup all of my GOG offline installers.

Sometimes, a music license may expire or some such, and they might be forced to alter an existing game to comply with that. Not sure if that ever happened on GOG, but I remember there being an uproar back when music was removed from some GTA games on Steam.

This is one of the reasons why I started getting more into physical games as of late. In particular, I like the bargain bin releases like Sold Out, since they are cheap, and usually have the PDF manual and the latest official patch on the disc. For all the great things about GOG, there is also a downside to their games in that they are often pre-patched with fan fixes and wrappers so that they can run on modern hardware. Not so great if you want to play them on a retro rig.

Same here, but I prefer early (unpatched) versions for better version control. I also like having the printed manual and the original cover art design.
And I hate the Sold-Out launcher. I find it often being buggy or slow on certain systems.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-25, 06:01:

And I hate the Sold-Out launcher. I find it often being buggy or slow on certain systems.

Yeah, that launcher is a mess.

But most of the time you can ignore Sold Out's setup.now.exe and just run the executable of the original game installer instead, which is usually on the disc as well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-25, 05:33:

Sometimes, a music license may expire or some such, and they might be forced to alter an existing game to comply with that. Not sure if that ever happened on GOG, but I remember there being an uproar back when music was removed from some GTA games on Steam.

Pretty sure GOG version of Mafia got hit like that. To my understanding it's trivial to add the removed music back but there you go.