Most of us would love this "feature", but i don't think it will happen'.... I would be the first one who would store all those games on floppies or CDs, because i'm in love in physical copies of old games, but i don't see that time will ever come 🙁

Can someone please explain why an address to GOG is posted here, exactly? Are VOGONS somehow affiliated with GOG?

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-05-15, 14:32:

Can someone please explain why an address to GOG is posted here, exactly? Are VOGONS somehow affiliated with GOG?

No.
But I imagine such post might get straight-up deleted on GOG? (Or maybe not?)

That said, I don't got the time to wait for some company to listen to my requests for stuff like this. If I have (legally bought) the game already on Steam or Epic, and if it's an old(er) game that was also (or originally) released on CD/DVD, then I usually just torrent the damn thing (to use on my older PCs that can't run Steam or Epic launcher) and call it done.

I see no good reason for GOG to provide more often than not DRM protected ISOs. They could provide FLAC audio CD rips when it's applicable though, as an extra.

I just read an article about why the release of "historic" sourcecode has value.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/micro … asic-from-1978/

I feel the same about the actual original software. Its great to have a convenient win11 installer, but the original release remains something special and important .

While I share the sentiment, the proper place to post that is:

https://www.gog.com/forum

Well, its already there.... (please add your vote)

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/provide_ori … th_gog_purchase

but we may need to increase the awareness of the issue a but more.

Aui wrote on 2025-09-06, 06:36:

I just read an article about why the release of "historic" sourcecode has value.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/micro … asic-from-1978/

I feel the same about the actual original software. Its great to have a convenient win11 installer, but the original release remains something special and important .

Let's be honest: GOG is first-and-foremost a business. Their main focus is on providing DRM-free games that "just work" on modern platforms. I doubt they're ever going to make an appeal to the tiny fraction of customers that use original hardware.

If you're interested in the preservation of original media or source code, I wouldn't place many expectations on a for-profit business. There are some fan-led preservation efforts that are worthy of praise, though (but I guess we can't talk about that here). And NPOs like the Video Game History Foundation.

The fact that GOG manages to provide games DRM free is good enough for me.

jh80 wrote on 2025-09-06, 10:45:

Let's be honest: GOG is first-and-foremost a business. Their main focus is on providing DRM-free games that "just work" on modern platforms.

Agreed, and I am enternally greatful for this. I accept physical media is all but dead, but at least DRM free means if you plan ahead you can have offline installers for versions of windows that have gone EOL.
eg Steam no longer supporting Win XP/7 even though the games themselves do.

While I'd love it if GOG did do this, I'd think the original image files is more someting like archive.org would host

Been collecting original images both floppies and CDs from Internet Archive, since I don't have the means to preserve those from my collection in perfect images.

And using floppy/CD images are more authentic when used with 86Box.

Despite the "grey area" mindset, I see digital image preservation is the only way to keep classics alive in the original form.

Coming back to the topic, it would have been more appropriate if the OP mentioned about his intention and just leave a link to his post at GOG rather than copy and pasting the whole post here.

Well, I went over to GOG and voted on the thread.

Like most others, I would love this. Not sure it will ever happen for a variety of reasons, so in the meantime, I'll keep buying them as is and use other means for orignal files/images. 😀

Thinking of getting a Greesewhesle to help with some of my own personal archiving.

I wonder how much of GOG's business is made up of retro-enthusiasts who really care about specific or niche versions of game. My guess is not much. I figure they are going after the people who want just any version. I know I passed up many a purchase because the version they offered either didn't have the content I wanted, or didn't take advantage of my computer's graphics or sound card (when I knew I could pirate a version that did). Heck, I felt burned a couple times when I purchased an arcade title, only to find the launcher didn't work under Windows 11. Posted about it on their forums, only to be told to run it through mame. This required me to pirate additional roms to get it to work, and made me think, if I have to pirate roms to play my purchased roms, why don't I just pirate everything? Well, I guess if everyone thought like me, GOG wouldn't be in business.

Muckrake wrote on 2025-10-03, 00:13:

Heck, I felt burned a couple times when I purchased an arcade title, only to find the launcher didn't work under Windows 11.

Really? Thats what I consider GOG's main market, Selling games in a package that'll work on current systems!
Well at least at the start. They sell just as many Indy games now as classic's but I guess at some point the supply of legally obtainable old titles would dry up so that's fair enough.

But yeh, I don't think they give much thought to people trying to use original hardware or specific version's of a game. That's a very small % of an already small audience.

Muckrake wrote on 2025-10-03, 00:13:

Heck, I felt burned a couple times when I purchased an arcade title, only to find the launcher didn't work under Windows 11. Posted about it on their forums, only to be told to run it through mame. This required me to pirate additional roms to get it to work, and made me think, if I have to pirate roms to play my purchased roms, why don't I just pirate everything? Well, I guess if everyone thought like me, GOG wouldn't be in business.

I've always had an impression that GOG is not the best when it comes to providing wrappers for games, even DOSBox configurations are not optimal (although I might be too picky at times when it comes to DOSBox).

As for the question of pirating everything, I suppose that theoretically, when you purchase from Steam or GOG you obtain the license for the game, which is what you pay for (primarily), and not for the service of getting an out-of-the-box experience. I believe that recently they explicitly reworded that in at least Steam's EULA that what you pay for is the license, not the game itself.

The interesting implication of this is that I gather that if I obtained a license from a vendor, surely this is not an agreement between me and Steam or GOG, but between me and whoever owns the game (developer, publisher). So when I obtained a license in such a way, then I suppose that even if I download a copy of the same from elsewhere, this is not piracy, because the license is like a permission from the game's owners to play it, no matter where I got it?

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-10-04, 11:54:

So when I obtained a license in such a way, then I suppose that even if I download a copy of the same from elsewhere, this is not piracy, because the license is like a permission from the game's owners to play it, no matter where I got it?

That’s the general consensus. The last court case I’m familiar with was back in the ‘80s when it was ruled that customers had the right to possess copies of the software they purchased. Whether they had to make the copies themselves, or could get them elsewhere is still under dispute. That particular case revolved around software that let you play computer games without a key disk or other copy protection.

I think my concern with GOG at the time was that the version of the game they sold didn’t work with mame out of the box, forcing me to pirate the system bios and an updated version of the game rom. Whether this is actual piracy or not is arguable. The bigger problem is they sold the game claiming it would run on a modern operating system, which it did not. If the other purchasers were like me at the time — ie, new to emulation — this wasn’t a reasonable expectation. They should have just sold the loose roms with a tutorial for mame.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-10-04, 01:48:

Really? Thats what I consider GOG's main market, Selling games in a package that'll work on current systems!
Well at least at the start. They sell just as many Indy games now as classic's but I guess at some point the supply of legally obtainable old titles would dry up so that's fair enough.

That’s a good point. I only purchase Indy games from them now.

Phil did a video about this in the last month or so.

Some games have a "Backup" folder which contain non-compatibility updated versions of the files. Some others have legacy patch directories.

Others require getting rid of the compatibility DLLs that were placed next to the EXE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64rRYj7VxJk

I'm not sure original disk images will be very usable if they contain copy protection. Being able to copy the games files over and having it run is a good middle ground. It's CD digital audio that's the biggest gotcha. But I did comment a possible fix that could work with the PicoGUS's CD emulator, as well as a Win98 software CD emulator.

Muckrake wrote on 2025-10-04, 14:09:

I think my concern with GOG at the time was that the version of the game they sold didn’t work with mame out of the box, forcing me to pirate the system bios and an updated version of the game rom. Whether this is actual piracy or not is arguable.

Oh yes, the reason I don't play emulated Mac games/demos, if they don't run in Executor.