Good Old Games: Pirates Are Our Competition, Not Steam

[Genocidicles]

It's a sad fact of high-end business, the good of the costumer means diddly-squat when the shareholders face diminishing returns of investment, and, as BrotherRool pointed, once Steam faces termination, it will most certainly be because of economic failure, which doesn't give much wiggle room for good will manuevers.

Well Steam is privately owned, so they don't have to jump through hoops trying to keep fickle investors happy.

But yeah, I really doubt in the event Steam fails that Valve will make all our games DRM free. Of course, there are always alternatives to recovering games you owned that were taken away from you because of corporate greed.

 

[llafnwod]

Hell from my limited knowledge of pirated games, aren't they more complex than that? I thought you generally had to muck about with ISOs and mounting virtual discs and all that jazz. Sounds like hassle to me. Pff I thought those pirates were supposed to be providing a service.

Not so much anymore. They mostly favor prebaked installers, or an already unpacked ISO with a crack folder. I don't know how much experience you've had with games with DRM beyond steamworks, but that's definitely providing a service.

DRM getting in the way making people want to pirate? Sounds familiar, buying a game, getting 3 installs then after fiddling with your hardware, which the game CAME WITH, you find you've used up your installs because it counts everything from HDDs to GPUs. More installs? Well there's going through all that tape with Ubisoft or just finding another website. What did I settle on? Not bothering at all.

GOG has no DRM, so what are you talking about?

Nothing. He feels guiltily slighted at the mention of the word "pirate" so he responds with his knee-jerk speech without bothering to examine the content of the OP.

But yeah, I really doubt in the event Steam fails that Valve will make all our games DRM free. Of course, there are always alternatives to recovering games you owned that were taken away from you because of corporate greed.

This will not happen. I have no idea how people can believe this outside of pure wish-fulfillment. Valve does not have the authority to arbitrarily rescind the DRM it has agreed to publishers to provide.

 

[Genocidicles]

This will not happen. I have no idea how people can believe this outside of pure wish-fulfillment. Valve does not have the authority to arbitrarily rescind the DRM it has agreed to publishers to provide.

Uh... that's what I was saying. But there are ways to find replacements to games that may be lost when Steam falls... such as getting a retail version and using a crack to remove the Steam requirement, as well as other slightly less legal methods.

 

[Doom972]

Makes sense. Steam is for AAA and indie games, with many intergrated features, at the cost of having your games tied to the user's Steam account and not owned directly by the user. GOG is for retro and indie games in a restriction-free service.

Both are different services for different user-bases. I'm glad that on the PC we get a choice.

As for Steam going bankrupt (blasphemy!), I doubt it'll just disappear. It's far more likely that another company will buy it.

 

[llafnwod]

Uh... that's what I was saying. But there are ways to find replacements to games that may be lost when Steam falls... such as getting a retail version and using a crack to remove the Steam requirement, as well as other slightly less legal methods.

I know, man, I was agreeing with you. But using a crack to circumvent DRM on a legitimately purchased game is still usually a breach of the EULA.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I like to imagine that Valve are using their Steam revenue to make Half Life 3 into a giant titanic super-game.

It's what I'd like to imagine, but we all know that they're just making more hats.

 

[RicoADF]

Yeah I'm not sure GOG could get much more convenient. Unless you're wanting to patch/mod games that you've bought (which is none of their concern so nothing they can/should deal with) it really is a case of click to buy - click to download - click to install - click to play.

Hell from my limited knowledge of pirated games, aren't they more complex than that? I thought you generally had to muck about with ISOs and mounting virtual discs and all that jazz. Sounds like hassle to me. Pff I thought those pirates were supposed to be providing a service.

Yeah gog has gotten to the perfect point, I buy the game, download the game, install the game then play the game. That simple. Steam has gotten it to that point as well which is why their popular, Origin has also but their prices are stupid. However the last 2 get complicated when the net is down (they can work offline but sometimes they have a hissy fit and say no, gog never has that issue).

 

[Ishigami]

Since Steam and GoG do not sell the same games afaik it is obvious that they don't compete...

 

[RicoADF]

Yeah I'm not sure GOG could get much more convenient. Unless you're wanting to patch/mod games that you've bought (which is none of their concern so nothing they can/should deal with) it really is a case of click to buy - click to download - click to install - click to play.

Hell from my limited knowledge of pirated games, aren't they more complex than that? I thought you generally had to muck about with ISOs and mounting virtual discs and all that jazz. Sounds like hassle to me. Pff I thought those pirates were supposed to be providing a service.

You're right, installing a game off an ISO would actually be an extra couple of steps. You can throw in one step more if the torrent is in a split rar. So you have

GoG: Search for game -> pay for game -> download game -> play game

Torrent: Search for game -> download game -> unrar game -> mount .iso -> install game -> play game

OT: I have ALWAYS said that piracy is an issue of convince rather than people trying to steal stuff. Look at Russia, for the longest time, no-one released games in Russia because "all Russians pirate games." Of course, the Russians only pirated the games because there was no legitimate means for them to get them. Valve, and a handful of other developers, really tried their best to open themselves up to the Russian market and lo and behold, Russians actually fucking bought the games that were available to legitimately buy.

Other factors, such as lack of demos, "day 1 DLC", and gross inequalities in region pricing force otherwise legitimate customers to piracy. I honestly don't feel bad at all when I hear about my friends back home in Australia pirating the latest Call of Duty because Activision feels it can charge Aussies double what Americans pay for a digital copy of the game.

If an Aussie is paying that much for a game they need to be acquainted with ozgameship.com, for eg: Pre-order for CoD Ghost on PS3 is $64.99 and most games are far less than that. Nowadays I refuse to pay the rip off prices and frankly even in retail stores most games have dropped to $70-80 new (PS3/xbox), so theres no excuse to accept the old prices unless it's a collectors edition...

You've just got to shop smartly, oh and GoG/Greenman gaming/Steam rule for cheap new games

 

[Woodsey]

I find it hard to believe to that anyone's genuinely worried about Steam going to down, although I won't mention why for fear of The Escapist's ban hammer.

 

[Teoes]

Since Steam and GoG do not sell the same games afaik it is obvious that they don't compete...

Not that it's a big deal but there's plenty for sale on both sites. Purely off the of my head: The Witcher games, Alan Wake, System Shock 2 and pretty much every indie game that GOG sells.

EDIT: in general on the topic at hand and more evidence of just how lovely GOG is, I just found a Thank You note on their website for the success of their recent summer sale.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to service downtime with one of our payment processing providers some of you couldn't complete your purchases on Monday, July 1st (between 7:46PM GMT and 9:18PM GMT). This was a worldwide issue affecting not only GOG.com users. The problem wasn't caused nor could it be fixed by us, but we're concerned with the fact that some of our customers missed out on our Monday offers.

We think that's unfair, so if you were one of those people, please contact our support. If your purchase failed during that time and your funds were frozen on your account, we will send you some free game codes to make up for your inconvenience.

I love this lot.

 

[themilo504]

All very nice but can you please stop charging so much for very old games.

I mean 6 bucks for ultima 4 5 6, that?s ridiculous for games that old, so until you chance the price to 2 bucks I?m sticking with abandonware thank you very much.

 

[targren]

I love these guys, and we need more like them. Not only do they own up to their own mistakes -- during the #NoDRM sale, their email "flyer" had the wrong cutoff time for a free game and they, shock of shocks, HONORED it, even extending the deadline to make up for the hoop-jump of having to go through the support system for the code. They even care about OTHER people's screwups as it affects their customers, like Teoes said.

 

[MHzBurglar]

DRM getting in the way making people want to pirate? Sounds familiar, buying a game, getting 3 installs then after fiddling with your hardware, which the game CAME WITH, you find you've used up your installs because it counts everything from HDDs to GPUs. More installs? Well there's going through all that tape with Ubisoft or just finding another website. What did I settle on? Not bothering at all.

GOG has no DRM, so what are you talking about?

I believe Snotnarok's referring to Ubisoft's draconian "limited installs" DRM they used to use before introducing their Steam clone, UPlay. This was a dig at Ubisoft, not GoG.

Edit: Oops, llafnwod already answered this and I missed that post. Nevermind.

 

[Something Amyss]

i always assumed in the best case of steam going under that the publishers and developers might patch the game to make it playable

It's always bad to assume. It's especially bad o assume good will from the gaming industry.

Steam is very good for people who live in the US, not so for people who don't. They don't enforce fair prices among publishes and seeing as how big they are; they probably should.

Yeah, but why would they do that? I mean, sure. It'd fit with the perception of Valve, but why would they bother making it a reality?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Yeah I'm not sure GOG could get much more convenient. Unless you're wanting to patch/mod games that you've bought (which is none of their concern so nothing they can/should deal with) it really is a case of click to buy - click to download - click to install - click to play.

I'd disagree. A lot of GOG's library requires workarounds or fixes to work on modern PCs. Some of the game straight up do not work, yet GOG sells them with little warning.

This is another decent reason why its not as popular as Steam. Piracy is one thing, selling games that straight up don't work anymore is another.

 

[Snotnarok]

DRM getting in the way making people want to pirate? Sounds familiar, buying a game, getting 3 installs then after fiddling with your hardware, which the game CAME WITH, you find you've used up your installs because it counts everything from HDDs to GPUs. More installs? Well there's going through all that tape with Ubisoft or just finding another website. What did I settle on? Not bothering at all.

GOG has no DRM, so what are you talking about?

DRM In general? That is a topic here, the guy from gog bringing up that he wants it to be more convenient than piracy, which many developers/pubs go against with their own policies.

 

[Evil Smurf]

DRM getting in the way making people want to pirate? Sounds familiar, buying a game, getting 3 installs then after fiddling with your hardware, which the game CAME WITH, you find you've used up your installs because it counts everything from HDDs to GPUs. More installs? Well there's going through all that tape with Ubisoft or just finding another website. What did I settle on? Not bothering at all.

GOG has no DRM, so what are you talking about?

DRM In general? That is a topic here, the guy from gog bringing up that he wants it to be more convenient than piracy, which many developers/pubs go against with their own policies.

DRM should be more convenient then piracy, Take steam for example: you don't have to jump through hoops to play your game, just download it and hit play.

 

[RicoADF]

I'd disagree. A lot of GOG's library requires workarounds or fixes to work on modern PCs. Some of the game straight up do not work, yet GOG sells them with little warning.

This is another decent reason why its not as popular as Steam. Piracy is one thing, selling games that straight up don't work anymore is another.

I've purchased alot of games from GoG and none have had issues running, the games have been updated (either using dos box or by patching) to work on modern systems. Not saying it's impossible, but sofar I haven't seen an issue (and I have alot of games on there).

DRM In general? That is a topic here, the guy from gog bringing up that he wants it to be more convenient than piracy, which many developers/pubs go against with their own policies.

Games on gog (weather new or old) don't have DRM as it's apart of the agreement of selling the game on the site. He's saying what gog's view on the issue of piracy is, their philosophy, and one that has worked well for them too.