GOG

Why is this shit allowed?

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You guys use that term way too liberally tbh

Get the fuck out and go choke on GayBen's penis, shill.

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Sorry but you are wrong.

wrong website friendo

I'm not saying that anyone on this site does, but someone is clearly paying for this.

It's not abandonware if it's being legitimately sold and distributed by those who own the rights.

Still abandonware.

it just works out of the box really

There's no more appropriate word for it than "abandonware".

That's not an argument

Dubs

Now

Please leave

No, the appropriate word would be "oldware". Being old doesn't mean something is abandoned.

But in most cases it is until some nobody claims that he owns the rights and you shouldn't be downloading the game for free anymore.

Did Gaben's false promise of Half-life 3 made you shill out several threads? but hey guys, DRM-free of abandoned games or IPs is bad! it'll hurt Steam and in turn hurt the chances of Half-life 3!

No, what happens is that the legit rights owner doesn't want to pay the expense and effort to distribute it themselves, but when someone else offers a convenient method (gog, steam, etc.), they decide to use it. "Abandonware" is not a legally recognized term, in the first place, and those who don't own the ip but distribute it for free don't actually have any legal right to do so. The owners just usually don't give enough of a fuck to stop them.

I miss when oldgames websites didnt all link to BUY IT ON GOG and you could build your own dos library without paying just because gog decided to become vr steam

This is probably bait but whatever.
Ignoring the fact that most people here are pirates, the main reason people buy shit from gog is because it's not available elsewhere and it's easy to install and run. gog also offers support for the games they sell which is the opposite of abandonware.

Not to mention they patch the older games for you. I'm willing to shell a few shekels to get old directx 4.0 shit running smoothly on a new system.

It isn't abandoned if they're selling it

If i cant find a download, i'll buy from gog. They dont jew me out too bad. Wizardry 9 for 10 dollars is reasonable.

Free market, you fucking communist faggot.

8*

Wasn't it that they were using pirate cracks to get shit running sometimes, or was that all bullshit in the end?

What about IP that has expired or companies that went out of business and the IP wasn't sold. Who owns it then? It seems more than a bit retarded that any company can just relicense the game and claim to own the IP but I've seen worse done in the name of owning a copyright.

Take my words with as much salt as you like but I did a little work for them. They find old games and approach the old publisher, then they work towards getting it DRM free. If there's already a crack that's working great for the latest version you were meant to send it to the manager so he'd look through the code. Otherwise we'd have to write it ourselves and do a few lines of extra script (usually the DRM was file specific, like CD2 containing some tiny accessory file).

Usually though the cracks available online were working, so we'd just rewrite it. Maybe the older games used to have 1:1 rips from crack groups, who knows.

does it matter if they use cracks once they have licensing and/or the publisher's blessing?

I don't know, it's highly rare they do anything themselves to make something more compatible with modern systems. They are good for being good about having a lot of original documentation but even that, there's sites to pull that all together usually. So, it's for people too lazy or clueless to do it all themselves.

I don't think so. The publisher transfers the distribution rights to them in exchange for some small royalty as % of sales or an upfront fee (some will just take the upfront money stupidly, not expecting a 10 year old game to sell so well). Those distribution rights never state whether copy protection must be included or not. Or these old producers don't know well enough about the GOG model and don't question it.

Here's a better question for you:
Why should this shit be banned?

It doesn't have to be allowed, that doesn't even make any sense. It just has to not be illegal\banned, which it isn't because there's no reason for that.
If someone wants to give them money for that, why shouldn't they accept it?

They should stop taking down the free download links. Sites are now redirecting to GOG instead of letting you download the games now.

lmao

That's a problem with those sites, not GOG
Find better sites? Or pirate it, not like you were gonna pay for it anyway.

Sometimes they were the only sites with the games. And I doubt they're doing it of their own accord. GOG is telling them to take down their download links.

[need of proof intensifies]
I honestly doubt that "they were the only sites with the games", it's far more likely you're just too bad at internet.
Got a game you can't find anywhere but GOG now?

Also, do keep in mind that while this may suck for you, it's still not illegal nor is there a single reason to not allow it.

Or you could just give GOG 6$ dollars and get a download that works out of the box and get playing immediately. Plus you support a DRM-free game distributor. Time is money as well.


If any company could just swoop in and relicense the game GOG would be having the entire Abandonia catalog by now. The truth is that for a lot of these old games the rights are all over the place, some people own the code, some the trademark, some the art, some the music and so on. Just trying to untangle this mess is a pain, but then you also have to get all parties to agree. That's the reason why it took so long for System Shock to be re-released.

Also, there is no such thing as "IP". There is copyright and trademark, but no "intellectual property".
gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

Because Shilling on Holla Forums works. They used to shill on half chan Holla Forums all the time. Luckily it didn't work here because shills are too stupid to know how to switch IDs.

Those links on abandonware sites are referral links where the site's owners get a little money when you buy via that link. What money do they get from hosting a free download for you? I don't think GOG even needs to ask for the downloads be to be removed.

That article started with what sounded like massive conspiracy theory but…
Is it possible to license the code of a game to rerelease it without owning the copyrighted name or would it be possible that you could relicense a copyrighted series that had defaulted and somehow take ownership of the code of a previous release? Something like, say the company that had the current rights to Duke Nukem suddenly died without transferring it's copyrights to a different company. Would somebody be able to snatch it up and suddenly own previous works of Duke Nukem because they own the Duke Nukem name or would it be possible to rerelease owned code that was originally Duke Nukem under a different name like Duchess Nuclear?

I guess a better question would be, is it possible for ownership of all the different ways a product can be licensed to simultaneously no longer be owned in some particular way, for example, if a company (collectively) owned all their code, trademarks, art, etc and went out of business. How is that product that has essentially had all of it's production owned by an entity that no longer exists handled, does it default to the CEO of the previously held company or to the individual people who made it?

Whatever bank owns the debt will usually receive all assets including Intellectual Property assets.

Nah fuck that shit
I remember scouting hundreds of sites for full ISOS that didn't have some cancer built in hacks for them or half the sound track ripped out of it.
With GoG, I can just pirate the gog release and look on the support forums for any stuff.

But, didn't just go with "IP isn't a thing"? Suppose they don't dissolve with debt, what then?

Oh yeah? You are still better off using community patches and better quality resources on top of that. For example if you want Unreal Gold in the 1920x1080 resolution you'd better patch it yourself to 227i and also DL the higher resolution textures for it.

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Another.

Intellectual Property is an umbrella term for all legal matters relating to Intellectual Property Rights, of which copyright and trademarks are a part.

Usually the kind of IP complications that make old games difficult to release are when the dissolved company had something like say, a contract with the music artist for the game that states that the music remains the artists intellectual propert, or the writer retains rights pertaining to certain characters. These contract are rarely written with the expectation that the company would fold in such a manner that it is not bought out directly, and in addition are often ambiguous in terms. Sometimes IP rights may be autioned off that the bank may only have had dubious rights to sell, and the company purchasing may have no knowledge of the contracts with the musician and writer, leading to assumptions and further complications down the road.

The reason why so many old games are in limbo is because these entanglements aren't generally considered worth the cost of untangling. Likewise, abandonware may not be disputed property, but is just not worth the cost of enforcing anti-piracy measure. GoG sells undisputed properties legally, abandonware sites allow download of both disputed and undisputed properties illegally. Make no mistake, abandonware is piracy, it's just that the owners would spend more money than they made chasing down the distributers.

That makes sense but what real benefit does a company get from allowing a music artist to retain ownership of music they make for their games? Wouldn't it be easier to own it outright to avoid this sort of struggle or was this just something that wasn't thought u p until later?

Licensing. Somebody still owns those games and wants to make money apparently.

Did you know it takes 70 years for a videogame to become a public work? There's no such thing as abandonware. Ofcourse nobody in their right mind gives a fuck about torrenting a 15 year old game from a long defunct dev. But legally EA owns Command and Conquer.

Probably a contract agreement from a more high profile artist that wouldn't have done the music otherwise

Then buy it in gog you stupid goy

What "IP isn't a thing" means is that the term is too broad. Read the full article and the follow-up linked at the end, it explains why IP is a bad term. Stallman is an autist who talks in strong polemics, but he is right.

IP can be used as an umbrella-term, but the laws it covers have way too little in common to be a useful umbrella term. Trademarks, copyright and patent have been created at different times for different purposes and have different criteria for being valid.

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(((Free Market)))

Need proof? Just go to myabandonware.com and check out how many games had their links removed for a GOG link.

By the way, it was all hosted on their own servers so GOG is pressuring them.

There's no such thing as abandonware that much is for sure.

If you make a videogame it is yours for 70 years. You can do nothing with it. It doesn't matter. Fucking Pong is still owned by someone. People can cry about GOG they are simply playing by the rules. There's no game that can be legally pirated. If GOG removes links they're simply enforcing DMCA.

Abandonware pretty much means a software that's still technically owned by someone but nobody gives a fuck anymore. Thus, abandoned rather than public.

OP Confirmed for Steam Shill

I'm curious, do their versions with dosbox even include MT-32 emulation?

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You just making polish kikes rich, that's all.

I've been supporting GOG for years, fuck off you poor-fag teenager. DRM free, easy to browse, download and run on modern platforms, access to manuals, wallpapers, maps, hintbooks, etc. Even the Galaxy client is optional.

When everyone else was OK with letting these games slide off the radar into obscurity, GOG picked up the slack and did things right. Honestly, I think the community should support GOG.

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Yeah, but I just like pointing out how everyone here shoot themselves in the foot. People only make games now for people too casual to pirate them, or esports shit where they make money of ranking and cosmetics, in which it's impossible to pirate.

It's alright. I'm old and have more money than I need at this point, so does it bother me to spend five dollars and get 12 games in a series I like without having to wade through abandonware sites and find cracks for shit? Not really. I just don't care, and a unified launcher helps. And this is coming from a guy with 10 or so binders full of close to a thousand CDs with games and cracks from my heavy usenet downloading days.

You mean:

Find me one game in history that failed because of piracy. Games are made to appeal to casuals because casuals now make up the majority of the consumer base for videogames, making it profitable to make casual garbage. Not because people interested in more niche games pirate things.

Watch_Dogs, No Man's Sky, Metal Gear Solid V, Assassin's Creed Unity.

All of them were having a hard time selling because piracy shown bad sides of those games.

I love this argument. Not only does it show a complete lack of understanding of economics, but it totally ignores the fact that CEOs are so paranoid about piracy they do everything they can to prevent it. You honestly just have to look the way the industry is going. Be it appealing to people too casual to know how to pirate games, retarded DRM/forcing online connection for single player games, or just making a game that has it's income based on cosmetics. Even MobA shits realize if you deny your enemy farm it fucks them over later.

They also don't pirate games.

Yeah I happily pay full price for my niche weebshit.

It is the folks who pirate everything and don't support any games that are at fault. I don't care what others do though.

It's not just old games. You can pay for modern european shovelware too.

Come on, you can't tell me you'd rather pre-order Nioh over this. This shit has vikings (like skyrim), and is clearly of higher quality.

It's not the fault of piracy that the game is shit.

literally not a thing legally. Someone owns a piece of software unless it's in the public domain. Abandonware is a pirate term that people came up with to describe software that the rights holder doesn't care about. Which isn't the case with GOG.

In GOG's case literally none of the games are considered abandonware because it's not like CD Projekt just sells the game and doesn't give jack to the rights holder. Whoever owns the IP now (likely after countless liquidations and bankruptcies) owns it and makes money off it.

Additionally one good thing GOG does is it often incentives fixing the game when they re-release it

A really good example is Night Dive got the rights to System Shock 2 entirely so that they could re-release it. And they did it by removing disk checking, fixing the shoddy compatibility issues that plagued the disk version for years and everything.

This was also the reason they ported Turok 1 to a brand new engine and why they're going to eventually do the same thing to Turok 2.

Some of us are old enough to remember how awesome that shit used to be. Fuck, I might even still have an old Ultima map around somewhere.

You keep on keeping on there, mate. Bitch about the "reddit spacing" as well for good measure.

GOG is a godsend for pirates, OP. You should wash your mouth when talking about them.

It is godsend for us buyfags too.

Getting a new game used to be awesome since you'd get what amounted to a book with it

Fuck off, nigger. Seeing [GOG] in a torrent name is always a good sign, since it means the game is getting seeded (GOG always gets seeded for some reason) and the game actually works on modern systems. Try getting even something as new as Gothic to run on your computer, and you'll see what a fucking bitch it is to track down all the necessary fan patches and mods. GOG does that for me

Because they also do a lot of the bullshit for you to make old games work on new systems. Being able to play Dungeon Keeper on a new PC is great. Plus GOG is great for pirates.

Ancap is that you? The fact it can't be measured is my fucking point, there is no evidence piracy has ever caused a game to crash and burn.
Or maybe because that audience is orders of magnitude larger than the audience for niche games? It's fucking basic, even if businesses are paranoid about piracy, they would still sell to casuals if it didn't exist because the audience is larger, and they are more able to get away with garbage like micro-transactions with that audience.

I'm actually a buyfag too

You didn't buy any of those games, faggot.

What do you mean? Of course I did, nigga. I love supporting the PC gaming industry.

No, you didn't buy all those games.

Not him, but I believe his argument was that it doesn't matter if piracy harms sales or not, what matters is whether the CEO thinks it does

Yes, and my counterargument was that even if piracy was non-existent, they would still make games for casuals because that audience is larger and more welcoming of shit like micro-transactions. I'll give you that shit like Denuvo and always online garbage wouldn't exist, but the market would still be flooded with casual trash.

I guess that's true for AAA. I never really said it, but it's more that no new good indie to middle-tier studios can pop up. It seems there is a trend with new studios and having rough around the edges first attempts then really start to make their good games when they got their feet wet.


Aside from very severe anti-piracy trends in the game industry and complete lack of AA that can't appeal to normalfags.

Only AAA studios and publishers can compete in that market. All indie or AA studios, the ones who are more inclined to make niche titles, get bought out or die off before they can start making their hard hitting titles. No new studios can spring up, unless their game gets meme-status with normalfags like Minecraft, Amnesia, etc. The studio can't grow and their games are stuck in unfulfilled territory because they have to botch resources left and right.

Your entire argument is literally "Well you can't prove that those unreported rapes didn't happen", and honestly you're probably as likely to change your opinion as a feminist is. It's just sad seeing Holla Forums bitch about how all new games are shit, but at the same time they won't look for obscure titles that are actually really good even if flawed to support. The company that wants to make X-game can't get the funds to get off the ground and make a professional attempt so all their games end up completely gutted. The last thing I've seen that comes close is Styx and that was made from a studio of ex-Ubisoft employees.

Middle-tier can't compete with AAA monopoly for casuals.

I'm curious. Explain.

Because piracy as a service has not superceded the utility of it. dummy.

It's not fucking rocket science

Ok, so you're saying that AA devs aim for more niche titles because they can't compete with larger studios, and they are hit harder by piracy? In that case I can agree, however I don't think these studios fail because of piracy. Additionally me saying there is no evidence piracy does anything isn't the same as femshits saying rapes go unreported therefore rape is a huge problem and men are ebul. You trying to make a point on the back of "unreported piracies" is, I'm basically saying the "unreported piracy" is bullshit and isn't evidence. There is no data suggesting that piracy has had a major impact on the sales of any games BECAUSE IT CAN'T BE MEASURED, i'm not trying to make a point on the back of this, I'm saying you can't make one.

You didn't buy them, you don't own them, and you don't know what it means to purchase a game. There's not much to explain.

The argument is not that it is impossible, it's that the amount of time and effort spent is worth more than paying GOG. Also, it's a godsend for pirates

Companies re-releasing games on GOG/Steam that are older gives incentives other companies to actually properly re-release them. Like they've been doing for the last while.

I highly doubt Capcom would've bothered to port Dead Rising to PC if there wasn't a huge market for doing that.

Oh, you are talking about software licenses. I don't really care since I have my entire GOG collection backed up on my NAS. Nothing they can do about revoking that.

tiberian dawn and red alert 1 are both open domain man. Granted, im pretty sure westwood did that as a fuck you to ea before they got bought.

These. Pirate if you want, but sending money to devs for older games you like might tempt them to make more.

Steam has it's uses, but I don't need to worry about GOG not launching or connecting, which is a daily hassle.

Also, sharing copies is the only way I could get some people to play games. These faggots will pay $10 for a meal that lasts twenty minutes and not a game?

I rarely use GOG for DOS Games, but there are many games that ran on Windows 95-98 and don't run at all on post XP Windows (Like Shadows of the Empire)

Also, I like to support some independent/japanese devs and show them that I want to buy their games on a DRM-Free platform.

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Holla Forums has enough games, when will they make games for me?

I pirated I & II for my PSP and I fell in love with the game. Then I saw the GOG collecion on sale for 10 bucks and I had to buy it. It's my only way to tell Falcom "keep making PC releases, keep making Ys games" Hopefully some more independent or AA studios follow suit

And maybe they'll start making Linux ports

except the money never gets to them. It goes to the middlemen that now own the rights, have not typed a line of code for the development of the game and have zero incentive to develop a new game if they can keep profiting of someone else's work with minimal effort.

Probably not even old enough to remember PC Game manuals were a part of old games and their DRM.

wew

Every single game you listed was a huge commercial success.

The very fact that a game is on GOG means that it hasn't been abandoned.

GOG is okay in my book: it makes for a nice clean torrent.

The GOG forums are great too. Much better than the fags on Steam.

If you need help getting something to run or looking for (fan) patches GOG forums always deliver. Pirate or no.

Fuck, why is life so hard and why did those kikes do "HD"-edition of Heroes 3 which clearly didnt need it and ignored the superior H2?

You are an absolute retard. These games were all financial successes and sold tremendously.

Out of every game you mentioned, the least of their problems was anti-piracy. Even No Man's Sky was a PR trainwreck, but still had strong sales.

Oy vey, how dare you goyim to speak like that about (((Gabe)))? Oy-yoy-yoy! Hoik a shainik, can a mod just delete this post and ban this vilda chaya, for G-d's sake? Mach shnel!

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To make more older games? Has time travel really been perfected?

>implying the money goes to the devs

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Actually they were released for free by EA long after they shut down Westwood. Dickish and evil as EA is they occasionally do something decent. At least they don't shut down fan projects like Renegade X.

Are you seriously that retarded that you can't find that shit on a Google search? Oh gee!, they put a bunch of shit on a zip file for me because i'm too retarded to look for it myself, thanks GOG!.

Do you actually believe that? That the money goes to the old devs? It rarely ever does, mongoloid

By buying Night Dive's shit you are supporting the new "System Shock"

But I'm also supporting the Turok 2 remaster, so it's worth the cost.

Because we're in a board that has less than 3000 posters and everyone is throwing shit at each other.