Old games rock. I recently played Prince of Persia; Warrior Within and there was no console update, game patch to download, daily login reward, update centre telling me updates I may have missed. None of that crap. Power-on, loading scree, game time, done!
Modern games are designed like a full-time job that you pay to work for the company.
“I care” … “Sorry let me check my latest game download from limewire.”
Oh man. I’ve supported gog from the beginning, always purchased there.
Even if it was more expensive or late or downsides (especially to steam).
Still, they didn’t always hold up to the drm free standard they set.
Then they come up with this, which to me sounds like ‘give us subscription money for what we already did the whole time’.
The Patrons initiative is particularly interesting
No it’s not! I care for the games. I want a drm free packaged version. You name the price, but keep all original features.
I don’t give a flying shit about any online badges or whatever. How could I know where the additional money goes? By my estimate I’ll pay the subscription and your ceo gets more money but the games wont see any of it…
Oh and spamming me with mails telling me how awesome it would be for me to be patron but completely without any real, tangible, non corpo speak reason to leaves a bad taste and kills a little confidence in you every time.
Gog has been my preference for a few years now, but there’s no way I’m subscribing to a patreon that gets me literally nothing. I honestly assumed at first you’d get something out of it at first, like a free game from the preservation program every month or something similar to Amazon Prime’s giveaways. Its honestly cause me to start to re evaluate how much I purchase from them. Its kinda skeezy.
Same here.
The whole things has a massive “grift” vibe, especially given that they’re double dipping since supporters of their “Game preservation efforts” still have to pay for those games.
Happy to keep on buying games from them in preference to from Steam, some even from the “Good old game” bucket, just not willing to assume a monthly monetary commitment to some black-box “trust us” which feels a lot like the “Charity as a business” shit from the most sleazy “charities” out there (you know the kind: the ones with CEOs paid massive salaries and were only a small fraction of contributions actually ends up in the charitable objective).
Seems the new GOG owner doesn’t care as they push AI use in the company
Something tells me the “double down” is to distract from that fallout
They do care. See archive.org for example.
Conflating care with the bottom line of your corporation is disingenuous.
Its true, but also “please give the business more money” isn’t exactly the thing anyone but business owners and shareholders want to hear.
I care. Enough to abandon my qualms about AI usage? Not really, it just means GOG is not the answer.
Do you not but games anymore then, or do you think steam is better?
Though if you only play FOSS or self published games, that would be kinda based.
I’m guessing by your wording that you’re aching to bash Steam, so I’ll preface this with: no corporation is ever going to get this 100% right; the world is drawn in greys, and only a Sith deals in absolutes.
“Better” is not very useful without context. In the context of AI usage, Steam is better. In the context of GOG, their main claim about game preservation is “no DRM”, but there is an important point often missed: lots of games on Steam also do not have DRM.
I have no issues “buying” games on Steam which have no DRM. For others, I factor the DRM into the price I’m willing to pay for access. These tend to be larger titles anyway, so I’m not terribly worried about it long term.
Long term game preservation? More about unofficial channels than relying on yet another corporation. GOG wasn’t changing that before, and they definitely aren’t now.
They have the opportunity to right their wrong of bailing on the StopKillingGames campaign, but they’re likely more worried about appeasing the corpo publisher more than they are defending their supposed core mission.
I don’t think they have even one game in their catalogue that StopKillingGames is about.
StopKillingGames is also about keeping games with always online DRM (even present in many singleplayer games today) from rendering it completely unplayable, which would also determine if it could even be sold on GoG in the future.
All of GoG’s current catalog is only possible because the trend of always online DRM wasn’t a thing yet, but going forward, we’ll need SKG to ensure GoG is able to preserve newer games as they become old. If GoG cares about preserving games, then SKG couldn’t get more in their wheelhouse. Yet they ghosted the organizer for it.
Even on Steam I‘ve never bought a game with always online DRM. Is that really still a thing?
Yes, many games implement that. More famously The Crew (which was mostly a singleplayer game with a large campaign with some multiplayer tacked on) became completely unplayable after Ubisoft shut down the multiplayer portion of the game due to always online DRM. They only later patched the game to become playable in singleplayer again after the extreme backlash from the SKG campaign, which focused on The Crew as an example.
There are many more singeplayer games either already killed, or currently at-risk of being destroyed. SKG keeps an up to date list of them here: https://stopkillinggames.wiki.gg/wiki/Dead_game_list
Offer a good service and people will buy from your store, most customers either don’t care about DRM or care somewhat but don’t want to inconvenience themselves with a worse product for it. GOG have to catch up to Steam with stuff like family sharing and controller support for me to consider buying stuff there.
Why do you need family sharing if the games are DRM free? If the kid wants to play a game from your account you just pass him the exe, what’s the issue
Controller support depends from the game, if you mean a controller remapper like steam, then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam. With heroic launcher you can add gog games in your steam list with a single click
You don’t just pass the exe though, modern games are huge with a lot of files required. With Steam it’s a 2 step process:
- I look in the tab in my library for games in my brother’s account I have access to with family sharing.
- I download a game from the list.
That’s despite the fact my brother lives in the other side of the country, and it offers me all the Steam features I make use of like cloud saves as if my account had bought the game.
With GOG it’s
- Find the right webpage for my brother’s games (you can’t see them from within the GOG client for some reason.
- Ask my brother to download the installer
- Get my brother to send me the installer file over discord
- The installer is too big
- Say nevermind just give me your login info
- I try to login to his account with the GOG client
- Ask my brother for his 2FA authenticator code
- Finally login, and can download the game
- Remember to turn off cloud saves so you don’t override your brother’s cloud saves.
Based on a true story btw.
There’s probably things we could’ve done that would’ve made it easier and less steps, but it still wouldn’t have been just as simple as what Steam does, and I’m missing cloud saves and I’d have to do several of those steps again if I wanted the game on say my Steam Deck as well as my PC.
then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam
If I’m just going to use Steam or extra software to compensate for Steam features, I might as well just use Steam.
Every solution that doesn’t need an external proprietary app is a better solution.
you can login in heroic once and then install what you need, and disable cloud saves as default option
with family sharing the DRM does not allow two people to play at the same time, don’t ignore this huge inconvenience
Can you use Heroic with multiple accounts? Because if not that’s meaningless.
If they abandon AI usage, I’d consider buying from them. Unless they give AI up and get a team of great humans at the helm to develop. They can get fucked, and I will spend my money elsewhere.
Do you feel you stand a chance in that fight?
Once the technology is there, and competition embrasses it, very few companies will actually have the capability of resisting.
In about 5 years I feel you’re literally just not going to be able to buy new games, or you’re going to abandon the idea of such boycotts.
But im curious. Are you concerned about the loss of human jobs from a game quality perspective or a human well being perspective?
Corporations are already trying and failing to do anything useful with gassed up LLMs, and I highly doubt that it will become useful in the next 5 to 10 years. However, what I do feel will happen is that all the hope posting and gaslighting by the shills, those who’s success rides on massive adoption will do their best to convince everyone to use the shit. Who knows how well that will actually turn out, it’s an open question at the moment. I hope all their efforts leads to failure, personally.
If gassed up LLMs do seep into the gaming industry to the point I can’t avoid it, then I just stop buying games. Spending money on slop isn’t ideal in my opinion. I have a backlog of games that haven’t been tainted by baby’s first lying software, so it isn’t a total loss. I got years of games to play before choosing another hobby altogether, I have adhered to some boycotts for a long amount of time in other areas. Having the will to research products and spend money only on those that don’t offend my sensibilities is natural to me.
I already won’t use Windows because Microslop chose to go hard in the LLM direction and look how well that is going for them. On top of it, I make use of open source software and support projects so that they can continue to thrive, avoiding anything that is stained with enshittification.
My concerns with gassed up LLMs that techbros call “AI” are numerous: Ecological effect, Quality of Media (games, art, movies, etc), how it affects the people who provide us with software and entertainment in general. Gassed up LLMs are being used as an excuse to lay off so many people in tech and gaming spaces. As corporations irresponsibly hired in a boom period and realized they’d have to pay people in so called lean times that aren’t actually lean. The myth of infinite growth has scrambled the brains of the C-Suite and distracted toddler investors, so the profits don’t look so good these days. As they are unwilling to cut off the CEOs who leech off a lot of corporate profits first, naturally the very people who make the stuff that enriches companies, execs, and shareholders…Are laid off first. Thrown into a rabid job market that is falling the fuck apart because rich fuckwits are creating a situation that serves to unilaterally fuck over those that don’t have a financial cushion to fall back on.
This will have a profound impact on the quality and selection of media…Humans are naturally creative, we’ve painted in caves and told stories for most of our life history. Storytelling and creativity is an intrinsic part of humanity, stories feel better when written by someone with that strong ability to tell a compelling tale! Gassed up LLMs mass produce sterile, meaningless slop comprised of stolen training data that doesn’t classify as art to me…Humans do to, but not on an industrial scale like an LLM can. Already, there are sites and instances even on the fediverse dedicated to sharing slop…It’s so bland. I can’t imagine staying interested in buying stories and art produced by slop generating LLMs. I’ll just write my own stuff…Learn how to draw things that exist in my head, that would be a better use of time and money. Creating feels so good, only a talentless techbro or hollow CEO would want to take that away from people to make a quick dollar.
LLMs in their current form use so much water and power, it’s honestly scare how they’ll have to rely on dirty forms of energy production just to keep up with escalating demand. That will have an impact on the local environment and marginalized communities initially and if enough of these irresponsible data centers are created…The scale of environmental and community impact is going to escalate.
We only have one home planet, imagine it being so sullied that human life can’t exist here anymore. To be honest, due to our current antics, I don’t even know if we’ll beat “The Great Filter” and become a sufficiently advanced civilization. We might destroy ourselves first, but at least nature would probably recover after we’re gone and our works eventually stop interfering with the ecosystem.
I don’t feel humanity should be concerned with AI as there is so much we don’t know about ourselves yet. We lack the sufficient understanding of neurology, why consciousness manifests, and how to create machinery that can actually mimic our brain structure. It would take so many generations of humanity, untold amounts of funding, multi-discipline research to produce a true AI. Techbros wanna shill now though, so we are stuck with gassed up LLMs that will probably cause society to collapse or the rich to finally get put to a French revolution style end (if disenfranchised people are feeling spicy enough).
Hey everybody, new LostWanderer book just dropped.
No but really interesting take, rather dystopian, but interesting.
Given the nature of most executives, rich fucks, I can’t see anything but dystopian coming from these chuckleheads. If you read their unfiltered and uncensored thoughts (often between the lines of their flowery words), how they see others, and notice their detachment for the everyday person. It’s pretty grim. Makes me wonder what you see.
Makes me wonder what you see.
No I don’t see dystopia at all; dystopia is what leads to destabilization and revolution; neither of those are good for profits.
Certainly it’s possible, but Im not going to pretend like I can accurately predict what the future holds.
What I’m not going to do is make up my mind that in the future this trend is incapable of producing new, fun, well made games. It just baffles me when I hear people say that they’ll never touch a game that used AI; like a developer can generate placeholder art and that kills the game for them? What? I just don’t understand this moral road block some people have.
Certainly right now the human mind and our creativity is miles beyond AI, but I don’t think it’s impossible for AI to reach an equal level; and you better believe if it does it’s going to rocket passed us.
I would love to live in a world where I can just click a button and AI generates a new Skyrim, or a Witcher; although that’s probably very far out, if at all.
And I don’t see job loss from AI as an exetential threat. I think the current lay offs in MOST fields are a mistake and they’ll be rehired. Like everyone is already saying, currently AI is just another tool that can accelerate the game development process; and anything that accelerates that processes decreases the cost of production which in turn increased competition. And I think that’s always a good thing.
The entire energy and water issue you’re raising is absolutely a non-issue for me. The model T got 13 miles to the gallon when it released; had no catalitic converter and basically zero safety features. Yet it was still a net benefit to humanity and was just a stepping stone towards the growth of humanity.
Energy use is the hallmark of a modern society; there is absolutely no path towards advancing humanity without forever increases energy use. AI can use energy from renewable sources. Data centers need exactly zero water input if designed that way; and if their current water use is actually an issue then I’m fine with government regulating its consumption.
That’s my book I guess. Please don’t quote every line I wrote and respect and to each individually; such an unatural way to have a conversation and I hate the internet for it.
Mmm, I figured your opinion would line up with the line of thinking techbros tend to share. It was nice talking to you, have a good day.
Fuck generative shit, there will ways be real passionate people making games, artwork and music and i will buy from them, not the trash spat out by the automated vending machine.
Interesting, but there’s a lot of presumptions in your post.
GOG needs to copy Steam a bit more.
Give us game based discussion boards, a mod workshop, and most importantly a friends notification system. Steer into the social experience of old games.
