GOG has reportedly cut dozens of jobs recently. Here are new details about the situation at CD Projekt’s subsidiary and the shortcomings of its business strategy.
I totally understand your point, but when people talk about “you own nothing” they don’t really mean you “own” the content on physical media, they mean it doesn’t have DRM that requires an online service. You’re technically correct, but your pedantry is making you miss the forest for the trees, basically.
but your pedantry is making you miss the forest for the trees, basically.
No. People here claim, that just because GOG cannot remote wipe your drive, people buying off GOG have a perpetual right to the games they’ve bought. But they don’t because that’s not how copyright works. If a game’s license is revoked, to keep playing the game is copyright violation.
Not only do so many people not grasp basic concepts of copyright, they claim Valve could take away all downloaded games. No, Valve cannot remote wipe my drive either. I can back up my Steam folder. Many games on Steam don’t have DRM at all. It’s opt-in and the actual Steam documentation outright says not to rely on Steam DRM because “it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.” If games rely on crap like Denuvo, 3rd party launchers, or invasive anti-cheat, the publishers are required to clearly state so on the store page in one of those orange boxes. Users can make an informed decision on a per-game basis even with Steam. And those games that ship crap like Denuvo aren’t on GOG in the first place.
So in the end GOG is a store that stretches the truth about game ownership in their marketing and despite all their Witcher and Cyberpunk money, they don’t care about users of platforms competing against Windows at all.
I think it’s pretty clear from context that they mean they have the ability to perpetually play the games because of the lack of DRM, not the right.
Plenty claim it’s their right and with much ferocity while as vehemently ignoring that there are plenty of games on GOG that offer reduced content when playing offline (an extensive list was posted by someone). Also, because games on Steam must disclose their use of DRM (and anti-cheat), people can just buy DRM-free games which can be backed up just as well. Goldberg is a drop-in library for games that use Steam APIs. So everything is fine there as well for people who actually make informed buying decisions.
No, the intellectual property is not transferred to you. You have no clue how copyright works.
For most people that is a distinction without a difference.
Yes, but the same is also true for Steam, so it’s a moot point.
So what’s the difference to making a backup of my Steam folder? The games I play have no DRM either.
Nothing at all. Most people are not creating derivative works.
I totally understand your point, but when people talk about “you own nothing” they don’t really mean you “own” the content on physical media, they mean it doesn’t have DRM that requires an online service. You’re technically correct, but your pedantry is making you miss the forest for the trees, basically.
But the same is also true for Steam, so it’s a moot point.
No. People here claim, that just because GOG cannot remote wipe your drive, people buying off GOG have a perpetual right to the games they’ve bought. But they don’t because that’s not how copyright works. If a game’s license is revoked, to keep playing the game is copyright violation.
Not only do so many people not grasp basic concepts of copyright, they claim Valve could take away all downloaded games. No, Valve cannot remote wipe my drive either. I can back up my Steam folder. Many games on Steam don’t have DRM at all. It’s opt-in and the actual Steam documentation outright says not to rely on Steam DRM because “it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.” If games rely on crap like Denuvo, 3rd party launchers, or invasive anti-cheat, the publishers are required to clearly state so on the store page in one of those orange boxes. Users can make an informed decision on a per-game basis even with Steam. And those games that ship crap like Denuvo aren’t on GOG in the first place.
So in the end GOG is a store that stretches the truth about game ownership in their marketing and despite all their Witcher and Cyberpunk money, they don’t care about users of platforms competing against Windows at all.
I think it’s pretty clear from context that they mean they have the ability to perpetually play the games because of the lack of DRM, not the right.
Again, the same is true for Steam as well, so it’s a moot point.
Plenty claim it’s their right and with much ferocity while as vehemently ignoring that there are plenty of games on GOG that offer reduced content when playing offline (an extensive list was posted by someone). Also, because games on Steam must disclose their use of DRM (and anti-cheat), people can just buy DRM-free games which can be backed up just as well. Goldberg is a drop-in library for games that use Steam APIs. So everything is fine there as well for people who actually make informed buying decisions.