It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
It technically still exists in the game properties -> installed files tab, but it doesn’t really work. The backup files you get require you to be online to meaningfully restore and will trigger a patch to the latest game version.
Practically speaking it’s better to just make a copy of the game install directory manually, gives you a better chance of things working (even though most games require some kind of external tooling for that).
For current exports, it’s some custom .csm/.csd file combo. Not sure if there’s any tools for working with it, seems like it’d be more annoying than just using a normal archive format either way.
Plus, unless the installers have the full package, it’ll still require an internet connection. Usually installers download the files and then install them.
What’s the difference? In practical terms, what does this mean for me as the consumer? We don’t own the intellectual property, but may use the software as-is? From a practical, consumer standpoint that feels the same as the days of owning your software on a disc, unable to be taken as long as you have physical control over the device. I’m fine with calling this “owning” personally.
I’m absolutely willing to be wrong on this. I’m by no means an expert. Please, if I have missed something, let me know.
There really is no difference. For almost all intents and purposes, GOG’s offline installers can be treated the same way as physical CDs of way back then, with one of the only exceptions being that you cannot resell them.
Depending on your perspective, the sell/trade/loan aspect of physical can be a huge deal. I outlined in another comment, selling/trading games was never my thing, but it was my cousins. From my perspective, there’s marginal difference, but there IS a difference.
I don’t want to advocate for shoveling money into any company, but if you could sell your steam games it would screw over indie devs in a big way. Many games made by small studies or one person don’t have as much content as AAA studies and would be far more prone to a small handful of copies being distributed back and forth on the used market instead of each being a sale that goes to the developer.
Some devs would see a drop in sales as much as 90% and I just don’t think it’s worth it to shoot the gaming industry in the foot like that.
Just to be clear: my main point was that you don’t own any more the game bought on GOG than on Steam.
And there are definitely upsides to this type of market.
Although nowadays I wouldn’t buy a just released triple A 70€ game knowing I can’t sell or give it (not that I play those much anymore). The games I actually want to keep a few and far between.
I buy second hand Switch games for my nephews. It’s cheap, I’m actually giving them something, and they can trade them with their friends or sell them to buy fortnite skins the little shits
Again, not hating on GOG, I’ve been a customer for a long time. Mainly because I don’t want any kind of launcher. I play 99% solo games, don’t need no updates or multiple clicks to launch a game.
I would ABSOLUTELY argue that you more own a game purchased on gog, with an offline installer, than one purchased on steam. I now see the functional difference between owning a drm-free installer vs owning a physical game, but there’s also a gulf of difference between steam and gog
Just to be entirely fair. The rest of what you said is absolutely spot on.
I can see the functional difference there, with regards to sell/trade/loan. You could of course emulate the functionality, or rely on the honor system for abandon ware stuff, but that’s clunky, inefficient, not worth the energy.
I hadn’t considered the second hand aspect. Even as a kid, I was always more a “build a library” kind of person versus a “cycle my catalog” kind of person. I was considering things from an availability to play the game perspective alone. Thanks for the different perspective!
Okay steam, if its just a digital license and not ownership… Then surely you’ll be significantly lowering prices, Since you charge full ownership prices for games, not license prices… Right?
People seem to forget that just moderately decent games sell magnitudes more today than they did 20 years ago, too, thus continuing to bring in insane cash (as long as you arent sony or other companies that are obscenely wasteful…) despite inflation, this stable pricing making them a good entertainment investment for people whose minimum wage hasnt changed in like 15 years
regular reminder that digital distribution was sold to us under the false promise that games would be cheaper, because they wouldnt have to pay for printing boxes, CDs, manuals, greebles, Wouldnt have to pay for shipping or storage, or any other burden addition of physical media.
That we’d be able to buy games for 30 dollars, and that that the developers and everyone involved would make more money than they would have paying 50 for a physical game.
and now, they are wanting to sell games for 70-80 bucks for AAA titles.
Its not cause the games are 50 dollars that they arent making enough hundreds of millions. The only reason these AAA games arent making bank is because they’re shit
Can anyone honestly remember the last AAA title that wasnt an absolute dog pile?
Their 30% cuts allowed Gabe to start collecting yachts, they could charge a lot less while still offering the same services and only Gabe would see his finances take the hit, no one else in the world would be poorer if they charged 20% instead.
Should be cheaper, emphasis on should, but at the same time if they sell directly and take the same cut, that’s one less intermediary in the chain so more money going to the devs.
None of the managerial class are good people, wake up, all billionaires are taking advantage of us.
I like GOG and I like steam too. While it is true that GOG can’t take the offline installer from me, this does not make it true I can play the game forever since many games are dynamically linked to libraries that may not be available in the future. This happened to me with games I just had bought. Steam also dynamically links to libraries but what I like about the way they are doing it is that these are part of the base installation so as long as you keep these files, the games should keep working. Nothing being perfect, I think they both try to do things in their own way and try to convince us that it is the best one.
You didn’t fuck up. You can always still pirate. Wait it out and see what happens, the moment it goes to shit put on your pirate hat and don’t give a fuck.
Absolutely. I mean, I love the fact that GOG has DRM-free games. It’s really incredible how many games are available without DRM because of them.
But I’m not going to make Valve out to be the bad guy here. Valve is like 99% of the reason why gaming on Linux is viable right now.
Valve seems like a great example of how, if you don’t sell your company to venture capitalists, you can just be cool nerds that make good products. As much as I want DRM-free to be the norm, I’m also not going to vilify a company that is one of the best examples of not enshittifying right now.
A lot of Steam games are also DRM free. It’s up to the individual developers whether they enforce DRM checks or not.
I’ve copied files from Steam folders directly to a flash drive, plugged them into an offline, Steam-less computer that I don’t have rights to install anything on, and ran them perfectly. But it is a game-by-game thing.
Yeah, the only caveat is that you don’t get an installer with steam, so if you copy the installed game onto a pc that doesn’t have all the correct dependencies installed (like the correct DirectX version for example), then the game won’t launch. But it’s not too complicated to install the dependencies manually
If we’re talking about DRM as in a measure to prevent copying, or require online security check, or anything like that, then no GOG game has DRM. One of GOG’s core policies is that all of their games are DRM free. However, some people have stretched the definition a little to include other stuff. For example, if an online multiplayer game requires GOG Galaxy to connect to its online servers, some people consider that to be DRM.
There are some posts on GOG’s official forums where people try to list all the games that have “DRM” of any kind. So if you’re interested, that’s where you could look. But if you just want to have confidence that you’ll be able to install and run the game in the future, then don’t worry about it. No GOG game has anything that would prevent that.
The info is here and none of that “DRM” means you can’t in the future, after the servers are down, install the game from your copy of the offline installer and play it.
None of that is DRM in the sense we’re talking about here: the kind of mechanism that allows the game to be taken away from you or won’t let you install it or play it in single-player anymore when the publisher decides they don’t want to pay for servers anymore.
It is, none the less, a deviation from the No-DRM promise, IMHO.
Not in the sense we’re discussing it here, they don’t.
There’s a list of about 20 games said to have DRM in Gog and when you actually read the list rather than just it’s title it turns out none of them has what we would call DRM - any sort of phone-home validation or anti-piracy measure.
It’s mainly things games with add-on content that requires you use Gog Galaxy or register online, some that send analytics to a server and stuff like that.
Whilst it’s still nasty and still shouldn’t be happening, none of that makes the game unusable in the future after the servers are down if you still have the offline installer.
Lol that comparison was also going through my head. I remember it being a fun game though, more than any Bethesda games from the past decade or so, but frankly that bar wasn’t really high either.
Heck, even if you want to blatantly ignore every other platform and site you can buy games from, which there are plenty, Valve gives devs a supply of Steam keys they can sell anywhere they want, they don’t even get a cut from those despite providing the bandwidth to distribute the files.
The reason they hold most of the market share is not because of bad business practices it’s because the opposite. People use their service cause it’s the best.
The gov only considers a large business a monopoly if it’s doing anti competitive practices to maintain or grow it’s market share. That description in no way fits steam or valve.
The reason they hold most of the market share is not because of bad business practices it’s because the opposite. People use their service cause it’s the best.
I have physical copies of PC games that require a Steam Account.
Which is why you don’t have physical copies of those games - you bought a steam key, exactly like you could have done digitally from humblebundle of greenmangaming or myriad of other stores, this one just had it printed on a piece of paper instead of sending you an email.
Helped you (and Valve) to save some bandwidth. But yes. If it requires a Steam account to play, you bought a license allowing you to access a game using Steam, and not an actual game you own.
Valve is holding up the bar not because valve is great but because everyone else is so shit. I’ve had a ton of issues with steam throughout the years and it’s just… nothing else is better. I was actually excited for the epic store launch and it’s… Well, not the worst, because being the worst is a challenge some places take seriously, but certainly not a good steam replacement especially for low data people.
Steam may not let me control the updates to steam, but it won’t force refresh my library causing ping spikes all the time as an intended feature.
Lmao, he is colluding with the rest, not holding up the bar.
There is nothing rhat differentiates Steam from Microsoft or Nintendo. The only difference between Gaben and Bezos is that valve has a really good advertising team that’s managed to convince everyone he “isn’t your average billionaire”.
They charge 30% because they have a soft monopoly, it’s basically robbery and it is affecting the indie scene and the quality and amount of games we receive.
Gaben has 6 mega yatchs and a number of submarines. The yatchs alone are worth around 1 billion and cost an estimated 75 to 100 million per year just to maintain.
Now I sit and wait for the Gaben simp squad to come compare him to Jesus and tell me how “he has the only good monopoly”. Both of these things literally happened last time.
I’m guessing you don’t remember what the market was like for indie games before Steam. Valve’s platform has done a lot of work to expose small game developers, and made it economically viable to work on and publish games independently. Before this it was very difficult for small titles without the advertising budget of a AAA publisher to get any attention at all, let alone actual sales. There’s nothing else like Steam for small studios trying to find buyers for their games, and Valve does deserve credit for that because it’s improved the video game market overall to have more people making more games and able to earn a living doing it.
The other major effort that Valve has made is Linux compatibility. Even before their work on Proton, Valve released native Linux versions of their games (they were one of very few publishers to do so at the time). I’ve been gaming on Linux since 2006, and Wine was great but rarely easy or complete. Proton has made things so straightforward that people have forgotten just how difficult it was before.
Credit where it’s due. No other major publisher has contributed to the gaming community the way Valve has, except maybe id Software when they just handed the entire Quake 3 Arena source code to the open source community in 2005 which spawned countless new open source game projects.
Indie games came about because of multiple factors, steam only being one of them but they did help a lot. That being said, they are currently having a detrimental effect and I think Gaben has been more than properly rewarded.
It’s not the early 2000s, steam is bringing in massive amounts of cash and I’m tired of seeing an other indie company go under because Gaben wants another boat in the 9 figure range.
The government will never do anything if we aren’t vocal about it and the community is doing the opposite.
25% more of the profit can go a long way, if Steam were to only take 5% for example. And it’s not only about bankruptcy, it’s budget for more features, dealing with bugs and potential sequels. The quality is affected as well and Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony don’t deserve all that money instead of the devs, just for being the middle men.
belt-tightening can often mean simply shutting down.
Sheffield says it’s hard not to feel guilty when other studios go under, even as his own struggles. “We’re all kind of fighting for a tiny slice of the same pie,”
“When an indie doesn’t get funding for its game, you just quietly never see their work again,”
The industry is struggling because steam and the other stores keep them on the brink, they have no leeway. I don’t know how steams greed could be seen as unrelated.
No one thinks Gaben is the second coming. His platform just, actually doesn’t suck, and genuinely functions as a service to its users. It’s a low bar, sure, but it’s a good one. Comparing it to Microsoft axeing any studio that produces something worth talking about while they force more datascraping malware and adware into Windows is just dishonest.
Your comment reads more like you get off on being controversial than having actual insightful thoughts and the comparisons in what these three companies you listed are actually doing.
Ya well if it’s such a fucking low bar, it’s probably because they aren’t holding it up which is my point.
They do the absolute minimum, yet receive mountains of praise. Call me when he brings down the cut to something reasonable like 5% or just let’s dev choose what price they sell their games for on other platforms ffs.
Indie companies are closing left and right, these mega stores and their soft monopoly is having a net negative impact on the industry.
Stop defending billionaires. If steam was fair, he wouldn’t be able to afford a billion dollars worth of fancy boats.
Put the installer on a USB stick and sell it.
I assume you’ve never gone back to the electronics store where you bought your dishwasher and expected to sell your used dishwasher there.
But that’s against the User Agreement with GOG. You don’t have that right, DRM or not.
GOG are not selling you something you own, just like the rest of the gaming platforms. They just give you the right to download and keep DRM-free installers (for the most part) for games you license / purchase.
I like GOG, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t own anything you buy from them, you just possess. Ownership means you have control over that possession too which is only really true of a minuscule fraction of FOSS games that are licensed with MIT-0, 0BSD, Unlicense, CC0 or some other public domain license (which doesn’t include GPL, MIT, Apache licenses).
Ownership in terms distribution of digital software is a bit funky I guess, but from a consumers point of view, there’s really nothing GOG/game companies can do once you got the installer. You’re effectively owning the bits on your hard drive and there’s nothing they can do to control what you do with those bits. I guess from a lawyers perspective it may be different, but in practice there isn’t much.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the licenses though? A game licensed under MIT would be free to share, attribution shouldn’t be much of problem.
MIT still has copyright attribution which means you don’t own it, just have lots and lots of rights. You own the code, but you don’t own the name etc.
MIT-0 is public domain, there is no copyright by the creators, that right is assigned to all of us. You own that content and idea. It’s why anyone can use Sherlock Holmes and do anything they want with the character as he’s public domain. You don’t have to call him Schmerlock Hoves.
But yeah, for all intents and purposes to the thread, you’re right. MIT etc you can sell the code/binaries so gives you practical ownership.
I don’t know if it’s a clause but Gabe said it at one point. Is that legally binding though? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit that whatever VC eventually buys steam and then runs it into the ground would have no problem changing the user agreement to whatever suited them…
I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document
And yes, if a VC buys out steam I’d be horrified, but it’s structurally resistant to that. It’s largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society’s problems
Steam does not provide installers for games, this means that whatever game you want, needs to be 100% functional and already be parsed/deployed/installed by steam on your hard drive.
That game needs to be DRM free, meaning that it has an executable available that can be launched without steam running or requiring any sort of authentication or input from the steam servers/services before being able to launch, play or even interact with the menus
So only the DRM free games will remain, and only the installed ones at that. Anything that wasn’t will be lost to the wind the moment the distribution service or storage (yours or theirs) bits the dust…
installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam’s standardized format. I’ve done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library
It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it
DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it’s generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction
Ultimately, it’s not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn’t have to use it if they don’t want to
2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.
GOG has the same drawbacks as Steam without any of the useful features. They should cut down on their “owning games” lies and spend time improving their platform instead.
It does not. You can download and backup all your GOG installers, making the games functionally equal to games you purchased on CD ROMs back in the day. They can revoke your license all they want, they wouldn’t be able to keep you from using the software you acquired this way. That makes all the difference.
and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content.
Which they define as:
1.3 Also, when we’re talking about games, in-game content, virtual items or currency or GOG videos or other content or services which you can purchase or access via GOG services, we’ll just call them “GOG games” or “GOG videos” respectively and when we talk about them all together they are “GOG content”.
The license is with regards to “GOG Service”, not “GOG Contents”. You need the former to get access to the latter, sure. But what isn’t clear about this?
You still own the contents (though, as mentioned, individual titles may have additional blablabla). If you don’t think this distinction makes sense when it comes to GoG vs Steam, then maybe you’re just discussing something entirely different?
To install a game you have bought on steam you need the steam client, the steam servers, internet and your steam account. If any of those stops being available you can no longer install the games you have bought. So while you can play the games once installed without most of the above, you can lose access to your not currently installed games.
Also, on steam you purchase licenses to the games which they can revoke. I.e. if steam turned evil they could take away games from your library and you couldn’t do anything about it really.
Comparatively on GOG, you get a binary installer you can download and can keep forever without DRM so you don’t need anything else to install the game in the future, even if it disappeared from your GOG account for some reason, you could still install and play the game.
If Steam stops working, you could replace the Steam API with the Goldberg emulator, and an already installed game should work, if there is no other DRM.
Offline installer. So a game gets removed from your library for any reason. Now you get a new PC and can’t play the game anymore. At GoG you get an installer that doesn’t check servers and can work with no internet connection etc. So even if they were forced to remove a game from your library, you still have the installer and can install it whenever you want. So if you keep a hard drive of installers, you will forever own the game as long as you don’t lose that data.
Nowadays the Heroic Games Launcher is the preferred solution for downloading and running GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
No clue if it’s heroic exclusive but it’s more than just affiliate linking. Heroic embeds the actual gog store page in the launcher and gets a percentage of anything you buy per their agreement with gog
Many of their games do have native linux versions, and a lot do work under wine or proton, which can be used as a Non-steam game in Steam or even without Steam.
Their launcher doesn’t yet have a native linux version but it’s completely optional, and does still run under wine if you really want it.
If I’m not going to use their game manager, then why would I buy the game from them instead of just buying it directly from the game studio? I guess because game studios rarely distribute their own games anymore?
Exactly, the game publishers and distributors are often not the developers themselves. Only one to distribute direct in recent memory was World Of Goo 2, and even that was sold primarily through the Epic store.
Love gog but fuck them for spamming my email. I found out to claim the new games it’ll auto subscribe you to the news letter. So I stopped claiming the games. But still I get emails for promotions and crap. More annoying then freaking scam callers. I’ve unsubscribed every time I get one and stopped claiming free games. I’m so close to just cut my loses and delete my account but I feel like that still won’t stop those parasites
You should not be getting promotional emails if you opt out, so something is wrong with your account/settings specifically. Contact them or filter your emails.
That’s what I figured… Some bug on their end or something because every time I get one I unsubscribe. I plan to just delete my account and go back to a mix of pirating and steam
All online storefronts doing business in California will soon be forbidden by law to lie to customers with words like “buy” when they really mean “license”. GOG is no exception.
My understanding is that GOG is an exception to this. Here is a quote that I got from an Ars Technica article
California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.
Since GOG does offer permanent offline installers that can be used without an internet connection, GOG’s sales are exempt from this new law.
I like GOG, but this is just weasel-words to take advantage of the ignorance of the public. Whether you receive the installs directly or not, you still don’t own your games, you are just licensing them, same as Steam.
This doesn’t tip the scales into the “this is wrong” territory for me, but I do think this kind of word manipulation exploiting an unknowledgeable public is a little bit slimy.
edit: I had a bit of knee-jerk reaction to the sensationalism of the headline; what GOG actually says is fine and doesn’t imply anything beyond licensing in my eyes.
I think it is fair. When you buy games through GOG, you get the offline installer. Nobody can take that away from you.
When you buy games through Steam, you can only install them via the Steam client. If the Steam servers are offline, you cannot install your games. In theory, some games are without any DRM, and you can just zip them up, but even then that doesn’t always work, and you shouldn’t have to. That’s not to take away from Steam, of course, it is great at what it does.
Providing an offline installer that works no matter what is as good as “owning” the game IMO, even if “technically” you are just purchasing a license to use the game.
edit: I went and read what GOG itself actually says. The headline is slimy, GOG’s disclosure is fine. I don’t think they’re implying anything beyond what they offer.
Are you referring to the use of the word “killshot”? Otherwise, the headline says exactly the same thing.
Its offline installers ‘cannot be taken away from you’
No implication of outright ownership, just that they can’t take away the offline installers. I mean, I guess it doesn’t outright say “that you’ve already downloaded,” but given the length, I’d say that’s a passable omission.
We don’t have to do this. It’s the juxtaposition of GOG’s claim paired being intentionally paired with the steam disclaimer so as to present it as if an alternative.
I don’t think “weasel words” is the right term here.
You own the GOG games like you own a book you bought, and like you don’t own a DRM-crippled book, even though you might be entitled to read it under certain circumstances. The difference between downloading an installer and downloading a game on Steam is, the installer will continue to work even if GOG folds or decides they don’t like you anymore. But if Steam blocks your account, all the games you bought are gone, and Steam is fully in the right to do so since you don’t own their games.
That’s not true. You still only receive a license to play the game, you do not own it. Directly from GOG’s website:
We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.
Practically this means you cannot resell your GOG installer in the way you could resell a physical book.
I think OP is saying that, while you can buy a book to read it, you do not own the copyright to that book. They’re saying it’s basically the same idea with GOG.
The illustration does break down, but I think their point still stands.
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Chad GOG
What the hell happened to Steam’s built in offline backup system, anyway? It used to have that when it was brand new.
I don’t remember that ever being a thing. It’s had an offline mode for decades, but for the longest time it never worked properly.
It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
It technically still exists in the game properties -> installed files tab, but it doesn’t really work. The backup files you get require you to be online to meaningfully restore and will trigger a patch to the latest game version.
Practically speaking it’s better to just make a copy of the game install directory manually, gives you a better chance of things working (even though most games require some kind of external tooling for that).
What file format does the Steam backup use?
For current exports, it’s some custom .csm/.csd file combo. Not sure if there’s any tools for working with it, seems like it’d be more annoying than just using a normal archive format either way.
That’s bad. I guess if I want to back up my Steam games, it’s going to be tarballs.
It’s still there. But I never tried it and it probably won’t work with DRMed games.
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Plus, unless the installers have the full package, it’ll still require an internet connection. Usually installers download the files and then install them.
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They’re called offline installers for a reason.
When have they not had the full package on GOG?
Yeah? And whats the difference in practice?
Seriously not trying to just be contradictory:
What’s the difference? In practical terms, what does this mean for me as the consumer? We don’t own the intellectual property, but may use the software as-is? From a practical, consumer standpoint that feels the same as the days of owning your software on a disc, unable to be taken as long as you have physical control over the device. I’m fine with calling this “owning” personally.
I’m absolutely willing to be wrong on this. I’m by no means an expert. Please, if I have missed something, let me know.
There really is no difference. For almost all intents and purposes, GOG’s offline installers can be treated the same way as physical CDs of way back then, with one of the only exceptions being that you cannot resell them.
Depending on your perspective, the sell/trade/loan aspect of physical can be a huge deal. I outlined in another comment, selling/trading games was never my thing, but it was my cousins. From my perspective, there’s marginal difference, but there IS a difference.
Can you sell them? or trade, give, even lend them? My guess is you can’t. And when I was a kid I did all those things.
It’s not anedoctal IMO, but a change in paradigm. I’m not saying it’s all bad. I buy games on GOG. But I don’t own them really
A 2015 study in France showed 54% where more willing to buy a game when they knew they could sell them when done
There is no drm so zip the installer and everything to your friend and call it a day
We were talking about legal offers. Are you legally the owner of your game.
Of course you can share, reproduce, pirate … but that’s not the point here.
I don’t want to advocate for shoveling money into any company, but if you could sell your steam games it would screw over indie devs in a big way. Many games made by small studies or one person don’t have as much content as AAA studies and would be far more prone to a small handful of copies being distributed back and forth on the used market instead of each being a sale that goes to the developer.
Some devs would see a drop in sales as much as 90% and I just don’t think it’s worth it to shoot the gaming industry in the foot like that.
Just to be clear: my main point was that you don’t own any more the game bought on GOG than on Steam.
And there are definitely upsides to this type of market.
Although nowadays I wouldn’t buy a just released triple A 70€ game knowing I can’t sell or give it (not that I play those much anymore). The games I actually want to keep a few and far between.
I buy second hand Switch games for my nephews. It’s cheap, I’m actually giving them something, and they can trade them with their friends or sell them to buy fortnite skins the little shits
Again, not hating on GOG, I’ve been a customer for a long time. Mainly because I don’t want any kind of launcher. I play 99% solo games, don’t need no updates or multiple clicks to launch a game.
I would ABSOLUTELY argue that you more own a game purchased on gog, with an offline installer, than one purchased on steam. I now see the functional difference between owning a drm-free installer vs owning a physical game, but there’s also a gulf of difference between steam and gog
Just to be entirely fair. The rest of what you said is absolutely spot on.
I agree, you are “more owner” with a GOG game.
I can see the functional difference there, with regards to sell/trade/loan. You could of course emulate the functionality, or rely on the honor system for abandon ware stuff, but that’s clunky, inefficient, not worth the energy.
I hadn’t considered the second hand aspect. Even as a kid, I was always more a “build a library” kind of person versus a “cycle my catalog” kind of person. I was considering things from an availability to play the game perspective alone. Thanks for the different perspective!
Okay steam, if its just a digital license and not ownership… Then surely you’ll be significantly lowering prices, Since you charge full ownership prices for games, not license prices… Right?
G*mers really don’t want the industry to evaluate the $60 price point and apply inflationary adjustments going back to when it became the standard.
Fr tho people seem to forget abt inflation a lot when talking abt the old days
People seem to forget that just moderately decent games sell magnitudes more today than they did 20 years ago, too, thus continuing to bring in insane cash (as long as you arent sony or other companies that are obscenely wasteful…) despite inflation, this stable pricing making them a good entertainment investment for people whose minimum wage hasnt changed in like 15 years
Why compare oranges and apples? Console and PC games were never the same from a price perspective.
The $60 was based on 55%+ going to distribution channels, +physical media costs, so it could be down from there.
regular reminder that digital distribution was sold to us under the false promise that games would be cheaper, because they wouldnt have to pay for printing boxes, CDs, manuals, greebles, Wouldnt have to pay for shipping or storage, or any other burden addition of physical media.
That we’d be able to buy games for 30 dollars, and that that the developers and everyone involved would make more money than they would have paying 50 for a physical game.
Yeah, this is the original sin, they just banked the cost the whole time until they could cry that they need to charge more because of inflation.
and now, they are wanting to sell games for 70-80 bucks for AAA titles.
Its not cause the games are 50 dollars that they arent making enough hundreds of millions. The only reason these AAA games arent making bank is because they’re shit
Can anyone honestly remember the last AAA title that wasnt an absolute dog pile?
I don’t think it’s Steam setting the prices.
They indirectly are inflating it with their 30% cut
They are also deflating it by providing services that developers would otherwise have to spend time and money on to develop themselves.
Their 30% cuts allowed Gabe to start collecting yachts, they could charge a lot less while still offering the same services and only Gabe would see his finances take the hit, no one else in the world would be poorer if they charged 20% instead.
So games sold on storefronts owned by the same publishers as the game should be 30% cheaper right? Right?
Should be cheaper, emphasis on should, but at the same time if they sell directly and take the same cut, that’s one less intermediary in the chain so more money going to the devs.
None of the managerial class are good people, wake up, all billionaires are taking advantage of us.
I like GOG and I like steam too. While it is true that GOG can’t take the offline installer from me, this does not make it true I can play the game forever since many games are dynamically linked to libraries that may not be available in the future. This happened to me with games I just had bought. Steam also dynamically links to libraries but what I like about the way they are doing it is that these are part of the base installation so as long as you keep these files, the games should keep working. Nothing being perfect, I think they both try to do things in their own way and try to convince us that it is the best one.
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I love how this article takes shots at steam despite valve being THE company holding the bar up in the gaming space.
I could list examples but I honestly don’t even think I need to
This isn’t about what steam currently is. It’s about what it will inevitably become.
I fucked up going with Steam. Should have just pirated everything Single player.
You didn’t fuck up. You can always still pirate. Wait it out and see what happens, the moment it goes to shit put on your pirate hat and don’t give a fuck.
Absolutely. I mean, I love the fact that GOG has DRM-free games. It’s really incredible how many games are available without DRM because of them.
But I’m not going to make Valve out to be the bad guy here. Valve is like 99% of the reason why gaming on Linux is viable right now.
Valve seems like a great example of how, if you don’t sell your company to venture capitalists, you can just be cool nerds that make good products. As much as I want DRM-free to be the norm, I’m also not going to vilify a company that is one of the best examples of not enshittifying right now.
A lot of Steam games are also DRM free. It’s up to the individual developers whether they enforce DRM checks or not.
I’ve copied files from Steam folders directly to a flash drive, plugged them into an offline, Steam-less computer that I don’t have rights to install anything on, and ran them perfectly. But it is a game-by-game thing.
Yeah, the only caveat is that you don’t get an installer with steam, so if you copy the installed game onto a pc that doesn’t have all the correct dependencies installed (like the correct DirectX version for example), then the game won’t launch. But it’s not too complicated to install the dependencies manually
Also GOG has DRM games now
And has had them for many years before now
I was wondering how all those Sony games worked on GOG.
Which ones? Do they disclose that they contain DRM?
If we’re talking about DRM as in a measure to prevent copying, or require online security check, or anything like that, then no GOG game has DRM. One of GOG’s core policies is that all of their games are DRM free. However, some people have stretched the definition a little to include other stuff. For example, if an online multiplayer game requires GOG Galaxy to connect to its online servers, some people consider that to be DRM.
There are some posts on GOG’s official forums where people try to list all the games that have “DRM” of any kind. So if you’re interested, that’s where you could look. But if you just want to have confidence that you’ll be able to install and run the game in the future, then don’t worry about it. No GOG game has anything that would prevent that.
The info is here and none of that “DRM” means you can’t in the future, after the servers are down, install the game from your copy of the offline installer and play it.
None of that is DRM in the sense we’re talking about here: the kind of mechanism that allows the game to be taken away from you or won’t let you install it or play it in single-player anymore when the publisher decides they don’t want to pay for servers anymore.
It is, none the less, a deviation from the No-DRM promise, IMHO.
Not in the sense we’re discussing it here, they don’t.
There’s a list of about 20 games said to have DRM in Gog and when you actually read the list rather than just it’s title it turns out none of them has what we would call DRM - any sort of phone-home validation or anti-piracy measure.
It’s mainly things games with add-on content that requires you use Gog Galaxy or register online, some that send analytics to a server and stuff like that.
You can see the info here,
Whilst it’s still nasty and still shouldn’t be happening, none of that makes the game unusable in the future after the servers are down if you still have the offline installer.
Yeah… it’s also a new law in California is it not? Kill shot? Hahahaha. Right. Who wrote this headline xD
It’s like every clickbait gaming website whenever a new MMO game drops and they call it the WoW-killer for the umpteenth time in the past 15 years.
Flashbacks from the advertising for The Outer Worlds, and IGN calling it the “Bethesda-killer”
The true Bethesda killer was Bethesda themselves
Lol that comparison was also going through my head. I remember it being a fun game though, more than any Bethesda games from the past decade or so, but frankly that bar wasn’t really high either.
If anything is a “Bethesda-killer”, it’s games like Outer Wilds, not The Outer Worlds.
I think you mean holding a monopoly in the gaming space.
A monopoly on what? PC game storefeonts? Itch.io, gog, epic, gamepass, some are better than others, but steam isn’t anti-competition
They aren’t really a monopoly. You can purchase games elsewhere. They are simply the gold standard of gaming platforms.
I think you don’t know what that word means.
Heck, even if you want to blatantly ignore every other platform and site you can buy games from, which there are plenty, Valve gives devs a supply of Steam keys they can sell anywhere they want, they don’t even get a cut from those despite providing the bandwidth to distribute the files.
The reason they hold most of the market share is not because of bad business practices it’s because the opposite. People use their service cause it’s the best.
The gov only considers a large business a monopoly if it’s doing anti competitive practices to maintain or grow it’s market share. That description in no way fits steam or valve.
I have physical copies of PC games that require a Steam Account.
Which is why you don’t have physical copies of those games - you bought a steam key, exactly like you could have done digitally from humblebundle of greenmangaming or myriad of other stores, this one just had it printed on a piece of paper instead of sending you an email.
A Steam key Valve didn’t get a cut from, btw.
So all those files on the disc I had to install were for something else then?
Helped you (and Valve) to save some bandwidth. But yes. If it requires a Steam account to play, you bought a license allowing you to access a game using Steam, and not an actual game you own.
So it’s anti consumer bullshit.
Valve is holding up the bar not because valve is great but because everyone else is so shit. I’ve had a ton of issues with steam throughout the years and it’s just… nothing else is better. I was actually excited for the epic store launch and it’s… Well, not the worst, because being the worst is a challenge some places take seriously, but certainly not a good steam replacement especially for low data people.
Steam may not let me control the updates to steam, but it won’t force refresh my library causing ping spikes all the time as an intended feature.
Lmao, he is colluding with the rest, not holding up the bar.
There is nothing rhat differentiates Steam from Microsoft or Nintendo. The only difference between Gaben and Bezos is that valve has a really good advertising team that’s managed to convince everyone he “isn’t your average billionaire”.
They charge 30% because they have a soft monopoly, it’s basically robbery and it is affecting the indie scene and the quality and amount of games we receive.
Gaben has 6 mega yatchs and a number of submarines. The yatchs alone are worth around 1 billion and cost an estimated 75 to 100 million per year just to maintain.
Now I sit and wait for the Gaben simp squad to come compare him to Jesus and tell me how “he has the only good monopoly”. Both of these things literally happened last time.
Downvote me you bootlickers.
Preach brother!
I’m guessing you don’t remember what the market was like for indie games before Steam. Valve’s platform has done a lot of work to expose small game developers, and made it economically viable to work on and publish games independently. Before this it was very difficult for small titles without the advertising budget of a AAA publisher to get any attention at all, let alone actual sales. There’s nothing else like Steam for small studios trying to find buyers for their games, and Valve does deserve credit for that because it’s improved the video game market overall to have more people making more games and able to earn a living doing it.
The other major effort that Valve has made is Linux compatibility. Even before their work on Proton, Valve released native Linux versions of their games (they were one of very few publishers to do so at the time). I’ve been gaming on Linux since 2006, and Wine was great but rarely easy or complete. Proton has made things so straightforward that people have forgotten just how difficult it was before.
Credit where it’s due. No other major publisher has contributed to the gaming community the way Valve has, except maybe id Software when they just handed the entire Quake 3 Arena source code to the open source community in 2005 which spawned countless new open source game projects.
No, you’ll enjoy the attention too much.
Indie games came about because of multiple factors, steam only being one of them but they did help a lot. That being said, they are currently having a detrimental effect and I think Gaben has been more than properly rewarded.
It’s not the early 2000s, steam is bringing in massive amounts of cash and I’m tired of seeing an other indie company go under because Gaben wants another boat in the 9 figure range.
The government will never do anything if we aren’t vocal about it and the community is doing the opposite.
Who’s the indie company going under here?
This is an article that was floating on lemmy a few months ago.
https://www.wired.com/story/death-occurs-in-the-dark-indie-video-game-devs-are-struggling-to-stay-afloat/
25% more of the profit can go a long way, if Steam were to only take 5% for example. And it’s not only about bankruptcy, it’s budget for more features, dealing with bugs and potential sequels. The quality is affected as well and Steam, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony don’t deserve all that money instead of the devs, just for being the middle men.
I’ll bite. I hate billionaires. Let’s check this out.
Things that hurt indie devs in this article:
Things not cited in this article as a problem:
Lack of funding is mentioned every paragraph?
The industry is struggling because steam and the other stores keep them on the brink, they have no leeway. I don’t know how steams greed could be seen as unrelated.
Gaben has the only good monopoly, he’s pretty much Jesus.
What a weird hill to die on.
Anyway, enjoy being wrong.
You know what’s funny, I used to get this same kind of attitude when I’d bash Elon Musk when he was popular a few years ago.
It’s even worst when the billionaire is being defended by his own con victims.
No one thinks Gaben is the second coming. His platform just, actually doesn’t suck, and genuinely functions as a service to its users. It’s a low bar, sure, but it’s a good one. Comparing it to Microsoft axeing any studio that produces something worth talking about while they force more datascraping malware and adware into Windows is just dishonest.
Your comment reads more like you get off on being controversial than having actual insightful thoughts and the comparisons in what these three companies you listed are actually doing.
Ya well if it’s such a fucking low bar, it’s probably because they aren’t holding it up which is my point.
They do the absolute minimum, yet receive mountains of praise. Call me when he brings down the cut to something reasonable like 5% or just let’s dev choose what price they sell their games for on other platforms ffs.
Indie companies are closing left and right, these mega stores and their soft monopoly is having a net negative impact on the industry.
Stop defending billionaires. If steam was fair, he wouldn’t be able to afford a billion dollars worth of fancy boats.
Doesn’t owning something mean you can sell it? That doesn’t apply to GOG, though.
By the definition of this California law, they seem to count as offering ownership.
Put the installer on a USB stick and sell it. I assume you’ve never gone back to the electronics store where you bought your dishwasher and expected to sell your used dishwasher there.
But that’s against the User Agreement with GOG. You don’t have that right, DRM or not.
GOG are not selling you something you own, just like the rest of the gaming platforms. They just give you the right to download and keep DRM-free installers (for the most part) for games you license / purchase.
I like GOG, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t own anything you buy from them, you just possess. Ownership means you have control over that possession too which is only really true of a minuscule fraction of FOSS games that are licensed with MIT-0, 0BSD, Unlicense, CC0 or some other public domain license (which doesn’t include GPL, MIT, Apache licenses).
Ownership in terms distribution of digital software is a bit funky I guess, but from a consumers point of view, there’s really nothing GOG/game companies can do once you got the installer. You’re effectively owning the bits on your hard drive and there’s nothing they can do to control what you do with those bits. I guess from a lawyers perspective it may be different, but in practice there isn’t much.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the licenses though? A game licensed under MIT would be free to share, attribution shouldn’t be much of problem.
MIT still has copyright attribution which means you don’t own it, just have lots and lots of rights. You own the code, but you don’t own the name etc.
MIT-0 is public domain, there is no copyright by the creators, that right is assigned to all of us. You own that content and idea. It’s why anyone can use Sherlock Holmes and do anything they want with the character as he’s public domain. You don’t have to call him Schmerlock Hoves.
But yeah, for all intents and purposes to the thread, you’re right. MIT etc you can sell the code/binaries so gives you practical ownership.
Doesn’t steam have a clause to the effect of “if we go out of business, you’ll get X period to download your games so you can manage them yourself”?
I don’t know if it’s a clause but Gabe said it at one point. Is that legally binding though? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit that whatever VC eventually buys steam and then runs it into the ground would have no problem changing the user agreement to whatever suited them…
I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document
And yes, if a VC buys out steam I’d be horrified, but it’s structurally resistant to that. It’s largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society’s problems
It’s not legally binding, since it isn’t part of the user agreement you review when buying games on Steam.
If there’s a grace period, perhaps, however:
So only the DRM free games will remain, and only the installed ones at that. Anything that wasn’t will be lost to the wind the moment the distribution service or storage (yours or theirs) bits the dust…
installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam’s standardized format. I’ve done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library
It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it
DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it’s generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction
Ultimately, it’s not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn’t have to use it if they don’t want to
Even if that’s not the case, the drm is very easy to crack.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
GOG has the same drawbacks as Steam without any of the useful features. They should cut down on their “owning games” lies and spend time improving their platform instead.
You legally didn’t “own” your physical games either if you haven’t noticed.
It does not. You can download and backup all your GOG installers, making the games functionally equal to games you purchased on CD ROMs back in the day. They can revoke your license all they want, they wouldn’t be able to keep you from using the software you acquired this way. That makes all the difference.
That’s for the gog service itself.
No, that’s for all content:
Which they define as:
The license is with regards to “GOG Service”, not “GOG Contents”. You need the former to get access to the latter, sure. But what isn’t clear about this?
You still own the contents (though, as mentioned, individual titles may have additional blablabla). If you don’t think this distinction makes sense when it comes to GoG vs Steam, then maybe you’re just discussing something entirely different?
Yeah, you have to download the installer before they pull the rug.
I suppose. If you are doing things against TOS and you suspect just might happen, by all means.
wdym you can play steam games offline the only exception is needing the steam client?
To install a game you have bought on steam you need the steam client, the steam servers, internet and your steam account. If any of those stops being available you can no longer install the games you have bought. So while you can play the games once installed without most of the above, you can lose access to your not currently installed games.
Also, on steam you purchase licenses to the games which they can revoke. I.e. if steam turned evil they could take away games from your library and you couldn’t do anything about it really.
Comparatively on GOG, you get a binary installer you can download and can keep forever without DRM so you don’t need anything else to install the game in the future, even if it disappeared from your GOG account for some reason, you could still install and play the game.
If Steam stops working, you could replace the Steam API with the Goldberg emulator, and an already installed game should work, if there is no other DRM.
But yes, GOG is definitely better.
I just wish GOG Galaxy worked on Linux.
Heroic launcher has been amazing
thank you for the detailed explanations i just thought steam only needs the client to work
You also need a Steam account, to which all your games are linked. If you somehow get perma-banned off of Steam, you lose everything.
ohh yeah i forgot
Offline installer. So a game gets removed from your library for any reason. Now you get a new PC and can’t play the game anymore. At GoG you get an installer that doesn’t check servers and can work with no internet connection etc. So even if they were forced to remove a game from your library, you still have the installer and can install it whenever you want. So if you keep a hard drive of installers, you will forever own the game as long as you don’t lose that data.
ohh
Does GOG work on Linux?
If it works on Steam it works on GOG. Nothing about proton is limited to Steam.
There’s a Linux specific Steam program though. Is there a Linux specific GOG program?
You mean a native version of GOG? I don’t think so, but you can use it through Lutris.
Nowadays the Heroic Games Launcher is the preferred solution for downloading and running GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
Cool, thank you.
The Heroic Games Launcher can download and run GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
Cool, thanks.
How does GOG support Heroic?
They set up a commission with gog if you buy games through heroic
Is this an actual, specific deal with Heroic, or some general affiliate linking thing?
No clue if it’s heroic exclusive but it’s more than just affiliate linking. Heroic embeds the actual gog store page in the launcher and gets a percentage of anything you buy per their agreement with gog
Many of their games do have native linux versions, and a lot do work under wine or proton, which can be used as a Non-steam game in Steam or even without Steam.
Their launcher doesn’t yet have a native linux version but it’s completely optional, and does still run under wine if you really want it.
If I’m not going to use their game manager, then why would I buy the game from them instead of just buying it directly from the game studio? I guess because game studios rarely distribute their own games anymore?
Exactly, the game publishers and distributors are often not the developers themselves. Only one to distribute direct in recent memory was World Of Goo 2, and even that was sold primarily through the Epic store.
Tarkov is only direct to my knowledge
Which neatly sums up why I do not and will not even have a Steam account, but buy many games from GOG.
Love gog but fuck them for spamming my email. I found out to claim the new games it’ll auto subscribe you to the news letter. So I stopped claiming the games. But still I get emails for promotions and crap. More annoying then freaking scam callers. I’ve unsubscribed every time I get one and stopped claiming free games. I’m so close to just cut my loses and delete my account but I feel like that still won’t stop those parasites
You should not be getting promotional emails if you opt out, so something is wrong with your account/settings specifically. Contact them or filter your emails.
That’s what I figured… Some bug on their end or something because every time I get one I unsubscribe. I plan to just delete my account and go back to a mix of pirating and steam
How weird, I wonder if there’s something wrong with my GOG account? I don’t think I’ve received an email from them in years?
No, if you claim the giveaways you have to subscribe to their newsletter. That’s all. If you aren’t doing that, you’ll almost never get an email.
I see, that makes sense. Thanks!
Ye that’s why I stopped claiming games
You realise GOG sells DRM games right?
Like…?
I believe Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has DRM and is still sold on GOG.
Okay, let’s see…
No mention of DRM in the reviews or anywhere in the forum…
No mention of DRM anywhere…
You’re right I was misremembering the reviews complaining about the UELA instead
All online storefronts doing business in California will soon be forbidden by law to lie to customers with words like “buy” when they really mean “license”. GOG is no exception.
https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab2426
My understanding is that GOG is an exception to this. Here is a quote that I got from an Ars Technica article
Since GOG does offer permanent offline installers that can be used without an internet connection, GOG’s sales are exempt from this new law.
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And it is a license. I’m just responding to the comment about the law.
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I like GOG, but this is just weasel-words to take advantage of the ignorance of the public. Whether you receive the installs directly or not, you still don’t own your games, you are just licensing them, same as Steam.
This doesn’t tip the scales into the “this is wrong” territory for me, but I do think this kind of word manipulation exploiting an unknowledgeable public is a little bit slimy.
edit: I had a bit of knee-jerk reaction to the sensationalism of the headline; what GOG actually says is fine and doesn’t imply anything beyond licensing in my eyes.
I just like calling it “the kill shot”, as though GOG is about to take all of Steam’s market share some time next week.
please let this be true it would be really funny
I think it is fair. When you buy games through GOG, you get the offline installer. Nobody can take that away from you.
When you buy games through Steam, you can only install them via the Steam client. If the Steam servers are offline, you cannot install your games. In theory, some games are without any DRM, and you can just zip them up, but even then that doesn’t always work, and you shouldn’t have to. That’s not to take away from Steam, of course, it is great at what it does.
Providing an offline installer that works no matter what is as good as “owning” the game IMO, even if “technically” you are just purchasing a license to use the game.
edit: I went and read what GOG itself actually says. The headline is slimy, GOG’s disclosure is fine. I don’t think they’re implying anything beyond what they offer.
Are you referring to the use of the word “killshot”? Otherwise, the headline says exactly the same thing.
No implication of outright ownership, just that they can’t take away the offline installers. I mean, I guess it doesn’t outright say “that you’ve already downloaded,” but given the length, I’d say that’s a passable omission.
We don’t have to do this. It’s the juxtaposition of GOG’s claim paired being intentionally paired with the steam disclaimer so as to present it as if an alternative.
I don’t think “weasel words” is the right term here.
You own the GOG games like you own a book you bought, and like you don’t own a DRM-crippled book, even though you might be entitled to read it under certain circumstances. The difference between downloading an installer and downloading a game on Steam is, the installer will continue to work even if GOG folds or decides they don’t like you anymore. But if Steam blocks your account, all the games you bought are gone, and Steam is fully in the right to do so since you don’t own their games.
That’s not true. You still only receive a license to play the game, you do not own it. Directly from GOG’s website:
Practically this means you cannot resell your GOG installer in the way you could resell a physical book.
I think OP is saying that, while you can buy a book to read it, you do not own the copyright to that book. They’re saying it’s basically the same idea with GOG.
The illustration does break down, but I think their point still stands.
You can resell, trade, give, lend a book you bought. You’re just not allowed to do the same with any copies you’ve made. At least where I live
Like I said, the illustration does break down.
There are no products for which you get the IP because you bought one unit. Edit: IANAL, there might be.
Not a book, nor a car. So I don’t see how that’s relevant.
Sorry if I misunderstood your point.
That’s fair I guess. But you can keep a backup of your GoG games in case the server goes down. With Steam that isn’t possible.
Absolutely. GOG has a much better license and distribution model, but it’s still a license.
I agree with you. GOG’s wording is fine, I was hasty in my reaction.