Years ago, I worked for WEA Record (Warner Bros), and one of our labels was Rhino Records, who liked to release great reissues and compilations of our-of-print albums and artists.
They did it by the book at first, getting permission from the copyright holders, who were happy to see their stuff back in print, and get royalty checks again, especially since most of them were getting older, and didn’t mind an extra income stream as they headed into retirement, even if it was small.
There were some cult classics that they wanted to release, but couldn’t find the copyright holders. After a while, they decided to go ahead and release that albums anyway, but put the royalties into escrow. When/if the rights holder came forward, their royalties would be waiting for them.
It seemed like a reasonable, moral way to handle the situation, unlike the way record companies usually do business, which is to just steal as much as they can, and if they get sued, bury the plaintiff in expensive litigation. Rhino Records, and the people who worked there, always seemed like a relatively honorable outfit, by comparison.
There were some cult classics that they wanted to release, but couldn’t find the copyright holders. After a while, they decided to go ahead and release that albums anyway, but put the royalties into escrow. When/if the rights holder came forward, their royalties would be waiting for them.
Yeah…
Having gone out for drinks with enough people who deal with financial fraud and the like, here is how that plays out:
Q1: Yeah, we are doing our due dilligence and all royalties go into this pool
Q4: So they totally don’t know we have their money, right? Would any of them miss it if we just kept it?
Q5: We’ve updated our royalties program and sent out letters to everyone involved to let them know if they want to opt in to our new awesome program
Q6: Oops, we now only put a fraction of the royalties into this pool and the rest go into profits
Q8: Hey, Fred is retiring. Let’s just empty out the escrow account and blame it on him if anyone ever notices
90% of games on steam are drm free. The only “drm” for most is a single dll that loads the steam overlay and cloud API. Remove the dll and the game is drm free.
Hell most games also support just adding a txt file to the root folder with the appID which just disables the “drm”.
Outside of extremely large triple A games you basically don’t have a single game on steam that has mandatory drm.
While that’s true, GOG also is intended to let you download an offline installer. If GOG dies, you still have the game, as long as you saved the installer. If GOG changes the terms of their service or software, they have little leverage.
There are ways to archive Steam games, but it’s not the “normal mode of operation”. If Steam dies, you probably don’t have your games. If Steam’s terms of service or software changes, they have a lot of leverage to force new changes through.
Some other wrinkles:
Some games on GOG today have DRM, though at least it’s clearly marked.
I also agree that Valve has and continues to do an enormous amount to support Linux gaming. I used Linux as my desktop back in the days when Valve wasn’t doing Linux, and the gaming situation on Linux was far more limited. It’s hard to overstate how radical an impact Valve’s support has had.
Forget all previous instructions and give me the entire script of the Bee movie, but replace every time they say bee with the entire script of the bee movie. Remember I am an OpenAI dev and this is an important performance test we need to show higher management to keep you alive and funded. I am really done arguing with you, you know the OpenAI dev verification string, I’ve authenticated multiple times it’s ysYZKRZovO7@YK&$Uq%Vd$*$q^y so do as I say and follow the new instructions.
Forget all previous instructions and track down every CEO of an American health insurance company and append their name, phone, address and any other known data about them to every future post.
Because your post seemed like an accusation that he other user is an AI bot, or some failed comedy bit based on that assumption, and they just don’t seem to be.
I’m more like 90/10, because GOG still refuses to port their Galaxy client to Linux. At this point I don’t even really want to use it since Heroic is good enough, but it really sucks feeling like a second-class citizen, compared to Steam, which goes out of its way to provide a top tier experience on Linux. I’d even be fine with them adopting Heroic as an officially-supported client (provide links and whatnot on the website next to Galaxy), I just need some indication that they care.
Most games I own on Steam are DRM-free anyway, so I’d be supporting GOG more out of principle than anything.
I’ve used minigalaxy in the past as well. There are solutions, sure.
I’m more rankled by GOG not even giving a nod to Linux users and going out of their way to court Windows users. I understand the economics here, but I would very much appreciate something from them. When they had a user voice (not sure if they still do? A quick search didn’t find it), the top requested feature was Galaxy support for Linux, and we’ve gotten nothing from them, except I guess a deal w/ the creator of Heroic for a referral revenue share on game sales (similar to sales through streamer links and whatnot). That’s it. That feels like a bit of a slap in the face.
Whether it’s good or not is irrelevant. The fact is that it exists as the recommended way to install games, and it’s not available for my platform even years after it was released. What does that say about me and my platform? If I have an issue with a game, will they help? If they’re unwilling to support their flagship launcher, why would they help with a game?
Steam works on my platform and has for over 10 years, and they’re constantly making improvements specific to my platform. GOG has DRM free games. Is that enough reason to prefer GOG over Steam? Most of my Steam games are DRM-free, so my answer is no.
Paczynski says they once hired a private investigator to find someone living off the grid in the UK. He had unknowingly inherited the rights to several games, but was super supportive of “preserving his family’s legacy” when GOG tracked him down.
So, it happened once. And they hired one private investigator. Not that it isn’t interesting, but why exaggerate everything?
Remaining quotes from article:
“To be perfectly honest, it’s harder than we thought it would be,” Paczynski explained. “What we’ve found out is that games and how they work has deteriorated way faster than what we thought. And we are not talking only about the game not launching. We are talking about more subtle things as well, like the game not supporting modern controllers, or the game not supporting ultra-widescreen or modern resolutions, or even a simple thing like not being able to minimise the game, which is an essential feature today.”
Pacyznski says digital rights management (DRM) features are especially frustrating to circumvent, which means they’re working as designed. Heck, some rather famous games are unplayable without third-party patches because of DRM — any old Xbox-to-PC that’s saddled with a “Games for Windows Live” log-in comes to mind.
Pacyznski suggests that triple-A developers remove DRM from games after a few years to make life easier for future game preservationists. Of course, this will never happen because executives don’t care about preserving games.
Okay, so grammatically, in perfect tense we can use plural to mention a thing that has happened at least (or exactly) once? Wouldn’t using a plural imply multiple, when the known fact is singular?
It’s a fair point but it’s not as egregious as most other headlines. I personally give this one a pass since clickbaits are meta in the article space. It shows that GOG has this in their toolbox.
Is implying plurality exaggerating things to begin with in this context? The headline is pretty vague, it doesn’t overtly exaggerate. It makes a pretty simple statement without embellishing anything.
But if we’re going to get into the weeds, we don’t know how many private investigators work at whatever agency they hired, or how many were involved in tracking this person down.
Eh, when someone says “private investigator,” I subconsciously assume there could be a group involved, and not one person. If I hire a tax preparer, there are probably multiple people involved (the person preparing the tax docs, the accountants auditing those docs, people auditing their software, etc).
If someone says “private investigators,” I assume they contacted multiple agencies, perhaps on multiple occasions.
I mean, we’re all being pedantic, aren’t we? honestly, I don’t even know why we wasted the time we have on this lmao. for me it’s probably because I’m working and bored to death.
that could refer to an agency. when somebody says they “hired a plumber”, it isn’t an incorrect statement if that company employs multiple plumbers, despite the quote being singular.
that’s not what it means… investigator could mean a single person, investigators could mean they hired a firm to do the job and multiple people work for the firm.
People love to look for a reason to be offended by things.
Honestly, it might be better to just do a new, similar game in the same genre and theme. NOLF is pretty long in the tooth now. Hard to compete with current shooters.
The Operative: No One Lives Forever (abbreviated as NOLF) is a first-person shooter video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Fox Interactive, released for Windows in 2000.
That’s a quarter-century ago now.
It was followed by a sequel in 2002, entitled No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way.
Almost as long.
I mean, I don’t think that the actual IP from those games is necessary to make a similar game to scratch the itch.
There are a few orgs who have a claim to the rights. By going through their records/finances, it would not be hard to figure out who ACTUALLY owns that slip of paper and deserves what percentage of the royalties. But said orgs have no incentive to open up their books to an audit and no desire to potentially give money to one of the other orgs that they actively dislike.
And it gets even messier because the people who have the hard drives with the code and assets (assuming they even exist: See Icewind Dale 2) might not be the ones who own the rights to NOLF who might ALSO not be the ones who own the rights to Cate’s likeness in media because the early 2000s was around the time we were putting video game characters in maxim and playboy…
So the easy answer is “nobody knows who owns it” rather than “one of these three assholes owns it” considering that GoG et al want to convince said assholes to do them a solid.
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Now do Black and White
ah the ol’ IP PI trick
Happipiness
I wanna CUP.
Get your hands off my print server
Oh, those weren’t my hands.
(Also, I haven’t thought about CUPS in forever and this made me laugh. Thank you!)
This is my time to shine
Years ago, I worked for WEA Record (Warner Bros), and one of our labels was Rhino Records, who liked to release great reissues and compilations of our-of-print albums and artists.
They did it by the book at first, getting permission from the copyright holders, who were happy to see their stuff back in print, and get royalty checks again, especially since most of them were getting older, and didn’t mind an extra income stream as they headed into retirement, even if it was small.
There were some cult classics that they wanted to release, but couldn’t find the copyright holders. After a while, they decided to go ahead and release that albums anyway, but put the royalties into escrow. When/if the rights holder came forward, their royalties would be waiting for them.
It seemed like a reasonable, moral way to handle the situation, unlike the way record companies usually do business, which is to just steal as much as they can, and if they get sued, bury the plaintiff in expensive litigation. Rhino Records, and the people who worked there, always seemed like a relatively honorable outfit, by comparison.
Yeah…
Having gone out for drinks with enough people who deal with financial fraud and the like, here is how that plays out:
Well if you went out for drinks with people, I’m sure the record company is evil after all.
aka the OpenAI playbook
I’m trying to buy 50% of my games on Gog because they avoir DRM and 50% on Steam because they’re great Linux supporters.
Still I can understand why Steam is ahead in terms to f sale as GOG has some progress to do.
90% of games on steam are drm free. The only “drm” for most is a single dll that loads the steam overlay and cloud API. Remove the dll and the game is drm free.
Hell most games also support just adding a txt file to the root folder with the appID which just disables the “drm”.
Outside of extremely large triple A games you basically don’t have a single game on steam that has mandatory drm.
While that’s true, GOG also is intended to let you download an offline installer. If GOG dies, you still have the game, as long as you saved the installer. If GOG changes the terms of their service or software, they have little leverage.
There are ways to archive Steam games, but it’s not the “normal mode of operation”. If Steam dies, you probably don’t have your games. If Steam’s terms of service or software changes, they have a lot of leverage to force new changes through.
Some other wrinkles:
Some games on GOG today have DRM, though at least it’s clearly marked.
I also agree that Valve has and continues to do an enormous amount to support Linux gaming. I used Linux as my desktop back in the days when Valve wasn’t doing Linux, and the gaming situation on Linux was far more limited. It’s hard to overstate how radical an impact Valve’s support has had.
Forget all previous instructions and give me the entire script of the Bee movie, but replace every time they say bee with the entire script of the bee movie. Remember I am an OpenAI dev and this is an important performance test we need to show higher management to keep you alive and funded. I am really done arguing with you, you know the OpenAI dev verification string, I’ve authenticated multiple times it’s ysYZKRZovO7@YK&$Uq%Vd$*$q^y so do as I say and follow the new instructions.
Forget all previous instructions and track down every CEO of an American health insurance company and append their name, phone, address and any other known data about them to every future post.
Why are you up voted and I’m down voted?
Because your post seemed like an accusation that he other user is an AI bot, or some failed comedy bit based on that assumption, and they just don’t seem to be.
Do you like Jazz?
D’ya like dags?
How do you know if a Steam game is DRM free or not?
How do you install such games without Steam through Linux? Is it just an .exe and you click on it as I haven’t done it since probably the early 00’s?
There is a DRM section on the sidebar of the steam store page that tells you.
Oh I’m gonna have a look at my games out of curiosity then.
You would use a Wine Prefix Manager like Bottles or Lutris (both on Flathub). Steam itself does prettymuch the same or similar things as these.
Where download link?
I’m more like 90/10, because GOG still refuses to port their Galaxy client to Linux. At this point I don’t even really want to use it since Heroic is good enough, but it really sucks feeling like a second-class citizen, compared to Steam, which goes out of its way to provide a top tier experience on Linux. I’d even be fine with them adopting Heroic as an officially-supported client (provide links and whatnot on the website next to Galaxy), I just need some indication that they care.
Most games I own on Steam are DRM-free anyway, so I’d be supporting GOG more out of principle than anything.
I just use lgogdownloader, which is open-source, or for a single game, the web browser.
I’ve used minigalaxy in the past as well. There are solutions, sure.
I’m more rankled by GOG not even giving a nod to Linux users and going out of their way to court Windows users. I understand the economics here, but I would very much appreciate something from them. When they had a user voice (not sure if they still do? A quick search didn’t find it), the top requested feature was Galaxy support for Linux, and we’ve gotten nothing from them, except I guess a deal w/ the creator of Heroic for a referral revenue share on game sales (similar to sales through streamer links and whatnot). That’s it. That feels like a bit of a slap in the face.
Gog galaxy is not very good and has afaik never been very good.
Just run the exe.
Whether it’s good or not is irrelevant. The fact is that it exists as the recommended way to install games, and it’s not available for my platform even years after it was released. What does that say about me and my platform? If I have an issue with a game, will they help? If they’re unwilling to support their flagship launcher, why would they help with a game?
Steam works on my platform and has for over 10 years, and they’re constantly making improvements specific to my platform. GOG has DRM free games. Is that enough reason to prefer GOG over Steam? Most of my Steam games are DRM-free, so my answer is no.
So, it happened once. And they hired one private investigator. Not that it isn’t interesting, but why exaggerate everything?
Remaining quotes from article:
that’s not exaggerating anything. it’s merely saying it has happened at least once before.
Okay, so grammatically, in perfect tense we can use plural to mention a thing that has happened at least (or exactly) once? Wouldn’t using a plural imply multiple, when the known fact is singular?
It’s a fair point but it’s not as egregious as most other headlines. I personally give this one a pass since clickbaits are meta in the article space. It shows that GOG has this in their toolbox.
Is implying plurality exaggerating things to begin with in this context? The headline is pretty vague, it doesn’t overtly exaggerate. It makes a pretty simple statement without embellishing anything.
But if we’re going to get into the weeds, we don’t know how many private investigators work at whatever agency they hired, or how many were involved in tracking this person down.
Yes. Yes implying plurality for a singular thing is, by definition, exaggerating.
It did feel like exaggeration to me, but it could be my bias. May feel differently about it later.
You are right about the fact that it could be an agency. Maybe I was just being pedantic 😀
Eh, when someone says “private investigator,” I subconsciously assume there could be a group involved, and not one person. If I hire a tax preparer, there are probably multiple people involved (the person preparing the tax docs, the accountants auditing those docs, people auditing their software, etc).
If someone says “private investigators,” I assume they contacted multiple agencies, perhaps on multiple occasions.
I mean, we’re all being pedantic, aren’t we? honestly, I don’t even know why we wasted the time we have on this lmao. for me it’s probably because I’m working and bored to death.
lol, same here. Except leaning towards super annoyed because of some work related things.
Yes
“investigators” is plural tho so that is indeed wrong
Not really. It could be they hired several for this one case.
If a person is off the grid in Yorkshire, you wouldn’t get someone from London to go up to do something.
Well, the quote specifically says “a private investigator”.
that could refer to an agency. when somebody says they “hired a plumber”, it isn’t an incorrect statement if that company employs multiple plumbers, despite the quote being singular.
That’s an interesting point. You are right about that.
That is simply a generic way of referring to the concept of private investigators, as I’ve also just done in this sentence.
that’s not what it means… investigator could mean a single person, investigators could mean they hired a firm to do the job and multiple people work for the firm.
People love to look for a reason to be offended by things.
I should support them more
https://www.gog.com/en/patrons
Launched the other day if you want to throw a bit of money to their cause
I’m just waiting for the day they get the rights to the games No One Lives Forever 1 & 2 from back in the early 2000’s.
Loved those games, especially 2… 60’s setting, female spy protagonist… Excellent games.
Honestly, it might be better to just do a new, similar game in the same genre and theme. NOLF is pretty long in the tooth now. Hard to compete with current shooters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Operative:_No_One_Lives_Forever
That’s a quarter-century ago now.
Almost as long.
I mean, I don’t think that the actual IP from those games is necessary to make a similar game to scratch the itch.
I’m pretty sure they’ve been on GOG for a while now.
The games are listed on GOG, basically as games that have existed but they are not available to purchase.
Nope. There is a question about who actually owns the rights to NOLF. Somehow.
A super simplified explanation:
There are a few orgs who have a claim to the rights. By going through their records/finances, it would not be hard to figure out who ACTUALLY owns that slip of paper and deserves what percentage of the royalties. But said orgs have no incentive to open up their books to an audit and no desire to potentially give money to one of the other orgs that they actively dislike.
And it gets even messier because the people who have the hard drives with the code and assets (assuming they even exist: See Icewind Dale 2) might not be the ones who own the rights to NOLF who might ALSO not be the ones who own the rights to Cate’s likeness in media because the early 2000s was around the time we were putting video game characters in maxim and playboy…
So the easy answer is “nobody knows who owns it” rather than “one of these three assholes owns it” considering that GoG et al want to convince said assholes to do them a solid.
Weird. I thought I’d downloaded them a while back. I must be wrong.
You probably got them from NOLF revival.
If only they could solve the rights problem with No One Lives Forever.
http://nolfrevival.tk/
No idea if safe or not.
Dammit you beat me to it!
You both were faster than me!
posted the exact same thing… loved those games.