Do you *really* feel like you own your GOG games?

I love GOG and the concept of owning games. But do I really own them?

Things to consider:

1. I am dependant on GOG servers and my hard drives. As long as GOG is still up, I can redownload my games at any time. However, the store may close at one point or another. So the other source of ownership of those games are my hard drives. Here's the problem. I have over 200 games in my GOG library. It would take a considerable amount of hard drive space to back them all up. But then, I would need to back them up three, perhaps four times, in case one of my drives goes the way of the dodo.

2. Video games are just strings of 0's and 1's. Can you really, "own" those?

3. Will they still be playable on a computer from 2045? If a game becomes unplayable due to software changes, ot's effectively as if you didn't own it, at all.



Like, recently, I claimed the two giveaway games GOG gave us. Do I REALLY "own" those games? What do you think?


To clarify, by, "own a game", I mean owning a COPY of it, not of the game itself.

Do you feel like you *own* your GOG content? Why or why not?

There is no such thing as having 100% security for one's games library to the point that there is a guarantee that it will never become lost and/or unplayable in the future.

But 100% security seems to be what your OP is asserting equates to what "ownership" means.

So yes, I do feel I own my GOG games.

That is, except for the ones that are bugged and which GOG provides no option to download a non-bugged version, which GOG easily could & should do, but yet still never does. i.e. Divinity: Original Sin 1 EE, of which the only way to make it playable on GOG is to use GOG Galaxy and revert it to a previous version from 2017 or earlier that is not-bugged (but GOG offers no way to make any backup copy of that non-bugged version). For that game, I feel like GOG has scammed me.

Even though I generally feel like I own my GOG games, except for the bugged games where only the bugged version is available to download, I don't, however, feel like my games library is 100% secure and guaranteed never to be lost and/or always to be playable; but that's a different question (I think?) than what your thread title/OP is supposedly asking.

For the most part, yes, I feel like having true ownership over the copies of the games I purchased here, because:

1. in my case I have the majority of them/the relevant ones backed up and mirrored on two conventional hard drives from a reliable brand specifically build for archival purposes

2. irrelevant in the context of what's been asked

3. very likely because by that time virtual machines capable of running/emulating all kinds of operating systems are going to be much more prevalent and common to use. With a non-commercial open-source VM solution and older operating systems maybe entering the public domain(?) I could even see GoG (if they're still around by then) packaging particularly hard cases with a virtual machine running the required OS (like it's currently done with DOSBox or ScummVM).

Despite this being an internet forum (aka environment where stating one's opinion turns things into f***ing WW3), me lacking sleep and your -300 rep, I'll bite and leave my reply:

I love GoG. As matter of fact, I prefer GoG over Steam or Origin. Do I feel like I really own my GoG content (actually an access license)? I guess I am going with yes. There's always a catch though. For instance, backing up files and making sure my backups are latest versions falls on me.

1. Incase store I bought games from goes tits up (can I say that? I am from old, politically incorrect school) I would rather not bother with DRM, cracks, warez sites and such. So harddrive and downloading headaches are nothing in comparison imo.

2. No. I mean, can anyone really own anything in this world? Everything's either 0's and 1's or atoms. Also everything's temporary. But I might be going into territory of philosophy here.

3. Depends on several factors:

1. if there's source code release.
2. There's way to reverse engineer things.
3. if there are people willing to spend their time working on, say, source ports.

Basically, it goes back to what I said earlier: everything is temporary. Don't worry about it. Let chips fall where they may.

As for what you were given: there was a catch, right? You had to agree to receive some emails or something like that.

Good night/day/evening.

Ive used sub-services quite much in last two years and I dont mind not to own any game.

I would say yes as much as you can "own" a game now.

1. GOG gives you access to offline installers which will allow you to install a game to your PC even in the event that GOG servers are down (or even GOG closes). This means that regardless of GOG's status, I will always be able to reinstall and play my collection of games and there are no authentication mechanisms that will prevent me from playing.

2. Doesnt seem relevant to the question. This is like saying every physical item is comprised of atoms. Can you really "own" these?

3. This is a fear that is applicable to any form of entertainment. We have probably lost access to home movies and stuff that was only on VHS, songs that were only on the jukebox, etc.

If people can own words then I can own ones and zeroes.

Absolutely, because I'm given the freedom on how I enjoy the products I buy. While many prefer just the offline installers, I actually don't mind game clients IF they're optional. As such, I use Galaxy because I enjoy using it to sort my games and because it allows me to launch all my games from one place. However, the fact that I'm not forced to use it, the fact that it's an option rather than a requirement, helps make me feel like I truly own the things I've bought. To add to that, I'm free to download, store and backup my games at will. I could even theoretically share my games in secret, though I won't do that as I encourage my friends to buy their own copies here to support GOG, the devs and DRM-free (and it'd be right on the line of being sketchy if I did that anyways).

When it comes to backups, I understand people who want redundant backups of their games but as for me, I only currently back up the ones I really love (saving toward a larger backup drive to backup all of my library eventually) but I only have one backup. If GOG did ever close down, assuming they'd notify us in advance, I'd just have to blow my budget on redundant drives for the sake of safety. But again, that's just it: I don't feel like I am required to do that but having that option available just further helps me feel like I own the things I've bought here.

While I do prefer physical when I can, your posts about not believing in ownership of digital products (I think you're the person I'm thinking of) aren't entirely correct. Yes, technically, they're a boatload of binary in the form of an executable but this is the digital age and computer code compiled into a product is just as valid of a product as something you can hold in your hands.

And as for your comment on the future, assuming that GOG is around that long (I don't believe the doomsayers, personally), they seem to be interested in keeping these games functional for future PCs. If they don't do it, either the devs themselves or the fans will likely come up with compatibility patches. If not, I guess we'll be out of luck but I don't worry too much about all of that.

So yeah, to summarize, I definitely do feel like I own my games. I'm free to enjoy, install, store and backup my games any way I want and, in the case of most games, I'm also given access to all of the goodies which helps add to that. DRM-free is ultimately not so much about offline installers and whatnot (though they're part of it), it's more about giving people the freedom to choose how they enjoy the benefits of ownership once they purchase a product. DRM restricts that in favor of corporate control, choosing to only lease a product to you indefinitely but DRM-free is not about that. In the Noclip CD Projekt documentary series, Marcin Iwiński himself was asked why the DRM-free concept is so important to CD Projekt and GOG. His reply? "Because it's freedom. It's 'do what you want with your game, we trust you'. It comes from the days of piracy, here. It's like us with Baldur's Gate competing against the pirates and it was always the carrot, never the stick. So, because we made such a great thing, it's fairly priced, there's great service, we guarantee it works and you can be part of the community, we are sure you will buy it and you will not steal it. And even if we protect it, you can still can get a cracked version so why should we give you an inferior version?"

Less than before, but mainly because i don't have a shelf with cases anymore.

It feels more like a library i'm allowed to take books from anytime i want, but only because i own that library, which i sometimes forget.
That might also be because i have way too many games and my eyes glaze over when i peruse through them.

If you're talking about GOG and DRM-Free stuff, then yea i do feel like i own them. Having said that, i do need to grab all the offline installers.

So do you guys think I can enjoy my GOG collection with full conscience? Without any feeling of guilt/regret?

1. I feel I own my GOG games less than physical games without disc-based copy protection and more than games WITH disc-based copy protection, because GOG games have less physical proof of purchase than physical media, but are easier to reliably back up than things that require special ripping tools and proper configuration like the copy of Alcohol 52% on my WinXP Retro PC.

(I say this as someone with quite the stable of USB-attached, Linux-compatible cartridge and disk dumping hardware, including a KryoFlux and, to free myself from the reliance on the closed-source client, a Greaseweazle I recently acquired,)

2. How is the ownability of strings of ones and zeroes specific to video games? The same thing could be said about anything that can come in purely digital form, from books to movies to music to ...

3. By the "in 2045" argument, anything that requires special playback hardware is of dubious ownability, which means anything but dead-tree print editions of sheet music and books.

As far as "in 2045" goes, I feel I own my games because I'm a Linux user who maintains DVD+R backups augmented with dvdisaster ECC and runs his games on top of an open-source translation layer like Wine, DOSBox, or ScummVM, on top of an open-source OS, on top of commodity hardware.

Thus, maximizing the ability to recover my backups and compensate for drift between the code I can't patch and the hardware that's changing out under it.

Not quite. Games are copyrightable. NFTs probably aren't (kink to an actual lawyer's take on them).

Owning an NFT is more like owning a receipt for a purchase.

at least you own something there even if it is just a link

but here you just rent games indefinitely, legally it can be revoked anytime just like on Steam
the only difference is the ability to download offline installers without authentication part

As much as it's possible to own a game, yes.

Not in the sense of owning the IP or copyright, in the sense of owning a copy, yes.

If we consider a physical copy of a game with no online activation the "gold standard" of game ownership then a DRM-free download is actually more secure. You can make as many backups as you want and as long as GOG is still around you still have the option of redownloading.

Also, the licence (the intangible thing you actually own, that gives you the right to download and play the games) is indefinite and not tied to whether GOG continues to exist or not. A third party cannot remove your ability to play the games beyond breaking into your house and destroying your hard drives, at which point they could just as easily break your physical games discs. Completely irrelevant, the game would still work on the computer it worked on when you bought it. Backwards compatibility is a bonus, not an expectation.