Let's be honest here. Beamdog have proven, again and again, that they're only interested in making money. The fact is that the Baldur's Gate games were probably the easiest targets for a quick cashgrab, and then once they had an agreement with WotC for those, they decided they might as well exploit the other, less well-known D&D games.

They also don't own any rights about the games they've remade by the way. When you do a contract with a license holder, you're basically leasing the rights to use their assets for a limited time, after which you don't have any rights at all. That's why GOG can't sell any old racing games with real cars, for instance, the rights to use the cars' likeness have long expired.


Any rights owned by Atari (and Interplay, back when they were the ones publishing D&D games) were temporary, and reverted to WotC long ago. Bioware has never had any right at all, developers who work under a publisher never do, since they're ulitmately nothing more than a subcontractor. They don't own anything for the same reason that the architect who made the plans for a house or the construction workers who built it don't own it.

The rights to a game is entirely different from the rights to an engine. Bioware probably does own the rights for the Aurora engine as such, but they don't have any rights to games built with the aurora engine.

I think the market of people hardcore enough about these titles to care about this and complain but who never bought the original versions in the many years and sales in which they were available is super, SUPER small. But hey, for those people who exist there's a very simple solution I will let you in on... wait for a sale. Crazy, I know, but it works. I'm sure your backlog will entertain you in the meantime.

I think for the most part the complaints are more about Beamdog butthurt than anything else, honestly.

Why do you defend people who aren't willing to let the market pass judgement on the value of what they're selling?

Well, yes. I'd go as far as to say it's virtually non-existent. Is it wrong though to call out questionable business tactics just because you aren't currently affected by them yourself? This will affect the easy availability of the original, the compatibility of mods and modules, and due to that the future of the modding community. It marks a turning point in the history of the game and its community without seeming to offer much in return (but asking a lot for it). It's not about people wanting to buy the originals now, but to keep them as available as before, for the sake of future "generations", preservation and continuity.

Your argument could just as well be used to abandon a game completely and take it off the market, because people had enough time to buy it now. "You like games from the 90's? So why didn't you buy and play them back then? They were available long enough, no need for a website like GOG."

Maybe some are, but that doesn't automatically make all of their arguments invalid. Personally I had no previous issue with Beamdog.

Beamdog are also responsible for the stream of "remakes" for quick cash, recent example being the Simon the sorcerer. Sad really that some feel the need to defend such practices, even sadder that an ip system which is so broken for decades is justifying this continuing. Lucas was a big proponent of this business model, whilst I really don't like Disney at least they are using the ip to create new content, rather than peddling the same old over and over as a revenue stream like these con artists.

LOL. That's a bit of a stretch.

How is it a stretch? One company tries it and gets away with it others will follow. Just look at any of the industry trends, everyone is doing in app purchases, day 1 dlc etc. Now

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, sorry. The original game is still available, you just have to pay more for it or wait for a sale. It's not being taken away or shuffled off to an Iranian prison. Also I thought the remaster was completely backwards compatible with the mods anyway?

As I understand it the main argument is "Beamdog does not deserve the extra money" which is A) subjective and B) kind of irrelevant to 99% of the people interested in these titles anyway, since they surely own them already. That's all I'm trying to say.

I'm saying your argument focuses on people's self-interests, while many are arguing principles. And I never said anything about the game being shuffled off to an Iranian prison or such nonsense. I didn't talk about NWN being removed, I just pointed out that your argument is weak because the same argumend could also be used to excuse something like the removal of games in the future, because it just concentrates on past and present.


I've read otherwise, and I think they made no promises in that regard, but I guess it remains to be seen.


I think the main point here is "Let customers decide whether they deserve the extra money or not". To a certain extent I can relate to your lack of understanding towards people hating on Beamdog all the time just because, but I don't get why you defend the move of removing options from customers. Beamdog invested some energy and money into the Enhanced Edition, so it stands to reason that they'd want to be paid for that, but that has nothing to do with removing the originals from the store, even if they're bundled with their more expensive version instead. That doesn't really involve much work on Beamdog's part and there is no benefit for customers in removing the option to buy the originals seperately.

Was Beamdog the pioners of patching/remaking ancient games up to modern standards?

To be honest, I appreciate that games are fixed to work well on modern technology so that they're not lost in time. It's about time that the gamign industry stopped treating their producs as some throwaway commodity. As long as it's done in a way that's faithful to the source material and respectful towards the customer, I got no problem with it.

Imagine movie enthusiasts being at eachothers throats because of "lazy money grabbing re-releases" of classic movies on bluray or streaming. Why don't those lazy customers learn to fix their VCR?

Without getting in to the subjective nature of your assertion that BeamDog performed a "quick cash grab", this is my main issue with your statement:

Responsible is a strong word. Legal precedent says you can't hold one person responsible for another person's actions. Perhaps inspired is the word you were looking for.

Well they obviously removed the originals from sale on their own to push enhanced editions. I don't think anyone is dumb enough to deny that. The source of my frustration is more seeing that as some horrible thing only bad people do. It's capitalism, and they want to be paid for their work and cover their licensing costs. If the consumer doesn't want to pay $20 instead of $10 they are free to wait for a sale. And again, the vast majority of fans likely got these games for $10 or less on GOG before.

My little user tag thingy is "devil's advocate" because I always try to see both points of view. It makes perfect sense for Beamdog to roll these out in the way they do, and in fact most businesses wouldn't care enough to offer the original version at all.

The point is that the originals are now "freebies" that have zero market value, not because there is no market for them, but because Beamdog doesn't want to compete with them.

They're not available for purchase, and $20 isn't cheap when half of what you're getting is worthless to you. The "enhancements" on the whole have been so marginal that I think it's fair to say that it's little more than planned obsolescence.