I work for ZOOM, what you state as what happened - did not happen.

I very much cant/don't want to post much here as we have already been warned in the past. But when there are messages stated as fact that are incorrect - I feel its only fair to jump in.

Answers to questions are via our channels, not GOG. Feel free to join us if you want to ask questions about how things work.

Hmmm... I guess I'll take your word for it.

:meanwhile the mystery deepens.....:

Yes, please quit with the unfounded misinformation, thanks. Don't portray something as if you know it as fact, when it is at best a wild guess/assumption.

Alien Trilogy was de-listed a while back because the license was expiring. I believe the folks at ZP have been working hard to try to bring it back. I'll post here if there is any update on that. The store page for it says 'temporarily unavailable'.

We're probably not going to see eye to eye on this, but what is a 'fair price' is somewhat subjective.

I agree that, in a perfect world, DRM-free would be the norm and games would be released DRM-free by default. But, unfortunately, it's not a perfect world. The reality is that we live in a world where DRM has become normalized and it is the standard these days for new games to be released DRMed on Steam.

So, my point is, there is effort involved in removing DRM from many games to make them available DRM-free. Which is why there does have to be a financial incentive. Because we are effectively asking game makers to go against the 'standard'. They are under no obligation to release DRM-free and can quite easily just do nothing, in which case there will be no DRM-free release.

I hang about quite a bit on the Zoom discord chat and Adam (their CTO) often shares details about the work he is doing to release games. He puts a lot of work into stripping DRM from games (CD checks, securom, all that crap) as well as fixing them to run on modern systems. What he does is not easy and he does it all without access to the game source code.

So, based on that, charging $10-15 USD for a classic game that is stripped of DRM and updated to run on modern systems to me seems to be entirely reasonable. This is why it frankly pisses me off when I see people simultaneously demanding for games to be released DRM-free but also for them to be $3. Zoom Platform (presumably) only gets a 25-30% cut of a sale, so for that price it's just not going to be worth it for them.

Also, imo the question you should ask yourself is: "For a classic game that you like, would you rather see it released DRM-free with a high price-tag, or would you rather not see it released?"

Example: let's say EA release Mass Effect on Zoom Platform next week, but at a price of $60 USD. Would you prefer them to just not release it DRM-free? It's a game many people have been calling for for years and there is always a chance the price can come down later on ...

Check it out, I logged in to my Zoom Platform account (had to reset my password) and those 5 games were added (thanks!), I then downloaded and installed 'A Boy and his Blob' and when I tried to run it wouldn't run and gave an error message which said that galaxy.dll is missing.

Oh wow, BIG THANKS to ZOOM Platform etc.

Killing Time was already free and I'd previously grabbed it, though I also had it at GOG.
I also already had the main two Bloodrayne games at GOG, but thanks for the third one and the Blob one.

Remember folk, my program lets you know which games have been removed from the ZOOM Platform. I am also thinking of adding a history element to the program to keep a record of price changes, just in case some do indeed change over time.

FYI: I mentioned it in the Zoom support Discord channel and they are looking into it. There was apparently a similar issue with Bloodrayne Betrayal and that has already been fixed. I will let you know if I hear more.

Oh, thank you!

Their support is super-fast. If you mention an issue in their Discord, chance are it'll be sorted within 24h (based on what I've seen).

Yep quite right about that, and perfectly okay to agree to disagree. :)

Once again, we are going to have to agree to disagree, as my expectations and tolerance are clearly not yours.

I don't expect a great game to be $3 though. It varies what I think is fair, per game, and I do appreciate the effort put in by others, but is it always others or is it in many cases the game provider.

So I have a sliding scale really, and I have a price which I will never pay beyond. I'd never pay that $60 USD for instance, too far out beyond my limit, and I am prepared to wait ... got plenty of others to play.

There are many factors for me that go into deciding what is fair, including the age and size of game and even popularity. If a game is very popular, then they are guaranteed many sales, so stands to reason it should be cheaper, as is the case for those Star Trek games.

I am not a fan of being milked.

Effort and cost can be offset by guaranteed return ... and really that is what makes it worth doing in the first place.

Though go figure about the many games that could be released here DRM-Free and make an absolute killing ... at a fair price too. Where are they, why aren't they here?

So I do wonder about a DRM-Free Tax that some think we should pay, above and beyond any costs to make a game DRM-Free.

FYI: apparently this has been fixed and the updated version is uploading.

Btw, probably best to take support issues to the Zoom Discord.

By the way, my GOGPlus Download Checker program is great for checking or validating your downloaded installer files from the ZOOM Platform, GOG, IndieGala, Itch.io and others.

https://github.com/Twombs/GOGPlus-Download-Checker

https://github.com/Twombs/GOGPlus-Download-Checker/releases/tag/v2.2

Regarding fair price, I haven't paid more than $6 for a digital copy of a game, and basically the limit would be the smallest value Paysafecard, 25 RON, which now with the increased conversion fees is actually about $5.5. (So of course this is more of a general discussion, with ZP not accepting PSC (and having their own prepaid cards being out of the question) and therefore having no way to get anything anyway.) But since I'd never say I "need" to play a certain game, much less play it soon, and a backlog lasting me the next decade, which is likely to keep increasing even just thanks to freebies alone, if I'd be to get something for myself it'd likely have to cost very little, like $1-$2, that 25 RON limit probably only still applying if I'd get something to give away, to give back to the community, maybe because of games I received from others, so that's even more purely theoretical, with ZP not having a community (not on the site at least) and the reasons to boycott GOG having just increased massively.

@Cavalary not sure if in romania it's different but here 6$ (or better 5€) basically are too low for most games.
I usually try to stay under 25€ (while the fullprice for most recent games it's 60 €), I usually try to spend about 15€ each game (on that end Hitman was ok with a 18€ price if it was drm-free, of course the fullprice is too much), I think really old games should stay under 10€.


Still I don't mind an higher price if drm-free, even if I will not buy it today I can wait for a better sale

Little conversation I had with someone from the store's staff:

The staff member: Me: The staff member: (some miscellaneous messages later)
The staff member: tl;dr: Zoom Platform plans to release games on Steam as well, but they plan for these games to be "yours to keep".