Everything I said was from ZP themselves. You can easily look up everything on there discord or store news page. I can tell you have not read most my post.

Also, I really don't understand the last paragraph. What are you trying to say?

Honestly, I think the bigger issue is not so much if GOG or Zoom have the game, but rather whether the game has Epic stores junk put into it (think EOS). That stuff is far worse for both stores than anything else.

Though personally for me, when it comes to buying a game, it's GOG, Steam and Zoom if I have to. Sadly for me that means 500+ games on Steam, 100+ on GOG and 1 on Zoom. Simply on a "which better supports my platform" basis.

Of course, but the ultimate determining party is the provider, so it is whatever they are prepared to agree to, and neither GOG nor ZOOM Platform can be held responsible for trying to get a good deal.

Seeing as you quoted me, you should take notice of the bit that says ... any kind of threat, and not just argue out of context.

If anything, I feel sorry for ZOOM Platform, as many of their games have been given away for free by IndieGala, some of those then came to GOG. So sorry, but it is horses for courses and courses for horses ... in this dog eat dog world, that GOG are just as surely a part of ... marketing and business pressures etc.

Taking ZOOM Platform to task over any of this is just ridiculous.

Hell we should be taking Epic to task for providing so many great free games, many or most of which then never got sold at GOG. Though we should also applaud Epic for taking on Steam. And I for one are grateful for so many free games, often feeling guilty about GOG's losses in that regard ... so sometimes I still buy at GOG, if cheap enough, especially if DRM-Free comes into question.

And really, we are talking relatively few games, just a handful that have gone from GOG and then turned up at ZP. A lot more games than that never come to GOG or come here and then leave for other reasons.

What about Steam poaching games from GOG etc etc. Hell Steam and Epic etc often have exclusivity deals that prevent games turning up here for years.

And what makes this thread even more ridiculous, is that if you really want the game that has been so-called poached, you can still buy it DRM-Free at ZP anyway. At least it is DRM-Free and there is another DRM-Free focused store out there. What truly matters is the game and its DRM state. And honestly, aside from price, I would probably prefer a ZP copy anyway, due to the configuration of GOG's offline installers, so customers could likely be better off.

And personally, I think we should actively discourage customers buying all their games at just one store, as most seemingly prefer to do with Steam.

So if ZOOM Platform are trying to attract more customers to their store, good on them ... more gamers should use them. I dislike monopolies, whether that be Steam or even GOG.

Alas, too many gamers wear blinkers, and don't see the wider picture.

Btw, indiegala also gave away GOG games, the Larry games still contain GOG icons and the Galaxy webcache.



I neither mind buying on Epic or on indiegala, if there's a game I want which I can't buy on GOG. I also buy on fireflower, Gamejolt and itch and of course on developer platforms like UPlay, Origin or RockstarClub.

Agreed.

You probably know this but I'll point it out to anyone who might not: many GOG versions of games have ended up on Steam, Origin, and maybe even uPlay. I remember when Square Enix started releasing former GOG exclusives on Steam and some users here were upset about that. Plus Activision, Disney, EA, Ubisoft, and surely others.

I'll be honest: I think exclusives are kinda crucial to helping a store grow, dragging users kicking and screaming to a new store when they'd rather buy all their games in one place (almost always Steam), which is why Epic does that. Zoom-Plat's top-most bestsellers are the Duke Nukem games that you can't get anywhere else, Hardwar that's new on Steam, Zone Raiders, Commandos Strike Force that's not on Steam anymore, GRID, etc.

Yeah, lke the almost the whole Star Wars games collection. Steam-fans had a hard time to admit that they got something from someone else :D

Well, it goes both ways.
There have been cases, I believe, where GOG versions have had dormant steamapi.dll still in them.

And we had one infamous game that would not start if Steam was not running ^^
It got fixed later however.

That was the time when there really was no way around Steam.

One can say against Epic what he wants, but it brought one significant change: Developers have to keep in mind that there is more than one major storefront and they should not hardcode any store access into their games.

Yeah, for sure I've certainly seen that, and at ZP, along with Steam elements in games available at GOG.

I imagine a game provider in at least some cases, does a deal with GOG, which results in them being the owner of any work GOG do on their game ... no doubt a similar case with other stores.

And of course we say GOG games, but in reality the games are only at GOG for an agreed period, though that could be open ended until otherwise not. So not really GOG games at all, except on some kind of temporary basis, dictated by the provider ... unless GOG have acquired full ownership of course.

ZP cannot be held responsible for "trying to get a good deal," but they can be held responsible for poaching GOG games, and for agreeing to shady exclusivity terms, and to using those shady exclusivity terms as a selling point which paints them in a positive light.

None of those dubious things are necessary for "making a good deal."

And they result in things being a bad deal for customers who should have freedom to buy the game on their platform of choice, but that freedom is being taken from them.

As for the comment that I argued "out of context," that doesn't seem to me to be what I did. Your comments were that this thread is supposedly "ridiculous," and "a laugh," seemingly on the basis that I was asserting that GOG is under "threat" because Zoom poached A Vampyre Story. But, that is not the premise of the OP, and I never asserted that there was any "threat" to GOG, so therefore to call this thread "ridiculous" and/or a "laugh" based on the premise that I was saying that, even though I wasn't, is a strawman argument, which is what I attempted to indicate in my reasonable rebuttal posts.

As for your point of other platforms poaching games too: I am against that as well. However, just because others also do a bad thing, that in no way justifies ZP's act of likewise doing that same bad thing. It's still a bad thing every bit as much as it always was, regardless of if others do it too.

Others doing it too in no way diminishes it being a bad and shady and dubious thing that ought not to be done, and that should be objected to when it is done (but very bizarrely, it seems that most are fine with this kind of poaching, which therefore I guess means it will inevitably continue and snowball and get worse over time, until eventually, many people are going to be complaining about it, I predict, once it starts to hit games that they care about en masse).

As for your point when you said "I think we should actively discourage customers buying all their games at just one store, as most seemingly prefer to do with Steam" ... that point directly contradicts & opposes your other argument, wherein you advocate the idea that nothing is wrong with games being de-listed off of GOG so that they can be converted into being ZP-exclusives.

ZP's act of doing that forces everyone to buy from just one store, their own store, if they want that game. Therefore logically, if buying from just one store should be discouraged, then ZP exclusives, especially after they were created by way of removing those same games from other stores, should be strongly objected to.

What I don't understand is why they won't remove unnecessary files which are only used for GOG Galaxy and don't have any influence on the game whatsoever.

I like poached eggs!

Not that I know what people are really trying to say here, but I would assume that the word is being used because in the dictionary the verb "poach" is offered as a synonym for the verb "steam" and vice versa.

The context in which they're using it means they think Zoom acquired it underhandedly from a competing store so they could turn around then sell it.