Have you actually done/tried this? I'm asking because as I said, I actively maintained computers with decade-old hardware, I did that for a long time, and I _never_ had a problem to get parts that I needed. In fact, I find that parts are usually so easy to come by (and at no cost at all, if you just look at the right places) that I got piles of much more parts than I can possibly use. I have about a dozen mainboards and CPUs, two dozen graphics cards, and countless RAM sticks of all imaginable standards lying around here, and I didn't even pay a single cent for them. And I didn't even spend _time_ collecting them, most of that stuff was picked up for free while looking for something else.

More than 400,000 _tons_ of computer parts are discarded every single year in the US alone. This figure does not include monitors (that's another 600,000 tons). Numbers in Europe are probably in the same league, perhaps a bit lower. Given these massive amounts, if you really have difficulties finding older parts then I can only assume that you're not looking very hard.

So, please tell me, which parts exactly did you look for, and where exactly did you look for them?

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How many games actually require a real legacy computer? The vast majority can be played natively after some amount of fixing or workarounds. GOG do a great job of dealing with all of this ahead of time but that doesn't mean players would be helpless without them. Even for those few cases that can't be handled now there will be something suitable in the future.

DOSBox has permanently solved DOS compatibility problems for all but the most obscure DOS games (and even some of those now work in SVN builds due to various additions and improvements); DOSBox itself can be updated for future systems as needed without breaking the emulated environment. There will probably be a similar solution for Windows games long before some future Windows version breaks compatibility with native games in general.

you should try to contact the devs or avgn directly , if you go to facebook and youtube trolls will attack anyone for anything

You evaded my question.

Again, please tell me, which parts exactly did you look for, and where exactly did you look for them?

The reason I'm asking is that practically all of your arguments sound rather superficial. They make sense on a superficial level for someone who doesn't really know much about the subject, but for someone who has spent a couple of decades doing exactly the things that you claim to be so hard, they seem very far removed from the actual situation.

Therefore, please, again: what is your actual experience with the things you are speculating about? And please don't evade the question again.

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What I would like is there to be some assurance that waiting a period of time could get you DRM-free. I rarely play games when I buy them, and I am behind enough that the idea of paying a price in time to get something both cheaper and in a more resilient form is worth doing. I most certainly have waited out DRM on a few games, but right now there is no guarantee a DRM-free version of a game will ever exist, so it's kind of hard to ask a question as to which way someone would rather have it since there is no option B in a large number of cases. If the question was how long would I be willing to wait for DRM-free if I knew it was going to happen. Would I wait a year? You bet. Two? Probably with little hesitation.

I also wouldn't mind if there were law limiters to that effect. Like if you choose to use DRM to "Secure your product" then you are required to remove it after 24-months for consumer protection reasons. I would be willing to compromise in that way, but we all know that would never happen.

I seriously doubt DRM-free hurts your chances. In fact the math of having an extra point of failure more or less guarantees you would be more likely to have issues getting something to work later on. There is no specific case for every scenario, but your odds have to be higher for failure if there is more to go wrong.

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That does sound like an excellent idea in the AAA market, when game piracy at retail price is something that gets publishers in a flap, 'protecting' it until the used/download/discounted sales replaces that would probably if anything ensure consistent profits after the initial retail. Then again a physical copy (because people still buy those on PC, I know I sure do, probably against my better judgement) becomes essentially worthless if the DRM is on-disc and is later only removed through a patch.

Of course, DRM-free would be 100% better, but publishers and distributors do seem to be rather sold on the idea of DRM. Ultimately, as much as I would hope that a 'please support us in order to allow us to continue to support the game and other games you may enjoy' attitude would be the most profitable to developers in the long run, it blatantly isn't. Ho hum.

It's pretty shocking how a lot of stuff only seems to become 'relevant' when it releases on Steam, but since GOG has no hope of matching up with the frequency of releases of Steam, I've learned to become very patient when it comes to interesting indie games in particular. I would like to think that it's just an issue of GOG not being as widespread in it's influence as Steam and half of the new developers simply not being aware of such a platform; but I'm also aware that it's probably not as simple as just the developer providing access and just sticking the game on here. I vastly prefer GOG to Greenlight, put it that way.

If Microsoft go down that route ( and they might ) you can bet your ass that a ton of people would jump ship and switch to some open-source OS instead. Likewise, many software and game developers would do the same, so for the foreseeable future, I'm not concerned about lack of alternatives for gamers and computer users in general.

And as for Steam / Valve, they might well still be around 10 years from now... But then, they might not. Wouldn't be the first highly successful company to take an unexpected nose-dive. You really can't predict these things with any certainty.


Edit: By the way, I'm not buying games here because I expect being able to play them in 10 or 20 years. I guess I'll worry about that 10-20 years from now. There's several things I like about GOG, but primarily I just despise DRM and the policies of most big software publishers nowadays, so it feels good to support a more customer friendly, DRM-free alternative ( along with supporting various smaller studios and Indie developers ).

I personally don't own a Blu-ray, but I have re-bought a number of games. To be honest, It gets damn old. And part of the re-buying comes with an expectation, not for continued use, but for added value. I don't want to pay again unless you can offer me a better experience than before. VHS -> DVD came with greater resolution and a host of menu features that warrant re-buying if one so wishes. HD remakes and the like for games, like the complete redrawing of SSF2T, make something worth re-buying to me. At least that is the most compelling reason to do so for me.

That one is fair. I usually file that one under, I have more to play with that I have time for, and working towards a world where I don't have to wait 5 years.

... and there you evade it again.

Really, if you know what you're talking about (instead of just speculating how things might perhaps be), then it shouldn't be difficult to provide substance to your arguments.

So again: What experience do you have exactly with the things you claim? Provided you _do_ know what you talk about, it shouldn't be hard to answer this rather simple question.

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I'd disagree in regards to PC gaming. OS transitions are gradual, not sudden, and backwards compatibility is a key selling point (at least for Windows). This has led to PC gamers having a general expectation that games will work for at least the near future, and when they do break (usually several versions later) it's not really anyone's fault. Even Windows 8 maintains a reasonable level of compatibility with Windows 95 software despite its code being vastly different after so many versions.

The transition to digital distribution led to many players buying games again for convenience but this is a one-time thing; once a PC game is available digitally developers can't justify releasing a trivially updated version instead of patching the one they're still actively selling. Making an enhanced version with new graphics or content would be exempt from this but anything minor is going to be poorly received. Publishers can get away with anything on consoles since the old game doesn't work at all on the new hardware, but on the PC there's a good chance that the previous version will work with minimal fuss.