No love for Paradox?

It does, always, 100%.

-$1 that returns to you as BC.

I look at it this way. GOG is doing what no other publisher does - offering games with NO STRINGS ATTACHED. They're taking a big risk by offering games at ridiculously good prices with no DRM and no requirement to log onto their servers to play. In that regard they're even better than Steam, which I love but does have its own DRM as does require at least one login to play.

I'd much rather support GOG than any other service in that regard, even if it's not the "cheapest" solution because in my mind it still offers the best value.

Paradox and GG went their separate ways some time ago.

I already found one game where I couldn't get it to work, though it may be possible to work around that particular problem as well, I haven't tried yet. Anyway, my point was rather to highlight the difference that with GOG, it's part of the contract that no online activation is ever needed, whereas with GamersGate, you'd have to rely on a workaround which (in case it doesn't work, for whatever reason) GamersGate certainly won't solve for you.

If the setup's exe is not in the GG temp file folder while it's running, you simply go to you user's temp folder in Windows, sort the files by date and grab the ones that suddenly appear at the bottom when you start the installer.

They are not "ridiculously good prices," and that is the entire point of this thread. Even at 50% off (which they aren't, most of the time) they still cost 40% more than most everywhere else.

I think Steam is an utter abomination, but that is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

It's up to you, bro. :P

Paradox had Impulse, which was bought by GameStop. Impulse does have the benefits of both an app to manage your games and the ability to run them outside it, so it doesn't function as DRM like Steam does. (Or at least that was the case when it wasn't part of GameStop; I haven't bought anything on it since.)

IIRC GamersGate does have the option to leave the installation files on disk, but I'm not sure, I'll have to check it. Edit: Ah, I read on the GG site that even if it does this it requires an internet connection to activate.

Anyway, I'm currently leaning towards buying just BG2 on GOG. Thanks for the interesting discussion.

Stardock created Impulse which has since been bought by Gamestop. Paradox created GamersGate but made it its own company.

Wherever you end buying from, enjoy! :)

Buying on GOG will get you whatever extras they offer.
Buying on GamersGate will get you x percent back in blue coins (percentage depends on user level).

Ultimately, the choice is yours. Do you want the bluecoins or the GOG bonus content? The publisher of the games (Atari in this case) will get paid either way, so you don't need to concern yourself on that aspect.

If you're only missing BG2 and the Icewind Dales, at 50% off that's $15.

Additionally, I'd prefer supporting GoG, where the emphasis is on curating old games and providing a quality DRM-free service to the customer, over supporting GamersGate, where, whatever other qualities it may have, the focus is not in that area. (I own several games through both services, but given my choice and the $$ to support it, I'd probably rather buy the same game from GoG.) That might or might not be compelling to you.

Further, GoG has a pretty active community offering guidance on getting your old games to run as well as possible. Obviously you don't have to buy the game here to get that, but it's worth considering that the company provides that to you and they can't do that for free.

Always 5%.