candour

Isn't it like colour/color, armor/armour, harbour/harbor and so forth, where the British use the 'ou' variant and Americans bastardized it by removing the 'u' because they want the written version to 'look' like the spoken version 'sounds'?

+1

I don't get what the fuss is all about. If you don't read the accompanying news item explaining why all these titles are sold so dirt cheap, how is that the fault of GOG? It's not even written in fine print or using a complicated terminology. You shouldn't just spend your money so trustingly on the internet and then afterwards threaten to sue the people just because you trusted them blindly. You've got to take some responsibility yourself, too.

And in this case it's not even as if someone was trying to cheat you, GOG was completely honest about the situation and it's probably one reason why these games are so cheap in the first place. If that doesn't sit well with you, you were free to decline the offer and renounce the possibly last chance for a while to get your hands on these games that in the worst case might soon disappear not just from GOG but from the entire market (and no, piracy is NOT an alternative; if you even consider it, on what moral and legal grounds can you complain about GOG's service?). If these are games you really wanted to play, be happy GOG offered you the installers for next to no money. If you're more interested in the online service than the games themselves, you had better saved your money for something more useful than a few covers on a virtual shelf.

Personally, I appreciate GOG being frank about it and pay them my respect, although it would certainly be nice if there was a way to put the further availability of downloads for sold titles in the contracts GOG negotiates with the publishers, even foreseeing cases as this one.

EDIT: Granted, I now noticed there's no link to the news item in the promo mail, so I can see why someone might overlook the relevant news and just buy the games without hesitation. I still don't think that's a good reason to sue GOG for though and it doesn't make the deal any less awesome if you're really after the games.

I don't trust any digital distributor to make my games available to me when I want them, short-term or long-term. Why on Earth should I? That's a big reason I buy first from GOG: because their games are DRM-free, I don't have to trust them.

What I do trust in is that GOG won't pull games from our shelves unless they legally have no choice. GOG and the T are being very up-front about the fact that the situation is unclear, and I appreciate that.

Thanks for the deal Mr,Mrs,Ms GoG. I've grabbed a couple of games. Not too sure about people complaining that the downloads might be unavailable in the future. Common sense dictates that you invest in an external hard drive for backing up the games or burn the games to disk. I've done it with every game I've bought on GoG just incase GoG goes down (temporarily) for whatever reason or the games do get pulled.

Why do you feel this way? 1) When GOG has had to remove games from sale before, they have been able to retain them on the shelves (and for download) for users who have bought them previously. 2) The GOG team is stating that they aim to continue this practice if possible - they are just using cautious language because at present there is no way they can know exactly what will happen to the rights to the games.

So we know that in the past games haven't disappeared from our shelves, and we know that GOG is trying to avoid that happening in the future. We don't know that games disappearing is a certainty even in this single, isolated case - let alone any kind of trend that will make all your games disappear from your shelf in "3 to 5 years".

Sorry, but it just bothers me when people somehow divine a trend (and even give it a set timetable) before one single instance of something has even happened. There is no logical reason to say "if this continues" like that, because nothing has happened yet.

He said 'may' and 'hypothetically speaking'. Aren't you overreacting a bit?

"Overreacting"? I don't know - I'm calm but genuinely curious why some of the people here are having feelings like those he expressed. That's why I asked.

But I apologize if it seems like an overreaction or harsh. No hard feelings intended - I just get a bit confused when people start setting up a doomsday timetable for something before we have seen any instances from which to derive any trend.

I don't think it's that strange. The hypothetical is based on what Gog themselves said. That it's recommended to download because they're not sure what might happen. In other words the possibility is there you may not even be able to download it anymore depending on what happens to the licenses during the bankruptcy. Hypothetical Start.

Reflexive Games also said that, but once they went under there was no such patch. The downloaded games are now linked to specific computers and once those die...

But the important thing is this. Why are you complaining about GOG but fine with Steam? You say that Steam lets you backup the games and will remove the Steam client requirement. If they do that, then they will become just like GOG. You buy the game, you don't need any other client to install and play, and you can back the game up.

So why complain about GOG when they are currently set up that way, but give Steam a pass because they will become what GOG currently is?

Well said on the whole thing.
This is a great site, with the best service.

Let's just be happy with what we have..........

Quick question that can (hopefully) be answered as quickly...

I'm a big fan of rpg's with turn-based combat systems (Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, Might & Magic 1-5). Any of JoWooD's titles fit that bill?

The sale seems too good to pass up, but I also don't want to buy something I won't enjoy.

I didn't agree with the marketing stunt with pulling the site down back a while. I thought it was cheap, it was tacky and it brought GOG down to a level usually reserved for litigious buggers like EA and Activision.

There was a lesson to be learned from all of this, and whereas companies like Ubisoft, Valve et al. probably wouldn't have learned from it, GOG.com has set itself apart by actually learning from it. The users said that they were frustrated that GOG had given no warning, and now GOG is warning us about every possibility. I appreciate that.

I very rarely buy from Steam. Most of my keys have either been free, have worked from my retail CDs, or have been ridiculously cheap. I will never, ever buy a full price game with Steam on it. Anyone who seriously takes Valve at their word that they will remove the DRM in the event of a shutdown of the server is an idiot who apparently doesn't bother to read the Steam Subscriber Agreement. I only buy (extremely cheaply) from Steam because I have more faith in the pirates and hackers being able to circumvent the DRM should this ever come to pass than I do in Valve.

This is why I more often buy from GOG, assuming I do buy digital. The first thing I do whenever I buy a game is download it, burn it to DVD, print out one of the lovely unofficial DVD inlays and archive it. Keeping your games in the cloud is akin to storing all your stuff in a stranger's house and them giving you a key. Having this key lures you into a false sense of security that your games are "safe", but ultimately someone else could steal this key (account gets hacked) or the owner could change the locks (server is shut down). Sure, you might never miss those games, but at the end of the day, something has been stolen from you that you will never get back.

Yes, we can hypothetically say that. But saying "my shelf might be empty in x years" is just a truism about the uncertainties of digital distribution. The statement is no more true now than it was last week.

All I'm saying is that it's really premature to base any doom and gloom on this particular newspost, when we don't even know if these 13 games will disappear, in this particular case with these particular circumstances.

Even if they did, I don't think it would be a big indication for any trend of all games disappearing. I think it would mostly be an incentive for GOG to avoid that happening again in the future. GOG is growing every year, and with more resources and more experience they have more pull and can maybe get contracts that are better suited for their business model with IP rights holders in the future - especially if they are motivated by a possible failure now.

That's just a hypothetical too, but just as valid as any gloomy "this may indicate the end of all my GOGs"-scenario, I think. And again, we haven't even seen a single game disappear from a shelf, so some cautious language from the GOG team shouldn't make us imagine depressing things just yet.