MerylUnlocked: There would have not even been the need for a “cease and desist”, I would have taken my video down and that would have been it. The reason they didn’t do it (and this is “my” speculation only) is because they count on me releasing the mod on the internet. Guess who benefits from that without having to lift a finger?
Spectrum_Legacy: I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that the community would benefit from it the most, right? I mean those who care about getting the best version possible on pc, or closest version to the original with improvements here and there which retains the original vision. Good job on the audio & cutscenes btw!
Gog sells what is agreed upon with publishers. They can ask for this or that to be included, but it's up to the publisher to give it a go in the end. That's why mods are generally not included, unless they improve compatibility with modern systems (since that is gog's take of game preservation... they don't preserve old originals, but aim to make them playable on windows x64 pc as the most widespread os/arch nowadays, for better or worse). Then there are also purists who would like them to include original exes as well for dos/early windows games, or even versions from different systems, you name it. And finally you might have a third camp that wants to have the best possible version, despite being modded - sometimes heavily modded. Maybe it could have been added as an extra or something, among the goodies that gog games were known to come with as an added value. Gog likely had to draw a line somewhere and aim for something achievable, a standard or framework that would work for the majority of users. That would be a good start, with further work aimed at bringing users more options to choose from as part of the community effort.
I understand what you mean and agree with it. In addition, my personal view is that Publisher and GOG benefit from it too. Steam customers (many of them it seems) could feel more inclined to buy this game with proper audio quality. Is that a fact? No, it’s a supposition or a gamble.
People only have to watch my comparison in the video I made to hear just how bad the current version sounds like. Thank you BTW for your appreciation of the work I’ve done on it.
I believe this game should be sold with such a mod baked in the build as per the nature of the mod itself. You buy the game, install it and enjoy it. That’s it! If you already own the game, you wait for an updated build to show up on your catalog and download a legitimate file. Why not? Licensing, royalties and all that? I understand but, why not communicate it to me. There was at least a chance to do so and I could have taken the videos I made down. Like I said, my mods are for my personal use only because I know that some game companies look down on modding, when in reality they should be thankful.
That is my opinion but I know that other people are fine downloading patches, manually modifying executable files, etc. I just think that for the nature of this mod (an audio mod), it should be included in the build. I have read that GOG has done these things in the past, like getting wrappers or other tools (I don’t remember exactly the specific instances) and include them in game builds.
I think that you the customers decide, and if enough customers demanded this mod to be included in the game build sold on GOG, they would at least feel an inclination to ask the publisher not to flat out ignore this.
But I don’t own the analytics. I don’t know how many people own this game already on GOG or how many have whitelisted it or, how many Steam users would be willing to buy it here. GOG and Publisher own some of this data.
But the point I was trying to make from my first post is that this whole “game preservation”, fixing, improving, it all seems to mean nothing other than just marketing, when here you have a chance to “fix” and “improve” a product you not only sell on your store, but you proudly sell it with the “game preservation” badge.
Now I am disappointed with these marketing tactics.
Sternitzky: I admit I only bought from Steam's spring sale yet, partly because they started earlier. But I was in the mood to buy three games related to firefighting. And I always wanted to play Conan Exiles, and since Ark: Survival Ascended is still not finished, I gave it a shot. Bought the whole package except for the heavily for PvP optimized Isle of Siptah expansion. My mood wasn't only for firefighting but for survival as well, so I bought the Icarus Spring Sale package as well and additionally bought Project Zomboid a second time for easier access to Steam's Workshop contents.
I wait out GOG's spring sale until the last day, because my purse's currently empty.
tfishell: Be careful you don't miss it, because iirc gog can get their countdown wrong sometimes, or people wait until just a few minutes until it ends and don't finish checkout in time, or something like that.
MerylUnlocked: You either don’t get it or are just trying to win an argument, which I am not interested in.
The information you have just provided (thank you BTW, I’ve been looking for that) further proves my point: lack of sales, sold out, it doesn’t matter as they are not willing to go the extra mile in the name of “game preservation” as they want to make us all believe. I know I am not the only one who thinks this cause I read these forums. This whole game preservation thing is all marketing…
If most (or many) of GOG customers already own this game: high quality audio or not, who cares? GOG and Publisher already got the sales or mileage they expected from this game, why add anything extra that the customer is likely to appreciate very much? Or like I said before in my other post: they had a chance to communicate to me privately that this is beyond them. I would have understood and left it at that. There would have not even been the need for a “cease and desist”, I would have taken my video down and that would have been it. The reason they didn’t do it (and this is “my” speculation only) is because they count on me releasing the mod on the internet. Guess who benefits from that without having to lift a finger?
You don’t know why in almost 25 years that this game has been around, there hasn’t ever been a single mod like mine for this game (people who attempted to mod it, might have an idea). I know why and believe me, very likely it’s got nothing to do with licensing, but obviously at the end of the day it’s easier to just leave it at speculation...
It would be interesting to run a survey and ask all owners of this game if they’d rather keep the botched up version GOG sells now or one with PlayStation hardware audio quality baked in?
I don’t do it myself cause I’ve been surprised the wrong way a little too many times now and that would be one more disappointment for me to add to the list.
I have never released any of my mods online. I read disappointing reviews online about the emulated version Steam released back in 2023 and chose to make an exception and this is what I uncovered: GOG and Publisher DON’T CARE about game preservation but they love a quick cash grab any day and customers (NOT ALL of course) are absolutely fine with that.
Did you make a thread in the game's forum showcasing the mod?
I have not.
I was not able to do so when I opened this account.
Maybe I can now, I’ll try.
I know this in not the right place to keep this discussion going and I apologize.
I’ll end this here. Thank you to all who have engaged in this discussion. Enjoy the current Spring sale.
