I personally don't care about legitimacy. I like the service: cloud hosting, maintaining compatibility, and the forums.

Take game sales numbers and plot them vs. time. Look for the 1/e^2 decrease point. That is the time in the lifecycle when games should become free.

Edit: SimonG is right as usual, and I only posted in this thread because I was away removing the cat from the ceiling and did not click refresh.

Found this while browsing http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2826.0:

"efore the age of GOG, you had to purchase an original copy at collector's prices off of ebay. Other classic games had that issue, too. For instance, a copy of Age of Wonders went for a hundred. Piracy was the "unspoken" word because many had no choice. I am glad there is a legal option now that does not involve paying big money to someone and praying you do not end up with a scratched, worthless disc with no recourse for getting money back." - Green1

Not to mention that the lifespan of games is nowadays a lot longer in general. Try getting a game from '94 running without problems in Win 98. Or a Win 95 game in Win XP. Also, due to the drawbacks of retail. Games literally had a shelf life. Meaning a game could be "abandonware" within a couple of years.


Nowadays, pretty much every game made during the XP lifecycle is not only available but runable without much effort.

We still get the occasional "modern abandonware game", thanks to licensing (BFME2), but in general time has become much kinder to gaming.

I've been looking through Abandonia's catalogue, finding games that look like they might reach GOG's standards and seeing if I can track down the rights. I'm not entirely sure how I should feel about this something like this: a classic like Anvil of Dawn received thousands of ratings on Aban., yet less than 100 here on GOG. GOG is doing a service by bringing these games back into the mainstream, but now that people have to pay to play, it isn't reaching such a large group of gamers. (And of course, GOG doesn't have to do much except package it with DOSBox.) I love to see good old games come here of course, but I'm still see-sawing on the issue.

Given the option, I'd rather buy from GOG. Not only does that make me feel more legit in a legal sense, but I trust the site itself to give me a working product without viruses/keyloggers/etc.

This. I think that trust and the issue of actual legitimacy is huge for me. I used to have a massive catalogue of games from both Abandonia and HotU, often doing the DOSbox footwork myself. (Albeit in a sometimes haphazard fashion.) The conveniency and security that GOG offers is ideal for what I want, which is GOOD games, no matter what the age is, as well as games that scratch my nostalgia itch.

GOG's legitimacy means widespread coverage on all the relevant sites. Many sites don't do nostalgia coverage of random old games so will only talk about an old game when it reappears digitally. This will result in many players finding out about games for the first time. Sure, they could have acquired an illegal version from some random site in the past decade or so prior to the GOG release but that goes for any game.

There is also a sizeable percentage of players who still own the original retail versions of a game but are ready and willing to pay a second time for GOG's version due to the combination of convenience and legitimacy. GOG also tries to go the extra mile where possible, bundling extras which even existing players might never have had, e.g. Wizardry 6 + 7 includes both the original and Gold versions of Wizardry 7. Similarly, GOG releases with expansion packs often give the option of deselecting the expansion(s) for those that would rather have the game in that form.

Abandonware is great for conservation, in many cases games would be lost without it (speaking as an Amiga fan, the whole community is more or less run on "abandonware" these days...). However, when it is possible, it is always best if the games can be gotten legally, I can not think of a single instance where this may not be the case.

More games on GOG = happy me.
I don't use 'abandonware' sites and I would like to see gems hosted there to appear on GOG. Harvester, I have no mouth..., Elvira series, I'm waiting!

Why would you leave a game to an abandonware site and not give the option to sell it legally and hassle free?

Hmmm. As long as games from abandonware are sold after making sure they run on modern systems, no.

I prefer this way because of convenience, time, legitimity and a fact that in many cases I still pay for it to the subject who was involved in the product development. I would really welcome to have such option also for music and movies.

I'm afraid the last part is not true. You are not necessarily paying the person that was responsible or involved in the production of the game. You are paying the rights holder. That may have been obtained through an auction, inheritance, or simply some legal dispute.

That's why I wrote "in many cases". :)

If one buys only at sales, than classic games on GOG are currently 3 or 5 dollars. I think this is really cheap and a fair price for getting a legal copy. For that price almost anyone should be able to buy more classics than he or she can ever play. I prefer it compared to having games not available for selling anymore and having to go to places like abandonia. For me abandonware will always only be the second best option.

As a company I think GOG should always only focus on what their customers want or their potential customers might want. More classics at cheap prices.

At some point GOG experimented with Pay-What-You-Want models but the experiments ended now already some time ago. I guess people wanted to have the games for an even lower price than they wanted to give them away.

I miss Elvira. I still have the C64 disks around somewhere I think...though considering they are like 25 years old I'd be VERY surprised if they worked...

Harvester: if its the one I'm thinking of it was probably the first PC game I ever played that completely creeped me out. :)