To give that a slightly different perspective: I would argue, games are amongst the software which is supported the longest & the most effort is taken to keep it running. Productivity software got replaced and substituted, a game experience can't be substituted. For games DOSBOX and WInUAE was developed not for the boring and substitutable productivity software (like the Amiga's Deluxe Paint or Word Perfect for DOS). For games people work since years in their free time with limited tools driven only by their passion. Recently I was greeted by the news that the Circle of eight mod, working on fixing ToEE since years, released version 8.0. Killap, who works for 9 years now with many community members on fixing Fallout 2, brought his patch v2.2 in the beta now. GOG itself can be seen a proof that games motivate people enough to play and fix them years longer than originally envisioned.

I'm quite sure jamyskis referred to official support, not fan patches, workarounds, and third-party solutions.

Most probably. But the point is, games have a longer product life than every other software product, while typically getting only limited love after release by the developers for economical reasons. To some degree GOG already understood this situation as chance for their own business by providing re-packaging of games and providing of binary adaptions (CD audio to MP3 hacks). But, the optimal solution would be be if the sources would become available for the game community who cares about fixing and is willing to devote much time into it. Here would be my vision that Gog.com would work actively on achieving classical game's source code. Gog is in the optimal position for doing so as they are already in discussions with the product owners. Would emphasize gog's already good reputation, and could be a further strong distinctive characteristic in comparison with steam.

Infact, there is already a community wish about it :) Community wish: GOG, obtain source code for games (where possible)

Yes, it's a good point. Developers and publishers see games as any other software, completely ignoring the fact they have narrative and artistic design which should put them in the same media class as movies, and justify preservation.

But GOG is a company and wants to make money. I don't see how your goals and this goal can be combined optimally. It's much more profitable to just sell the games and do not make the sources available.

I feel these goals should be pursuaded by a different entity, a foundation that do not need to make profit. And I fear that it wouldn't really get many source codes. Why should a publisher or dev give away the sources? There are notable exceptions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code) but mostly this does not happen. In the end only a small part of the community would be able to really do something useful with the source code and it would take ages to do something substantial.

What GOG could do though is to track and offer famous fan mods for the games they have. If they would acquire the Civilization series I could name literally hundreds of excellent fan mods. IP would be no problem for once because all fan mods automatically belong to the publisher according to most EULAs (you can an exclusive right to the publisher). Simple and clean although a bit unfair.

I think you have a good point, but then with productivity software the it is usually of utter importance that the newer version of the productivity software is fully backwards compatible.

That's why many companies, labs etc. hang to old OSes and applications. On my work PC, I am still using Internet Explorer 8 and a bit older MS Office, because of backwards-compatibility reasons mostly (at least for IE8, apparently).

Also I've used in labs some Win3.x or Win9x era applications, which were running in such old Windows. Maybe it is because for that JTAG flash programmer device that we are using, there is no newer software for newer Windows, or something. Or then it just wouldn't bring us any benefits to install Windows 8 and the latest bells and whistles on those lab PCs.

Not always, at least with Bethesda (& maybe others) what is made with the supplied toolset is "fair game" but any assets not made by the toolset is considered the property of the modmaker & as such can't be released by Bethesda without the modmaker's consent.

that's why a mod for one Bethesda game may be very similar to a feature in a later game

The good thing is here, for most games here "open source" and "commercialization" is compatible. The engines itself are pretty outdated (no risk or loss) while the art assets can be kept proprietary. Infact, there are already some examples here on GOG exactly doing this, most known is maybe Arx Fatalis, which became open source shortly before the GOG release. I guess GOG played a role here in getting the sources from some dusty tapes. The support of Arx Fatalis is now done by the community of Arx Libertatis (also ports to linux, mac etc) while still being sold here (assets are still proprietary). So, this model works already and would work for many more games. And would give GOG a unique selling point in the open source community (and the linux people among them, as source available means community ports).

Yes, GOG should present himself stronger as "Preserver of Game Art", by saving the source code for being lost forever ;)

(would make this wish unnecessary)

In general I just wonder why Paradox and Stardock are not available on GOG (with a small exception). I know that in this thread people already vented about other people whining about games being not available here, so I don't want to be misunderstood. I just wonder. I don't want to change anything.

I always thought Paradox and Stardock are well known for excellent niche strategy games that even for years in the past managed to do without much copy protection/DRM. Since I cannot imagine that GOG wouldn't like to have them it must be their refusal that is causing the absence of their games. Of course they are on Steam. Being on GOG could potentially increase their sales and profits but obviously not so much that they feel compelled to do so.

I could imagine a combination of GOG not being important enough of a market and their change of attitude towards DRM. However for someone like me liking DRM free and hard core strategy this is a bit sad. Of course I bought most of their good title before they went to Steam and if they produce another one I will eventually buy there but I would be more happy if they would offer their games on GOG too and would probably pay more.

I imagine the problem here might be that both of them seem to have switched to all Steam lately. I remember a case of Paradox where due to demand they still released a DRM-free version of a game they made and it turned out selling even less copies than they were expecting.

Yes, I remember that too and also that a big Kickstarter project that initially only offered a Steam version, then when it seems like funds weren't rising anymore and the goal would be missed, added a DRM free version but there was only a tiny peak afterwards, less than 10% of the initial rushing in, when it was Steam only. Both demonstrates very clearly how much bigger Steam is than GOG and how much the majority of gamers is tolerating the DRM of Steam. Mostly they are just fine with it.

On the other hand GOG is profitable (at least I guess so) and sells well at least for some games, mostly classic RPGs. It might have to do that they had for some time a monopoly on that. Nowadays the indie games who come here either think that the GOG audience especially likes indie games (the best selling list seems to say otherwise though) or they just have nothing to loose, so they try every possible place.

Still I'm not happy with Stardock and Paradox decisions to go Steam only. But I'm part of a minority obviously.

Unless they added the DRM-free version to GOG, it doesn't really tell anything about GOG.

If they offered the DRM-free version in the shitty GamersGate format (which is "kinda DRM-free"), then I am not surprised the "DRM-free" version didn't sell well. People avoided it for other reasons than whether it had DRM, or not.

I guess we'll never see exact sales numbers from GOG or Steam or anyone else, so all we can do is speculate. My firm impresssion is that GOG is quite insignificant compared to Steam. I have to admit that even though I don't like it.

Especially for Paradox games, which were never even released on GOG. Yet, you use them as some kind of example against GOG. "Paradox games sold poorly on some non-GOG store => GOG is in trouble".

Anyway, I guess the game publishers know the numbers best between the stores. One of the indie game developers, I don't right now recall which one, was comparing the sales between different stores (including both Steam and GOG), and mentioned in his analysis that "GOG is clearly a rising star." (not exact quote, just from my memory).

That was last year, I think. And it was a freaking indie game, something that you apparently feel sells very poorly on GOG.

EDIT: Actually it was this one, from early 2013: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#Market_share

But yes, GOG is (most probably, as we still don't have numbers) much smaller than Steam in pretty much any measurement. But insignificant?