Originally posted by OctoberFox:

This has been a dilemma for years. GOG circumvented this through their gutsy (and at that time controversial) DRM free approach; meaning that if you as the consumer ever worry about having a game taken from your library you were free to always back it up at any time. YOU, the consumer, have full control over what YOU, the consumer, have purchased. You had no risk and no fear; YOU are in control of YOUR library.

Unfortunately, it's only a thought that GOG store allows you to have full control over your library. I am observing many discussions about this issue past two years and I have never saw that any GOG employee said "if a game taken from your library you were free to always back it up at any time". This is only a conclusion created by users. Read the user agreement and you'll see this: GOG only trust you if you use games from your library for your own purpose. And if you lose the license of any product you will lose the right to use it legally. So with offline installers it's only a matter of trust, as you can see.

Also there is unvoiced thought among the developers that releasing your game on GOG might be financially unsuccessful because of well-known offline installers abuse. And maybe that's why we can see game releases of very popular games on GOG store much later then on other platforms (Steam, Epic).

"YOU, the consumer, have full control over what YOU, the consumer, have purchased." is only an advertisement that GOG heads repeat since they manage to make GOG store popular.

Originally posted by OctoberFox:

Speaking from the perspective of a producer and publisher in my own field; the product is the priority until it goes to the consumer. Once the product goes to the consumer, the consumer becomes the priority.

True. Because it's a consumer who gives you money, not the product which you were just able to advertise. But! It will never makes the consumer as the owner of that digital product. You, as the consumer, only have a right to use it. No matter where you did purchase that product - GOG or Steam.

Originally posted by awg:

Originally posted by OctoberFox:

Speaking from the perspective of a producer and publisher in my own field; the product is the priority until it goes to the consumer. Once the product goes to the consumer, the consumer becomes the priority.

True. Because it's a consumer who gives you money, not the product which you were just able to advertise. But! It will never makes the consumer as the owner of that digital product. You, as the consumer, only have a right to use it. No matter where you did purchase that product - GOG or Steam.

Some of your points seem to visit most of the more darker aspects of the trade. Physical copies, for example, are still as subject to "ownership" as digital, the glaring differences being that said ownership cannot be revoked, and that said ownership can be resold or exchanged.

There was a study a while back, I want to say more than 10 years ago, that showed that Piracy wasn't the monster that it had been made out to be, and this was in an era when sales the like we've seen here and in 3rd parties didn't really exist at their current scale. The damage of piracy was inflated, and in some cases, piracy even fixed developer problems.

As I said, there are no perfect systems for preventing these kinds of problems. I lean more in favor of the consumer; they pay they play, no exceptions outside of maliciousness or TOS violations (within reason) and even then locking out online or group features mean they can still play but cheating or harassment aren't possible anymore.

I'm half asleep but I put in a a search with DDGo "game piracy isn't that bad" and saw some of what I was talking about in the top two pages.

GOG is not perfect, but it's better (from a publisher standpoint) to lose a finger than a hand. Also, anti-piracy doesn't exactly foster good will with users that must take lots of extra steps to do what pirates don't have to.

As for being in control; GOG isn't lying. Rare games have some form of DRM, usually for multiplayer, but leading up to and then after their change from GoodOldGames to GOG they've made it clear that end users can backup all purchases at any time.

I appreciate you starting this conversation. It's clear that you were thoughtful and deliberate with how you approached the issue. Thanks for that.

Originally posted by OctoberFox:

I'm speculating, but a lot of the anger appeared to be less about the loss of this game and more about the loss of a game; that something purchased could so easily be revoked, bringing to light the question of what it means to own digital property.

I think this is the most important point and it's a point that ties into the current conversation that we're seeing broadly throughout gaming: game preservation.

To your point about digital rights. In the short-term, its incumbent upon consumers to demand clarification and restitution where relevant/appropriate when something like this takes place. Gamers need to decide for ourselves how comfortable we are with these practices and try to purchase our games accordingly. That is obviously a personal/individual decision - but also a collective one; social habits/collective consciousness or just word of mouth and market forces.

Sorry to talk governance, but In the long-term we need to have more robust consumer protection measures that keep pace with the times we live in. I live in NY and by US standards, we have rather strong consumer protections (broadly speaking - not specific to gaming/media/digital content). But when compared to a lot of countries laws in W. Europe or EU-level directives, or even California, not so much. We have seen a lot of pushes for citizen's privacy rights online (I'd love to have a US version of GDPR that isn't watered down by corporate interests) and other consumer protection measures - but many don't go far enough and in the US specifically, to deal with this issue effectively, it should be handled Federally.

This brings me to my point about game preservation. We're seeing this throughout gaming right now - on the console side specifically, but we're having that issue on PC too. While we don't 'really' have to deal with 'generations' from the same standpoint as console, we do have do deal with obsolescence of operating systems, drivers, compatibility issues, etc... platforms like Steam have obviously simplified those issues quite a bit for the vast majority of the least technical among us.

We want permanence, we want convenience, and we want it to be cheap. We want our games to be there when we want them, without question or hassle. We don't want to be forced to be online for single player games. Unfortunately, nothing is permanent - not even physical media. Companies will close. Servers will shut down. Machines break down. Physical media degrades. This is coming from someone who has taken great pains to preserve/conserve a number of functioning consoles and 100's of games from childhood (which are in phenomenal shape btw!) - but digital is actually a better long-term solution for game preservation IF (massive if) we can get it right!

I do enjoy GoG and purchase from them specifically because of the ability to have an offline installer - but again, not fool proof. I do everything I can, without voiding my agreements with gaming platforms, to preserve my games as best I can - but unfortunately, there is no fool proof solution.

Originally posted by OctoberFox:

Just my thoughts. I am happy that things are starting to work out for legit buyers again. I hope the developers, Steam, and anyone else that can learn from this will learn from this what they can.:LIS_pixel_heart:

Let's hope this is the beginning of that conversation. Thanks again!

Originally posted by OctoberFox:

As for being in control; GOG isn't lying. Rare games have some form of DRM, usually for multiplayer, but leading up to and then after their change from GoodOldGames to GOG they've made it clear that end users can backup all purchases at any time.

Well, I didn't say that you can't back up your purchased games. By all means (and not only on GOG, by the way) you have your right to do so. But, by making any purchase, you have to follow the rules that any digital distributor has. Just read items 2.1 and 8.2 of GOG user agreement, and you will get the picture. That being said, you don't have full control over your purchased (not owned) games, even on GOG. That's the point - the phase is a sheer advertisement. Nothing more.