I really hope the epic thing doesn't last, its classic chinese undercutting everything to kill the market then jack up the prices
This sucks, gog is the best place to buy old games! I really love and care how much work they put into in getting most games to just work on new machines. They just had a good sale and think I spent $100 bucks on some games just so I can have worry free version that I know will work.
People forget that Steam isn't the only marketplace Epic's garbage threatens.
To be honest, I'm surprised that GOG is just now having issues with its bottom line. GOG's whole shtick is selling DRM-free games, which is not something your average AAA developer and even some indies ever want to get behind. It's definitely more consumer friendly from a moral standpoint, but when your average consumer typically doesn't notice or care about the DRM in their games (mostly because DRM these days has gotten less intrusive instead of more, unless it's always online bullshit), you're essentially asking companies to make their games easier to pirate in order to gain a small amount of brownie points with a minority of people who are adamantly against DRM as a concept.
And I'm not saying any of this to shit on GOG. I fucking love GOG as a platform. Ideally, I'd want no DRM in any of the games I purchase, and typically if a game is available on GOG at its launch, I'll usually get it there. I'll especially buy CDPR's games on GOG to give them 100% of the profit essentially.
I'm just saying, pushing for no DRM, in a DRM centric industry, is not exactly the best way to stay profitable.
GOG also has the advantage of the old games actually working when you buy them from their site, unlike Steam, in which people just lazily upload games to it without checking to see if it works on a modern system.
There's also the issue that sometimes between Steam and GoG, the former game version is better due to having more (locked down) features. Wanna mod your game that only has them on the workshop? Tough shit if you're on GoG!
I also remember No Man's Sky's MP not being available when it launched on Steam. People were furious when that happened, and it wouldn't surprise me that it made folks ignore the DRM-free perk in future titles.
I dunno what else to say about this recent article other than it makes me want to archive my current library onto my external 2TB drive even more... Just in case.
Definitely going to backup my games now.
Feels like GOG hit the wall when it comes to finding old games - harder obstacles, more stubborn old timers not caring about IPs, lost papers and who knows what else.
Sure you can't live with scavenging ancient stuff alone, we get it.
Gosh I hope they can stabilise, GoG is my go to place for older games.
It's important to elaborate on how they are doing this. Rather than lowering the prices of games for customers, they are undercutting Steam, GOG and other stores by lowering the revenue share from sales to a point where other competitors can't possibly make a profit. Epic can of course easily tank any possible revenue loss thanks in part to Chinese investment, and in part to Fortnite's endless cashflow.
They are also engaging in Exclusive Dealing, although here the roles are reversed. Epic Games, as the retailer, is exerting power over the suppliers (the developers) by offering bonuses if they decide to only sell the product over their store, when usually, it's the other way around. The bonuses come in the form of, for instance, by receiving no license fees for the Unreal Engine, which just so happens to be one of the most commonly used game engines around.
Both of these are anti-competitive practices. In addition to that, Epic also geared the design of their platform entirely towards developers and publishers, with the people who actually purchase the games being secondary. That is why they are developing an opt-in review system, that is why they chose not to have any kinds of forums, curators or other discussion platforms on their service. They cite "toxicity", when in reality the goal is to create a store where consumers cannot expose publishers and developers for shady practices; a store where any hack-fraud developer can promote their game as the best thing since sliced bread, without any opinions to the contrary being visible on the store page itself.
The Epic Store is 100% anti-consumer, and that's apparent even without diving into their nightmare of an EULA, or without discussing the possibility of Chinese censorship.
remember when corporate monopoly laws were about a company's intent rather than their long down the road effects on consumers? those were the days...
Oef.. GOG is great. Always a shame to see companies like this getting damaged by the big boys
In other news, GOG will be discontinuing the Fair Price Program.
It's kinda even worse since half of the people on the internet doesn't understand what competition actually means and dismisses anyone against Epic store as entitled, anti competitive or some other bs words and basically could and will allow Epic to be even more shitter towards the people who actually buys the product
I'm hoping, that by some miracle, GOG ends up pulling through this without some sort of major restructuring having to take place or some other force having to take control. GOG being kept afloat by someone else has the risk of having the original idea being tainted by something that could make things worse.
Gonna be honest, reading all this fear of the Chinese boogeyman makes me laugh, because you do realize Tencent has investments in more than just Epic, right?
They have investments in just about every major video game publisher that is publicly traded and have been for years. They have investments in chat platforms like Discord. You can bet your ass that if Valve was publicly traded, they'd invest in them as well. You'd think if Tencent was some big Chinese government boogeyman who was intent on censoring communications and art, we would've seen the ramifications of it by now, no? They are more than big enough by now to make some serious moves like this (not that those would fly in the US at all given their current tensions with China).
Also, you're telling me Valve with their also basically infinite piles of money can't lower their revenue share on Steam to match at all? That is seriously all it would take to snuff out Epic, yet Valve refuses. GOG couldn't do this by any means because of their relatively niche market and audience, but I seriously doubt Valve cannot with Steam.
We see that quite a few of you raised concerns about GOG's future. As a part of publicly traded company, we can't comment on any financial results until they are officially reported, but we want to ensure you everything is good with GOG. Being part of a big gaming company, some reports - especially some given by significant media outlets - can often sound much scarier than reality.
I had to go get a third party patch to make Manhunt work because it crashes when you try to go through a specific gate in the first level.
I had to use a specific installer to even get it to run on a more modern system.
My experience was a few years ago on Windows 7. I imagine on Windows 10 with more modern hardware is just not even worth it.
It has more to do with all the Activision SJW crap......
go do some research..
...?
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