"I care" ... "Sorry let me check my latest game download from limewire."

Seems the new GOG owner doesn't care as they push AI use in the company

I care. Enough to abandon my qualms about AI usage? Not really, it just means GOG is not the answer.

Something tells me the "double down" is to distract from that fallout

I suspect so.... But not everyone knows so it's still worth mentioning.

I know it, but I'm not sure why one would affect the other. I still get DRM free games on GOG that I'm not going to find on itch.io or elsewhere.

Do you not but games anymore then, or do you think steam is better?

Though if you only play FOSS or self published games, that would be kinda based.

GOG needs to copy Steam a bit more.

Give us game based discussion boards, a mod workshop, and most importantly a friends notification system. Steer into the social experience of old games.

I'm guessing by your wording that you're aching to bash Steam, so I'll preface this with: no corporation is ever going to get this 100% right; the world is drawn in greys, and only a Sith deals in absolutes.

"Better" is not very useful without context. In the context of AI usage, Steam is better. In the context of GOG, their main claim about game preservation is "no DRM", but there is an important point often missed: lots of games on Steam also do not have DRM.

I have no issues "buying" games on Steam which have no DRM. For others, I factor the DRM into the price I'm willing to pay for access. These tend to be larger titles anyway, so I'm not terribly worried about it long term.

Long term game preservation? More about unofficial channels than relying on yet another corporation. GOG wasn't changing that before, and they definitely aren't now.

Because supporting GOG now means supporting unfettered AI usage. If you disagree with such policies, the only way to voice that discontent is with your wallet.

I suppose so, but even if that bothered me, it would still mean I'm not owning the games I buy when I shop elsewhere.

Depends on the game. As I mentioned in another thread, there are many games on Steam which are DRM-free and do not require the client. GOG's advertising suggests they are the only method for getting such games, but as always, the devil is in the details.

Mostly it comes down to how much you feel about one issue over the other, but I don't see how they can be unrelated if there's a monetary transaction involved.

Considering games with no DRM can have it added retroactively, that Steam pushes updates I may not want with no option to decline, and that that wiki can't even load in its entirety without erroring out for me and comes down to user submitted data, GOG's DRM free promise is more than just advertising.

Its true, but also "please give the business more money" isn't exactly the thing anyone but business owners and shareholders want to hear.

Maybe. If you trust them, though now... I don't.

If there's someone else doing the same work, by all means give to them instead.

The reason why this doesn't concern me at all is that the very nature of the business they run means that I explicitly don't have to trust them.

Does it? What recourse do you have if they change their policy and you don't have local backups of your games?

archive.org and their collections to the rescue!

If ownership is what you're worried about, why wouldn't you already have the installers downloaded and backed up?

Oh, I absolutely would -- I'm just making a point based on a previous statement earlier in the thread:

Considering games with no DRM can have it added retroactively, that Steam pushes updates I may not want with no option to decline

If the practice is that you need local backups on purchase anyway, then I fail to see the difference between non-DRM games on Steam and those on GOG. It feels like a different goalpost is being used depending on what service is being discussed.

Undoing DRM-free quickly enough that I couldn't download my remaining installers would be speedrunning the failure of a company faster than Unity, but other than that, they can't take away what I and others have already downloaded.

all this stupid publicity makes me feel dirty for buying there

Neither can Steam. Then the difference is down to those games on Steam which are not DRM-free.

The true GOAT.

The difference is that even with the convenience of a launcher, I can decline an update that would undo DRM-free rather than manually copying every vetted DRM-free game on Steam to another directory every time there's a patch. And that's only to entertain this apocalyptic what-if that would never happen because it would trigger false advertising law suits that would instantly destroy the company.

I leave my Steam update settings to only update on Play. This allows me to pretty easily review what is being patched in to any particular game and choose if/when to apply it (true that choosing not to apply means no longer using the Steam client for that game).

It's also trivial on Linux to keep the Proton prefixes and game installs backed up automatically. This has the added benefit of making all game installs portable.

Unfortunately GOG still has no official Linux client, though there are workarounds. The "apocalyptic scenario" would ultimately kill either company, so you're right to think it is moot.

If they abandon AI usage, I'd consider buying from them. Unless they give AI up and get a team of great humans at the helm to develop. They can get fucked, and I will spend my money elsewhere.

Do you feel you stand a chance in that fight?

Once the technology is there, and competition embrasses it, very few companies will actually have the capability of resisting.

In about 5 years I feel you're literally just not going to be able to buy new games, or you're going to abandon the idea of such boycotts.

But im curious. Are you concerned about the loss of human jobs from a game quality perspective or a human well being perspective?

game based discussion boards

These already exist, every store page has a "Forum discussion" link. You can also go here and you should find the "game specific forum" section where you can search for whatever game.

Only games I bought from these guys are the games I can't get on Steam.

It's very sluggish compared to Steam; everything is slower in GOG client. I wonder if it is a server problem or my region.

Offer a good service and people will buy from your store, most customers either don't care about DRM or care somewhat but don't want to inconvenience themselves with a worse product for it. GOG have to catch up to Steam with stuff like family sharing and controller support for me to consider buying stuff there.

Corporations are already trying and failing to do anything useful with gassed up LLMs, and I highly doubt that it will become useful in the next 5 to 10 years. However, what I do feel will happen is that all the hope posting and gaslighting by the shills, those who's success rides on massive adoption will do their best to convince everyone to use the shit. Who knows how well that will actually turn out, it's an open question at the moment. I hope all their efforts leads to failure, personally.

If gassed up LLMs do seep into the gaming industry to the point I can't avoid it, then I just stop buying games. Spending money on slop isn't ideal in my opinion. I have a backlog of games that haven't been tainted by baby's first lying software, so it isn't a total loss. I got years of games to play before choosing another hobby altogether, I have adhered to some boycotts for a long amount of time in other areas. Having the will to research products and spend money only on those that don't offend my sensibilities is natural to me.

I already won't use Windows because Microslop chose to go hard in the LLM direction and look how well that is going for them. On top of it, I make use of open source software and support projects so that they can continue to thrive, avoiding anything that is stained with enshittification.

My concerns with gassed up LLMs that techbros call "AI" are numerous: Ecological effect, Quality of Media (games, art, movies, etc), how it affects the people who provide us with software and entertainment in general. Gassed up LLMs are being used as an excuse to lay off so many people in tech and gaming spaces. As corporations irresponsibly hired in a boom period and realized they'd have to pay people in so called lean times that aren't actually lean. The myth of infinite growth has scrambled the brains of the C-Suite and distracted toddler investors, so the profits don't look so good these days. As they are unwilling to cut off the CEOs who leech off a lot of corporate profits first, naturally the very people who make the stuff that enriches companies, execs, and shareholders...Are laid off first. Thrown into a rabid job market that is falling the fuck apart because rich fuckwits are creating a situation that serves to unilaterally fuck over those that don't have a financial cushion to fall back on.

This will have a profound impact on the quality and selection of media...Humans are naturally creative, we've painted in caves and told stories for most of our life history. Storytelling and creativity is an intrinsic part of humanity, stories feel better when written by someone with that strong ability to tell a compelling tale! Gassed up LLMs mass produce sterile, meaningless slop comprised of stolen training data that doesn't classify as art to me...Humans do to, but not on an industrial scale like an LLM can. Already, there are sites and instances even on the fediverse dedicated to sharing slop...It's so bland. I can't imagine staying interested in buying stories and art produced by slop generating LLMs. I'll just write my own stuff...Learn how to draw things that exist in my head, that would be a better use of time and money. Creating feels so good, only a talentless techbro or hollow CEO would want to take that away from people to make a quick dollar.

LLMs in their current form use so much water and power, it's honestly scare how they'll have to rely on dirty forms of energy production just to keep up with escalating demand. That will have an impact on the local environment and marginalized communities initially and if enough of these irresponsible data centers are created...The scale of environmental and community impact is going to escalate.

We only have one home planet, imagine it being so sullied that human life can't exist here anymore. To be honest, due to our current antics, I don't even know if we'll beat "The Great Filter" and become a sufficiently advanced civilization. We might destroy ourselves first, but at least nature would probably recover after we're gone and our works eventually stop interfering with the ecosystem.

I don't feel humanity should be concerned with AI as there is so much we don't know about ourselves yet. We lack the sufficient understanding of neurology, why consciousness manifests, and how to create machinery that can actually mimic our brain structure. It would take so many generations of humanity, untold amounts of funding, multi-discipline research to produce a true AI. Techbros wanna shill now though, so we are stuck with gassed up LLMs that will probably cause society to collapse or the rich to finally get put to a French revolution style end (if disenfranchised people are feeling spicy enough).

Fuck generative shit, there will ways be real passionate people making games, artwork and music and i will buy from them, not the trash spat out by the automated vending machine.

Push slop and lose your business there will aways be other services that are more ethical.

Why do you need family sharing if the games are DRM free? If the kid wants to play a game from your account you just pass him the exe, what's the issue

Controller support depends from the game, if you mean a controller remapper like steam, then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam. With heroic launcher you can add gog games in your steam list with a single click

Family sharing? You download the games they are installed for all users.

Family sharing isn't just for your local machine, I have family who live in the other side of the country.

They have the opportunity to right their wrong of bailing on the StopKillingGames campaign, but they're likely more worried about appeasing the corpo publisher more than they are defending their supposed core mission.

Apart from the fact that all things you listed exist in one form or another on GOG, have you considered that there are people that prefer not having all those random bullshit social features in their game store?
Stream may be more popular, but getting out of their niche and copying steam will alienate their fans without attracting steam users.

Also fuck the workshop, it's the worst thing that ever happened to modding. It's a total pain in the ass to download and apply a mod that is only available there to any non-steam version. Additionally it produced a generation of gamers that is unable to trouble-shoot even the tiniest problem with the mods they applied.

For me it's the opposite.

My preference is itch.io, then GOG, then Steam.

You don't just pass the exe though, modern games are huge with a lot of files required. With Steam it's a 2 step process:

1. I look in the tab in my library for games in my brother's account I have access to with family sharing.
2. I download a game from the list.

That's despite the fact my brother lives in the other side of the country, and it offers me all the Steam features I make use of like cloud saves as if my account had bought the game.

With GOG it's

1. Find the right webpage for my brother's games (you can't see them from within the GOG client for some reason.
2. Ask my brother to download the installer
3. Get my brother to send me the installer file over discord
4. The installer is too big
5. Say nevermind just give me your login info
6. I try to login to his account with the GOG client
7. Ask my brother for his 2FA authenticator code
8. Finally login, and can download the game
9. Remember to turn off cloud saves so you don't override your brother's cloud saves.

Based on a true story btw.

There's probably things we could've done that would've made it easier and less steps, but it still wouldn't have been just as simple as what Steam does, and I'm missing cloud saves and I'd have to do several of those steps again if I wanted the game on say my Steam Deck as well as my PC.

then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam

If I'm just going to use Steam or extra software to compensate for Steam features, I might as well just use Steam.

Interesting, but there's a lot of presumptions in your post.

Hey everybody, new LostWanderer book just dropped.

No but really interesting take, rather dystopian, but interesting.

If you are ok with steam despite stuff like this then why is GOG somehow worse?

I don’t think they have even one game in their catalogue that StopKillingGames is about.

Every solution that doesn’t need an external proprietary app is a better solution.

Oh man. I've supported gog from the beginning, always purchased there.

Even if it was more expensive or late or downsides (especially to steam).

Still, they didn't always hold up to the drm free standard they set.

Then they come up with this, which to me sounds like 'give us subscription money for what we already did the whole time'.

The Patrons initiative is particularly interesting

No it's not! I care for the games. I want a drm free packaged version. You name the price, but keep all original features.

I don't give a flying shit about any online badges or whatever. How could I know where the additional money goes? By my estimate I'll pay the subscription and your ceo gets more money but the games wont see any of it...

Oh and spamming me with mails telling me how awesome it would be for me to be patron but completely without any real, tangible, non corpo speak reason to leaves a bad taste and kills a little confidence in you every time.

Not sure that was their point. It's about the principal of it.