GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive (opens in new tab)

Just because a company doesn't have their IP available for modern systems doesn't mean they abandoned the IP, see also all the remasters and remakes coming out today.

That said, my gut feeling says it's mainly about them not willing to invest in it, because they can't see the economic viability. If GoG were to go to the rights holders and say "Hey lad, we have a platform and a lot of experience in reviving older games, you'll get x% of revenue", I'm sure some would be like "ok".

Of course, I'm also sure these rights holders have received offers like that from various parties for a long time now.

Only the PC version of the original version of Resident Evil was unavailable. It had a Remake in 2003, a port to the DS in 2006 and AFAIK has been and still is available for purchase on PSN in PS1 form for PS3, PSP and Vita since 2009 and PS4/PS5 since 2022. That's not even counting all the sequels and movies. And the PC port is generally considered, not the best.

There's better examples like No One Lives Forever that have been stuck unavailable for purchase because of rights reasons but RE1 is arguably not that.

This is related to "cadastral mapping" in real estate law systems. IP does not have such a map, or indeed any map at all. At best you might find a (no longer obligatory!) copyright notice on it saying who originally owned the rights to something. That doesn't work when the rights get sold.

There's no good way to even ask "who owns this?" for a piece of IP other than the highly inadequate and risky approach of just pirating it and waiting to see who sues you. But even then DMCA provides all sorts of problems with unauthorized groups claiming to be rightsholder representatives.

Sometimes, the legal situation is complicated, especially with old content. Sometimes the technical situation is also complicated, very typical for old games. Not releasing, can't be automatically considered abandoned; we just don't know what's going on behind the scenes.

That's how copyright law works. There's no "use it or lose it" provision. Once you create something it is yours, and others only get rights to it 70-100+ years later.

Basically it is the problem with GOG also, I think that if you do nothing the game is Abandonware and I don't think that anyone can go after you to use it pirated or whatever, and even distribute it. Maybe it is shady, but something like that if there is no commercial activity and the IP violation is not enforced for some many times, it can be considered that you are responsible for this and there was no legal way for the user to be able to use the software.

But if GOG comes and the restore the "commercial activity" of a game, actively selling, even if no one buys, then you can't say that it was commercially abandoned, and that will postpone of that much that it will be on GOG the legal claim of "having the IP active".

Yeah, but it's a bit depressing when one buys a game (Lego: Lord of the Rings), but it promptly crashes and there's no response when one asks:

https://www.gog.com/forum/legor_the_lord_of_the_rings/crashe...

(there are other forum posts about other crashes)

So, when I had some money left over at Christmas, I got a couple of Lego games for my Nintendo Switch instead.

> Like take the Resident Evil example FTA: Launched in 1996, 2000-2023 not available (i.e. not for legal sale).

The Resident Evil IP is still alive and kicking though (with the latest installment trailered during the game awards a few weeks ago).

Why? IP including copyright and trademarks are assets that can be licensed and/or bought/sold. How hard is that to grasp?

If you don’t sell me a copy of your family albums, I should be allowed to freely sneak into your house and make a copy? After all, you still have the originals and are not making money from them

The patron program was introduced weeks (or even months) before the buyout of GOG.

It is true, but occasionally it is a practice in some companies with certain business models to leave part of users contributions free up to the users to decide. I have bought some games from their preservation program, and gave me the option to add some extra donation for the project, which I did. I guess this is similar to that.

Moreover, if somebody is really into these old games, they may want to support it and get access to the behind the scenes material, discord, vote for which games to prioritize etc. I don't think this is very different than eg subscribing to the patreon of a creator to get some extra content.

That's what it looks like. I kind of get it, as there's no guarantee that a game they make available again will sell enough to cover the costs - it's as much a preservation effort as a commercial one.

For a lot of games it's just a matter of configuring dosbox and packaging it, I can't see how that would be very expensive. But for others it's a lot more involved.

Simplified, but yes, more or less correct. I'm a patron of theirs, and see it more or less as a donation (obviously isn't, in the eyes of the tax agency).

Yeah my first reaction was, what the heck is is this ?

Now I can imagine having specific campaigns. Let's say they need $50,000 to release an upgraded port of Shining Force.

Cool, I might be open to pre-ordering it at $25 so they can see if there's enough interest to proceed. But why am I going to literally just donate to a private company. I think the entire world has gone mad, there's not even a real product here. It's not like for that $5 a month they give you a random game or something. They just want money.

why not a classic game subscription

Also weird not to have an easily accessible list or some kind of plan to show which games will be prioritized.

Just a vague 20,000 game list which may or may not have games that I am interested in.

Also seems like Patrons should get access to the games that are preserved, at least after some point of contributions (e.g. after $60 were accumulated in donations over a period of time)

I would gladly pay 2x or 3x that amount if I knew I would get access to this game library hassle-free in the future.

Good idea overall, "meh" execution so far.

The problem with this is that the game might never become available. Taking pre-orders in the hope you can obtain IP is sketchy at best.

That distinction doesn't really exist. You have to pay employees. You have to pay for equipment. You have to pay for office space. And the countless other costs of running a company. There's no way they can realistically say "this particular dollar we got from you was used for exactly this purpose".

Their FAQ is not really clear on that, my feeling looking at this page is that it is more like: this money goes directly in the pocket of GOG, so by helping us to generate more money for us, you are helping (indirectly) the preservation of games as it is what they do.

But I saw nowhere in the FAQ explicitly that this subscription money will only be used to the "active act" of preserving other games.

That would be cool, but they probably only get rights to sell the games, not full ownership of all rights.

"Good Old Piracy" does not (always) help much with incompatibilities arising from running on new machines/OSes.

Piracy isn't only a matter of money, it can also be convenience or outright accessibility (no way to purchase the item legally).

If you find a playable version of an old game on a piracy site chances are that it originated from GOG.

Speaking personally I'd rather pay a few dollars than risk my PC getting Good Old Virusy, which may or may not be a real risk, but is certainly an idea that puts me off pirating software.

Their DOS releases are fantastic. I install the games, then copy the files to my virtual C: directory for DOSBox-X and know those games will always Just Work and I will never have to reinstall anything or mess with configurations. Some games I also copy to my phone to play in DOSBox in Android.

To repeat myself from old threads, it would be awesome to have something like a WindowsBOX, like DOSBox but emulating (probably) Windows 98SE, fully open source. GOG could use that for old Windows games and never have to modify the games themselves. I would be happy to support GOG developing an emulator like that, rather than making old games run on new Windows.

GOG uses emulators as well. GOG has a share of games that use Dosbox or ScummVM as two somewhat common emulators they will configure a game to run in that I'm aware of.

That said, there's also something to be said that if a game is patchable, there is some value in patching it to run directly rather than "need" an emulator.

Install Proton and use the Heroic Games Launcher. Works on my machine™

https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

Lots of games on GOG run on Linux; not sure what you're asking for here

GoG games run just fine on Linux through Proton. GoG Galaxy too.