The missing context here (I think) is that California passed a law saying that digital storefronts (like steam and gog) can’t say things like “buy game” because you aren’t actually gaining ownership of the game, but instead just buying a license to access it. Some people were questioning if this law should apply to gog since their games are drm free and can be freely installed on any compatible devices once you download the installer.
It should because their use agreement makes it clear that you don’t own the games but are licensing them. That’s pretty much why they had to clarify what they said I’d imagine. IMO, proving the point of the law, really.
This is equally true for almost any game ever sold, including physical ones. You only ever own a license that specifies what you can and cannot do with the game. The difference is in what this license is tied to, for example either a physical copy of a given game or an account that can be remotely deactivated taking away all your games. In GOG’s case once you grab the installer, the game license cannot be easily forcibly revoked, just as with the physical copy.
Thanks for saying this.
With recent campaigns and rants against digital media, people often claim that “you own the game if you buy a physical copy”. That always makes me sigh, because it’s false.
Not saying there are some advantages for some use cases, but I dislike hyperbole and untruths.
That’s just semantics.
When you buy a CD, you don’t own the songs.
But you do have some item that belongs to you.
With Steam, you have a ticket that will let you into Steam to download the game for as long as your account is in good standing and as long as Steam exists.
With GOG, you have a file you can use to install the game on any machine INDEFINITELY. GOG can’t revoke your access for any reason, and if GOG shuts down, you can still install the games.
I have plenty drm free games in steam where I copied the game folder into other computers and it ran offline. At that point, there’s no difference between an installer and a compressed copy of that game. For reference, Grim dawn but there’s plenty more.
“Installing” is just semantics for decompressing a file in specific folders, you can the collect that data and “install” the game wherever. As long as you can run the game without steam, it doesn’t matter that you used steam to buy it.
You’re right! Some games on Steam are DRM-free.
All games on GOG are DRM-free as a rule.
The difference with physical is that you own the physical medium the license is stored on and are permitted to sell the physical medium with the license. With digital downloads you are not allowed to sell a drive with the files. Since you are technically making a copy.
The worth of a gog game secondhand is 0 though. Theres nothing to be made there.
People do sell accounts though.
Isn’t there a clause in baldur’s gate 3 terms that lets you transfer the game license once to a friend or something along those lines?
Not sure how that works but it’d be cool if we can have that apply for all of them (digitally) maybe like 3 times over the lifetime of the licensed game.
Only thing I could find was section 5 which relates to eldritch law. Worth a read!
You can transfer the game with a wish scroll.
It doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t change the point that people think they own digital goods when they don’t. GOG may have a more consumer friendly system in place but it doesn’t change what has happened with people’s music, movies, shows, games and music in games at these digital storefronts, where people have clicked “Buy X” and later on, it’s no longer in their libraries anymore. This has happened even when the business still exists and is still providing digital goods.
With GOG, you can buy any game, and you’ll have files to keep. Once you have the installer, you can keep that forever.
Even if your GOG account is hacked, banned, and GOG goes out of business, you can forever install your game onto any compatible machine, even offline, and play the game.
That’s what GOG does differently.
It’s like buying a physical game, except there’s no disc. They can’t revoke your access or deactivate your ability to play the game.
I know that. That still misses the point. The point of the law is to clarify that on digital storefronts that you make purchases for licensed digital goods, that you can’t imply to the consumer that they actually own those goods. It doesn’t matter if there is an offline installer. It doesn’t matter if you can ‘keep your installers forever’.
This article seems to say that it covers only digital items that have an always online requirement.
https://www.gamefile.news/p/california-ab2426-crew-call-of-duty
So i think offline games don’t need the warning, but online games, steaming movies, etc do need the warning.
Edit:
I looked a bit further and found the bill text:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB2426#99INT
(4) This section does not apply to any of the following:
[…]
© Any digital good that is advertised or offered to a person that the seller cannot revoke access to after the transaction, which includes making the digital good available at the time of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.
This exception clearly allows for user downloadable installer for a game with offline functionality. But consoles, steam, etc where you don’t get a standalone installer, they look like they will need the warning on all titles.
Technically that also applies to Steam, since you get a digital good available at the moment of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage, just copy the game folder and you’re done. It would be the equivalent of a music store place downloading mp3s (and the equivalent to GoG would be selling an .iso to the music CD you can burn whenever you want or an installer that extracts the mp3 to a folder).
If the game itself has DRM then that would also apply to GoG (yes, there are games with DRM on GoG, there’s just proportionally less of them).
How does an offline installer from GOG differ from the offline installer provided on a CD/DVD?
The license for the DVD version is with the actual disk, the license for the offline installer is with the GOG account.
GOG has essentially created a way to bypass their own licenses, as a feature. And it looks like they won’t be affected by this law because of it.
Isn’t the law only about always online games?
That was my understanding as well.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law, AB 2426, to address concerns over “disappearing” purchases of digital media, including games, movies, music, and ebooks.
Some of their games are drm-free/have offline installers
Can confirm for both Gog and steam I have always had access to the original fallout which went missing off store fronts for a number of years
sadly about 60% of the games i have through steam do not function in “offline mode”
That might not be on steam but the way the game was made and even if it gotten thru piracy that it would still not work.
trying not to cry
cry a lot
give those people some cookies !
bursts in tears
The existence of GOG and Steam is why gaming is bearable in 2024
licensing issues
I understand that the buyer doesn’t lose the de facto ability to install the game from a local copy of the installer, but is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG’s end? I’m not saying it is, I’m just curious.
is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG’s end
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that no, you can’t. When you buy the game, you’ve obtained a perpetual license to install and play that game, similar to what you’d have if you bought the game on a disk. You can lose your ability to download the game, that isn’t guaranteed to be unlimited or perpetual, but installing it via the installer you downloaded, and playing it once you do, are forever. (This is in contrast to something like Steam, where you rely on their servers granting you permission to install the game, and that permission can be revoked.)
How is backing up an installer from GoG different in any way to backup a game folder in Steam?
Both can be copied to a different computer and used to run the game offline forever (unless of course the game has DRM, in which case both suffer from the same problem).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t most Steam games require the steam client in order to run? You can’t necessarily just copy the files into a flash drive and deliver them to another computer.
(unless of course the game has DRM, in which case both suffer from the same problem)
That’s GOG’s whole schtick, none of the games they sell have DRM when purchased from their store. You can always copy the installer to another computer and run it.
I don’t think there’s a way of checking how many games are like this, but I find that the majority of games I’ve tried doing that just work, and the ones that don’t are mostly bad programming (e.g. crashes trying to load the steam library).
That’s GOG’s whole schtick, none of the games they sell have DRM when purchased from their store. You can always copy the installer to another computer and run it.
That’s not entirely true, as a general rule I think GoG has a lot less DRM-ed games, but it’s not 100% DRM free like they sometimes claim https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1
Right, if you download the offline installers, then they can’t stop you from doing whatever you’re going to do with it but you don’t own them. Legally, you can’t sell them, transfer them to someone else, etc.
There are other sections that make the lack of ownership by you clear and that you still have to abide by the publisher’s/developer’s licensing agreements but Section 10 states the situation outright:
Section 10 of the GOG user agreement says:
GOG content is owned by its developers/publishers and licensed by us.
Did people think they meant something else? Or was it more that they didn’t really elaborate and folks didn’t know quite what they meant?
I think they are clarifying due to what has happened with Ubisoft. They’re also using it as an opportunity to spread the word farther that they won’t do the same thing.
It’s too clarify that in their case the games you buy on their platform don’t require anything in particular to install (just the install file that you can download from their website directly and back up for later use), contrary to all other major stores.
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Galaxy is a necessary convenience for them to compete with Steam tbh
well they should make it at least slightly usable. people harp on epic launcher when this piece of shit barely functions 20% of the time. if you have a big library, it’s useless.
or it was, I stopped trying to make it with when i realized playnite exists.
I have a large GOG library, I no longer use their launcher because I’m on Linux and use heroic. However their launcher always worked fine for me.
I don’t recall ever having an issue. Are you sure there wasn’t something underlying going on with your system?
yes. I’m talking about library including integration, which is the only reason I wanted to use galaxy to begin with. it fucks up all the time, losing games, not updating, logging out … not to mention its generally slow and clunky. playnite doesn’t look as nice but it’s 100x better in every other way.
Strange, I guess to be fair I haven’t used their launcher in at least a year or two. Good that you found a solution that works better for you though.
Eh, it’s literally there for games that need online access.
I use it for theme hospital and that’s it. Everything else i standalone
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They don’t really though. I haven’t been on GoG in a minute, but when I was looking for an offline installer (I think for Cyberpunk?), it was very easy to find it
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I had a situation with The Saboteur.
When installed manually with downloaded installers it had configuration issues, IIRC it was limited to 1280x720 and the in game option to modify it didn’t work.
But when installed with Galaxy it defaulted to 1920x1080 and the in game options worked.
At that point my game was working and I didn’t investigate further so I don’t know if it was downloading different installers, or performing post install tweaks to my game config, but from a functional perspective the game was broken when not using Galaxy. Ideally whatever the “magic” was it should be included in the standalone installers!
Sounds like the work of saboteurs.
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Yeah they manage both distribution methods.
I’m just highlighting at least one example where they have regrettably left the standalone as a 2nd class option.
Yeah, I should have gone with GoG every chance I could. I guess it’s never to late to switch
For those willing to do a bit of CLI work there are even tools to pull your whole library automagically. Just make sure you got the space for it. Sitting at just over 1.5 TB here.
Thor from Pirate Software must be absolutely seething rn
why?
He hates StopKillingGames, because he thinks it will make bad actors try to ruin devs because he expects people to try to profit from being able to provide game access to players when the devs are out of the picture. So therefore we can’t stop killing games, we need to just let games die and stop feeling entitled to the necessary code to run servers. And besides we need to get comfortable buying games with temporary licensing deals that are more convenient and cheap for the developers so they can not renew them if the game isn’t successful, and if the license runs out then we need to accept that the music or car or whatever legally needs to be removed. And we need to accept that if corporate wants to delete our accounts or sew our mouth to somebody’s ass then that’s just gonna have to happen because it’s what we agreed to. Turns out the man is a business bro shill cunt totally cool with the new bullshit because it’s preferred by the suits.
He was strawmaning the stop killing games initiative.
I need to get those Resident Evil remasters, the REMASTERS NOT The remaKES from dese guys.
Maybe it’s great, but I cant even download the installer on linux.
Um, yes, you can actually.
Installer file is a direct link to an executable file from their website. They contain the full game inside the installer. There’s no reason you can’t download that on Linux as long as you have internet and a browser.
GoG homepage > (your name [drop down menu] when logged in) > “Games” > Click on any game in your collection > Download offline backup game installers
You can download installers for whatever systems the game supports – usually that’s just a Windows .EXE installer (+ several .bin files if the game is large). For games intended to run on Linux w/o WINE, you can select “Linux” from a drop down where it says system and it will give you an .sh file.
If it’s an EXE and you just want extract it you can use https://github.com/dscharrer/innoextract
It supports the special GOG Inno files. And it’s a lot faster than the official installer with less temp files.
Okay gog sucks but this actually makes me wonder if I should dry them again anyway.
GOG is pretty good because of this. I check in there if I’m considering buying something on Steam. There might still be compelling reasons to buy on Steam, like I bought Parkitect on Steam because a review on GOG specifically called out how the mods really only work well on Steam, but I’m at least checking first and maybe Wishlisting the game on GOG. I have fairly reasonable trust in Valve while Gabe is running it, but I feel like I can have longer trust in keeping copies of installers myself.
What aspect of GoG did you find sucked?
Their software. I don’t want to go to a site and download a game to find an actual functional launcher (and file management, etc) somewhere else. GOG galaxy is terrible on windows and doesn’t support Linux, despite the overlap between their philosophy and Linux users.
Steam isn’t just a store. It manages my large library with no work on my part, including reasonably high quality tags to make it easier to find games for whatever mood I’m in. It completely seamlessly handles Linux support on almost all of my games, while giving me all the freedom I need to make changes in the rare cases their out of the box setup has issues. It has an exceptionally high quality input mapping tool that is done per game and has a large catalogue of user generated control schemes. It handles simple modding for a lot of games that don’t need anything too crazy. It handles cloud saves so invisibly between devices that I almost never have to think about it.
I will (and have) pay for a game on Steam when I have it on GOG for free, if I actually want to play it. I’ll eventually be self hosting almost all of my other media, and have taken steps in that direction, but I definitely will not be doing so for games. Steam is just too much better than any third party options.
To be fair GoG selling point is that it doesn’t use any external software, it tries to emulate the old disk feel.
Personally I identify much more closely with GoG philosophy, i.e. mostly no DRM, manage the games on my own, etc. However I use Linux, and Steam has been investing into it so I’ll keep giving them my money (the input management is indeed great, but not enough on its own for me).
So what’s the problem about using third party clients like heroic game launcher ? Or did I understand the first line of your post wrong ?
Heroic is just as terrible. None of the alternative ways to manage game libraries support any of the large list of features that Steam does that I rely upon to make PC gaming a comfortable experience, and that list was far from comprehensive.
Until there’s an open game library management tool in any way comparable to Steam, DRM free has no value to me. I’m willing to (and want to, for the things I haven’t yet) self host movies, ebooks, audiobooks, TV shows, etc, because you can get a functional experience with them. I am not willing to do so with games because you cannot.
Steam makes millions of dollars for Valve. They can afford to put a lot of work into making it impossible for anyone to ever catch up to them. If you will never use anything else until it has feature parity with steam as well as having other upsides compared to it, you are never going to benefit from the other upsides.
What upsides?
A. Many games that are DRM free on GOG are also DRM free on Steam.
B. Most of the games that are only DRM free on GOG are old, out of date builds that don’t get bug fixes and updates.
C. Even if both of those weren’t true, DRM free isn’t worth a terrible UX and no features. If GOG had feature parity for everything Steam does except big picture mode, big picture mode alone would outweigh the outrageously small chance that Steam somehow removes access to my games.
But they’re not just not at feature parity. They’re like 2 out of 10 software. Better than Epic’s 0 of 10, but still really bad.
Many games that are DRM free on GOG are also DRM free on Steam.
I challenge you to download an offline installer from Steam for these DRM-free games they host.
When I tried it it was buggy trash. And while I know it’s been a few years since it launched, I also remember when unity launched and it was buggy trash so I still roll my eyes whenever I see their logo pop up too.
