What a bunch of scumbags.
Yeah, the Blizzard a lot of us grew up with is truly dead and gone.
People do not understand that company name means nothing. The OG people who were the heart and soul of Blizzard are long gone. Blizzard is just a name now.
Absolutely but companies can retain the culture they were originally set up under if they actively work to do that.
Which Blizzard hasn’t done
zug zug
Me not that kind of orc
Something need doing?
Awe, more work?
I can see my house!
I wish I had a weapon!
Orcs and Humans were put into direct conflict by the opening of a portal by evil wizards. To fight for their homeland doesn’t make them scumbags, just brave fighters doing their best to follow orders, stand in the right places at the right times, and chop down whatever stands between them and safety.
Wasn’t Microsoft just talking about how important game preservation was to them?
Its important for them to preserve any chance of profit that may be squeezed from old games.
Ah yes, the Nintendo method of preservation.
I have a script endlessly deleting and downloading BOTW on repeat so Nintendo experiences thousands of lost sales every few days.
Dude, download it from yourself, you will make it to tens of thousands!
I mean…those aren’t lost sales exactly…but I’m sure Nintendo still doesn’t like it.
Joke
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You
(Context: Most companies including Nintendo claim that any act of piracy is a lost sale, which is completely a lie)
There’s a very crucial fact you’re forgetting about corporations who say they care about anything. They’re liars and only care about money.
I guess that must be why I can’t buy the Black & White games or Fable 2. Because Microsoft cares so much about preserving the awkward legal Loop some of their Lionhead Games are in.
“No, not like that!”
It could be them getting ready to push a wc1 and 2 remake. Hopefully more of a D2 than a WC3…
Friendly reminder: A “DRM-Free” game is only as preserved as the hard drive space you dedicate to it. If GoG goes down tomorrow then you are looking for torrents, same as everyone else.
That said: GoG has been doing this basically since year one (I want to say they lost and regained Interplay’s library like five times?). On the one hand, I love that I get that “hey, buy it now or never. Here is a discount code” warning. On the other hand… this feels like I would be calling it out as manipulative FOMO bullshit were it any other company.
Although… it is a pretty safe bet that MS aren’t interested in going back to GoG until the next time their online ecosystem collapses. So probably a “reasonable” bit of FOMO for those who love the SP campaigns of these games.
On the other hand… this feels like I would be calling it out as manipulative FOMO bullshit were it any other company.
While I hesitate to type this as it might be perceived as viewing a corporation as a friend, the intent matters, and GOG has a different history than the majority of FOMO abusing game companies. Did they identify that this is probably an opportunity to push some sales? Sure, probably. But I am chill permitting them that right when they’re visibly working to remove FOMO as a commercial strategy.
Say it with me kids: Corporations are NEVER your friends. At best you have mutual interests, for a time.
Just look back to everyone who was all in on Google because “Do no evil” and “They aren’t Apple” and so forth. Unity when they were the underdog relative to Unreal. Reddit when they were the “counter culture” social media. And so forth.
I like GoG a lot and have since they first launched. I also remember the French Monk Incident and so forth.
The underdog is often the one that is most pro-consumer, since that is in their business interest. As soon as the take the lead, the doors to enshittyfication open, because business shifts from getting new customers to not letting them leave. (Of course there are exceptions, but this is the case broadly)
This is true. But things aren’t black and white, there are degrees. For example, there is a big difference between private corporations, and publicly listed ones. The former at least allows for possible decency. Sometimes. Usually not.
A “DRM-Free” game is only as preserved as the hard drive space you dedicate to it.
You mean, just like any pre digital purchasing game that you own on disks? Or similar to any physical object you ever bought (hard drive space / shelf space), for that matter?
They’re preserving it as much as they’re able to without being a government funded museum.
They’re preserving it as much as they’re able to
So we are giving participation awards? GoG use digital preservation as a marketing point. They aren’t doing that. And they are arguably making for a false sense of security (some might go even farther…) when people think that buying a game from a major dev and European publisher is digital preservation.
How would you feel if Crunchyroll started arguing they were the good guys because they were releasing Witch from Mercury for 100 USD?
Now for the fun part!
Or similar to any physical object you ever bought (hard drive space / shelf space), for that matter?
Yeah. As in it is “preserved” up until someone does a cross country move or merges their life with a partner who doesn’t see why you need to have every single Blizzard Battle Chest on a giant shelf in the living room.
You mean, just like any pre digital purchasing game that you own on disks?
Yes. Because bit rot is a thing and people need to be aware of that and actually preserve that data. Hmm, I wonder who could help with that…
They’re preserving it as much as they’re able to without being a government funded museum.
Good news. You don’t have to be a government funded museum. In fact, governments are kind of an active threat to these because they are in a REALLY grey area legally. And publishers (like CD Projekt…) tend to go after them both legally and not legally.
I very much disagree that just having a copy of a game is games preservation but it is part of it. And orgs like The Internet Archive are preserving both the media itself AND the media and culture about said media. And they and their associates put the legwork in to reach out to people who have those big boxes or scratched up discs and preserve things BEFORE it is time to make room for the new baby. And they don’t have fancy deals with publishers to help market for donations. They have to ask.
So if you actually care about digital preservation? https://archive.org/donate?origin=iawww-TopNavDonateButton
Whereas, if you just want to spend money and react to FOMO?
So we are giving participation awards?
Huh?
Are you blaming them for not preserving things more than actual physical objects that you bought are preserved in your house? The whole root of the matter was people complaining about companies obsoleting or taking away games they paid for. What GOG is doing counters just that. It is now once again in your hands and your hands only to preserve and maintain your property, and if the data gets corrupted, you only have time, physics and yourself to blame.
I couldn’t care less about anybody creating some kind of eternal video game archive for archaeologists of the post apocalyptic world to find. I care about if I will still be able to play the games I paid money for in 30 years, provided I keep the data and hardware. How would that last part be the store’s responsibility?
I “blame” them for marketing themselves as a “Preservation Program” when they really aren’t doing anything more than the other stores (in that regard. They are doing amazing work in modernizing some titles… which is arguably not preservation either but that is a different mess).
It’s not McDonald’s responsibility to store large amounts of data either*. So does that mean Ronny Mac should be talking about how buying a twenty dollar Big Mac is preserving video games?
*: also… it kind of IS GoG’s responsibility in this case but that only lasts until the company/site is shuttered. Which is another issue with GoG being about “preservation” when their first responsibility is to make money for CDP.
Yeah normally I would feel the same way about this FOMO style of marketing but normally in that case it’s the company selling it deciding to like remove it from sale to create the FOMO need. In the case it’s another company basically forcing this decision on them so I don’t think it’s bad to let people buy it for cheaper while they still can.
If GoG goes down tomorrow
Or if Blizzard sues them to get the games removed.
The game will be removed on 13. December?
However that can’t simply take away a game someone has already bought.
It will be removed from sale on 13 of December, but everyone who already bought it will continue to be able to download it from GOG indefinitely. Furthermore, GOG has stated their commitment to ensure the game remains compatible with newer computer and operating systems. That’s what the preservation project mentioned in the post is about.
I think you might have replied to the wrong person
I don’t think so. On my screen I see that post I responded to said this:
The game will be removed on 13. December?
So in my post I tried to explain that the games will still be available to download from GOG, but it will no longer be purchasable. Different people mean different things when they say “removed from GOG”, so I thought this was good to clarify.
It wasn’t really a question in that sense. What I meant by that sentence is that the game is already planned to be removed (from sale), so Blizzard suing GOG wouldn’t make much sense. However that doesn’t mean that GOG/Blizzard can just take the game away from those who already purchased it.
Sure they can. Companies do it all the time.
There are differences with buisness models. Steam sells a license to use a software. This license can be revoked. GOG sells you a copy that you can download and run any time later without needing it. They can’t take that away from you.
Since the installers are DRM free, they physically cannot. Save for breaking into your home and destroying your hard drives.
I’m talking about the content on the store. If you don’t download it, then they can remove it and it’ll be gone, regardless of if you purchased it already. That said, they can still do some shady shit with content you physically have too. Sony once put a root kit on their CDs that would brick people’s computers if they tried to rip them to the hard drive.
If you don’t download it, then they can remove it and it’ll be gone, regardless of if you purchased it already.
Yes, if you don’t take possession of the goods you paid for, you are in fact not in possession of the goods you paid for.
Sony once put a root kit on their CDs
Ok. In theory they could have put in a kill switch. I’m choosing to trust they didn’t.
Games are constantly pulled from the Steam store, but that doesn’t result in owners losing access to the game, GOG is no different. The only thing that will happen is they stop selling the game, it’s standard practice.
GOG also offer offline installers that would be impossible for even GOG to take away from you.
Short of suing me for it (after finding out who I am and making sure I own the games), how would they do that for non-DRM games whose installer lives on my hard drive and that I can install whenever I want, wherever I want?
Is the “everything is a rental and you use it on sufferance until we say so” bullshit so ingrained now that people are no longer able to conceive of other ways for things to work?
I’m specifically talking about it being hosted on GoG. I thought I made that clear.
If you want something preserved, you gotta be the one to preserve it for yourself.
Encrypt it, too.
Which GOG makes possible by offering DRM-free and offline installers.
I know several big GOG customers download all offline installers and keep them on their own NAS. Some even keep the different versions.
Are complete data backups just not something people do anymore?
For data that is “mine”? Yeah.
But the average steam library (from just asking chatgpt because i am lazy) is 30-100 games for a “normal” user and 200-300 games for an “enthusiast”. Assuming 10 GB per game on average (which is woefully small these days) and you are expecting people to spend 1-3 TB of storage on just their game installers alone. AND that is assuming none of those installers get updates and people need to figure out which ones (most of us who lived through The French Monk incident can attest to that).
So what happens is “oh, someone else will back it up” and so forth. And it means EVERYONE is grabbing torrents for Spec Ops The Line and not just the people who didn’t think to buy a copy while they could.
If the games are DMR free, I’m including them in my regular backups. It’s that simple.
What’s GoG?
A DRM free store that’s run by the CD Projekt Red guys. It focuses mainly on older games (Good Old Games) but it also got modern DRM free games such as Baldurs Gate 3.
If you’re buying an older game, it’s likely a better option than whatever steam offers as GOG will also try to fix old games that are broken on modern systems.
Always pirate blizzard
It is so lame that originals get delisted. I still hate that about the GTA trilogy when the remaster sucks.
That’s one thing I really hate and why video game preservation is so important. We need to keep games alive forever so future generations can enjoy the classics and all the masterpieces out there.
Agreed however … I had a discussion about this for Fallout 1 a d 2 and one of the comments was that it should be remastered to be like fallout 3 or 4…
I get it but… Just leave classics to be classics… If classic are being changed and remastered than… It’s not a classic anymore…
They actually updated the remaster a few weeks ago and it is a huge difference.
Now the only glaring issue is the music, since the originals came out before game studios knew to secure licensed music rights in a way that would allow future re-releases in different formats.
They can update the remasters all they want and it won’t make delisting the originals any less shitty.
Agreed. But I was responding to the claim that the remasters suck. With the recent updates, that’s not as accurate unless the music is the most important part of the experience for you.
The improved controls, higher resolution, gameplay tweaks (fucking David Cross RC missions in the original were ludicrous), and restored lighting make a pretty compelling package. If the remasters launched in their current state they’d be considered excellent.
It only really makes sense when the remaster is trash (like GTA I guess). Otherwise, all I can see it doing is increasing sales of both the original and the remaster…
It only really makes sense when the remaster is trash
I gotta disagree. Even when the remaster is (arguably) better than the original, there’s a lot of value in the original art assets and the more rudimentary gameplay as a historical guidestone. For the same reason you wouldn’t tear up the original Mona Lisa because we’ve got a high resolution digital copy, you don’t just scrub copies of the original version of Pong from the internet because we have Wii Tennis.
For what it’s worth, they actually updated the trilogy to make it suck less, by a lot.
I never got into WOW. As a 90s kid Warcraft was always the FIRST game in the series. I couldn’t get the 2nd one as a kid (and only played part of it a few years ago to get it out of my system).
This hatred for old games makes me want to take a shit outside their offices.
I can understand hating WOW. I can even understand not getting into WC3. But how do you enjoy WC1, but lose interest at WC2???
That’s like saying “A hamburger is good, but I just can’t into bacon double cheeseburgers.”
I can even understand not getting into WC3.
I cannot. Could be nostalgia talking, but WC3 was the pinnacle of the PC RTS gaming era imo. WC3 and AOE2.
I played hundreds of hours of WC2 and WC3 over LAN in college, awesome games. Starcraft too. I mean quotes and terms from WC RTS games haven’t entered the modern lexicon the way that “zerg” has but they’re part of the same cultural continuum and are important to understanding how we got here.
Edit: also, WoW was huge but it’s where Blizzard lost their way and will always be tainted in my mind. RTS is more my scene than those sleazy MMOs
Yeah, I never got into MMOs (probably because WoW got big before I had a disposable income lol), so RTS was also my scene back then. I dabbled in SC, and played WC2 at a friend’s house, but WC3 is where I really cut my teeth.
That game was so much goddamn fun to play online (dial-up, don’t pick up the phone mom!). I remember getting caught every now and then in some kind of surprise rush that I had never seen, so I’d save the replay of the game and watch back to see how they did it, and then try it out against other people… I think I learned some kind of wyvyrn rush with Night Elves that way, if I recall correctly. Shit was tight. My memory is shit, I can’t believe I can recall that. There were so many crazy strategies I picked up that way.
That was the golden age of RTS gaming. For me at least. Good times.
100% the explosion of custom maps from WC3 set the stage for the next generation of RTS.
HoN, HOTS, DOTA, League, etc relied upon these foundations.
WC3 was the pinnacle of the PC RTS gaming era imo
I’ve heard a lot of mixed opinions on the WC3 Leaders mechanic, as it focuses gameplay around farming and single points of failure (losing a leader at the wrong moment often meant losing the game)
In that light, Starcraft was the pinnacle of PC RTS gaming and WC3 was an experimental variation that branched off into an RTS variant that would eventually congeal into DOTA, the pinnacle of PC MOBA gaming.
I played DotA for 14 years, but WC3 was home to so many more incredible custom maps. Element TD is an example of another that became a standalone game. But there was also Footman Frenzy, Uther Party, Wintermaul Wars, Hero Line Wars, X Hero Siege, and countless others that made WC3 the greatest RTS platform ever conceived. I hope the suits that pushed out the piece of garbage that is “warcraft reforged” rot in hell forever
I loved WC3 because of the Hero mechanic. It made it added just enough RPG to it… You could usually resurrect your Hero, and if I recall, you can upgrade to make the cooldown faster. Been so long though and I didn’t play the unfortunate remake.
I did not lose interest in 2. I simply couldn’t get it. I think we had some demo versions but they just… didn’t work. I have a functioning copy now, but I haven’t played it much. It is a fantastic game.
When I first got WC2, I discovered that my 1x CD couldn’t read from the disc fast enough for me to play it. The game would run for about five or ten minutes, then crash. I made it about half way through first campaign - 5 to 10 minutes at a time - before I was able to afford a 4x CD and play it normally.
For me, it is just that the game never ran. To make it clear, I don’t think I ever had the WC2 full game, but the demo, but that didn’t do much either. I remember being at a cousin’s place who seemed like he had it, but again… it just didn’t run. It seems like all the forces that be in the 90s just didn’t want me to play that game.
I find this especially interesting as I bought the game from a garage sale and when I got home I found out it was just a burned disc with a home-printed label. I was too young to understand the dangers of putting that shit in my cd-drive but old enough to know there was a good chance the game wouldn’t work at all. To my great surprise it worked fine and I played the crap out of it. Probably one of the first games where I finished the single player campaign.
Rose tinted glasses
That’s like saying “A hamburger is good, but I just can’t into bacon double cheeseburgers.”
I mean, I would say this unironically.
I’ll add that WC1 had fewer variances between factions. Orcs and Humans were almost identical. That made the game more akin to a real time digital chess than WC2, which made Orcs marginally more aggressive and Humans more defensive. I think WC2 is more fun because of the asymmetry, but that’s purely a question of taste. I’m not going to begrudge someone who has a fondness for the original.
get a job as their janitor under a false identity. shit inside their offices.
Don’t even need to bother getting hired, just wear a jumpsuit and some keys.
With a high-vis vest and a clipboard, you can get almost anywhere.
Mine experience is polo with non major brand logo and carrying a whole PC. If you come in a white work van, not a single person will question you, they will even open the door for you.
I already have these in my library, it turns out. But it is nevertheless awesome for GOG to do this.
Just got them 2 days before the execution date on friday the 13th.
I have them on CD-ROM.
I also think I have the final patches for them on floppies that I stuffed in the boxes. Not sure if they’re readable (or in fact the final patches)
Thankfully it seems that PC gaming wiki still has working links to the patches.
Use code Makewarcraftliveforever on GoG to get a $2 discount.
Definitely had to pick this up. Perfect excuse to add another game to my list of games to play :)
wow, was into leveling. have 2 accounts 10 chars/ea. haven’t subbed in years. coordination off. wtf gog?
This warcraft 1 and 2, the RTS games, not world of warcraft
I will not pay 15-ish bucks for decade old games that I already purchased long time ago at release. Also not with another buck discount off. Definitely not since they are Blizzard games and these days that studio is not worth supporting anymore.
Good initiative from GOG, but this feels like wasted money to me. Warcraft 1 is definitely a hard sell because of how terrible playing it will feel. Or did they change that in the Remaster? You used to be able to only control one unit at a time. In Warcraft 2 they upped it to 9 units? Or am I off and it was 9 units in 1 and already more in 2?
If you already purchased it a long time ago, and you can still get that copy working, then cool. But having a DRM-free copy designed to work with modern systems is very appealing. Buying DRM-free shows them where customers want to purchase their games. There are plenty of decades-old games worth more than $7.50 each.
I don’t think you understand the point of preservation. This is for future generations, and you as well if you ever lose the original CD installers
So it’s wasted money because you personally already own these games.
Yeah, I said I will not. I didn’t say no one should. I think it is great that GOG preserves them but the price is still to high for something from a scumbag company.
How does it work with the money GOG is charging, does Blizzard see anything of that? If not, then nice, makes it more worth to me to pay so GOG gets more funding.
If Blizzard does get a cut then GOG should give a rather hefty discount as a final “fuck you” to Blizzard. Because that’s all they deserve.
Never played the OG, but I’ve played the remaster and you can definitely select more than 1 unit.
The good thing is that thanks to how GOG works, as long as some pirate purchases a copy, they will always be able to keep a current update available to the pirate community.
Thanks GOG, for being against DRM in games.
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It was 4 in warcraft 1, 9 in 2, increased to 9 in the remaster.
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you could group multiple in W1. you could only build buildings adjacent to your road though, I remember making a road right to the enemy and putting the barracks in their camp lol
This entire preservation program is just going to end up costing them millions for dozens of people that care.
If it was only dozens gog would have been shut down ten years ago
