GOG: Preserving Gaming's Past & Future

An interesting point from the history of GOG is that it originated from a market where piracy was the norm, Noclip has a great documentary about it: ▶ this video

in “Russia to legalize software piracy” · View on HN

Noclip did an interesting documentary about GOG. "GOG: Preserving Gaming's Past & Future" ▶ this video

in “10 years of gog.com” · View on HN

GOG shows that paying for drm-free games in a country where copyright was unenforced and piracy offered a better UX can still be profitable: [link] , ▶ this video

in “Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost” · View on HN

I'm sure this was alluded to in NOCLIP's YouTube documentary on GOG[0]. It was said then that half of the battle was tracking down rights holders as IP had sometimes been absorbed through multiple acquisitions by the time they came to restore some games. [0] - ▶ this video

in “GOG has had to hire private investigators to track down IP rights holders” · View on HN

Something else to consider is motivating piracy. If they sell a piece of software for a flat price in all geos, the ones who can't afford it will invest more time in pirating the software. As a side effect, piracy is normalized in those communities as a necessary way of life in the digital world. Naturally, their tools and methods will leak out to other communities and make piracy easier in places that CAN afford them. Devs would rather sell to those communities at a "loss" than ostracize them and deal with the fallout. Check out this brief description of how software proliferated in Poland during the early years of computers (3:09-8:27): ▶ this video

in “Apple announces upgrade to App Store pricing” · View on HN

GOG.com[1][2][3] revives and preserves old video games. [1] gog.com [2] [link] [3] GOG: Preserving Gaming's Past & Future Documentary: ▶ this video

in “Microsoft gaming chief calls for industry-wide game preservation” · View on HN