now I'm trying to imagine a DRMed pizza. to no avail.

Drm pizza is being covered in leavings from gaben's piles of takeout boxes. Also stench of failures.

Wait, pizza is served hot and some womens are being hot. Let us having some womens hold gog signs and a pizza and nothing else for the next ad campaign. Profit? I think so!

What was I thinking? It should being about the pizza and the pizza alone. Back to pizza, PBH!

Subnautica is an interesting case.

The game is 100% a single player game but it does have a "social" feature that relies on an active connection.

It would be interesting to see if the game would land on the DRM list of shame if the feature was left "as is" or on the second citizens list of shame if the feature was simply absent from the game when running it offline.

I think voting on time capsules on queue also requires registration on the webiste that handles the queue, so, yeah, all in all it would be interesting to see how the different perceptions of drm-free proponency on gog would regard the specificities of the title.

A user told me a few months ago about some problems with ZP here on GOG, but I didn't know it was like that. If the rivalry between the two storefronts is that big, I'd better keep to myself, hehe, after all I'm not winning anything from ZP and I have nothing against GOG, despite not agreeing with some of the store's recent behavior. About pointing out the Linux topic, thanks for that! I don't even know if I posted anything there, if I did I forgot.

Well, I was facing problems related to the frame rate in Spider-Man (2001), problems that are considered "unresolved", and on my side I managed to solve them using DxWrapper.

If you want to know, these are the bugs: [url=https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Spider-Man_(2001)#Issues_unresolved]https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Spider-Man_(2001)#Issues_unresolved[/url]
I even opened a ticket to notify the programmer responsible for the project: https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/issues/331

Of course this is not a definitive answer to these problems, testing is still needed on other systems, which unfortunately I don't have.

Anyway, sometimes I keep thinking... That maybe now is the time to start having emulators for operating systems other than MS-DOS. You know, DOSBox emulates even Windows 95 games, so it would be cool, really cool in fact, if it started emulating Windows 2000, XP, anything released after Windows 95. Obviously, that would be A JOB, but I see that this will be the path to an inevitable future.

A true Windows emulator would require MS allowing it, which they don't.
And you can't run Windows games directly in DOSBox. Can run their DOS versions if they have them, of course. And you can run Win 3.x through DOSBox if you have a Win 3.x kit and then run Win 3.x games that way. Hadn't heard of doing so for Win 9x as well, but it did also run on top of DOS really, and now that I check I see that it may be possible to do it, though on a quick search it seems that the success rate is quite low among those trying it.
But anything from 2k onwards works differently, no longer on top of DOS, plus that, besides the fact that MS won't allow it and all the trickery required for such emulation, any such package would mean GBs of overhead.

GAME PRESERVATION is certainly a great and worthwhile thing.

However, I'd like more detail on how it is being achieved.

What happens for instance, if GOG closes ... dies?

What if a game is removed from GOG ... like WarCraft for instance?

Sure, I can appreciate, that all those who have properly backed up a game they bought from GOG, have achieved a level of Game Preservation.

Properly of course means archiving more than one copy of the Offline Installers for a game to physically separate hard drives.

So how important are Offline Installer versions to the Game Preservation process?

Does Games Preservation just mean removing any DRM?

What happens, if in ten years for instance, a preserved game no longer works on latest Windows?

So how preserved is a digital copy of a game compared to any counterpart on disc ... especially if the disc can be copied successfully?

Wouldn't a good number of games on disc already be preserved, if it is not about working on modern systems?

Is there a Public Domain aspect to Game Preservation?

And a bunch of other things, that would no doubt be good to know.

Not much is being preserved forever. For long periods maybe so, but not all time. Begin playing your games and encourage the newer generations to try some of your favorites while they are still playable and interesting.

What happens if Steam dies? Will we get the biggest loss in humankind or will it just be a very big fart which is slowly fading? Whats clear... Steam games are not useful for preservation... what they can do best is to "smell good" for a good while until at some point this good smell may eventually fade. Some people are telling me "just use Goldberg and Steamless" you will be good and if you put the PC offline and enable offline mode... the game will be able to stay offline for very long. Even while offline, the game is sometimes "phoning home" (already checked) and/or is rooting itself into the specific system with countless parameters. As soon as there is a slight change in parameters (for example a different system or new hardware parts, or if no Steam installed = always test a game on a PC without Steam nor open connections, else useless) or if it is totally unable "to phone home from time to time" it may all of a sudden stop to work. A lot of DRM layers are making it happen. Not even Goldberg and Steamless may be of use anymore, unless there was close to no DRM attached from the beginning. So... those games surely can not be preserved; at least not in such a condition. They are usually owned by Steam and their industry, no one else.


GOG, will have to use a more "open" and public approach, means... handing out more ownership to everyone, so everyone got more power for preserving it, even if GOG may eventually fade... most games may surely get a bigger chance for being able to "survive" long term. As it is not only owned by a single big company, it is owned up to some extend by a pretty huge crowd, which is as new form of power. I think, this task can not be done by one single company nor the industry itself... because there are just to much dependencies attached when it comes to interests. Often pretty short term as it may simply offer a lot of benefit, and what comes "after" is often being neglected; it is simply not they way "how it works" in the current environment. Same for the gamers... they may consume a game for some years and as soon as there is something new showing up... the old game is nearly "out of their mind", this is the typical "consumer mentality", thats why we call them "consumers" as such games are typically consumed and as soon as the new juice is almost empty... a new "full game" may appear. Long term... retro gamer or even game archivists surely got a different mentality, so they are concerned about "what will happen after its golden era, or is there probably another golden era and the game simply will have to survive a dark age?". They are much less into trends or hype... rather looking for the bigger picture, which is a difficult but surely important matter.

Look at the amateur made games sold on xbox 360 and other console stores. What happened when those stores went offline forever? Many of them were lost. Such is being life.

Using goldberg only works for some games. Using proper methods and files can allow one to saving a large number of games for some time. Not forever and ever, but long enough.

What can be said for sure: The existence of something is just in very limited terms dependable on "das Sein" (there is not really a english word for it)... as their progressive society does barely understand a immovable condition which is doing nothing more than "to exist" for no other reason than "not to become forgotten". Because as soon as a human or humans totally forget something... even their own existence or heritage (where they came from... what is important in order to sustain themself) stuff may cease to exist. In a typical "consumerism" society... progressive and always looking out for the next sensation... this condition "das Sein" may slowly become forgotten and along with this condition the world becoming affected by it may slowly "fade"... thus slowly disappear of its existence. So, it is important not only "to be"... "das Sein", it need to be moved into the "das Dasein"... another thing i barely know a appropriate english word for. The progressive society knows a lot of words for "guilt"... and "debt"... anything able to turn any burden into even more coins... yet they may barely understand the condition of just "to exist" and never "to become forgotten". So it is important to work on a non progressive part of humankind, because this is a paradox... at some point it will be the roots for new progress... yet we fail to see in short term.
Not even "amateur games"... even some pretty "big games", for example "Magna Carta 2" are almost lost... perhaps forever... Yes there is a emulator, but until this day even the best emulator may fail at playing it properly and so far no emulator (there is only one good emulator... anyway) was able to fully tackle it without huge issues. It totally depends on the games... if the game got bad luck... no one is able to fully preserve it.

Yet i dunno why i should just "accept death and demise" if there is no clear evidence that we... or something... can not become raised out of the ashes of its remains and able to overcome the depleted condition.

I can't answer for GOG, but here's my observations - Any "preservation program" run by someone who has official publishing contracts (ie, all for-profit game stores) have no choice but to remove them when the publisher requests it, ie, for games people don't already own, they'll be no more preserved here than any other game that's come and gone (Gray Matter, Duke Nukem, etc) before you've been able to buy it. If GOG closes then nothing at all will be preserved by GOG, only by individual (now former) GOG users who backed up their offline installers.

I'd say very considering it's literally the only thing that'll be left if GOG shuts up shop. Galaxy, servers, achievements, cloud saves, time tracking = *poof*, all gone.

The way GOG uses the term seems to be some combination of DRM-Free and "maintaining" it somehow. I think though, that as long as DRM-Free is removed now and compatibility tweaks can be applied at a future date (maybe you've even backed them up + instructions separately as many disc owners have with NoCD's / widescreen patches, etc), that can still deemed to be be preserved. It's not like compatibility tweaks have even been "exclusive" to any store or that "preservation programs" only started when stores started pre-patching. Real-world example:-

During 2000-2001, there was a news that 64-bit was coming. Two separate API proposals were put forward : 1. AMD64 had the advantage in being able to run 32-bit on 64-bit OS's with almost no performance drop but at the cost of losing native 16-bit compatibility. 2. Intel Itanium64 had the advantage of retaining native 16-bit compatibility but at the cost that 32-bit games ran noticeably slower on 64-bit OS's. The former won and became the "SYSWOW64" we know today. During early 2001 though many at the time thought "that's it - all those 16-bit games will be unplayable in a decade's time. No-one is 'preserving' them today". Within 2 years, two new projects sprung up (ScummVM in late 2001 and DOSBox in 2002) and all of a sudden they were "preserved" again. But during that 2000-early 2001 time-frame of worry, people were "preserving" DOS games just by keeping their discs. So I think "preservation" is ultimately the ability to retain the game files without any DRM / "external dependencies", ie, even if you can't get it to run today, there's a chance someone else could do in the future and simply keeping them intact in between still "preserves" them without needing to actively maintain them.

I think GOG themselves are going to need to rethink their "We only support the very newest version of Windows" if Microsoft keeps heading in the direction they are ("move Windows increasingly to the cloud"). All it takes is for them to make something like W11's currently optional Smart App Control (OS level DRM kill-switch that will block "unfamiliar of unsigned .exe (like old games) unless they pass an online check") mandatory, let alone deprecate 32-bit / DirectX9-11, etc, and such a newest "no longer usable offline" version of Windows will instantly add OS-level DRM to all "DRM-Free" games making GOG look more than a little silly unless they also support the last version of Windows that didn't do that.

Yes, I view many of them as being preserved due to the long life of optical in general. And in many cases, discs have the advantage of always offering a static "clean base" from which to work from. Another example - No One Lives Forever was for a long time 4:3 only. Some early Widescreen patches added widescreen compatibility but the games increasingly developed problems from W8 onwards (stutter on zooming weapon, Intel iGPU's didn't render water, timing / physics issues with uncapped framerates (but VSync doesn't work properly on +Win 8-11 for DirectX7-8 games), etc). Then NOLF Modernizer came along and fixed these. But installing that on top of the older, earlier Widescreen patches often causes crashes unless you knew exactly which files & registry entries to change. Had GOG acquired the game and patched it with the old widescreen patch then gone out of business, people with that version would have had no "clean base" to install the new Modernizer patch, only disc owners would have that.

Another example - thanks to disc versions, I have the choice of playing Loom & Lure of the Temptress on either EGA or VGA under both ScummVM and DOSBox. GOG's version is the censored VGA-only version they delete the .exe from so it won't run under DOSBox. So stores pre-patching everything "their way" isn't always better than disc if that means they lose the original form. Same is true of many other things, eg, before NewDark (Thief 1-2 & System Shock 2) there was "Tafferpatcher", before vkQuake there was GLQuake, before Raze there was EDuke32, before GZDoom there was ZDoom. Each new one still needs the original files. Had some stores tried to be too "clever" and delete what they think they don't need today (or start adding their own proprietary client code), some future source-ports / patches may not work.

Yes. Many old Text Adventures (now called "Interactive Fiction") are preserved by IF Archive (since 1992), not just for PC but old systems (eg, TRS80), and a lot of those are public domain / been made freeware (including the first 3 Zork games). Same with 8-bit microcomputers, eg, World of Spectrum, etc.