>>11387690
The real issue is PC faggotry. Going back to old consoles is totally fine and emulation gives them a bunch of extra features and enhancements, but old PC games are an absolute nightmare to run, require a bunch of patches, specific drivers and video settings, and run like shit

>>11387690
didnt read all that but if they're patching/"improving" old games they'll give you an option to play the vanilla version, that's how it's been with every game they patched so far

>>11387690
Perfect preservation doesn't work on PC because of shit like StarForce DRM not running at all on modern Windows, or games like Splinter Cell 1 relying on ancient hardware features on specific GPUs that no longer work properly on modern systems, some old FMV games syncing audio/video by relying on slow CD-ROM drives etc

>>11387690
game preservation is at archive.org, not on GOG.

>>11387690
Unless they offer a iso that has an identical checksum to the disc it was taken from, it isn't preservation. It's modification.
>This ancient manuscript of the Iliad has a grammatical error, so we scraped that part of the ink off and rewrote it. Then we used Krylon clear coat to seal it all up and preserve it forever!
Absolutely no one would call this preservation.

>>11387727
No vanilla version of vampire bloodlines. You are stuck with the unnoficial patch which is not just bugfixes, it has fanfiction garbage that alters the original game. You can mod it out of the game of course, but thats not the point, they shouldve provided the original version in the downloads.

>>11387690
It would cost roughly double the resources to host both the fixed versions of games and the untouched ISOs etc, when most of their audience is just interested in having installers that make the games work on modern PCs. It's questionable that GOG even has those resources. They'd also potentially need to revisit every licensing agreement they have to okay the release of those untouched game files. Frankly, I'm surprised they're even still around, given that most people probably only know of them for the DRM-free installers that are uploaded elsewhere. I think it's a bit unfair to question their dedication to game preservation given that they're the only one of these companies who even want to provide DRM-free releases as a mission statement. I'm sure what they're doing could be better on paper, but unsure that it would be feasible to do as a company of their size.

>>11387729
You can emulate specific GPUs, I did so to use an old tessellation feature in Morrowind only available on ATI cards

>>11387709
>The real issue is PC faggotry
/thread

>>11387709
Programs like 86Box will fix this eventually, but the average person's hardware isn't quite there yet. Even the latest and most powerful CPUs struggle to emulate late Win98-era hardware according to the devs.

>>11387690
Windows is officially fucked. You either use linux or you are doomed.

>>11387837
As an OS, maybe. For gaming, Linux is even more fucked.

>>11387841
I think he means in the future Linux will have better compatibility with old windows games than new windows doe and since there is a push for more accessible Linux distros, there will inevitably be a Linux distro that surpasses windows while being able to do everything windows can. We are already close.

>>11387849
Literally have been hearing this for ages mate. I'll believe it when it happens, not a moment sooner.

>>11387690
>the fact is, what is a bug can be subjective
Wrong, what kind of retarded shit is that?

>>11387849
>in the future

>>11387862
I hope it all works out, and will likely make the jump if it ever truly does. I've just become cynical on the mattert. I was seeing these claims about how Linux is just on the cusp of fixing game compatibility issues roughly two decades ago.

>>11387802
it would only be double storage space which is the cheapest component. I doubt there'd be a licencing issue since this is a new thing that GOG are implementing themselves.
I dont think its unfair to question them. I may be cynical, but its more and more evident that GOG's DRM-free preservation schtick is just a marketing gimmick. If they really cared, theyd provide more than just DOS versions of old games, for example
>company of their size
theyre worth over half a billion

>>11387690
None of this matters if the changes are optional.

>>11387837
>>11387849
>>11387862
wont count for shit if you cant actually find the old games
>>11387861
youve obviously never scrutinised an unofficial patch

>>11387861
What about stuff like the Gandhi aggressiveness bug in Civilization, or the crash window when you quit Wing Commander? Both were bugs the developers just decided were "features".

>>11387854
I'm already using Wine on Linux for all my Win9X gaming. So far, Wine just werks for old Windows games. Modern Windows games in Wine is another matter though.

>>11387873
I agree but they dont appear to be optional. I've looked at my library on GOG.com and in Galaxy and there is only one version available

>>11387690
Preservation is a dishonest joke.

>>11387871
I've just pessimistic about licensing because I know what a tedious bitch it can be for things that should be simple. How easy it is depends on the IP holder, how communicative they are, how willing they are to give up aspects of their IP to a distributor like GOG that is most known for people using it as an indirect piracy source, etc. Regarding releases for other platforms, are there any good emulators for Macintosh games, for example? They use DOSBox because its license allows them to freely package games with it, it doesn't require actual DOS OS images, and it works as a game launcher thanks to the autoexec settings with no work required by the end user to start games besides clicking a shortcut. I've seen some Macintosh games emulated on archive.org but they require booting into the OS (could GOG freely include this without legal issues?), navigating to the installed game and then starting it yourself.

Try playing master of orion/magic without "modifications" on gog? You can't.
The list goes on. They never cared about preservation but just about grabbing files from warez sites and dumping random fixes on them to make them work for modern os.

"preservation" is a piracy excuse in 99% of cases and the 1% of people who genuinely care about it are turbo autists

>>11387912
>Try playing master of orion/magic without "modifications" on gog? You can't.
Which modifications are you referring to? I just checked my own installs and while the MoM shortcut loads a launcher by default, the original unmodified release is included in the installation folder and you can just run it with DOSBox.

>>11387897
They dont actually have to provide the emulator though. Their prepackaged DOSBox out-the-box thing is great, dont get me wrong, but they should really be giving us the option to emulate other versions ourselves. They seem to default to DOS even when theres a Win95 version.

Macintosh emulation is a bit heavy handed but that system is a bit more modern. My Apple II emulator is easier to use than DOSBox.

I dont know about the licensing stuff. I would think it would be easier to license the untouched files but these things arent always logical. I doubt many of them care though since it was abandonware before GOG came along.

>>11387690
I thought this thread was a joke at first but then I remember autist on here would rather spend $500 on a half rotted CD than to emulate or play a patched digital game.

>>11387940
The problem comes from a storefront actually selling the games. When abandonware sites are just providing downloads for free, they tend to go under the radar and/or they may not be inclined to care. Somebody else profiting is what really activates the legal teams.

>>11387764
The vanilla version of VTMB literally won't run. There are thousands of older games with DRM requirements that aren't even possible to run anymore on any operating system of the past 20 years. There are even more games where the game code is tied to things like refresh rate or RAM amount, and are, or will be, unplayable as technology advances. There is quite literally no point to "preserving" e-waste that has no use and no function, unless you also demand that every single possible PC configuration, from hardware to software, is eternally preserved alongside with it, and then you will eventually hit a road block when those DRM checks ping a server that hasn't been up for 25 years, and the only way around it is game modification.
Preservation is the realm of full on autistic retards with hoarding disorders

>>11387943
Oh are you saying the game may have different licencing for each platform? I didn't think of that.
I see how that could cause problems but I still think its lazy for them to go for the DOS version every time. It may be convenient for the consumer but its no good for preservation and certainly wont be the best version for every game

>>11387917
>>11387942
>>11387951
niggas, we're at the dawn of a new medium in the age of information, why the fuck wouldnt we want preserve this stuff?

>>11387963
Yeah, I'd love to see for example Apple II versions of games up there, many of those were superior to the DOS equivalents, or at least worthy alternatives. Is the best emulator out there still AppleWin? One thing I notice about their DOS releases is that they try to keep manual disc swapping to a minimum if not nonexistent, or at least I haven't encountered any releases on GOG that require the user to discswap. Is that automated or otherwise possible to circumvent for AppleWin yet?

>>11387970
How much value is there in preserving the original versions of PC games with DRM that make them literally unplayable in an unmodified state on modern OSes? I have physical copies of games like Age of Mythology that will simply not run at all due to SafeDisc v2. I have no choice but to use a modified exe to play them.

>>11387985
You should have preserved your original hardware

>>11387979
I'm still using AppleWin and its still the top standalone on emulation wiki. I doubt AppleWin will ever do auto disk swapping and you'd have to write a script yourself anyway. I don't mind it personally, feels authentic

>>11387994
Original hardware is failing and rotting away as time goes on. Trying to run older OSes on modern hardware is becoming increasingly impossible due to hardware/driver incompatibilities. The solution lies in emulators like 86Box but modern CPUs aren't up to snuff for anything beyond mid-range Win9x stuff.

>>11387828
You need a really good CPU to emulate a Pentium 2
Pentium 3 at full speed is impossible for now

>>11387985
More value than the MBs it takes to store them. If theres a DRM free version that would be more valuable, unless you get something unique with the DRM.

Disc games no longer working is a reason why we need proper preservation of the software itself. We need the original programs to emulate or modify for a modern system

>>11388008
>>11388030
But we will get there eventually

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>>11388030
>>11388034
Problem is it requires significantly higher single-core performance, and CPU development is far more interested in simply adding more mediocre cores to work in tandem for modern games and programs. We'll be waiting a long time.

And all it would take would be to just put the original disc images up for download.
I love what gog is trying to sell but I'm not always convinced they're really doing their best.

>>11388047
Would be great, but I would find it somewhat amusing. When GOG originally came on the scene their whole point was to provide working downloads of old games at a time when peoples' disc copies stopped working due to compatibility issues. Providing downloads of disc images that will no longer work for the vast majority of people would go against that original goal, not that I'd be against it of course.

>>11387923
They all come bundled with unofficial patches you can't remove.

>>11387849
>in the future
they've been tooting that horn for over two decades kid

>>11388069
The community patches are separately installed. The original game files running the latest official patches are included.

>>11388034
>But we will get there eventually
Actually we won't. 86box improvement will come at a cost of even more demanding hardware requirements. You will be lucky to run a 3d game at 30fps in 5 years from now on a top of the line cpu from that era.

>>11387690
>1. preservation must be warts-and-all
oh, so you're the retard that makes hacks for broken games and uses the original release, instead of using later revisions with official bug fixes

>>11388074
We'll get there but will be senior citizens

>>11388073
They are not. Run orion 1/2 and check the versions, it ain't the original.

>I wish the games being sold were unplayable and didn't work for most buyers
>THATS PRESERVATION
Preserving something doesn't mean it remains untouched. It means keeping it alive for later generations by whatever means. You want a perfect and untouched system that doesn't exist and wouldn't attract many consumers.

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>>11388082
Sure, I just launched MoO. It's running 1.3, the latest official patch.

>>11387951
You need 3 dlls and hex edit the exe to make Bloodlines fully working on modern hardware, it will be as vanilla as it gets without modifying anything from the game. No need for extra quests, classes, music change or anything of that bullshit that the unofficial patch comes with. If gog really cared about preservation, they'd presented the game with just those files replaced.

>>11387764
The GOG release of the game comes with both a version with the Unofficial Patch applied a "Legacy" version which does not include any of the Unofficial Patch content. You didn't actually buy the game from there to even verify what you're talking about, did you? My guess is you just pirated the GOG installer for the Unofficial Patch version. You get both when you purchase from GOG.

>>11388057
I mean if they start boasting about preservation then I'd say that would be the right move. And I'm talking about just providing the isos along the extras, not replacing their patched stuff with it. I really don't have issues with them trying to make old games playable out of the box.

>>11388119
I guess you do start to run into issues like what and how many versions and variations of those roms they would offer.
You could also argue that keeping the games playable on modern platforms is already a way of preserving them.

>>11388119
Honestly what they're proposing seems more like future-proofing than preserving in the truest sense of the word. Or, being generous, what they're really preserving is the ability to continue to play these games on future OSes.

>>11388104
Legacy has balance changes, it's not just bugfixes. I'm not saying the unofficial patch shouldn't be included, I'm saying it should've been optional, something you chould disable in the installer.

>>11388131
>Legacy has balance changes, it's not just bugfixes.
No, it's literally just the original game with the official 1.2. There is even a simple way to delete all of the UP files from your install folder if their presence bothers you which means you end up with a complete clean folder as you would if you installed from disc: https://www.gog.com/forum/vampire_the_masquerade_series/vote_for_a_vanilla_v12_build_of_vtm_bloodlines/post12

>>11388083
>NOOOOOO WHY WON'T THE LOUVRE SELL THE MONA LISA TO ME, IF I CAN'T HAVE IT THEN IT'S NOT REAL PRESERVATION

>>11387709
>The real issue is PC faggotry
Wouldn't be an issue if devs/pubs released the source code.

>>11387887
Internet preservationists don't believe in what they do. It's all for money and attention.

>>11388119
There is no method of preserving protected SF/Securom games that doesn't rely on propretary formats

>>11388075
I am not. Official bug fixes that come shortly after release are obviously fine

>>11388128
I dont think its an issue. Provide the original version and the out-the-box version. They practically already do this with remasters. Ports are secondary nice-to-haves

>>11388104
>>11388131
>>11388145
wasnt it originally released on steam where it still remains to this day? my copy works

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>>11388301
It was originally released on disc, then came to Steam.
>my copy
You don't own the Steam games that you spend money on. A new California law forced them to admit this.

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>>11388372
well then I guess the new california law proves I never actually 'stole' anything

>>11388379
OP is trans.

>>11387690
GOG(or Nightdive/Limited Run/whoever) is still a business, people using social media to brag about prototypes they discovered are only doing it for recognition, true preservation is and always will be done by random people who are doing it simply cause they want to. Thay's the only time it works because a majority of people don't care about preservation over playability. It needs to be a passion project, not something you expect to reap benefits from. GOG doing what they're doing(which is what they've been doing with a new coat of paint) doesn't interfere with that.

>>11387690
i'm going to do a harry potter novels preservation website because it's a classic and i want future generations to be able to enjoy it. i didn't like that ron's family all had red hair so now it's brown to keep things politically correct. also, the second book was a little slow so i removed some of the parts that weren't paced correctly and also added a chapter where harry finds a spellbook full of 1st edition d&d spells like bigsby's giant hand and melcor's floating disk. the whole magic system in the harry potter books is broken so i took the liberty of redesigning it. the fourth book was pretty good but it needed a couple of new characters so i added them. dumbledore was supposedly always gay but it wasn't clearly stated in the text so now harry and ron find his stash of sex toys in the final book (after he's dead).

i know better than rowling and all her fans so it's okay for me to do this kind of stuff.

>>11388756
I downloaded DOOM from GOG and they turned Doomguy into a handicapped black woman and removed the weapons. How the fuck do they get away with this shit?

>>11387690
You sound like the most insufferable faggot alive.

>>11388736
It does interfere though. These games are more easily available, and with more options, on abandonware sites before GOG puts them on their store or before Shitedive starts to take credit for them. The games can usually still be found in some places but what happens when they decide to really start cracking down? Its like what another anon itt said; once somebody is profiting it activates the legal teams

Now with this new program GOG are actually updating game files so they're no longer properly preserved and then slapping a big fat "PRESERVED" label on them. Given the amount of consumer trust GOG have been building over the years by steam bashing, this will lead to most people believing, without a second thought, that these truly are the original and best versions, which is often not the case and reduces the demand for the abandonware sites that actually were preserving this stuff in the first place.

It always uses assblaster instead of any better option and the speed/cycles tend to be set incorrectly too. If these "preserved" updates are anything to go by, that isn't going to change.

>>11387951
Actually there are a lot of efforts to preserve “e-waste”, for example the community was able to restore 3D EAX audio.

>>11387690
Fuck you OP. If they didn't you would be screaming "Why don't they fix this obvious bug it's literally a typo in the .ini file!"

>>11388959
Sounds like you care more about piracy than preservation.

>>11388959
>Now with this new program GOG are actually updating game files so they're no longer properly preserved and then slapping a big fat "PRESERVED" label on them.
I can see where you are coming from and although you could be onto something, let's wait until there is actual proof the doom guy has become an etc before making a judgement, as long I keep receiving a fully offline installer in exchange for my cash GOG will always be the only real store front on the internet, the rest are mere rental places.

>>11387690
Their definition of game preservation is different. They are a company whose selling point has always been DRM free games you can download and run on a modern machine, without tinkering. When you host thousands of ancient games that's easier said than done, so this is just a branding that makes it clear these games are vetted to work

>>11388959
>>11388756
You are both such astronomical autistic retards it's hilarious. This is like bitching about film being converted to digital video or books being converted to e-readers. You are so autistically obsessed with preservation meaning every single revision, edit, or version of something is preserved forever despite its inability to even be used that you miss the entire actual point of media preservation.
Enjoy your USB drive of StarForce or Windows Live games that can't install, and can't run and convince yourself you're preserving anything

>>11387690
Retarded question, but here goes: what is the optimal storage solution for ROMs? I’ve been paranoid about their availability for a while and would like to create a personal library, but I’m also paranoid that the data will corrupt on me and be worthless. What do?

I know maintaining my consoles is a battle I’ll eventually lose. Just looking for something more future proof.

>>11389812
Yeah you faggots always come out to say this shit without bothering to comprehend what we're saying. The 'piracy' sites hosted more versions of these games before GOG came along. Its harder to obtain original versions of game like Ultima thanks to GOG. I actually have all the Ultima games on GOG but I play the Apple versions instead.

>>11389904
If anything its more akin to complaining about old TV shows being put on streaming services upscaled in widescreen. Have you seen the state of the Simpsons on Disney+? That's how everyone will experience the Simpsons from now on.

Do you really think we give a shit about preserving DRM? I just want the original game itself to be untouched. I don't care about every revision, I want the optimal version that came from the original developers themselves, not some touched up version from a random polish dev.
That being said, why not preserve every revision? Memory is cheap and they can still provide their out-of-the-box version.

I don't even care if GOG chooses to preserve games or not but when they put a game on their store it stops other sites from doing it.

>>11389825
You should see the list of improvements for RE
>4th Survivor and Tofu modes enabled from the very beginning

>>11388158
This is so retarded I had to give you a (you) so you don't feel ostracized

>>11388083
>Preserving something doesn't mean it remains untouched
it kinda does though? I never said "don't release a playable version" but they're erasing the original versions too.
has capitalism wormed its way so deep into your brain that the only things that matter are those that attract consumers?

>>11390498
>If anything its more akin to complaining about old TV shows being put on streaming services upscaled in widescreen.
No it isn't. These releases aren't applying widescreen hacks or anything like that which would be closer to your analogy, they are just converting them to a format that can be played. The other anon's analogy of converting analog video to digital was better. I keep seeing people implying that GOG is applying total mod overhauls to these titles or something but never posting examples. So far a few titles have been mentioned and they were just blatantly wrong. This honestly seems more like a rumour that fooled some retards.

>I don't even care if GOG chooses to preserve games or not but when they put a game on their store it stops other sites from doing it.
What's funny about this is that those abandonware sites you're referring to almost always host edited (gasp) cracked copies of those titles, some of which actually cause visible glitches. One example that comes to mind being "Gold Rush!" by Sierra, where there are strange graphical issues in the opening screens in those cracked versions. GOG at least takes care to ensure that their DRM removal does not cause actual changes to the game experience.

GOG's arrival on the scene has not affected the sites that take care to host unedited, byte-checked copies of old DOS etc games. The actual issue here is you are simply too ignorant/retarded to know where to go for what it is that you seem to want. These sites have been around for ages and have never cared if GOG or anyone else is hosting a game.

>>11390409
The only advice I can give you is to maintain regular external backups. I dont follow best practices myself really; I have a single backup HDD for all my shit, including ROMs, and I pray to the machine god every time I plug it in it wont corrupt. That and separate data partitions on my internal drives incase my OS tanks or something. Really this is a question for /g/

>>11390515
>I never said "don't release a playable version" but they're erasing the original versions too.
Kek, they're not erasing them at all you dope. Learn where to find these sites that don't involve a simple google search. They are far better than the abandonware sites you're almost certainly referring to.

>>11390409
As far as entry-level stuff goes, HDDs and optical media are your best bet. Have at least three mirrors across some combination of different storage mediums at any given time. Don't cheap out with the optical media if you decide to do that. You can go for the more expensive M-Discs which are rated to last centuries when store properly, some DVD-Rs with AZO dye from a decent brand like Verbatim, and/or some BD-Rs. Don't cheap out on the brand when it comes to optical storage. Keep them in CD/DVD cases and in a fairly climate controlled environment. Look into buying new HDDs to clone your data onto every 5-10 years. Spin them up at least once or twice a year and check on drive health. If one is in the early stages of looking bad, get a replacement for it ASAP.

>>11390531
(see) >>11390505

I dunno about this cracked copy thing. My experience is I download the original files and the crack separately.

>>11390536
Personally I can find whatever I want, but obscure, dodgy looking sites is hardly a strong foundation for game preservation and the law could crack down on them at any time.

You both seem really defensive for GOG but, like, why? There's no harm in providing the original files along with what they're doing and they don't have to define it as preservation. You act like they're anything but a rich company with a market niche

>>11390565
They simply aren't going to do it, it's a waste of bandwidth to appease a minority. Give up on GOG and stick with whatever sites you're getting the games from already. GOG is preserving the ability to play the games on future OSes, nothing more.

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>>11387690
This shit pisses me off so much. Most of the features in the HL2 anniversary update are alright but the new fonts and anti aliasing look so fucking retarded and shit on the 2004 aesthetic of the game, I want my Windows fonts and non anti aliased text back without having to lose the QOL stuff fuckers

>>11390689
I was going to bring up HL2 in the OP but ran out of characters. Given how game changing that game was in '04 its a real shame its no longer available in its original form.

>>11388372
This is bait or you are deluded. You never "own" the game part of a game when you buy physical either, only publishers/devs and other rightholders do. The only thing you "own" is the cardboard and paper and plastic the game comes in. Buying a game has always meant that, paying for the right to use it, same as movies or music in any form. Same reason you're not supposed to broadcast music or show a movie in public without paying licensing fees, regardless of whether you bought the music/movie in the first place.

>>11390531
>EAX
I think the problem is that some patches don't improve the experience and that GOG is a place to dump games without much care. Look at XBLA ports compared to GOG releases. People often speak highly of these ports for their high fidelity alongside qol improvements. Or platform-specific ports like Resident Evil DS, which is almost a completely new game full of new features that aren't seen anywhere else. PC gamers are treated like second-class citizens who receive barely playable scraps. GOG should do like Steam, which is the “evil platform” that lets patches into the workshop or at least makes it easier to install them.

>>11387709
>blaming PC
It's an irritating dev problem - the same reason many games these days have 10+ updates spanning a few months and don't provide any access to the older ones. I can see them using something like Blender for their game models, but Blender provides access to all their old versions.
In the ROM sets are ones marked Virtual Console, meaning there's something different about those compared to the ones still on the carts. Almost no one says what the differences even are, especially since there isn't any evidence they fixed any of the bugs that have been detailed all over the Internet.

>>11390689
>>11390729
are you fucking retarded,how is that related to GoG half life isnt even on it.

>>11388372
I can wipe my ass with any of these laws and general conditions since EU law directly contradicts this and there were already cases.
>dude dies, Apple account gets lost
>parents say kid dies, ask Apple for access
>Apple points to general conditions and muh law
>Judge overules and grants access to account for parents.
You DO own them and there is nothing they can do to stop that.

>>11390853
I dont think it necessarily means theres something different in the ROM, its just its source. It is annoying when thats all there is available though
>>11390938
its related to game preservation dipshit

>>11388372
>You don't own the Steam games that you spend money on
I've had my Steam account since 2008 and still own every single one of the literally hundreds of games I've bought on it.

People keep fearmongering as if one day everybody's games are just going to vanish, but they can't ever point to any example of this actually happening. Even when games get delisted (eg. the original un-remastered GTA trilogy) you still get to keep them if you bought them.

>>11391089
man I wish you hadnt used GTA as your example...

Where does one get old PC games that remain untouched and are not patched to support modern systems?

>>11391165
ebay

>>11388045
This. CPU improvements have been focused on having more cores for the last 15 or so years, single-core performance is on the back burner. Sure, architecture improvements help single core performance a little, but the focus is by far not there. Some of the higher-end CPUs even sacrifice single core performance so they can cram more cores in there. Even this had stagnated until AMD lit a fire under Intel's stupid ass with Ryzen, Intel was not only stuck at 4C8T but was even starting to remove features from their CPUs until that happened.

Issue is this is useless for X86 emulation, which is heavily single-core based. A lot of emulation of older systems, just about every system that would be posted about on this board except for a few cases in 6th gen, are mostly single-core, and even in those cases it's mostly having dual-core that helps (such as with PS2) not four, eight, twelve, whatever cores.

So without there somehow being a lot of faults in the emulation code that can be optimized there is s bit of stagnation in emulation performance happening of these older systems, just that it's not as noticeable with most consoles because we have already hit good enough performance for most of them, at least being able to do cycle accuracy up until 4th gen, good luck having 5th gen or later running at a playable speed anytime soon with cycle accuracy however. And that's not even getting into transistor accuracy which barely gets you 1/10th of a frame per second on NES.

We are barely going to be able to emulate a Pentium 2 system (and even then not a high-end one) for a long time unless there is some kind of breakthrough. Which also isn't unlikely since to be fair there is far less interest in x86 emulation than consoles, having some of that Nintendo emulation autism pointes towards x86 could get us some big improvements. Of course, PCs have a slew of hardware configurations so they are also far more complicated to emulate than a console with set hardware.

>>11387690
>1. preservation must be warts-and-all
Seems like a retarded, arbitrary and impossible to achieve definition of preservation. Are you saying it has to only be the v1.0 shipping version of a game that's preserved then ("warts-and-all")? No patches at all, official or otherwise? What about games that were completely transformed by patching? Do we need to "preserve" the shitty, bug-ridden mess that was the release version of Cyberpunk 2077? What about the PS3/360 versions of GTA V, which shipped with different visuals and a dramatically different vehicle damage model to the version widely available now? If we ARE preserving patched versions, do we need to preserve everything single build of the game ever released? If not, how are you picking and choosing on that front? What about games that have received tens or even hundreds of patches like, say, World of Warcraft? Do hotfixes count?

>>11387690
First of all, what >>11387729 said. PC aren't consoles, they don't have one set configuration, not to mention nearly any game on GOG was expecting to be played on a monitor connected by VGA, not a TV with RF or composite, so even the "blurring pixels"/scanlines argument does not work here as many of these monitors, especially in the mid90s and later, did not really have visible scanlines or these other issues.

Keeping a game playable is still preservation, that's like saying software emulators are not preservation because they don't produce the same image the console having been connected to a 30 year old TV over RF would. Many PC games had patches and updates too, even in some cases console games did with printings of newer versions of the game on the cart/disk. By that argument even back then any game that isn't version 1.0 isn't preservation. This isn't even getting started on the mess that DRM later became, and I for one am glad that programs like ScummVM bypass the annoying DRM those games originally had, to say nothing of shit like Starforce or SecuROM, the former of which could ruin burners over time.

Patching up these games and keeping them playable is still preservation. Anti-preservation is trying to erase them from existence and preventing them from being playable, not patching up bugs and having some enhancements. Even fucking Nintendo patched a typo in the original Zelda over 20 years later in one of it's VC releases.

>>11387807
>You can emulate specific GPU
Massive spike in PC requirements and CPUs are not really keeping up with that in mind >>11391223
They would have to build custom emulators around the games then and it would run much worse than the natively running patched version.

>>11391236
>If we ARE preserving patched versions, do we need to preserve everything single build of the game ever released?
yes

>>11391089
The people acting like a Valve employee will wake up one day and wipe their library are disingenuous shitposters. The main issue with Valve are their complete negligence for the consumer in any matter, and their decade+ long effort at this point to create a walled garden for PC gaming revolving around themselves.
You can't install a game you buy on Steam without installing the Steam client, which means that if Valve decides you need to run a background driver with root level access to "prevent cheating" like tons of other games do now, you are locked out of your library entirely without doing so.
Valve has more or less zero quality control with their products. Things like bitcoin miners and stolen asset flips have easily made their way into the absolute mountain of shit games Valve will proudly herd onto their storefront. On top of this, there is zero assurance as a product owner your product will remain the same thing you bought. Valve not only allows multiple 3rd party DRM programs to be installed alongside Steamworks DRM itself, but they also allow old games to be "updated" to use them as well, and you can't launch a Steam game without it force updating. Buying games on Steam is often the objective worst way to buy them now, as you still forced into using the Ubisoft/2K/EA/whatever launcher DRM you'd have to use if you bought it directly from them, plus usually Denuvo on top of that meaning your Steam version is just giving you even more account and DRM systems to get hung up with and possibly neeed to circumvent in the future.
They do the same exact kind of thing with mods and controller support under the guise of "convenience" when its actuality its simply removing your ability as a consumer to decide. Anytime you see someone praise the workshop mod system you can very safely write them off as a complete idiot. The mods, just like the games, are force updated, don't retain old versions, and refuse to launch without being updated.

>>11387849
>there will inevitably be a Linux distro that surpasses windows while being able to do everything windows can
Ha ha ha no. Linux can't even have decent games without essentially replicating Windows APIs
to Windows games think they are running on Windows, and there are literally thousands of issues with games that way that aren't present on Windows. To say nothing that they can't even make most of their UIs look better than the windows 95 or 3.1 era. To say that Linux will not only run every game Windows does, but also ever did, and better is like those idiots that claimed "This year will be the year of Linux" every year until even within the Linux community it became a meme to mock such people.

>>11387862
>We’ve made great stride thanks to Proton
So the only way Linux made strides in gaming was to... basically trick Windows games into thinking they are running on Windows... which Windows itself can still do better? Wow, so impressive, especially when many major games are still broken. Tell me, what issues would I have gaming on Windows that I wouldn't have on Linux? Playing Tux Racer? Ha ha ha.... wait, even Tux Racer is on Windows?

Look, you guys can argue the benefits or pros of the OS, fine, but trying to argue that it's even close to gaming on Windows, much less even remotely comparable, and absurdly trying to argue that it is or will become better, it beyond laughable to the point where even others in the Linux community would laugh at this. Same goes for it surpassing Windows as a generic desktop OS for 99% of the population, the public can barely use Windows, you think they can handle Linux once something inevitably breaks and they have to use a CLI that might as well be reciting arcane eldritch scripture to them? Many can barely handle fucking MacOS.

>>11387758
>>11387871
And how would you deal with ISOs of games that had DRM in the form of intentional faults on the disk meant to be uncopiable? Then you get into the mess of less standard formats and actually being able to copy that properly, and even then just because you can read it into an ISO does not mean you can burn it back, or virtualize it in many cases. A lot of the software to do that was made for OSes from that era.

Floppy disk images too, there were also some games that did that, some even physically lasering holes on the writable part of the disk.

It's decades of all sorts of crazy tricks publishers tried that messed with the disk standards, they would have to have a different method for hundreds of games, it's not as simple as "just provide an image of the game disk"

>>11391297
Another reason preservation in its most literal form is so stupid are all the localizations. Especially when it comes to German or Australian versions of games. No one needs to eternally preserve Soldier of Fortune with a bunch of robot enemies, or games with half the levels redesigned or outright ripped out because a swastika was featured heavily.

>>11390749
>This is bait or you are deluded.
No it isn't, when you go to an store and checkout at the register and they don't tell you the stuff you are paying money for is not yours, they are breaking the law. You are either born yesterday or like super naive or ignorant, or are pushing an agenda.
>>11391089
>says people keep fearmongering, quotes the GTA trilogy as an example
And just like that the room IQ dropped
>>11391271
> acting like a Valve employee will wake up one day and wipe their library FOR NO REASON
And yet they retain the power to do so, anons arguing otherwise either willfully ignore the SSA or just don't know how to read or can't do reading comprehension.
The rest of your post is dead on point though.
The GTA trilogy was possibly the worst example at "ownership", and as you say rn if the launcher detects a game update, >even in offline mode btw<, you are quite likely forced to go through with it or have your game stop working.

>>11388736
>people using social media to brag about prototypes they discovered are only doing it for recognition
Clout helps getting support for preserving games. A lot of these prototypes and betas were purchased for a lot of money, a lot of that money was acquired through donations. People would be far more willing to donate to a group or organization that is known to preserve games than some random nobody going "Hey, I found a rare game on Japanese Yahoo Actions, give me money so I can win the auction and dump it for everyone!". It also helps to know if the person you are giving the money to has a history of preserving games and knows what they are doing than some random bozo who is hoping to bang rocks until it works.

If they only wanted recognition they would be on TikTok creating retarded ass "challenges" and memes instead of going through all this effort that only a niche would be interested in.

>>11388756
Nice bullshit, this is more akin to fixing a typo on a page that literally wrote "stop" as "stopp" or using a different kind of book binding because the old one would come unglued if the weather got too hot, they didn't completely change the game like some modern "remaster".

>>11390409
The 3-2-1 rule of backups, applies to ROMs too, any data really.
3 copies of the data
2 different media
1 of them off-site

It sounds like a lot, but note that your original copy of the data counts as one. of the copies. So basically, if you had the ROMS on your computer, also backed them up to an external drive, and to a cloud drive, that fulfills every requirement listed there. Basically, just have a backup on both an external drive and a cloud drive.

Note that optical media and solid-state dries are NOT recommended for long-term storage, especially solid state drives. Use HDDs (Since I assume tape drives would be excessive and out of your budget here).

>>11390498
>Have you seen the state of the Simpsons on Disney+? That's how everyone will experience the Simpsons from now on.
It's hard to take you seriously when your example ignores the bigger fact that Disney has removed the episode Stark Raving Dad from just about every service, even removing the episode from new pressing of on disk of the show, just because of those BS allegations against Michael that were even proven to be false years ago.

>I don't even care if GOG chooses to preserve games or not but when they put a game on their store it stops other sites from doing it.
*Looks at his collection of retro games that are on both Steam and GoG*
No it doesn't.
And before you say >I meant piracy sites
*Looks at listing on multiple piracy sites of said games*
No it doesn't, try putting more effort than the first result for an "Abandonware" site that Google gives you instead of being Stark Raving Mad

>>11390531
>What's funny about this is that those abandonware sites you're referring to almost always host edited (gasp) cracked copies of those titles
This. I hate using those sites because a large amount of the time it's some hacked-up copy, many times with random fan patches applied and 30 year old cracks that still have the cracktros in them. Many of them are also just the installed files in a zip instead of the installable disk image, I have even run into what are basically packs designed to be loaded into Dosbox or even fucking Retroarch than the original game. Even GoG does a better effort than that.

>>11390549
I would recommend against optical media for long term backup storage. Most disks these days are crap, and even the few that are not like the M-Disks you mentioned are expensive and don't hold much. DVD M-Disks even need a compatible burner, and while a standard Blu-Ray Burner can handle Blu-Ray M-Disks, the largest only store 100GB, pretty small by today's standards, and a 5-pack costs $50-60. You can get a decent 2-4TB HDD for that.

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>>11390729
>Given how game changing that game was in '04 its a real shame its no longer available in its original form.
Did you... did you even READ the update notes?

>>11387690
>is preservation fucked
For 99.999% of the games anyone ITT has ever played, the game exists on hundreds of schizos' hard drives. Thousands of people have complete sets of NES through Wii backed up. Similar is true for large swaths of PC bloatware. Point being: stop looking at big corporations for an answer in games preservation. You should instead be looking into buying 100 TB of storage and backing up every piece of media you care about in durable, replicated long-term storage.

>>11390823
>PC gamers are treated like second-class citizens who receive barely playable scraps
Probably because PC gamers are by far the most smug demographic about how they're just going to pirate every game.

>>11387709
>specific drivers
no
>video settings
no
>and run like shit
for a very few

If you can't do a few things to make it work you shouldn't touch a computer and go back to chugging consoles

>>11387837
only if you take anything after 7

>>11391261
You start

>>11391408
>in durable, replicated long-term storage
Where do we get that? Electronics can get fried, and there is nothing protecting any storage from physical damage. Unless we build something deep underground and store everything on tapes?

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>>11391629
the thing that bothers me most about the piracy and preservation argument is that i already fucked paid for these games. i bought them when they were new. i paid full price and my money went to pay the developers salaries. it's wrong to try to keep charging me over and over for games i already paid for. i have every right to pirate the games whose success i was responsible for. if not for me, the modern sequels that you love and i despise, would not even exist.

>>11391695
Realistically, if you have a back up, you'll be fine. One of the nodes will eventually fail. Whether it's the primary or secondary doesn't matter. Once one fails, get a new hard drive, copy over the healthy node's data, and boom. Problem fixed. The only world in which this approach doesn't work is one in which both nodes fail at the same time, and I'd sooner plan around a meteor hitting my house than that happening.

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>>11391368
>optical media is not recommended
Speak for yourself

>>11391093
>man I wish you hadnt used GTA as your example...
>>11391345
>>says people keep fearmongering, quotes the GTA trilogy as an example
>And just like that the room IQ dropped
Do you think people lost access to the GTA games when they got delisted or something?

I bought them years ago. I still have access to them through my Steam account. I literally have III, VC and SA all installed on my PC right now through Steam.

Yes there's plenty of cases like these games where you can't buy them anymore, but I've never heard of a case where someone lost access to a game they already bought on Steam (or PS Store, or Nintendo eShop, or Xbox). Once you've bought it you, for all intents and purposes, own it, even if you don't technically "legally" own it.

>>11387690
>Meanwhile, they still only provide DOS versions of really old games despite the originals being for other systems
This is true and they need to support the Windows versions of games like Simcity 2000, everything else in the post is nonsense.

>>11387865
I switched to Linux as my main OS when the end was near for Windows 7, which was also when Proton started being actually good
The strides I've seen since then. I used to have to check Protondb for everything, but most things still worked and you had to fuck around the parameters a little. Now? I don't even check protondb, almost everything works. I've seen a bunch of things go from not working, to barely working to totally working too
The only issue in general now is out of Steam games, they need better launchers in general, but, man, for old Visual Novels I was able to find the exact dll I had to override by searching for it online. Otherwise, you can also just simply add these games on Steam and use Proton that way
I predicted back then that we probably were 10 years away from pretty much full compatibility and we're nearing pretty close

>>11391236
>are you saying has to be only v1.0...
No I'm not saying that. For me, the most important thing to preserve would be the definitive version, the version everyone played "at the time", probably patched by the original dev team not too long after release (or even a GOTY edition), and certainly not by some random devs or even the same devs after theyve long forgotten their vision a decade or more later.

>PS3/360 versions
I dunno maybe Youd have to ask someone who cares about those consoles. After a certain point the there is less and less difference between platforms and PC seems the logical choice. Console game preservation seems to be doing fine anyway with ROMs and remaining physical copies, for the time being at least.

>impossible to achieve
why do you think this? there arent many games you couldnt fit every version of on, say, a 1TB harddrive, including modern games if you structure it well (1.0 build + patches to be applied separately I suppose). That's like, what, 20 quid a game? Not a lot to ask. You could probably fit the entire 80s on one drive, yet anons in this thread are saying a half-billion dollar company cant spare the resources.

Preserving every version would be purely to for its historical significance. What will be historically significant is difficult to judge and its so easy to preserve software so why the fuck not? Video games have only been around for like 50 years; everything happening now could be significant in the future.

>arbitrary
hardly. if anything my definition is strict.

>WoW
arent all the builds available? If not Minecraft is a good example of a game with every build accessible from the devs, they should do it like that.

>>11391831
That's not even an M-Disk

>>11391260
Honestly Im not sure what youre saying about monitors and I've got a lot to read atm so I'm just gonna say: shaders

What I really care about is preserving the definitive version that everyone was playing "at the time." Please dont be obtuse about this statement. I dont see a reason not to preserve every version anyway.

I obviously dont care about preserving DRM, I care about the video games themselves.

>Anti-preservation is trying to erase them from existence and preventing them from being playable
I'm not saying GOG are doing this intentionally but they are having that effect by giving abandonware sites legal trouble.
Keeping the games playable is great(!) but patching and enhancing them is not preservation, its actively changing the experience. Personally I dont think its good for Nintendo to patch out quirks from the 80s. Are they gonna remove "I am error" next? Theyre killing the memes, jack.

>Massive spike in PC requirements
Oh for sure, but I managed to play a full campaign of Morrowind doing it and my CPU is from 2013. It ran like normal but with sweet sweet tessellation. Splinter Cell is probably more taxing. I can't remember what I used but if you ask me I'll dig it up.

>>11391297
>how would you deal
Well really I'd hope a rich game company with good ties in the industry would come along and do that shit for us and charge us for the privilege WITHOUT messing with the game itself like some retarded monolith-patching modder. You read the title of the thread right?

>>11391313
why not? they could be historically significant or at least kinda funny

>>11391368
Trusting cloud services, especially with ROMs, is naive as fuck.

>>11391385
>the bigger fact
we're basically saying the same thing, I havent seen your random sitcom. You cant stream some of the best Always Sunny episodes legally anymore, happy?

Yeah when I say "GOG puts it on their store" the significant part is "puts it on there store". I can find this shit personally, but you can hardly argue that it doesnt make it harder to find. They could potentially shut the others sites down as well. Itd be nice to have a more-than-dubious platform

>>11391390
I skimmed them. Thanks shitlord.

>>11391408
>stop looking at big corporations for an answer
yeah thats basically where Im at now. its a shame, financial incentive effectively guarantees their longevity. I wonder if the schizo drives' contents will be around 100 years from now.

>>11391390
These anons are nuts. They keep mentioning games that you can't get the originals for anymore and they're wrong every time.

>>11391839
It a bad example cause music from those games did vanish and retards are gonna throw that back at you. I've never heard of a case of someone losing access either, I've still got the Deadpool game.

>>11391962
>why do you think this? there arent many games you couldnt fit every version of on, say, a 1TB harddrive, including modern games if you structure it well (1.0 build + patches to be applied separately I suppose). That's like, what, 20 quid a game? Not a lot to ask. You could probably fit the entire 80s on one drive, yet anons in this thread are saying a half-billion dollar company cant spare the resources..
Dude, that's what solid archives are for, especially when it's for preservation's sake and you don't need instant access to every version.

>>11391984
>Honestly Im not sure what youre saying about monitors and I've got a lot to read atm so I'm just gonna say: shaders
Then you completely misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that a lot of these effects which people praise consoles on CRTs for were not present on PC games because the monitors (especially once you go past the 80s) were generally much higher-res screens, not interlaced, and had a much higher-fidelity connection that did not blur the image like RF or composite did, which is actually where most of the benefits of those effects comes from, not the CRT screen itself (in fact, many CRTs can be modded to accept an RGB signal and produce a significantly clearer signal... which again will lack all those effects). So therefore you can't even argue that the games are not being played on a CRT because these games (outside of very rare edge cases with an obscure way of using CGA) weren't even taking advantage of that like consoles were.

>What I really care about is preserving the definitive version that everyone was playing "at the time."
Problem is that can be subjective from game to game. Sometimes something can be missing or have a change people are not happy with in such versions, it's not always just a perfected version of the game with all previous content.

>>11392021
>>11391984
>I obviously dont care about preserving DRM, I care about the video games themselves.
Obviously, I don't think anybody here gives a shit about preserving the DRM itself other than maybe the SDKs for it just for analysts sake. My point was that the disks the images are taken from would have the DRM on them and that will be problematic to try to preserve not for the sake of preservation, but for the sake of getting the game actually running. Many of these publishers are likely not going to have access to the code anymore, much less the old compiling tools, to create a DRM-free variant of their 20 year old game that used SecuROM or 30 year old game that relied on a hole lasered onto a floppy disk for it's DRM. You will need an image format that preserves this so the DRM check can pass, and that can be an issue as there is no real standard for this, and the programs that did let you do this were mostly from the XP era and obsolete, as well as using their own proprietary formats.

>I'm not saying GOG are doing this intentionally but they are having that effect by giving abandonware sites legal trouble.
Yeah but like I mentioned in >>11391385 a lot of those are doing a far worse job preserving than GoG, they are just tossing together something that works, except in any random haphazard way they can manage it with no standard way of doing it. There are many far better ways to get the original images and not a pre-installed and hacked up mess than a random Abandonware site one finds on Google.

>Keeping the games playable is great(!) but patching and enhancing them is not preservation, its actively changing the experience.
I disagree. Unlike consoles there is no authentic experience, PCs had no set hardware and just about none of the CRT tricks consoles used were relevant for PC games. It's still preserved if you ask me. That's like saying museums aren't preserving historical artifacts unless you are viewing them in the original tomb they were from.

>>11392027
>>11391984
>Personally I dont think its good for Nintendo to patch out quirks from the 80s. Are they gonna remove "I am error" next? Theyre killing the memes, jack.
The typo wasn't a meme, it was a typo, nobody even talked about it. This is also the reason why Square did NOT change the "You Spoony Bard" line from FF4 when it was re-released with an updated translation, that WAS a memorable meme line.

>Oh for sure, but I managed to play a full campaign of Morrowind doing it and my CPU is from 2013.
Still a massive resource bump that will alienate many who want to play older games for no real benefit for 99% of people. I use 86Box when I want the original experience, but I am well aware that 99% won't care. Thing is, I can easily do this, and so can anyone else who actually wants to. Do you think even 1% of GoG's userbase would want to have to setup an emulated PC, configure the HDD in the CMOS,. install DOS, install mouse drivers, CD drivers, sound card drivers, and then slowly install the game off a dozen floppies? ... and likely still need to edit Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. That would alienate nearly all of their customers and kill the site. Most people just want to play the game or they won't care at all, and if people stop caring it's a lot harder to keep them preserved when far fewer can play them, just for the sake of an autistically replicated "original experience".

I was recently doing exactly that with some old DOS games, most of them Lucasarts adventure games, and believe me I far far prefer just tossing them into ScummVM than dealing with that mess AND the annoying DRM where you have to look up shit in a manual or spin a physical wheel that was included with the game. What you are suggesting would hurt preservation because it would drastically decrease interest in it, meanwhile all of us who care THAT much can still do it through things like 86Box, PCem, or original hardware, but you know damn well we are a small niche of a niche of a niche.

>>11392014
>wrong evertime
The original of the game mentioned in the goddamn OP is not legally acquirable through online services and made more difficult to aquire due to only the DOS version being monetised on GOG. You found a single example of someone being wrong. Fuck off.

>>11392038
>You found a single example of someone being wrong.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Zoomers like you might not have heard that one.

>>11392021
>>11392027
>thats what solid archives are for
cool. that was just off the top of my head.

>crt stuff
sorry dude Im trying but Im fried and its just going over my head. If its a limitation then theres nothing we can do about it but we can still try to do everything else right.

>subjective game to game
Of course it is but there will very likely be a known version, or maybe a even a few, probably the latest patch from the time or the most moddable. If not then fuck it and preserve it all and add community notes.

>DRM
I see. If individuals cant get around the DRM then it makes it seem like for preservation to really work then the companies themselves would have to be on board and release the files. Preservation probably is fucked then. GOG could be the solution but they decided to fuck with the games and restrict which versions they release.

>no authentic experience
it may be harder to pin down one single definitive version but at the very least we can identify that any version tampered with by GOG is not a wholly authentic experience. Id say your analogy is more describing not playing them on original hardware. Im saying the museum isnt preserving an artifact if they fill in imperfections (and not just the ones caused by time), even if they did go to the effort of digging it up

>>11392035
>it was a typo, nobody even talked about it
who can say though? maybe it was noticed by disparate groups of friends or small communities. the fact that the game had typos at all could be the meme. best thing is to not fuck with it.
Zelda is one the the most historically significant games so it should be able to be seen in all its naked glory. If they want to release a fixed up version along side it then cool. Why not add in some good ROM hacks too, give that map a polish, go nuts.

>alienate many who want older games
All I want is options. Release the plebian version upfront but give us the files to run the game as close to the original as possible. I used the steam version of Morrowind btw, average users dont need to know about any of the shit I did and we're all happy. It would be so easy for us to have it all. I dont expect consumers to be interested in game preservation but I dont expect them to be interested in preservation of historical artifacts either. Thats what museums are for and its the role GOG could have taken while still providing their replicas at the gift shop.

>>11392136
>>thats what solid archives are for
>cool. that was just off the top of my head.
Here, let me try to describe what I mean.
Archives generally compress each file individually. Say you have an old retro game whose ISO is about 500MB, and you have six different versions of it. Even if it manages to compress them to half their size, putting them all in an archive would take up 1250MB. Some modern archive formats such as RAR and 7Z, and unofficially TAR, have an option to instead treat all the files as one blob and compress them together. Since compression works on finding patterns and similar data, and chances are the ISOS of different versions of the same game have 95%-99% the same data, this will significantly decrease the size of the archive since all the data that is the same across the five ISOs only gets compressed and then put in the archive once, with only the differences between each files taking additional data, so the archive in this example will likely end up closer to 250GB, very likely under 300MB.

>sorry dude Im trying but Im fried and its just going over my head. If its a limitation then theres nothing we can do about it but we can still try to do
I am just saying that PC games from the 90s and later generally didn't use CRT effects like consoles did so you don't even need to worry about shaders or using a modern monitor giving you a different experience.

>Of course it is but there will very likely be a known version
It will be hard to get people to agree on which version in those cases

>DRM
>Yes, but that's the thing, GOG's releases generally bypass the DRM in most cases along with these changes, you can't have the original image and have the DRM removed without the original publisher somehow managing to re-compile a copy of their 20-30 year old game that is EXACTLY the same minus the DRM.

>>11392184
>>11392141
>it may be harder to pin down one single definitive version but at the very least we can identify that any version tampered with by GOG is not a wholly authentic experience
I disagree, my whole point is that there is no authentic experience because PCs had a variety of different hardware and configurations unlike consoles, and didn't even employ the CRT tricks consoles used. What is authentic would have varied from person to person, because the devs could not design the game for one specific experience as there wasn't one single configuration to do so.

>who can say though? maybe it was noticed by disparate groups of friends or small communities. the fact that the game had typos at all could be the meme. best thing is to not fuck with it.
That's just silly. What is even the cutoff then? Is a game fixing a typo a day after release considered no longer authentic? A year? 5 years? You can't even argue it was a third party because Nintendo themselves did it. Saying even a typo by the original devs can't be touched is just ridiculous.

>All I want is options.
The problem is your option would come at a significant cost and effort from GOG that only maybe 0.1% of customers would care about, and there are still ways to do what you want outside of GOG. But to claim it's not preservation because it hasn't been quantum-locked in time forever decades ago from any changes ever happening ever again is insane. GOG itself is not super profitable, doing what you suggest could kill the store completely.

>>11392184
>didnt use CRT effects
so its not an issue then? I would rather use shaders anyway since the devs likely created it on a CRT and so thats what it looked like to them when they made it. It creates a more authentic experience, even if I'm not getting all the benefits I would get with console games.

>It will be hard to get people to agree on which version
I dont think it will be that hard at all in most cases.

>you can't have the original image and have the DRM removed without the original publisher somehow managing to re-compile a copy of their 20-30 year old game
so yeah its fucked then. Im not trying to argue that there is some solution. It sucks that these publishers put their greed before art. They should have bothered to keep their backups but they clearly didnt care enough. If they do have the code, however, it really shouldnt be that hard to take out the DRM stuff and recompile it.

>>11392185
>there is no authentic experience
an experience that could be had at the time would be authentic. Playing RE2 with '4th Survivor and Tofu modes enabled from the very beginning' is inauthentic, for example. Given there are limitations we have to view authenticity as a spectrum.

>That's just silly. What is even the cutoff then?
Certainly before 20 years, even if Nintendo did it themselves. Im not gonna argue that its not the original dev team because in this case a mistake has clearly been made, and by translators not the devs themselves. Time wouldnt be a good threshold anyway, I'd say whatever the state of the final version released by the devs before they move on to other things is the version that should be preserved above all. A rerelease, distinct from a revision, would not be the original game and thats effectively what Nintendo are providing now. Zelda is historically significant so the original, or final revision, should be preserved with all its bugs and typos. I'm not saying it cant be touched but if it is it should be labelled appropriately.

>your option would come at significant cost
I don't see how. Old games aren't exactly big and its not like you could download every version simultaneously. They could limit downloads on these optional versions if people start hoarding. Theres plenty of options, they simply arent putting the effort in so I think theyre disingenuous in their mission statement. If abandonware sites can do it for free how are they fucking it up for profit?

>to claim it's not preservation...
what Im saying is their program is anti-preservation because in their efforts to preserve games, in their own particular way, they are actually making it more difficult for abandonware sites to publicly preserve those games in a way that I consider to be more authentic or at least more comprehensive. Im not saying theyre doing this maliciously, its more of a knock-on effect.

>>11391982
M-Disk blu rays are a meme, normal HTL discs are made of the same inorganic metal

Why are some games so hyper fixated on “preserving” video games? 99% of them are complete shit. I actually can’t name a single one that should exist 200 years from now for any reason at all. Video games aren’t art

>>11392378
does bait make you happy or has is become a compulsion for you at this point?

>>11387690
>controller support and widescreen
it's the bare minimum for an old game now, so stfu faggot OP

>>11387709
>extra features and enhancements
Native software mode or fuck off nigger

>>11391390
NTA, but I don't think Valve offers the retail version anywhere. I still have my discs, there's some simple to use software to remove Steam from them and play the original, and it's got different lighting and such about it. (I dont really care, it just is what it is)

>>11392378
This is absolutely true for human lives as well, to hell with everyone who exists today.

File: gog chad.png (558 KB, 1080x1331)

558 KB PNG

>all that seething from Steamies
KEK this remind me that the GOG Winter Sale is coming soon. Going to buy 10~20 games like i do every year and have faggots on /v/ piss and shit themselves that i dared to buy games from GOG.

>>11392885
the gog v steam pseudo platform war is pathetic. I use both for different purposes. the valvedrones are retarded and you gogfags are contrarian faggots

What is this thread even talking about? You can't play original versions of old games because they do not run on modern systems.

At minimum you will need to alter the game to get it to run. Either with a patch or some other method.

Thus it's not "preserved" anymore. So anyone who gets mad at patches doesn't make any sense.

>>11392895
When they say "preserved" they mean "available to download on the internet for free"
Real preservation would be about maintaining and servicing old hardware and finding games as released in their original packaging and keeping them safe from wear over time.
Just the act of making any game playable on a system it wasn't designed for changes the game and is not preserved.

>>11392892
Ever since Valve was forced to admit that their business model dictates that nobody actually owns the Steam games they spend money on, they deserve all the shitflinging they get.

>>11387690
none of the games i bought from gog don't come with the original version like you describe it, but some have the ms dos executables stripped off and come with scummvm
i do NOT like that

>>11392275
>so its not an issue then? I would rather use shaders anyway since the devs likely created it on a CRT and so thats what it looked like to them when they made it
Again, my point is that the argument for using a CRT over a modern monitor isn't even there in terms of PC games from 90s and later.

>I dont think it will be that hard at all in most cases
You... think it won't be hard at all for gamers to mass-agree on their opinion of which version of a game is the best and should be the "preserved" one? Is this your first time on the internet or something?

>so yeah its fucked then. Im not trying to argue that there is some solution
That was my point, there sorta isn't really a solution here.

>If they do have the code, however, it really shouldnt be that hard to take out the DRM stuff and recompile it.
We are dealing with 40-ish years of fuckery, the last 25-ish or so where there was far less standards than today and publishers were doing all sorts of things, many publishers of which are no longer around, nor have their code anymore, and even if they did it likely cannot be compiled again with modern systems and software. Do you have any idea how much of a mess it is trying to use decades old tools to compile decades old software? You can't just toss a 30 year old code in a modern version of Visual Basic and churn out a new working compile of the game. They might not even legally be allowed to anymore as licenses for any middleware they used might have expired long ago.

>>11392285
>an experience that could be had at the time would be authentic
Which can very significantly from person to person. Many early 3D games even had an option of software rendering for those without a 3D accelerator.
>Playing RE2 with '4th Survivor and Tofu modes enabled from the very beginning' is inauthentic, for example.
Many games had later versions where stuff like that was unlocked from the beginning

>>11393467
>>11392285
>Certainly before 20 years, even if Nintendo did it themselves.
That doesn't really narrow it down, and again, you are arguing now that a TYPO should not have been corrected

>I'd say whatever the state of the final version released by the devs before they move on to other things is the version that should be preserved above all
You're saying that a dev team can never willingly hand something off to another, that's silly. It happens all the time with the original dev's blessings. It happens even with individual devs within dev teams. You are trying to draw a line on something that shifts far too much to draw on. So if a game was a buggy mess and the devs handed it off to another to fix it, only the buggy mess should be preserved? There are many games that were literally unbeatable because they were so broken, I don't think many would agree on that.

>A rerelease, distinct from a revision, would not be the original game and thats effectively what Nintendo are providing now.
Go ahead and try to argue with others that you are not playing the original Zelda because a single typo was fixed, see how many would agree.

>I don't see how
Storage costs (which ARE significant), bandwidth costs, money for the labor, licensing, new agreements, all the effort to find ways to preserved the oddball DRM needed for the games to run in their original state, etc. It's a significant effort that would cost a lot to do, and very few would care to make it worth it.

>hat Im saying is their program is anti-preservation because in their efforts to preserve games, in their own particular way, they are actually making it more difficult for abandonware sites to publicly preserve those games in a way that I consider to be more authentic
Many consider it preservation, and again, they are not taking away jack. Spend more than 10 seconds on Google and you will get these original versions you crave so badly easily, I easily can.

>>11393194
It's crazy people dont see it this way.
Emulation for example is not preservation, that's the equivalent of someone taking a photo of the Mona Lisa and putting it up on their wall. NO, that is not the Mona Lisa.
And yes, dosbox is emulation (unless im wrong, but im pretty sure it is)

>>11392885
I stopped bothering touching /v/ long ago when every topic was not talking about games so much as just pissing themselves over everything. Not surprised that they have Steam vs GoG butthurtery going on in there too. I buy games from both, though I prefer to keep to mostly old games on GoG and newer games on Steam.

>>11393194
>Real preservation would be about maintaining and servicing old hardware and finding games as released in their original packaging and keeping them safe from wear over time.
Pretty much, which there are museums who do. It's just not feasible obviously to somehow have this available to everyone as a product.
>Just the act of making any game playable on a system it wasn't designed for changes the game and is not preserved.
Disagree. I feel that allowing a wider audience to experience it even if it had to be updated to run on modern hardware is still preservation. It's not like they are changing the characters and story and gameplay itself. I can see an argument made for fan-hacks being included, not a fan of that, but because those few instances that's not the case for 99% of GoG's games. Most games would be completely forgotten if they were only preserved in the previous sense you mentioned, keeping the games in people's minds is also a way of preservation.

>>11393467
>think it won't be hard at all for gamers to mass-agree on their opinion of which version of a game is the best
generally a consensus does form on which version is best. if I'm really wrong here than I guess we'd have to preserve everything. dang.

>code stuff
it SHOULDNT be hard. they made it harder than it had to be with copyright and lack of foresight. sure the tools are probably a pain in the dick but once you get them working you're good to go

>vary from person to person
no shit, but running DOOM game files from the 90s is more authentic to the 90s experience than running edited ones from 2020, for example.
>Many early 3D games even had an option of software rendering for those without a 3D accelerator
so give me the software with those options, that would be authentic. Me choosing which renderer I need is part of the authentic experience. I get to play old games like a rich kid from the time for no extra cost (if I choose to)

>many games had later versions
yeah Im talking about the original versions. can you honestly tell me GOGs RE2 is as authentic as a version without those changes?

Perhaps we need to give "authenticity" some context. I want the experience that is authentic to the definitive or popular release from the time, not from some random rerelease. Basically I want to play shit as if I was there cause I was too young/ignorant at the time. I know I'll never have the perfect experience so I want to get it as close as possible with the tools available.

Btw I'm not some egomaniac, I know this is personal preference and opinion. That's why I think its important to give users options.

>>11393472
>doesn't really narrow it down
I know it doesn't, I'm simply stating the obvious. I said time is a poor threshold anyway. I don't know what the strict criteria should be, or if there needs to be one, I haven't given it enough thought and I'm not gonna sit here and do that now.

>you are arguing now that a TYPO should not have been corrected
that's not what I said. I said the original should be preserved for its historical significance. If they want to apply bug fixes 30 years later they should label it as a rerelease or make it clear in some other way to avoid confusion (history is surprisingly fragile). Preferably they'd allow access to the original version too.

>You're saying that a dev team can never willingly hand something off to another...
what I said was for the general case. I'm not saying there cant be exceptions and I'm certainly not drawing any hard lines.

>Storage costs (which ARE significant)
no they arent, certainly not for small files. I've got a small archive of my own that costs me nothing.
>bandwidth costs
I addressed that
>licensing, new agreements
Id need to see what they actually agreed to but Im sure it does cause plenty of problems. Is that really why they only release DOS versions?
>money for labor
theyre doing the work anyway but theyre taking it too far and changing the games too.
>significant effort that would cost a lot to do, and very few would care to make it worth it
modders/rom hackers had been doing it for free for years. if GOG arent up to the task then dont make it harder for everyone else.

>Many consider it preservation
I'm sure they do. You ignored the part were I said "more comprehensive" also.
>they are not taking away jack. Spend more than 10 seconds on Google...
Before GOG put it on their store I didnt have to, therefore they have made it more difficult. I can find whatever I want, bitch, thats not the issue here. The less public platforms are more dubious for long term preservation.

>>11393472
>try to argue with others that you are not playing the original Zelda because a single typo was fixed, see how many would agree
I don't like how you've worded this, very tricksy. If someone says they played the 'original' Zelda they probably mean they played the "first" Zelda rather than the "original version" of Zelda. If they played the new bug-fixed version and tried to claim they played an original version they would simply be wrong.

>>11393194
>When they say "preserved" they mean "available to download on the internet for free"
its not what I mean at all. financial incentive would be much better for preservation.
you weirdo self-appointed piracy watch dogs are so sensitive. if someone told me that you lot couldn't cum without paying for it I'd believe them.

>>11393194
>>11393484
hardware will eventually rot away, software can last forever

>>11394504
>generally a consensus does form on which version is best
Again, you must be new to the internet or something if you think gamers of all people are going to agree on something like that

>it SHOULDNT be hard
But it is, it's a total mess. Trying to work with old code is a huge pain in the ass that's not even feasible in many cases without basically rebuilding the original infrastructure used to compile it.

>no shit, but running DOOM game files from the 90s is more authentic to the 90s experience than running edited ones from 2020, for example.
You can make modern Doom engines play the game exactly like it originally was

>so give me the software with those options
They generally don't remove those options, even the current Steam version of Half Life 1 still has the option for a software renderer. My point though was that there is no authentic experience because different people had different hardware and played with wildly different settings.

>can you honestly tell me GOGs RE2 is as authentic as a version without those changes
I am not familiar with that ver of RE2 so I can't say, but I can say that even on the PS1 there was revisions of RE1 that people have complaints are not the "authentic" game, it becomes silly to argue this autistically about what "counts" as autistic because everyone will have some nitpick.

>I want the experience that is authentic to the definitive or popular release from the time
And my whole point is this varies from person to person and there isn't one, and most of these still give you the same experience as back then

>>11394571
>I said the original should be preserved for its historical significance
It's on ROM sites everywhere. If you expect Nintendo of all people to publicly preserve stuff, good luck

>If they want to apply bug fixes 30 years later they should label it as a rerelease or make it clear in some other way to avoid confusion
GoG isn't trying in any way to claim these are EXACTLY the original untouched images

>>11394571
>I'm not saying there cant be exceptions and I'm certainly not drawing any hard lines
Then we don't really have any definition of what counts
And that's another one of my points, there are way too many variables and edge cases and exceptions over the last 40+ years of gaming to really define "authentic" like this for PC gaming

>no they arent, certainly not for small files
They are, go ask any business, storage costs are huge, especially for things that are being actively served and not just in cold storage. Even small files add up astronomically.

>I addressed that
No you didn't, you just made a vague statement about download limits (Which would NOT go over well, imagine if Steam limited your downloads if you tried to install too many games at once) and then made an even more vague "there are plenty of options"

>Is that really why they only release DOS versions?
Likely one of many reasons, others being it's likely far easier to get those working than other versions, and in many cases they were the better version. The other systems didn't even run on x86 based CPUs, so you would need to license an emulator AND possibly the original BIOS/OS... if you even can. And depending on the system it might not even auto-launch the game. Imagine downloading a game, launching it and it just boots into an emulated PC, and then being told to type a specific command to get the game to start VS how their current DOS and Windows based games just start.

>theyre doing the work anyway but theyre taking it too far and changing the games too
It's a completely different line of work to make the originals run like you said vs what they are doing now

>modders/rom hackers had been doing it for free for years
And they can't just take their work without agreements, a lot of these modders are also not going to want their work sold and many hacks to fix stuff like DRM would straight up be illegal to include

>>11394571
>Before GOG put it on their store I didnt have to, therefore they have made it more difficult
Abandonware takedowns still happened before GoG. It's incredibly silly to argue that your Google-fu is so weak that GoG is "killing preservation" because they a random Abandonware site took down a game you can still easily get in hundreds of other places in it's original work

>>11394576
>If someone says they played the 'original' Zelda they probably mean they played the "first" Zelda rather than the "original version" of Zelda
Disagree, a typo being fixed does not mean they didn't play the original game. That's incredibly silly nitpicking. That typo does not change anything whatsoever.

Would love for all the retards here to have to install a game with no GUI, set RAM allocation themselves, require a floppy disc or CD in tray and then be forced into playing at 320x200 @ 4-8 bit color and see how obsessed they still are about "real preservation"

>>11394830
>Again, you must be new to the internet...
I'm saying they already do. Like its generally agreed the PS2 Greatest Hits version of SH2 is the best version. Its probably obvious which version to go for in most cases.

>Trying to work with old code is a huge pain in the ass that's not even feasible in many cases without basically rebuilding the original infrastructure
once the infrastructure is in place its just a matter of looking through code. You could probably reuse the environment for a good number of games too. And you could build new tools to help with this process. I'm not gonna talk about this anymore; its out of scope of the thread and youre taking some of the technical shit I'm saying too literally, I'm just saying its theoretically possible in an ideal world.

>You can make modern Doom engines play the game exactly like it originally was
exactly exactly or close enough? I dont see why we have to compromise. Using the actual files from the time is still more authentic since they're unquestionably the same old game. Emulating the old environment is also more authentic. I dont know why youre fighting me on this so much and denying that authenticity exists. Its not like I'm saying authentic == good, inauthentic == bad, its my preference.

>They generally don't remove those options
man, I... I didnt say they did... I'm saying so long as the option is included its authentic because I can choose the settings like someone would at the time. Playing with setting on or off isnt more or less authentic.

>>11394831
>>11395053
>My point though was that there is no authentic experience because different people had different hardware and played with wildly different settings
Believe me I know your point... Im not saying there is a single authentic experience. Youre acting like there were infinite possibilities when there is actually a very limited set and probably one or a few most common ones. If I played some Wonderswan edition of DOOM it would be authentic to the time but not authentic to how people commonly experienced it, or how I may have likely (or ideally) experienced it if I was there. Playing a Unity engine version with bug fixes and spelling corrections wouldnt be an wholly authentic 90s experience. So long as I can access the same settings and emulate the different hardware available at the time I can choose my authentic experience. Please stop being obtuse about this.

>I am not familiar with that ver of RE2 so I can't say
I just told you what the change they made was, are you being annoying on purpose? With RE1 if youre talking about DualShock edition that really is an inferior version. If you mean the minute text revisions done by the devs shortly after release all I can tell you that doesnt bother me at all personally. Unless you specifically wanted the experience of a day 1 purchaser of RE1 I wouldnt call playing the revisions inauthentic by any small measure, and even if you did it would only be slightly inauthentic on the first menu in one bit of text (but in that case just go for 1.0 obviously).

>It's on ROM sites everywhere.
I know but a less dubious platform would be nice. Its not on Vimm anymore...
>If you expect Nintendo of all people to publicly preserve stuff, good luck
Im not expecting anything, see thread title.

>GoG isn't trying in any way to claim these are EXACTLY the original untouched images
theyre implying it with their big fat "PRESERVED" label

>>11387690
I could never get theme hospital to work

>>11394831
>Then we don't really have any definition of what counts
we do not. maybe it has to be case by case. maybe theres a set of guidlines that could be devised to work for most cases. I'm not saying you can define what would be authentic by everybody's standard. We are talking about an artform here. My opinion right now is just archive everything so everyones happy.

>They are, go ask any business
If suboptimal business solutions are another barrier then its more evidence that preservation is fucked. Theres obviously ways they could handle this very cheaply.

>No you didn't, you just made a vague statement about download limits
I said I addressed it I didnt say I wrote a fucking novel

>imagine if Steam limited your downloads if you tried to install too many games at once
For one thing, I said limit downloads for original versions only, not their out-the-box version. Normal games would obviously have to be unaffected.
For another, they do limit your downloads to one at a time.

>others being it's likely far easier to get those working than other versions
see thats what I dont get. Why not provide the other versions if its not a licensing issue? They dont need to provide an emulator, just the files. Normal users can still press the big play button for out-the-box.

>It's a completely different line of work to make the originals run like you said
I mean theyre already putting money into it, they should put it into what I apparently said instead. If its more expensive its a test of their dedication to preservation isnt it.

>they can't just take their work without agreements
didnt even imply they should. I'm saying if random internet twats can do it illegally for free then GOG can sure as hell do it with their resources and permission.

Preserved doesn't mean untouched. Get a grip

>>11390853
The most common change I've seen to VC roms, if there's any I can find at all, is flashing lights being edited to reduce seizure risks.

>>11394834
>Abandonware takedowns still happened before GoG
they literally state games arent on there anymore because its now available storefronts such as GOG

>It's incredibly silly to argue that [because (?)] your Google-fu is so weak that GoG is "killing preservation"
Did you actually read what I said? Regardless, my statement is ironclad logic, bitch. If all these other sites were forced to follow suit would you argue theyre still readily available since you can DM redditors for a download link?

>a random Abandonware site took down a game
not random ones, the most popular ones. the less popular, dodgy-looking sites arent a strong platform for preservation.

>Disagree, a typo being fixed does not mean they didn't play the original game
you didnt read what I said you just quoted it and shat out your preloaded response. You seem like your more interested in "winning the argument" than an honest discussion at this point. That or I'm being trolled with ChatGPT.

Anyway I think youre really overcomplicating this, youre now arguing points I'm not making, and, frankly, arguing with autistic people is exhausting so lets just agree to fucking disagree. What really matters to me is video games are archived for the sake of their history. I like playing old games at maximum authenticity because I have a genuine interest in this. Since theres no dedicated historical field for vidya yet, like there is for the other arts, I'm worried we'll lose software, something that is incredibly easy to preserve, in the name of piracy prevention before theres public demand.

>>11395149
>Preserved doesn't mean untouched
it kinda does though

>>11394986
Noone is asking for that, retard

>>11395174
Really? How else can you authentically preserve the game? If you're not doing all those things then you're modifying the original experience and it's not "real preservation."
In fact you shouldn't even be able to download the game, you should have to call a hotline who will send you a floppy disk. Unless the game was on tape of course, in which case you get it in a plastic bag

If I preserve a cucumber in vinegar, it's preserved but it's not a cucumbner. I couldn#'t eat a fresh cucunmber and dill pickle and be like "this is the same." GoG is putting vinegae on cucumber jar, amd petending it's still a fresh raw cucomber. to perseve tyou need vinegae, a cucsomer left alone will rot.

>>11395170
>it kinda does though
depends what you are talking about,when talking about video games keeping them playable is more preservation than just keeping unplayable files.

>>11395189
Genuine retard who doesn't understand what dumping and installation do. I have seen some stupid shizo and insane shizo's, but have never seen a complete retard schizo like yourself.

I don't know if I'm an outlier, but all I want is the original game so I can play it with an emulator or compatibility layer (DOS-Box and Wine for PC games). I even buy used physical copies when the pirate sites don't have them unaltered.

File: giphy.gif (1.47 MB, 500x281)

1.47 MB GIF

>>11395053
>I'm saying they already do.
I have seen nothing but infighting over what is the best version in most cases like these, the ones where they agree is rare.

>once the infrastructure is in place its just a matter of looking through code
>You could probably reuse the environment for a good number of games too
picrel

>exactly exactly or close enough
exactly exactly
Unless you want to complain that not going through the original install process from floppies makes it not authentic
But at this point you are being this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o28wlLmz--c

>I dont know why youre fighting me on this so much and denying that authenticity exists
Because like I said many times, PC hardware is not a console, there was no single experience like consoles had

>>11395087
>Youre acting like there were infinite possibilities when there is actually a very limited set
Not really, no. There were hundreds of edge cases that could happen with any game depending on the system.

> If I played some Wonderswan edition of DOOM it would be authentic to the time but not authentic to how people commonly experienced it
If you're going to argue about the game across different PLATFORMS now, then good fucking luck, you just added about a million more variables to this already huge mess. That's like arguing if the PC or PS1 version of Duke Nukem is better and which one is more "authentic" when they had different content.

>With RE1 if youre talking about DualShock edition that really is an inferior version
And that's my point, not everyone will agree on that. It also goes against the claim to just use the goty/deluxe edition.

>I know but a less dubious platform would be nice
Plenty of those, your Google-fu is weak

>theyre implying it with their big fat "PRESERVED" label
No, you're just being autistic about your definition of it

>>11395190
>GOG pickles video games
Video games arent cucumbers dumbass, they dont go off. You need to look at the definition of historical preservation not culinary preservation. Btw you can also preserve food in air tight packaging without changing the contents.

>>11395127
>My opinion right now is just archive everything so everyones happy.
We have that, just not through GoG

>If suboptimal business solutions are another barrier then its more evidence that preservation is fucked
There is a reason many businesses are anti-preservation, take how SEGA is removing many of their classic games soon. Preservation is not conductive to business, in fact it's the opposite, so corporations are mostly against it. That's why GoG is an outlier, they are a business who actually cares about it, even though it means their store is held back because they only allow things such as DRM-free games on there and many publishers won't agree to that. Yet you want to attack them because it doesn't fit what is in your own opinion "preservation" when it's pretty much impossible to define with this many variables, which you even just agreed is the case.

>I said I addressed it I didnt say I wrote a fucking novel
It addressed nothing regardless of how many or little words it used

>For one thing, I said limit downloads for original versions only, not their out-the-box version
Would still not make people happy for the same reasons

>For another, they do limit your downloads to one at a time
Yes but not overall

>see thats what I dont get. Why not provide the other versions if its not a licensing issue
.... because of the other issues I mentioned in that very post?

>They dont need to provide an emulator, just the files
That would have 99% of the customers, even with a giant "You need an emulator" warning in red, to complain that the game does not work. And yes, I know you would know what to do, issue is as a business they can't just ignore that 99% of people would not and complain/demand refunds.

>I mean theyre already putting money into it, they should put it into what I apparently said instead
Except there's no money in that. Why don't you start a storefront that is just this then if you think it would actually be profitable?

>>11395192
>when talking about video games keeping them playable is more preservation than just keeping unplayable files
no that just makes them more accessible. youre just changing the definition of preservation for convenience

>>11395127
>didnt even imply they should. I'm saying if random internet twats can do it illegally for free then GOG can sure as hell do it with their resources and permission
GoG does not have a massive reverse-engineering team, no they cannot, nor would it be reasonable to dedicate tons of money and resources into that. That "twat" you mentioned is spending months to years on this sort of thing in their free time while not being bound by licensing or legal agreements, make it a paid thing and suddenly it's an expensive mess.

>>11395152
Yeah, though in many cases it's not a change to the ROM itself but just a LUA script for the emulator. That "translation" that Sin and Punishment had for the Wii? (Which was just the menus as the game itself had English text). It's a realtime script the emulator runs that modifies the game at runtime, I tried extracting the ROM from my VC copy, it was a 100% CRC match of the Japanese ROM and loaded up in Japanese in other emulators.

>>11395169
>they literally state games arent on there anymore because its now available storefronts such as GOG
And how does this change the fact that it wasn't jut GoG that did or even started this?

>Regardless, my statement is ironclad logic, bitch
Saying bitch does not make your logic ironclad, bitch.

>you argue theyre still readily available since you can DM redditors for a download link
You really need to improve your Googling, bitch

>not random ones, the most popular ones
A.K.A. the first results in Google

>That or I'm being trolled with ChatGPT.
Funny, I'm starting to feel the same, except with a beta version

By the way:
This Statement Is False

>>11395974
>>11395992
>>11396003
read my previous replies as response since you arent actually reading or comprehending what I've typed. If you had youd know that most of what you just said is invalid. Youre literally too autistic to argue with.

>Funny, I'm starting to feel the same, except with a beta version
lol youre one of those guys who thinks theyre smarter than everyone else arent you? but all youre doing now is arguing disingenuously. gtfo my thread, bitch

>>11396037
>Youre literally too autistic to argue with
You realize how many times I said that to myself while replying to your ChatGPT-BETA nonsense?

>lol youre one of those guys who thinks theyre smarter than everyone else arent you?
I swear, it's like people like you are always one step away from realizing all the crap they spew perfectly describes themselves

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So I recently found out about the Video Game History Foundation and their efforts to not only preserve source code but old development documents too. Pretty satisfied that if we already have non-profits like this then private companies like GOG aren't necessary and video game preservation may well be safe without them. This thread got exhausting, thanks for nothing as usual assholes. OP out.