It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion"Digital games can't be preserved"(65 posts)(65 posts)
(65 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
This is my favourite topic
Posted January 19, 2024
high rated
https://nordic.ign.com/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown/77571/news/ubisoft-exec-says-gamers-need-to-get-comfortable-not-owning-their-games-for-subscriptions-to-take-of

Ubisoft trying to push game subscription services, that is nothing new.

What interested me more in that article was how the writer (Wesley Yin-Poole) seems to have an odd idea that digitally delivered games can't be "preserved":


Tremblay’s comments also bring up the issue of video game preservation. As more games go down the digital route or rely upon an internet connection to work, so does the risk that these games are lost to time when their servers are shut down. Developer Remedy Entertainment was heavily criticised for releasing Alan Wake 2 as a digital-only video game to keep the price below $70.


Ummm, hello? Digitally delivered games are the BEST way to preserve games... as long as they don't rely on online DRM (or any DRM, but in the case of digitally delivered games, it usually means online DRM).

For instance, I still have my original Wing Commander 2 and Red Baron installations from the early 1990s preserved on my hard drive. The point was not that they were "physical" games, as in delivered on floppies, but that they didn't have any kind of copy protection nor DRM. After I had installed those games from the original floppies, I could just zip those installation directions, and continue using them even now, decades later (on DOSBox, or an old PC that can still run MS-DOS).

So no, being able to preserve games has nothing to do whether it is physical or digital (-ly delivered). It depends only if the game has any copy protection (in the case of physical games), and/or online DRM (mainly with digital games). GOG.com should be a prime example of that.

So yes, digital-only Alan Wake 2 can be preserved just fine, as long as it doesn't rely on online DRM. I guess on consoles it will because consoles by default rely on either online DRM or physical copy protections on all their games. A physical game with online DRM or physical copy protection can't be preserved either, unless someone cracks, ie. removes, that DRM/copy protection.


Luckily, Larian doesn't agree with Ubisoft:

https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/1747556874562457799

To Larian, the gamer "owning" the game is still a thing. Damn I feel good for buying Baldur's Gate III, and other Larian games on GOG.
Post edited January 19, 2024 by timppu
Posted January 19, 2024
high rated
avatar
timppu:

Tremblay’s comments also bring up the issue of video game preservation. As more games go down the digital route or rely upon an internet connection to work, so does the risk that these games are lost to time when their servers are shut down. Developer Remedy Entertainment was heavily criticised for releasing Alan Wake 2 as a digital-only video game to keep the price below $70.
You have to remember this is Ubisoft we're talking about, so probably the idea of digitally distributing games without some form of online DRM is completely exotic to them.
Posted January 19, 2024
high rated
avatar
timppu:

Tremblay’s comments also bring up the issue of video game preservation. As more games go down the digital route or rely upon an internet connection to work, so does the risk that these games are lost to time when their servers are shut down. Developer Remedy Entertainment was heavily criticised for releasing Alan Wake 2 as a digital-only video game to keep the price below $70.
avatar
WinterSnowfall: You have to remember this is Ubisoft we're talking about, so probably the idea of digitally distributing games without some form of online DRM is completely exotic to them.
I wasn't really commenting on what the Ubisoft exec was saying (he pushes subscription services, whoopie-doo, what else is new?), but the wrong suggestion in the article itself that digitally delivered games are detrimental to game preservation, while physical games can be "preserved". The article even used Alan Wake 2 (a non-Ubisoft game) as an example, suggesting that it can't be preserved because it is released only as a digital game, not physical.

In reality it is the exact opposite, digitally delivered games can be easily preserved... as long as they don't have (online) DRM. We GOG-users certainly know that.

Either way, since I am an irritating know-it-all who likes to correct people, I decided to reply to the writer of the original article, even pushing the GOG.com service to him like some kind of religious zealot:


Hi

I read your recent article, which was overall quite good.

https://nordic.ign.com/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown/77571/news/ubisoft-exec-says-gamers-need-to-get-comfortable-not-owning-their-games-for-subscriptions-to-take-of

However, I disagree with this part:

"Tremblay’s comments also bring up the issue of video game preservation. As more games go down the digital route or rely upon an internet connection to work, so does the risk that these games are lost to time when their servers are shut down. Developer Remedy Entertainment was heavily criticised for releasing Alan Wake 2 as a digital-only video game to keep the price below $70."

Being able to preserve games has nothing to do whether it is delivered physically or digitally, or in fact, digital delivery is better for game preservation for future generations.

All that matters is whether the game has copy protection (in the case of physical games) or online DRM (in the case of digital games). For instance, you can buy Baldur's Gate 3 PC version from www.gog.com, download its installer files from the GOG website digitally, and install and play that game decades from now, regardless of whether GOG or Larian servers are still online then.

The beauty is that those digital Baldur's Gate 3 installer files have no online DRM, so you can freely install and play the game, even without an internet connection. Same for Alan Wake 2; as long as it doesn't have online DRM, the digital version can be preserved just fine for the future, which e.g. applies to the DRM-free Alan Wake 1 (on e.g. www.gog.com). I presume currently Alan Wake 2 PC-version does have online DRM on the Epic Game Store which makes in "unpreservable", but it is because of the online DRM, not for being a digitally delivered game. If they remove the online DRM from that game at some point, then it can be preserved for the future.

For physical games, I give a similar example for the original Wing Commander 2 and Red Baron PC (MS-DOS) games that I bought as a small boy in the early 1990s for my 486DX PC. The games were physical (delivered on floppy disks) but they had no copy protection nor DRM. So, after you had installed those two games from the floppies to your PC's hard drive, you could even throw the installation floppy disks to trash bin if you wanted, you didn't really need them anymore in order to play or "reinstall" the game.

You could just zip those installed Wing Commander 2 and Red Baron games (their installation directories), copy and unzip them to another PC, and continue playing there. I know because I still have those games zipped on my hard drive (playable on e.g. DOSBox), while the original floppy disks from which I originally installed them in the early 90s, have been long gone.

www.gog.com is a prime example on PC how game preservation and digital delivery work great together.
Post edited January 19, 2024 by timppu
Posted January 19, 2024
high rated
LOL.
Luckily, I do *not* need to get comfortable with anything from modern Ubisoft.
Posted January 19, 2024
avatar
timppu: What interested me more in that article was how the writer (Wesley Yin-Poole) seems to have an odd idea that digitally delivered games can't be "preserved":


Tremblay’s comments also bring up the issue of video game preservation.
As more games [...] rely upon an internet connection to work [...] the risk [rises] that these games are lost to time, when their servers are shut down.


Ummm, hello? Digitally delivered games are the BEST way to preserve games... as long as they don't rely on online DRM (or any DRM, but in the case of digitally delivered games, it usually means online DRM).
I can't look into that author's head, to know for sure what he meant, exactly...yet, I'm pretty confident in my assessment, that it was directly related to the parts that I bolded.
Posted January 19, 2024
avatar
BreOl72: I can't look into that author's head, to know for sure what he meant, exactly...yet, I'm pretty confident in my assessment, that it was directly related to the parts that I bolded.
Indeed, the author of that article seems to be equally confused about digital distribution, as if in itself that would imply some form of always-online DRM or a server component for games. You don't need physical releases to combat the aforementioned problem, just a sane attitude when it comes to development choices.
Post edited January 19, 2024 by WinterSnowfall
Posted January 19, 2024
avatar
WinterSnowfall: Indeed, the author of that article seems to be equally confused about digital distribution, as if in itself that would imply some form of always-online DRM or a server component for games. You don't need physical releases to combat the aforementioned problem, just a sane attitude when it comes to development choices.
Or at the very least, a sane exit plan. I don't know if/when EA plans to unplug Sims 3, but given the entire game is better than the whole of Sims 4 on several marks, I imagine it's an embarrassment to have a game 15 years older do that; and that they may choose not to preserve the last gasp of the company formerly known as Maxis.
Posted January 19, 2024
avatar
BreOl72: I can't look into that author's head, to know for sure what he meant, exactly...yet, I'm pretty confident in my assessment, that it was directly related to the parts that I bolded.
avatar
WinterSnowfall: Indeed, the author of that article seems to be equally confused about digital distribution, as if in itself that would imply some form of always-online DRM or a server component for games. You don't need physical releases to combat the aforementioned problem, just a sane attitude when it comes to development choices.
This. It used e.g. Alan Wake 2 as an example of a non-preservable game because there was no physical release, only digital. So I mentioned Baldur's Gate 3 and the first Alan Wake game for him, as games where the digital version is fully preservable.

The confusion you mention may come from playing too many console games (where all digital games have DRM by default, you can't just copy the files to another console and continue playing there), or thinking incorrectly that all digital PC games nowadays require an online account and client in order to play them. It may be a totally unfathomable idea to them that some digitally sold games wouldn't have such online requirements.

Either way, it is indeed odd to suggest physical games would be somehow better "preservable" as:

a) More and more physical games also require an online account, so the only difference to the digital version is that the initial installation comes from the physical disc. The days of PS2 where physical console games didn't require that are long gone.

b) The physical media itself becomes an obstacle for game preservation as it WILL eventually break up. Digital games don't have the same restriction, the bits and bytes can be always transferred to a new media and even make multiple backup copies.
Post edited January 19, 2024 by timppu
Posted January 20, 2024
avatar
timppu: Damn I feel good for buying Baldur's Gate III, and other Larian games on GOG.
Oh yeah...that very same Larian who knowingly left the GOG version of Divinity: Original Sin broken on GOG, with a game-breaking bug that they deliberately never bothered to fix, for a period of just short of five years, until they finally patched the bug.

But do you think the Steam version also had that same game-breaking bug in it? No, of course not. And if it did, surely they would have bothered to fix the Steam version long before 5 years had passed.

So no, Larian is certainly not some paragon of virtue when it comes to making sure consumers "own" their games.
Post edited January 20, 2024 by Ancient-Red-Dragon
Posted January 20, 2024
high rated
avatar
Ancient-Red-Dragon: Oh yeah...that very same Larian who knowingly left the GOG version of Divinity: Original Sin broken on GOG, with a game-breaking bug that they deliberately never bothered to fix, for a period of just short of five years, until they finally patched the bug.

But do you think the Steam version also had that same game-breaking bug in it? No, of course not. And if it did, surely they would have bothered to fix the Steam version long before 5 years had passed.

So no, Larian is certainly not some paragon of virtue when it comes to making sure consumers "own" their games.
On the other hand, during that time they also stated that the fix was to allow everyone to revert to the previous version, but GOG wouldn't do that for offline installer users, just telling anyone who asked to use Galaxy.
Posted January 20, 2024
avatar
timppu: What interested me more in that article was how the writer (Wesley Yin-Poole) seems to have an odd idea that digitally delivered games can't be "preserved"
Well yeah, if (AAA)game makers go to streaming only or game content accessed mainly through such
methods, gamers won't be able to preserve much. My guess is it's that sort of 'gaming' he's talking about.
Posted January 20, 2024
avatar
timppu: Tremblay’s comments also bring up the issue of video game preservation. As more games go down the digital route or rely upon an internet connection to work, so does the risk that these games are lost to time when their servers are shut down.
And the risk that breaking someone's favorite games in this manner, one by one, causes decreasing desire to continue buying such vaporizing-ware.

But if they get enough sales it probably doesn't decrease executive comfort. They could look at a forecast and see a flock of new gamers who've never owned a disk, who have only played "streaming apps", (and who may feel physically ill if they sit down at a boardgame without a 20 dollar buy-in for cosmetics and starting bonuses.) OK now it's just a rant. :o)

If current gamers don't comply with Ubisoft's demands to be Ubisoft-comfortable, oh well: less than maximum executive comfort while continuing the same worsening business practices. :'-(
Posted January 20, 2024
There is indeed a problem with older games.

For example I cant play my copies of Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II anymore. They require MSDOS.

Thankfully I dont want to play them anymore anyway even if I could, so whatever.

Such a problem may one day also occur with current Windows games, who knows. Even now older Windows games arent the smoothest to run.
Posted January 20, 2024
I want to buy a GAME not a "digital subscription service", so, Ubisoft is right... you can not buy their games anymore.

Technically, someone have to buy their game first and the subscription service after; else the game may fail to run at all. However, if no online subscription is made, it is like buying a car without a driving license and all the other costs paid... it may not drive a single mile anymore. There is still a difference: The car at least got some real value and can be sold, the game on the other hand in the current condition got zero value and is useless as an investment.

In my mind, the current digital prices are crazy high, considering, the majority of games are nothing more than a "subscription service" with some local data stored (that are useless without a service linked to it).
Post edited January 20, 2024 by Xeshra
Posted January 20, 2024
avatar
timppu: Ummm, hello? Digitally delivered games are the BEST way to preserve games... as long as they don't rely on online DRM (or any DRM, but in the case of digitally delivered games, it usually means online DRM).
Yes, indeed, the big preservation problem is the presence of DRM, and the more aggressive it is, the worse it is.

In terms of preservation, you could also argue that digital distribution in itself is better than physical distribution because it avoids other problems that can make preservation difficult. If there's no physical layer, then you don't have to worry about media degradation or figuring out how to access the content of some ancient or esoteric format that you no longer have a reader for, if you ever did.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion"Digital games can't be preserved"(65 posts)(65 posts)
(65 posts)