If it's not corrected on Wine side it will be a problem for plenty of games in the future. you cannot realistically expect all games to have an engine recreation/released source code; it would be great but it's king of unrealistic.

He was implying that it was GoG responsibility to ensure that it's games/installer were future proof and that them not going it was some sort of "DRM". At least that's how I read it.

However it's fixed, it's going to be difficult. x86 machine code is x86 machine code. Wine just reinvents the loader and the libraries the code expects to call. (On-disk binary formats are sort of like Ogg, Matroska, and so on. They provide a defined structure for the binary code and a whole bunch of metadata. Windows uses PE, OSX uses Mach-O, and everything else modern has agreed that ELF is superior in every way except for supporting embedded icons or "Universal Binaries"... both of which were prototyped for it but rejected.)

Rewriting how a compiled program uses processor registers is non-trivial and, so far, most of the talk I've heard of getting Win64 to work on OSX has centered around emulating it via qemu-user. (Which is full/slow emulation. It's also how you run Win32 Wine on ARM processors.)

My interpretation was that he wants GOG to limit the roadblocks they put up to ones that are roadblocks as an inherent side-effect of "computer science is complicated" rather than "explicitly tries to limit what you can do".

(Sort of like the difference between speaking a foreign language and speaking in code.)

Yeah, wrongly worded of me. The (common) browsers don't do checksumming without such addons though, and even considering them, GOG cannot offer official support for them.

If a support issue comes down to making sure that a file is downloaded without missing/changed bits, the only tools they can - and should - recommend are ones they have tested extensively themselves - taking that into account, I'm fairly certain that the official downloader is the only one with built-in checksum checking.

Hence why I said "in so much as anyone can guarantee anything".
If the computers are so different that they cannot read the file then that is on me to try and work with it, it is not something that GoG did.
It doesn't matter what type of computers we have in the future, I guarantee (again, in as far as anyone can guarantee anything) that it will be possible to physically copy files from old systems to whatever we have at the time.

Oh absolutely, but if you'd read my first paragraph, and really the last 20-odd pages of discussion, you'd see that "this" isn't quality assuring their software, it was poorly implemented and didn't accomplish what they claimed they were trying to do. Don't defend that.


Future. In the future. Distant future. Not now. Years from today, as in not the present. In a time when computers are completely different and those installers have no chance of running on the hardware, after a time when they may have done something that makes it impossible to run those installers at all.

In so far as anyone can guarantee anything, yes they can. They can promise to only use package technologies with known formats that can be extracted by third party tools. Beyond that it's up to the user to figure out what to do with it. Maybe not easily, if we have to jump through hoops to do it then so be it, but the possibility is still there. If they implement something in the future that is somehow encrypted that it cannot be extracted without their installer AND they've done something "clever" with the installer such that it just doesn't run in Wine, or Windows 19, or even Windows XP in an emulatore, whatever we've got at the time, that's the problem. Promise me that, that they won't intentionally do something that makes it impossible to get the data files. Basically the only thing I can think of is if they put in literal DRM, something like a "phone home" installer, or time synced, but I'm not very imaginative, I cannot see the future, and it is entirely possible that they may, over the next few years, create an installer which will eventually be impossible to read. I want a promise that they won't do that.
No hand holding required, just a promise that they won't make it impossible to get the data. That doesn't seem like very much to ask.
Yes, that's what I was getting at. They should "future proof" their installers by not making limiting decisions, not by literally thinking about what is currently happening. They don't need to guarantee that it'll work with current tools, it's enough to guarantee that the format of their installers, whatever it may be, is known enough that someone else can write a tool for the job. As long as they don't intentionally try to limit things everything will work out just fine.

Is there a full list of games affected by this? Are they already unpassworded?

The whole point of the installer is it to give the user the data files. They can't make that impossible, can they? :)
The only thing that may happen is that our tools don't work any longer and we have to develop new ones. But if those data is in the installer, it can also be extracted. The only question is how much effort it requires.
And in that matter I am content with the promise of GOG that they won't hinder our efforts on purpose.

Maybe they can. Maybe they can't now but find something in the future. Who knows? The future has many possibilities. Maybe, over time, little bits and pieces of DRM slowly slip in, mostly benign on their own, until one day, years from now, a complete infrastructure that depends on always on connectivity exists, and that could have all started with the (easily breakable) password protected RAR files.
The only people who can say this won't happen are the good folks of GoG.
Note very carefully what I'm saying and asking for. I did not complain about the password protected RAR files simply because it made extraction more difficult (although that is a concern, it's not something I would complain about), I complained about them because they didn't do the things we were told they were supposed to do: they created a feature that did nothing but hinder "legitimate" (rightful owners even if they aren't using it in a prescribed manner) users.


Yes, that is almost word for word what I said. If non-compatibility is a result of a perfectly valid feature, that's unfortunate but they don't claim to support third party stuff. An interesting side effect of "not hindering on purpose" and "no DRM" (as is classically defined) is that future compatibility will basically be assured. But if they can't even promise these two things then there's not enough trust in the system, especially when they explicitly reject such third party extraction in their EULA.

Minor correction, Wine can handle 64 bit, sort of, it's just a real PITA to set up and not something that's done by default. In general, you don't want to go there if you don't have to, but it is possible.

I've done it and it's a pain that involves a fair amount of work in most cases.

http://wiki.winehq.org/Wine64

I see. My bad. The lack of official attention is unfortunate.

But, interesting ideas keep rolling in.

This particular issue didn't affect me personally, but I was aware of it and was mildly concerned.

For lack of a better venue, thanks to the GOG.com team for listening to your friends and responding in a rational and responsible manner. You will continue to enjoy my business and I will continue to recommend GOG.com to anyone who will listen.

Thank you. You are rare in this world. I appreciate that.

yes I did read the post and as I said you can just install the games to an external hard drive and keep that as your game data archive

Except the whole point is not to install it but unpack with minimal effort. Using Wine for that and let a lone some Windows in VM is far from minimal effort. Anyway, GOG already said they aren't going to hinder that on purpose.

They also said we won't get regional pricing. :P

Yeah but those games DIDN'T WORK. GOG games work fine, if you're trying to make an emulator or a mod for something that doesn't work then more power to you. But trying to extract game data from a perfectly working installer using a algorithm to hack it's password is insane. Especially when he developers of said installer have gone out of their way to make it unnesosery hence the term "hassle free and user friendly." So there's no need do it.