No you're right, it's stupid and misleading to call modifications "preservation". I misspoke when I said 'the community does a better job at preservation', what I really meant is 'the community does a better job at tweaking and keeping old games running on new hardware.'

GOG's misleading idea of preservation is, like most things they do, short sighted, conceptually muddled and poorly communicated. It'll only get worse too as operating systems evolve (or more likely devolve), the whole thing is going to deteriorate into an unmaintainable mess.

The only way GOG can fix this mess is to bring back untouched original files in some form, even if it's just as bonus content, because if they don't all they're doing is muddying the water, nothing is actually being preserved.

What did you expect on the GOG forums? These are the same people who think Amazon Luna collaboration is a waste of money for GOG and the new dreamlist somehow worse than what we have had up until know completely ignoring the fact that the userbase is responsible for the old whislist being a mess and full of duplicates to begin with. Also, said userbase is not going easy on the dreamlist either just saying. Not to mention with Galaxy you are able to at least roll back to old versions, but I have not tried if it is possible with the games included in the preservation program, but crashing out this bad about two or three games is at the very least absurd.

Then again these are the same people who also think their ideas and decisions are far superior, when they have no idea how things work on a competitive market, not to mention inside a game distributor company and also cannot comprehend the fact why Mac and Linux support is non-existent vs on a platform like Steam.

Who on earth would think like these people do, when you are trying to make money or at least avoid going to bankrupcy considering the semi-monopoly state of Steam.

Hm... This is offtopic, but I understand the conversation with large messages like those can get confusing on the long term so I will try to explain those two points that it seems to me were aimed at something I never intended to say, thus I think you misunderstood what I meant in the giant post I made with 8 logical points. I will explain it though:

I never said Preservation Program = DRM Free, therefore, the program may or may not be DRM-Free. This is worthless to this discussion as GOG is a DRM Free store, etc.

I quoted only the messages important to clarify the, what seem to me, misunderstanding on your part.
What it seemed to me is that you came with a topic, that is, that GOG would do anything to profit.
This was the topic I was 'counter arguing' against. Not if Preservation Program is DRM Free or affect DRM Free. It does not, necessarily, but it may affect GOG build preservation.

Anyway... moving on.

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If I may, please, kindly read the message you just quoted.
I explained and did exactly the opposite of you're saying I said and did.

I never said:
- the issue was only with DA:O
- all games on Preservation Program are affected
- all games being added to the Program in the future will be affected

I said:
- DA:O was one major example of many other small ones
- all games on the Preservation Program are at risk of being affected
- all games being added to the Program in the future will have their Pre-Program Offline Installers lost, because Offline Installers have no Rollback feature as Galaxy does, thus, if said game added to the Program have any issues, we wont be able to download a working Offline Installer build
- all games that will be added to the Program in the future are at risk of being affected in ways that GOG team doesn't expect, and we will, most likely, only discover this "after its too late"
- This will not help to preserve these games in the end but hurt Offline Installers preservation on the long run

Also, annoyingly, I will repeat this argument again:
(Although to be fair, I understand that with big and controversial topics like this, repetition is necessary as you're not obliged to read the whole thread for the arguments presented.)

- Most likely you guys that had no issues have not played 100% of the games that were affected;
- As @AB2012 explained, again, just because you had no issues with it, it doesn't mean others weren't affected, this is a factual problem explained at least 4 times by AB2012 and other users on this and other forum posts, both on General and specific games forums;
- Most likely GOG had no time to check every bit of gameplay after they did the builds, thus users will most likely encounter other issues that we don't even know about right now as the time goes by;
- Because of this, in the long term, GOG will just forget about these changes, and we might end up with Preservation Program breaking some offline installers with no way for them to know which ones will be affected in the future, if they continue the Program like this applying the "One Fix to Rule Them All"
- Most likely mods that are now broken on the newer Post-Program builds will not be updated for it, thus GOG versions of games being added to the Program will not be recommended for users that enjoy modding their games.

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Sorry sir/lady... but your post makes no sense and its just a generalization fallacy and it doesn't contribute to the discussion at all.

You just randomly attacked those who agree that the Program should be reviewed by GOG and that GOG should offer us the choice to use the original Offline Installers builds.

Is that much to ask on your mind?
Or just because we disagree with the haste GOG is working on the Program we are now "Enemies of GOG" and "Full Complainers"?
Shouldn't we discuss what GOG do with the products we buy?

The kind of thing they are doing with the Preservation Program offline installer builds is the same Steam does with forced updates, giving us no choice if we even want the update or not.

"Use Galaxy with the rollback then." - If your counter argument is this, I don't even know what to say. :/

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The many edits:
Corrections, etc.

Okay where to start

- DA:O was one major example of many other small ones

One game and then you are vague about other minor things, DA:O is the only game people keep bringing up and despite that you titles the thread "Stop this madness, Preservation Program is killing games!" One game really deserves this apocolyptic scenario? All throughout this thread you keep alluding to the end of games over one game that a handful of people are having issues with...... one game..... ONE.

- all games on the Preservation Program are at risk of being affected

Again you go to using fear to support your argument, you are trying to use emotion to provoke people to your way of thinking rather than providing evidence aside from, again, one game only a handful of people are having issues with.

Saying all games are at risk of being affected you might as well say all people are risk of something bad happening to them with how vague you are being. Plus affected by what? Again you are treating this like a virus or something way worse than what is actually happening.

- all games being added to the Program in the future will have their Pre-Program Offline Installers lost, because Offline Installers have no Rollback feature as Galaxy does, thus, if said game added to the Program have any issues, we wont be able to download a working Offline Installer build


This is again fear-mongering. If GOG is not offering games that are not in a playtable state that could bring in legal issues and also cause massive damage to them publicly with how easy it is for something to spread among the gamin communioty on the internet. You are just scarring people to believe your argument.

- all games that will be added to the Program in the future are at risk of being affected in ways that GOG team doesn't expect, and we will, most likely, only discover this "after its too late"

Again this is just more fear and also repetition of previous statements that have had no facts or evidence to them.

- This will not help to preserve these games in the end but hurt Offline Installers preservation on the long run


This, again, is just your opinion that has no evidence of being true, again one game has had minor issues that only a handful of people experienced. At first I was respecting your desire to ensure things are running smoothly but these last few pieces make me feel you just like yelling at people that "The Sky is Falling"

- Most likely you guys that had no issues have not played 100% of the games that were affected;

For your argument to be true though you would have to had played every game that is in the program and has bad experiences with the vast majority of them to title the thread "Stop this madness, Preservation Program is killing games!". But again, everything just keeps going back to DA:O with, once again, minor problems a handful of people are having (that should be fixed I will state)

I have not played every game in the system. But all the ones I have, DA:O among them, have run with no issues or have performed better than the last time I downloaded and played them.

- As @AB2012 explained, again, just because you had no issues with it, it doesn't mean others weren't affected, this is a factual problem explained at least 4 times by AB2012 and other users on this and other forum posts, both on General and specific games forums;

Nobody said others have not had performance issues, with the countless computer builds out there pretty much every game should have issues in some form regardless when they were made.... hell games being made today are experiencing performance issues way worse then what is being experienced here. But again this is a small number that you are inflating to imply the entire program is broken.

- Most likely GOG had no time to check every bit of gameplay after they did the builds, thus users will most likely encounter other issues that we don't even know about right now as the time goes by;

You have no evidence to support this. But, as I just stated, almost all development studios are having problems getting programs running on the countless computer setups that are out in the world. I don't know how many systems they test on and I doubt anyone here outside of GOG know how many types of systems they have to test on. They could have done extensive testing on as many systems they could believe are common setups but missed one or two obscure CPU/GPU setups or a specific software package that could be causing conflicts.

- Because of this, in the long term, GOG will just forget about these changes, and we might end up with Preservation Program breaking some offline installers with no way for them to know which ones will be affected in the future, if they continue the Program like this applying the "One Fix to Rule Them All"

This isn't a statement and is again more emotional manipulation to make people afraid of using GOG and the programs in the Preservation program.

- Most likely mods that are now broken on the newer Post-Program builds will not be updated for it, thus GOG versions of games being added to the Program will not be recommended for users that enjoy modding their games.

Again more attempts to cause emotional distress into people. Anyone who is into the modding scene knows that any patch or game update runs the risk of breaking mods, Bethesda is notorious for this with (Fallout 4 Next-Gen patch anyone?) there game updates and some companies like Capcom are actively trying to dissuade people from modding there games.

Modding is not a feature of games, it's something the gaming community due on there own time to change a game to there taste with some copmanies being fine with it and some trying to prevent it.

I suspect a lot of people are mis-reading intentions here, ie, to me the motive coming from various posters is obviously concerned precaution rather than "fear-mongering". Eg, if you allow downloading an older offline installer of the original and then nothing bad happens, well, nothing has been lost has it? It's like backing up your data and then not needing it. No big deal. On the other hand, if GOG screw something up, or refuse to fix it for years on end (as they have done in the past), or perhaps as mentioned above, they add a patch that will become as outdated in 10 years time as some 10 year patches are today, but you then can't install those 10 year newer patches on top of an older conflicting one, but perhaps GOG may not be around forever to do it for you, and they refuse to let you download that original preventing you from doing it yourself, then you're screwed and it's too late to do anything about.

This is less fear-mongering and more common sense, ie, it's no real different to retail disc owners who have to apply a patch to get a 20 year old CD-ROM game to work, they wont go tossing the original disc away just because they can zip up the game folder with patch applied, just in case they need that original version to install an even newer patch or source-port that requires the original form in future. Countless games have been through this over the years that it's an entirely valid longer-term concern.

I had that with Morrowind. MGE XE & Morrowind Code Patch fix up a lot of problems running Morrowind under W10 whilst retaining the original game engine. However, after installing them I tried to add the game folder to OpenMW later on and just couldn't get it to work. Wiping then reinstalling Morrowind (without MGE XE & Morrowind Code Patch) from scratch then adding OpenMW then worked fine. Moral of the story - People aren't being unreasonable in not wanting today's game preservation campaigns pre-installing today's patches to not bork the ability to install future patches in the future.

10 years from now...... really...... I love how people keep moving the goal posts. You are assuming GOG has already failed. You keep saying GOG can't, GOG won't, this sound more like you just want GOG to go away more than anything.

Got to love the paranoia where everyone is assuming the worst then are just expecting it to happen.

Again, I have tried many of the games in the GOG preservation program, DAO included and they have worked fine and, in some cases, some worked better for me compared to previous builds of the game, so that for me shows they want to make this work. But again my own experiences run contrary to the narrative being pushed so clearly they don't count.

Again, there are an infinite number of possible computer builds out there so yes there will be problems and again, as I stated earlier, even brand new games are still having issues running on all these different builds.

Right now the only game having proven issues DA:O, these issues seem to be affecting a small group of people and should be fixed (with many of the issues having been fixed).

Also love how the normal retorts are "People are just mis-reading intentions". Only so many ways to read the same thing being regurgitated .

I'll just sit back now for the typical "You don't understand" or "You are part of the problem" or "You're just a GOG Supporter" posts.


But please understand. I want nothing more than for people to experience there games without issues, if they are having problems then fixes should be made available. But to just go out and explain "the whole system doesn't work" or "All the games are at risk" is fear-mongering, it is using fear of your offline installers not working to provoke an emotional response against a company and also falsely representing a company with no proof to support your position.... and one game which only a handful of people are having issues is not proof of your position.

If what this thread is exclaiming was indeed true it would have blown up over social media as things like this normally do, there would have been tons of videos and social media posts - people who never even heard of GOG would react as negativity generates clicks and attention and spreads like a virus....... but it hasn't, The Hitman Fiasco really blew up in GOG's face years back and I saw people who never heard of GOG report on that but nothing negative has come from this..........and please don't claim I am overreacting because after reading a good chunk of this thread that would be rather hypocritical.

I really don't. I want them to stay around in the long run. You on the other hand, seem to have quite the unhealthy habit of putting words into people's mouths. I've only made 3 posts in this whole thread and none say "I want GOG to go away, no game GOG preserves will work, nothing works, etc". Half the people you're arguing with didn't say that either. Your endless false accusations of "people said every game is broken, etc" when they clearly didn't are pure unrefined gaslighting.

that's the sense I get from at least some people on the forum.

You do seem to be doing that though. People aren't complaining about GOG adding fixes, they're concerned about losing the original version they paid for as a desired "insurance policy" against old fixes blocking new fixes in future. In post 111, I just gave an example of how 10 year old patches block new ones from working and where I needed that original to be reinstalled. There's no conspiracy or anger there, that's just my own experience too. The concern is valid and the intent behind it is genuine for many of us regardless of how you want to reframe it.

I actually didn't want to join this discussion, as I personally can't yet make any concrete statements about the games in question.

For me personally, and probably for most GOG veterans here, it shouldn't be a problem to save most of the games from this preservation program in multiple versions. Many of these titles are relatively old and therefore relatively small. So why not simply back up all versions of at least the important titles?

Of course, this only helps those who have been here for a while and have always backed up everything. Unfortunately, this wouldn't be a solution for new customers, but they could at least request a refund if they have problems with a game.

From a technical perspective, I agree with AB2012's point of view. Always offer a game in its original state and always add the further development to it. That would be true preservation.

Have a nice weekend!

That's the problem with conversation in text, people tend to let assumptions and there own perceptions fill in the blanks. I haven't put words into anyone's mouth, I can only respond to what people are typing and that is how people are typing.

To be perfectly honest, I bet if everyone here in this thread could just sit down together we could sort this out within 20 minutes and, at the very least, have a better understanding of everyone's view point as well as one another, AT most maybe some new friendships could be made and we could even help those who are still having issues.

But again the problem with plain text, words can be mis-interpreted, sarcasm is lost, a viewpoint can't really be fully explained, and a persons objectives could be twisted or mis-represented when read back. Even a simple grammar error can change the meaning of a sentence.

Again, just a shame people can't just sit down and sort things out.
Again, never said this, I was pointing out that people were blowing things out of proportions. People should be getting proper fixes for there games but the very titles of this thread doesn't say "hey I have a problem with a game can someone fix it"

Also never said someone who was having a problem wasn't valid, I have stated multiple times that if someone has a problem that problem should be fixed so they can play there games.

I also never re-framed anything, It is clear people are having issues with DA:O and would like these issues fixed, I never said this wasn't true and in fact support this and would never dare to re-frame this, but it is hard to deny people in the thread, and the thread title itself, is painting the issue much larger than it actually is: Again "Stop this Madness, Preservation Program is killing games" this title alone is reframing what the actual issue is.

Again for everyone still having issues I want you to get your games fixed so you can enjoy them.

I concur and I will NEVER install Windows 11. (Microsoft tried to force me to download it when I accidentally rebooted with the PC connected to the internet.) Why? Because it is a trojan horse that usurps control over the device for the benefit of Microsoft; the PC becomes a node on their network and the owner (us) can be physically locked out of their computer!
Fahrenheit 451 using the Dark Web™. :D
The opportunity here is for Gog to coördinate the amateur efforts of the crowd-sourced workforce willing to preserve their favourite games. That way, they can be the gate their curated content while encouraging the fans to do what they do best. This is a better, less error-prone workflow.
I cannot see a better way, since backward compatibility is less and less true as more versions of OS and hardware (devices that were never envisioned when the games were originally made and that are not backward compatible with their own specie) appear.
It is possible that Gog are creating a new baseline for future maintenance releases and I sincerely hope that is how it was planned and executed.
QFT

This is a(nother) reminder that abrogating supervision of maintenance in any respect will always rely on those to whom the maintenance is delegated are making assumptions that we would in their place. That assumption, itself, is inherently flawed.

I have all the games I have bought, downloaded around the time of purchase, stored offline. Any updates are stored separately.

I haven't posted here yet but I can say (I feel compelled to say for some reason?) that I agree with the OP and the sentiment of this thread. I am sure there are more people like me who haven't posted yet but do agree.

The issue is that a lot of these games are old so not many people are playing them actively.

People are not going crazy over the internet about these changes because any problems encountered are by a minority of a minority. But they still bought the game and if they want to go back and fix those problems then they have no way to do it, no access to the original files, and no publicly available patches/fixes for the "GOG version".

GOG is not big enough to be making wholesale changes to games because they potentially make weird versions that are incompatible with other platforms and other community patches.