No worries - I don't expect you to allow it and I appreciate we're allowed to discuss this so openly. We're not here to be competition for GOG but rather to offer what you can't or don't.

Attitudes like like this remind me of how much I love GOG.
You guys rule.
Keep on being awesome.

No, objective.

If you have been in doubt, the forums belonging to the site have a "request" part, and you could see how the biggest number of requests gets rejected if there's any legal retailer selling it, or if it's an ESA member, and so on. The staff on AB goes to great lengths to ensure that nothing in the "warez" category makes the light of day on the site. I myself started on HOTU, then migrated to AB, where someone pointed me to the 2009 Interplay sale here on GoG (thanks Red :P). Since then, I grabbed around 70 titles here, replacing my illegal copies one by one. Guess you could say my parrot died and the peg leg was stolen ;)

I am a member of Abandonia I have also brought a fair amount of games from GoG and do so whenever I can. I also am one of the people to remove games from Ab when we find a source of sale or are asked by the relevant copy right holder or by the ESA. But we don't just collect games and let people download them we collect boxshots, art, posters, manuals and extra content that game with the game itself, that collectors seem to love and have a hard time getting from over places including real life. We also have a forum that people are free to come to and talk about their old games, help people play them and be with people of a like mind.

I buy plenty of old games (and new), but if I am buying them second hand I might as well have pirated them. Second hand games return no money to the copyright holder, at all. When you can explain to me how me downloading Laura Bow 1 could in anyway affect Sierra Online Inc. or how doing so is worse then buying a second hand overpriced copy who's cost will never be returned to Sierra I will stop. (And when it comes out on GoG I will be sure to get it from here to go with my collection)

Well while it doesn't make any difference to Sierra - pirating games is still illegal - I don't mean that anyone cares enough about most abandonware to enforce the law or that it counts as a particularly big breach of the law (I've downloaded games from abandonware myself) but I will always prefer second hand games because they are legal.
It isn’t because I want to support developers that I don’t pirate games (except for occasional abandonware!) it because it doesn’t seem right to get something for free when I can and should pay for it.

Sorry, but there is a flaw in that statement. If you would have pirated then somebody (the seller) would not have seen money for it. It makes a difference.

I could even argue that indirectly the ability to resell something increases the chance of accepting a higher price initially and therefore might be compeltely neutral on the total return for the original copyright holders.

Right, that is exactly why publishers are stepping up against second hand resale, putting in stuff that renders your used copy not 100% anymore, like the inability to delete saves, no multiplayer and not being able to access parts of the game. Sure.

Hello,

Abandonia is a nice website. I use it frequently to get copies of old games i used to play as kid. Games sold on Gog.com are not available for download at Abandonia.com. So there is no conflict of interest, no Abandonia actualy advertises for gog.com for free. I do not see any link on gog.com to abandonia.com at all. The admins over there do all the hosting for free, so they do a great work in keeping alive old games, and they did it long before gog.com did it for money. So i do not think it is fair to talk bad about someone who does deliver a good service for free.

Gog.com delivers a great service too. I would not spent so much money here if not. But sometimes i feel a little itchy about paying 5.99 for a 20 to 30 year old game. You get 2010 games for less money in the bargin bin. It feels just a little greedy to me at times. But prices are good when customers are ready to pay them.

I own many games here on gog.com. Many of them i bought back in the past for good money, so i spent double on them . Okay its fair. Why should i not be allowed to redownload games i bought in the past? Ah yes because of copyright. Copyright does not protect your rights as user. Its only a protection of the rights of publishers. Who protects my rights to access digital property i bought when i loose my account access or license keys? So its an unfair one way protection of only publisher and shareholder rights.

Money you spent on non-independent games goes at 99%(minus VAT) directly to the publishers and their shareholders. Money you spent on old games where no game studio exists anymore, goes to 100% to the poor publishers. None of it goes to the game developer. So if you actually want to support games with gameplay and mechanics you like, buy independent games.

And buy more games on gog.com. Perhaps they can remaster some of this masterfull old rpgs here on this site with new shiney grafics. I am getting old and i do not know how long my eyesight is good enough to withhold with them old 1990 grafics :).

Have a nice day

I never bought such sh**, did you?

No, and probably won't buy Rage just because of this crap. But I was trying to show is that publishers don't want second hand retail, because they don't get a cent from it.

As I said, to the industry, second hand copies are just as bad as piracy. Even more so, in a way, because there's money involved. The huge majority of piracy in the West, is done for free leaving money to spare to actually BUY games. Here, you basically lock money up in the second hand market which is worse since it soaks up money that could go to the publisher instead - stores like Gamestop make massive profits on second hand sales, and eBay has more and more "professional" businesses that buy up games for selling instead of playing. So it's no surprise publishers wanted to limit this market BUT:


Before:
Say person A buys a game for $50. $15 of that $50 go to Publisher. Person A relies on the price of resale to recoup some of that money. He sells the game for $30 and paid $20 for completing the game. Person B buys the game for $30 and, after completing it, sells it for $25. In the end, publisher A gets just $15.

Now:
Person A wants to buy a game but because it can't be resold, he holds off. When the game drops to $20, he buys it, giving $5 to the publisher. Person A has to wait a year for this to happen though, and initial sales of the game are worse because of it. Person B can't buy the game second hand either, but doesn't want to wait a year. No money goes to the publisher.

In the end, the publisher isn't going to get any more money because of this - the perceived value of the game drops massively once you can't resell it. Only for those who never intend to sell, the value remains the same. It's a very big error made by publishers who will then blame piracy for the drop of initial sales (which are the sales they focus on the most).

In all of the EU actually. You have the legal right to make a backup of your media - this is why stuff like a Nintendo DS supercard is deemed legal, because it can be used to play backed up games. It's logical since you own a license of a game - the media on which it comes is just the means of delivery. You always keep the license even if your DVD gets scratched for example. Except if you buy a game on Steam, of course, since Valve made it so you own a subscription there instead which gives you far less rights.

That's what I think too. In first order approximation it does not matter if you have second hand sales or not. So the whining of the industry about how bad second hand sale would be is greatly exaggerated.

But here are some more arguments pro second hand sale:

- less risk for the customer in case, the game is really bad, he can still try to sell it again

- greatly prolonged availability, even long after the company does not sell the game anymore, you can buy it

- you can inherit them, something you normally cannot with licenses which are typically bound to a person and expire with death, while resellable things cannot be bound to only one person

However, while creating the backup at least in germany it's not allowed to circumvent any copy protection. So this rule cannot be applied in many circumstances. sadly.