So gog rebranded around the preservation preservation program, and now they launch a patron program to help fund the former? :S

I understand why gog is doing this and I bet there's a lot good faith and passion behind it, but at the end of the day, a private company (owned by a publicly-traded one) asking for patronage and donations in order to boost production so they (and the game publishers, I assume) can sell and profit more, is something that doesn't sit well with me. Feels like a weird mix between investing in a company without owning any of the shares, and supporting a local enterprise or artist without any of the 'indie', public service, or public ownership.

Maybe I'm too old already -or heck, perhaps I'm being too harsh since this is an ongoing investment-, but I have the feeling that this program would have been better aimed at publishers. They're the ones who should be more interested in subsidizing gog's technical expertise and pipeline after all. Have them have a profile page and a badge they can boast about.

You can "own it", just need to buy CDP stocks... GOG will be included.

""""CD PROJEKT S.A. shares are traded on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. To buy or sell shares of any WSE listed company, you need to open a securities account in one of Polish brokerage houses, or in a foreign brokerage house which engages in trading on WSE.""""

I honestly do not see the issue but i guess if anyone know a good way on how to wipe Steam out of the sea by boosting GOG, i guess they got a open ear.

Besides, Steam and EGS can not be owned because, although they got some stocks, it is not open to the public, but some private investors are still considered (Tencent for example).

Regarding section 1.5 of the GOG Patrons terms of use: Sorry, ChuckysGhost, GOG won't take your dirty money, even if you tried. This exclusive club is for good little boys only (they know if you've been naughty or nice).

Polishing the old saucer sled with some non-chloric, silicon-based kitchen lubricant, huh GOG?

Enjoy the leisurely trip down that slope, folks.

Is this the end of GOG? :-0 Well, at least there'll be a change and can still get all our DRM-free installers from Z-P and Fire Flower Games.

It'll be interesting if GOG continues to survive.

One way for GOG to save some money is to close the GOG forums.

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/close_the_gog_forums

In its current incarnation, I don't really much care. It's kind of tacky to be soliciting donations from people who are already buying from you, but if it helps keep GOG afloat then whatever. I have no interest in using Discord for any purpose, so it doesn't really matter if the GOG discord is pay to access. I suppose my only real concern is whether GOG will prioritize which games to bring here based on what their patrons* want.

* Technically everyone who spends money on GOG is a patron, but I you know what I mean.

I personally view it as a matter of self-interest, not charity (I reserve the later for non-profits like letsencrypt, wikipedia or the Bevy Foundation).

Many of us accumulated large game collections here and realistically, GOG won't have the resources to 'preserve' a significant number of those games meaning the burden to keep those games working will fall upon us.

At this point in my life, I'd be more interested in paying someone else to do this and it is longer term ongoing work so a single lump sum payment won't cover it.

Enters GOG with this program and it looks like a good fit for my needs. They can keep maintaining my games, boost their pr as a company that keeps older games working and other non-paying users can also benefit (which sits well with my personal values... while it's not open-source software, it has a little bit of the open-source spirit in that some stakeholders contribute and a larger pool of people benefit). Win-win-win.

However, GOG needs to fulfill my self-interest if they want me to pitch in money.

For starters, they need to keep games currently in my collection working, not hunt for new games with the capital I'd give them (I expect them to fund working on new games with revenue they get from selling new games on their catalog that they 'save'... I'm sure they made a pretty penny from Resident Evil or Dino Crisis).

Second, they need to start putting in serious work supporting Linux. While all OSes are a moving target, given that Windows is close-sourced software held by a quasi-monopoly large entity (much proner to enshittification than a business operating under strong competition), support for it has much shorter term ephemeral benefits. If they can provide solid support for at least one Linux distro, we'll be in a much better position in the long term even if GOG folds later on. Though we won't have access to the game's code, at least we will have the legal right to tinker with the base the game runs on and tinkering, some people will.

So, I'll wait and see how it goes and then, I'll decide whether I want to contribute or not.

I think it is interesting what the Google AI had to say about this topic. I have asked the Google AI whether you can trust LLM output for serious research and discussion.

"LLM output cannot be blindly trusted for research and discussion due to inherent limitations such as the potential for factual inaccuracies (hallucinations), biases, and a lack of true reasoning or real-time knowledge. LLMs are powerful tools for assistance but require significant human oversight and verification to ensure reliability and integrity."

The Google AI is honest.

Just to much judgement in the current world, which is as well the main issue we increasingly lack to be able to go along together, in any terms.

But did you independently verify everything in its response? Or did you just assume everything it said was true?

Have you taken the time to understand how an LLM works under the hood and how the output is generated? (I have - it's all available online.) If not, how do you know that Google AI is not just telling you what you want to hear based on the perceived bias of your question?

I'm not trying to be unkind or anything, but I think that people need to stop blindly trusting these types of LLM chatbots. The only way to verify their output is to do the research yourself, and this detail alone makes the chatbot incredibly pointless because "proper use" still requires doing your own verification on the bot's output. These bots no more than a parlor trick that should only be considered a form of entertainment, and posting walls of text from them in a serious conversation is unhelpful at best because it just creates more noise that needs to be sifted through and verified.

I remember that all points in the text above have been mentioned by people in several threads here and on other platforms. The people outside of this forum have a much more positive opinion about GOG than the people here in this forum. If the AI is presenting a more positive view about GOG than it won't be surprising. And to be honest, I think that the Google AI is actually less biased than anyone here in this forum. If GOG is really struggling and has serious problems that might lead to the closure or it getting sold off, we will read it on websites like this before:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/

You are wasting your time with a troll who is trying to sabotage the current thread, like they did with many other ones.

I recommend the following uBlock Origin filter:

OK. In any case, my point was that people need to stop packing threads with such filler text in lieu of having meaningful discourse. Also, it's essential to understand how LLM technology works before you start relying on it.