I'm sure everyone is familiar with the situation where someone says they like to own their games so they buy them on GOG or on disc, and then someone immediately points out that you cannot own a game?

Well, now it's right on the front page of GOG. We all own our games, and no one can say otherwise. :)


(and yes, this post is tongue in cheek)

Personally, I think making a clear value statement about it in the front page is a definite step in the right direction.

For a period of time, we had mixed signals about that and I wasn't quite sure what to think about their long term intent. Now, the messaging is clear.

Of course we own our games, because most people don't use the term 'own' in the most extreme libertarian sense. Even Disney used the term 'own' for their movies; you used to see this bumper on Disney VHS and DVD tapes before the trailers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvofRevxFIs
And those movies had just as many restrictions on what you were ostensibly allowed to do with them as modern games do. It was pretty much like operating on an honor system.

"Owning" something in legal terminology would mean you are the IP owner, which is of course nonsense. You haven't bought the rights for a game and plan to make a sequel, you simply own a copy, and are subject to an EULA (or you know, not really :P).

De facto, since your GOG copy is offline, you can escape with your "booty" even if the EULA changes, the IP changes owners, world governments return to a feudal lord system etc.

Tax official of the royal GOGBear: Pay thine tithe for yer' digital merriment, peasant! :P
GOGlodite: Nay, m'lord. Thou hath sold me the game in the fore years, the golden time of the internet, and I have faithfully kept my backups.

They need to add an asterix: except for online gated and online only. And gamers appear right behind CDPr and their investors.
It’s actually quite funny if you goto the linked page:
https://www.gog.com/en/about_gog
What it should read is:
No support
Killing support be including other dlls
You do need to keep authenticating things online
Curation is at best haphazard
A not optional client
Altering old games as we see fit and removing old versions
We focus on the term DRM and only focus on that even though it’s a wee in the ocean of anti gamer features
We work with very few partners, those mentioned like Bethesda/Ubisoft long since stopped releasing things
Etc.

Technically, ownership laws have well understood, intuition friendly, implicit properties that a court will uphold in the absence of any explicit agreement. They dispense of the need for complicated legal constructs like EULAs which is a big part of the charm.

Now, that mostly existed in the context of physical goods and the digital realms introduce some complexities (for things like borrowing for example), but honestly, I think there should be a way to translate ownership laws from the physical to the digital realm with most of the properties kept intact.

Otherwise, for licenses (which are still useful to allow some use cases not well covered by ownership law like copying open-source code for example), there should be a limited number of well-understood ones recognized under law.

You shouldn't be able to force on your users the cognitive overhead of a customized EULA.

Great. How do I delete (not hide, delete) from my library some of the games that I own and no longer want?

do I? so can i sell them? nice

Delete? You can not renounce your games, mrkgnao. Any past purchases you committed to, even in error, will haunt you forever. The great GOGBear has mandated this as penance for your backlog :P.

You say that, but I renounced ownership of Fez via a support ticket when my pithy computer couldn't run it. (This was decades ago.)

The great GOGBear, in his infinite grace, extends a merciful period of 30 days in which you can make amends... no more and no less.