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Everyone is so angry. Let's cool down for a moment with some facts.
(Tok me a while to find links.)

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Ponchik: All they have to do is say that they had their time with it, and now, after waiting a decade and a half, we can finally enjoy it for free.
There are many games which became legally avaliable for free.

GOG:
http://www.gog.com/mix/free_games_temporarily_free_games
Desura:
http://www.desura.com/groups/bundeals/forum/thread/all-free-games-on-desura-courtesy-of-agtv
World:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_released_as_freeware

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Ponchik: I want to play 10-20 year old games without paying outrageous sums or being a criminal. Is this too much to ask?
You had (and will have) many ways to do it.

2013
http://www.gog.com/news/500_games_giveaway

2012
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogcom_4th_annual_screenshot_scavenger_hunt/page1
http://www.gog.com/news/video_challenge_your_goggame_story
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogcom_music_contest/page1
http://www.gog.com/news/syndicate_on_gog_com_on_19th_of_january_plus_a_contest

2011
http://www.gog.com/news/gogs_third_annual_screenshot_scavenger_hunt
http://www.gog.com/news/ubisoft_holiday_contest_new_years_resolutions
http://www.gog.com/news/activision_holiday_song
http://www.gog.com/news/interplay_caption_contest
http://www.gog.com/news/our_final_round_of_bonus_codes_is_here
http://www.gog.com/news/a_blizzard_of_bonus_codes_is_on_the_way
http://www.gog.com/news/gog_com_s_holiday_celebrations_are_almost_here
http://www.gog.com/news/contest_week_end_returns_day_1

2010
http://www.gog.com/news/gog_s_second_annual_screenshot_scavenger_hunt
http://www.gog.com/news/st_nicolas_games_giveaway
http://www.gog.com/news/write_a_gog_holiday_carol_contest
http://www.gog.com/news/gog_com_contest_week_starts_today
http://www.gog.com/news/neverwinter_nights_contests_the_drm_monster_and_the_treasure_of_gog

2009
http://www.gog.com/news/guess_these_games_contest
http://www.gog.com/news/guess_these_games_contest_pt_2
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/science_fiction_reference_in_sacred
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/sacred_beauty_contest
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/darkstar_one_spaceship_show_off_contest
http://www.gog.com/news/holiday_contest

2008
http://www.gog.com/news/community_event_review_contest
http://www.gog.com/news/community_event_review_contest_1
http://www.gog.com/news/community_event_review_contest_2


Now, where do I get these?
http://www.gog.com/news/win_original_and_trendy_gog_buttons
Lol. Guys, I can pirate stuff for free, why does gog charge $5-$10 for them and only provide real free games for free, they're so mean!

Most of the games in the gog library wouldn't be available if they went to the rights holders and said hey, let's put it out there for free! Duh.
Post edited February 16, 2013 by Al3xand3r
Lol. Forget about arguing with the OP douche.
He just wants to argue for the sake of arguing and attracting attention to himself.

I'm really tight with my money and up to now haven't bought a single game off gog that wasn't on sale. Bought over a hundred from GOG and most have been 50% off or even cheaper. Lol
But I couldn't believe my eyes when I logged on and saw SS2 available. Immediately snapped it up and started downloading. $10 is dirt cheap and so far the only gog game I have paid full price for.

Very big thanks to GOG and their staff.
Hopefully they can make inroads to that ever-growing wishlist.
Hmmm... no, wait, the OP was naive and his analysis was not thorough, but his point was not totally wrong: in any economy you should be paid for the work you do. OP did not recognize the work GOG team does and mistook them for someone that sells things not created by them, without adding anything, an if that was true, it would be wrong.
But, as I explained above, it is OP that is wrong, because GOG provides a pretty good service, keeping updated in the less invasive way possible our games, giving us a fully functional game even on present day PCs, letting a thriving community of gamers point out the best mods and adding some "goodies" that would be otherwise lost forever, like the manuals (you don't get them from a pirated copy) or paper gadgets, that it is nice to have.

AND they let us say "go to hell, we are no thieves" to DRM users, and that's a good thing.
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Jonesy89: tl;dr: US law can effectively apply to people outside of the US.
I'm just writing to thank you for your very thoughtful, interesting post. I appreciate your positive contribution to the discussion.

IP law is ever-evolving and is being challenged by the concept of a borderless Internet, but if I'm understanding your post it sounds like some precedents are being set to prosecute individuals in the jurisdiction where the servers exist. It makes you wonder whether the Internet itself might be classified a country so that infringers can be held accountable internationally.

Interesting stuff!
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Jonesy89: tl;dr: US law can effectively apply to people outside of the US.
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briandamage: I'm just writing to thank you for your very thoughtful, interesting post. I appreciate your positive contribution to the discussion.

IP law is ever-evolving and is being challenged by the concept of a borderless Internet, but if I'm understanding your post it sounds like some precedents are being set to prosecute individuals in the jurisdiction where the servers exist. It makes you wonder whether the Internet itself might be classified a country so that infringers can be held accountable internationally.

Interesting stuff!
I think I may have represented the current state of the law in my last post, or at the very least waxed alarmist. I do not know if there is a court ruling that has held that downloading copyrighted material automatically equals jurisdiction; however, I am aware of a ruling that has held that jurisdiction may be exercised where one directs electronic activity into a stat with manifested intent of engaging in interactions within the state and that activity creates the cause of action (you did stuff over the web to deliberately do stuff governed by that area's law and what you did allows you to be sued in that area). It is highly probable (in my opinion as a student, take that for what it is worth) that such a ruling *could* be applied to downloading in cases where one knows that the server is located in the US. I personally think that any attempt to exercise jurisdiction over someone in a case where they did not know where the server was is thoroughly inconsistent with precedent, but the problem is that I am all too aware of the fact that the courts often do not understand the internet, and as a result, they make mistakes in their rulings (see my reference to the Zippo case in my last post, where the court applied a woefully incorrect personal jurisdiction standard); in short, I do not know if such rulings exist, I think that they should not, but given that the courts have gotten law on the internet wrong in the past, it would not surprise me.

Furthermore, I seem to have actively misstated the law; apparently writing posts on little to no sleep has a tendency to result in brain farts. Jurisdiction only refers to where one may be sued; it does NOT mean that you will be sued pursuant to the law of that jurisdiction. That said, oftentimes the factors that determine what law applies often includes the behavior that gives rise to the cause of action, which usually constitutes a contact; more specifically, where said contact occurred. Once again, I personally think that that US law should not apply in cases where someone downloads something while in a different country. The very idea is ludicrous; it would be akin to a court holding that a man who photocopies Time magazine in France committed an offense in the US. However, once again bearing in mind the courts' lack of internet literacy, there is room for a decision that holds that infringement occurs not wherever the alleged infringer is located, but where the electronic activity occurred, as if the man who photocopied Time magazine in France actually did so by copying the magazine in the US through a doppelganger. Ridiculous as a matter of logic and law? I think so; but again, from a realist perspective, the possibility is certainly there for a technologically illiterate judge to be swayed by an attorney from the RIAA or something. Generally, though, liability would be more likely to be imposed under some sort of international law or something; since I have not studied those at this point in my academic career, I will not touch that can of worms.

I again sincerely apologize for any misleading or incorrect statements I have made. I hope to enter the profession of law upon graduation, which involves providing people with accurate and objective perspectives of the field of law; while I am merely a student, I attempt to hold my assessments to the standard expected of the profession as a matter of pride and ethics, and screw-ups like this are something I strive to avoid.
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Ponchik: Old games, as I see it are like art. When the artist makes his work public, he expects a period of revenue, and that's it. It is not right in my opinion to withhold art from the public for decades. If they want a modest fee for keeping the games up to date, I'll be all for it, but when most games here cost more than year old AAA games that are on sale, it just seems like madness to me. If you were an artist, wouldn't you like for people to be able to enjoy your work freely after it was published for enough time?
The thing is, that in most cases, the artists that made these games are not always the copyright holders. Sometimes they share the rights and sometimes they do not have them at all. Most of the time it's publishers that own the copyright or share it with some or all of the people that developed a game.

If you want to go into the philosophy of how long should be a copyright holder able to keep this right, by all means, discuss away but the current thread has been started on wrong assumptions made by you. These were:

1) games on GoG were abandonware
2) GoG just repackage and re-sell abandonware for profit so they're sleazy

By now I hope that you've learned that

1) games on GoG are not abandonware even if, at one point, they were (Blood 2 rings a bell for me)
2) games on GoG are being worked upon to assure that they work or modern operating systems
3) games on GoG are being published with the consent of the copyright holders which certainly get a cut of every sold copy
4) the price (high or low) represents the cost of the work done to make these titles work and to keep them working - software is never perfect, there are always bugs. Either from the old code (these do not get fixed - GoG does not get to work on the original source code) or from the one needed to make the old code compatible with the newer systems

I consider the price they are charging is fair for what they provide with each game they sell. If you don't, then it's only your problem and nobody is forcing you to buy anything.

Also note, that the publishers of the game have a big say on pricing policy.

I was wondering when this forum was going to get trolls. Well, now we've got everything. Hey GoG, you're becoming really famous...
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Zeraan: If you still see a problem with that, then go ahead and walk into GameStop and declare "This game has been on the shelf for more than a day, so it's now abandonware." and grab it and try and walk out. Abandonware doesn't excuse you for pirating a game that's being legally sold by its license owners.
While I rebuked the initial poster for his assumptions, the analogy you make is common and also flawed. You say that downloading a game is the same as taking it off the shelf. Bits cost next to nothing to replicate, physical copies have manufacturing costs.

Downloading (which is just copying) is not the same as me taking your car, is it?
I'm pretty sure that there's no way this topic isn't just trolling, though some of the responses are concerning.

Regardless, GoG has every right to charge any price points they deem warranted or necessary, they are a business after all. Either you can give them crap for reviving dead games and offering them at extremely affordable prices. I'm willing to bet that securing these properties for sale is not free and any time spent updating games and offering additional content actually requires effort on their part. I'm not sure any of this would be worth it if they were selling these games for less and there might not even be a GoG. Keep in mind that GoG is not exactly cranking at the newest Call of Duty games, this is a niche site for the most part. This is also a site that has handed out free games on occasion and given great deals on already fairly priced games.

And I don't think the length of time ago that a game was released should really have much of an impact on these games, but more importantly the content and demand of the game should. So what... should they sell SS2 for $5? Then what should the original Space Quest games sell for? $0.50? Yeeeaaaah.

Honestly, you choose to buy it or you choose not to. There's nothing shady or wrong about what GoG is doing, which is to say, running a business. It's a little asinine that this is even a discussion.
Oh, and sorry, but I need to response to the the topic question directly and I can't not do this...


Because stranger, you'll buy it at a high price!

Heh heh... thank you!
Post edited February 19, 2013 by EtherealPotato
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Hotels: insanely high prices like 10$
Holy crap am I the only person here with a job?
God almighty, what is this the roaring fucking 20's?
10 bucks is too much to ask for for a video game that's been out for over a decade now? Along with the latest patch and totally DRM free?

Seems like a legitimate post by a straight up guy with serious questions and thoughts. Truly this has made my day.

To those who gave honest and truthful knowledge on the legality of abandon and free ware, I thank you, you turned a terrible joke into something educational and insightful.
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p3ac3: I have collected and sold games for a couple of decades now , I can tell you that I have sold boxed copies of System Shock 2 for $160 ... so GOG releasing it for $10 is amazing ...ss2 and Looking Glass are some of the most revered entities in gaming ..of course anyone can download or these days stream games for free but increasing numbers of gamers are chosing not to , they support the creators of these games and in a way thank them for their efforts , the more ss2 that sells , the higher the chance that someone will daringly rescue Warren Spector and the Looking Glass crew from Epic Fail Mickey Mouse duty and get them working on System Shock 3 .. kudos to GOG ..now could we have Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri please
You mean... I should find my complete and nearly pristine german boxed copy again? :O
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cogadh: You are mistaken, SS2 has never been legally available for free anywhere at any time.
Not true. I installed it for free many times from original CD I bought with real money.
(Yes, this post is silly and bad attempt at humor, but entire topic is just so ridiculous I can get away with stuff that only sounds funny in my head. :P )