Gog-games has returned; if you missed it, they went private for a while, then announced they were coming back in a week. They seem to have come back early.
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Nice but also kinda worrying no? What is up with this private-unprivate dance?
They released a few statements about being upset about people sending demanding/rude messages to them. They also complained about the cost of hosting (there are no ads on the page). Originally, they wanted to only open for people who are donating, but they appear to have backtracked on that, at least for now.
It’s a common issue on the Internet. The moment you’re doing anything, especially for free, you are basically inviting vitriol.
A thing that always felt so weird to me is that there are so many other websites and services that work basically the same yet the people that run them don’t have such a shitty attitude about it. I’ve been in that position myself and you need to just ignore the idiots, they’ll always be there no matter what. I’ve always felt that the people behind gog-games need to get their heads out of their asses, if you look anywhere they communicate with people (which is VERY little) it’s just complaints, defensive and offensive statements.
Please note that this in no way means I don’t appreciate the heck out of their work, I do and I have donated to them.
But I really think they’re just doing themselves a disservice by treating basically everyone like shit. I’ve seen this exact behaviour in other places and it never ends good, and it was always their own damn fault by being unable to ignore and filter out the crap. Everyone else handles it and doesn’t act like dicks about it.
So like, it’s really easy to armchair and just say that they should ignore the haters and so on, but having been on the opposite end of a small Internet hate mob, even if you only have like a dozen people telling you that you’re a crook, or a piece of shit, or your stupid or dishonest, or whatever, it doesn’t really matter how accurate any of that is, it really does start to get to you, no matter who you are.
The only healthy option is to log out at that point.
Near (the creator of BSNES / Higan, as well as a fan-translator who worked on Mother 3 and Bahamut Lagoon) was driven to suicide. It’s a serious issue. And I suspect the sort of people who work on labors of love are often the most susceptible because they’re the sort of people who want to listen and who care if people say something is wrong with their work.
Ah. Man, if I were in their place I’d get rid of any and all means of communication.
Idiots can’t send you rude messages if they can’t even e-mail you.Lmao “you should pay us to pirate”
good old games games is back!
The ATM machine of our times 🎉
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Fun fact:
By default, in the US, you have copyright on anything you write. Putting a CC license at the bottom of your comment is a waste of electrons, unless you’re making it CC for some reason besides a futile attempt at persuading a scraper to not harvest your data.
Fun Fact: Dwarf Fortress is the only video game I still play once in a long ass while. I quit with VG with board games. I have zero regret.
Fun fact: I don’t live in the US 🙂
Anti Commercial AI thingy
This is the tech bro equivalent of posting this kind of message on Facebook:
https://i.imgur.com/In7lZg5.png
It doesn’t work. If you don’t want things you post publicly on the Internet to be scraped, don’t post things publicly on the Internet.
Thank you for your constructive criticism. Your defeatism is so refreshing to read.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
There’s a German word called “fremdschämen”, which roughly translates to “second-hand embarrassment”. It think it’s appropriate here.
At the very least put a space bat between thingy and CC.
You can’t retain extra rights by slapping “NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED” on your own comments.
He’s right you know. Scrapers and journalists will simultaneously know and respect the fact that he is not in the US, nor does he allow them to use his content without adherence to the license that he tacked on. I mean who would do that? And if they do? Oh boy they’ll be in trouble. Cory Doctorow will probably fire on them from his balloon or something. It’ll be glorious.
Do you copy/paste that as a signature every time or is there a browser plugin?
It’s a keyboard shortcut that calls this script
#!/usr/bin/env bash sleep 0.5 xte "str ::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy" xte "key Return" xte "str [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)" xte "key Return" # TODO figure out how to print it self #xte "str \`\`\`" #eval $(sed -e "s/.*/xte 'str &'/" -e 'a xte "key Return"' "$0" ) #xte "str \`\`\`" xte "str :::"I wish it were a functionality of the lemmy frontend.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Stupid question but what’s gog games?
Gog.com are selling DRM-free games, so there’s no copy protection, Internet activation, mandatory launcher, etc. It used to stand for “good old games”, but they also have new titles these days. Same parent company as The Witcher developers. There is a launcher, but it’s entirely optional - you can just pay prices that are generally comparable to Steam and download the installation files for a game, which require no Internet connection at all (apart from some edge cases, e.g. a very small number of multiplayer games).
Gog-games meanwhile is a piracy site that redistributes these DRM-free installers to people who are not inclined to pay for the privilege. What makes them preferable to other sites is that you get the trustworthy installers from gog and do not have to fiddle with potentially malicious cracks yourself. They are also uploading to fast file hosts. One thing they are particularly useful for is preservation, games that are now delisted on gog.com and elsewhere, only available there if you have purchased them in the past. The rather decent licensed Back to the Future game from Telltale for example can’t be bought anywhere anymore (since the license for the movie franchise was only granted for a few years), but it’s still available in its most convenient shape on gog-games.
Cool
Do they just do PC?
Yes, since gog is PC-exclusive, so is gog-games.
Forcing console manufacturers to open their systems to third party stores might be coming in the future, at least in the EU, which could also provide avenues for piracy.
That would be bloody amazing.
Also I know this isn’t the place to ask but is there an android equivalent?
I haven’t really kept track of Android sites, since I’m rarely playing native Android games other than The Battle of Polytopia, an accessible, but endlessly replayable Civ-clone. Please send help - I’ve been playing it almost since its release seven years ago and can not stop. The base game is free and each additional tribe is only a small one-time purchase. The more tribes you have purchased, the larger maps are unlocked. A single tribe purchase unlocks multiplayer. There’s also one additional skin for each tribe. Perhaps the best monetization model on mobile to date.
There are few standout titles like these for mobile devices. If you want to seriously play games on your phone or tablet, use an emulator. I’m currently revisiting Vice City in GTA Vice City Stories, a lesser known, but nonetheless high quality spin-off in the series (there’s also one for GTA 3: Liberty City Stories), which runs perfectly in AetherSX2 (although I should switch to NetherSX2, which continues development of this PS2 emulator). If you have a less powerful device, you can play the only slightly inferior PSP versions (worse textures and significantly downgraded lighting, some missing side-missions, but overall the exact same games) in PPSSPP, which has much lower hardware requirements. You can even add a second thumb stick to the PSP versions using this patch:
https://github.com/Freakler/ppsspp-GTARemastered
The PSP version of Chinatown wars is superior to the Android port, having better visuals and more missions, so consider playing this one in PPSSPP as well.
I’ve recommended PSP racing games here:
https://beehaw.org/comment/2784912
And PS2/GC/Wii action games here:
https://beehaw.org/comment/2994175
I would highly recommend using a controller for most of these titles. You can connect almost anything to an Android device, either wirelessly or through USB. Wii or newer, PS3 or newer and Xbox One S or newer work via Bluetooth in every emulator I’ve tried. With wired controllers, you can go as far back as you want. I’m playing PS2 games using an original PS2 controller with a PS2 to USB adapter, which is connected to a USB A to USB C adapter. If portability is of concern, 8bitdo makes very high quality, but nonetheless affordable controllers that you can easily fit into even the smallest pockets. The d-pad on my FC30 Pro is perhaps the single best d-pad I’ve ever had the pleasure of using.
I have a dedicated android Handheld for comtrols and keeping propietery stuff away from my phone.
Tried the Terraria switch rom but the controls are kinda bad, mainly looking to pirate play store games. I have a few hours, might look at some if the better sites in megathread
What on earth are they up to?
That sounds a bit suspicious to me.
You made my day thx
Oh good I had just checked them this week and aaw that they were coming back soon.
