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Comment on Reminder that you do not own digital games

They don’t have DRM. That’s not the same as owning the game. If you don’t back up the games or installers yourself, and GOG goes under, you lose access to your library the same as if Epic or Steam going away.

You can back up your Steam and Epic games, too. You just need to be able to access your account to verify your license for most titles (but not everything; loads of games do not use Steam or Epic’s DRM, have no online checks to verify anything, and you can just copy the installation folder to another machine to play the game).

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486@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

They don’t have DRM. That’s not the same as owning the game.

That’s why I mentioned that you purchase a license. That has also always been true even if you “bought” a game as a physical copy in a store. A DRM-free game is still the closest thing you get to owning a game.

If you don’t back up the games or installers yourself, and GOG goes under, you lose access to your library the same as Epic or Steam going away.

I have heard this argument before, but I really don’t get it. Of course you could lose your files if you don’t download them. I’d say that’s so obvious it isn’t even worth mentioning. If you lose or destroy your physical copy of a game you also lose access to it. Pretty obvious.

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- Ashiette@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Why could you both not be right ? Yes, right now a DRM Free game is the closest thing that we get to owning a game. Yet, that wasn’t always true, we used to have an unlimited access to our video game, executable, as long as we had a disk.
  
  But they took that from us ! 👿
  
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  - Alinor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    But that’s the point they’re making, isn’t it? With GOG games you can download the installer. With that you also get unlimited access to it.
    
    Given you don’t lose it, but that same argument goes for physical disks.
    
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    Dagnet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Exactly, GOG has no control on how you use it, for all intents and purposes it’s yours. You can even borrow the game to your friends if you want. I love GOG, hope they nvr go under
    
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kewko@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
So you’re saying torrenting and seeding is basically a moral obligation?

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- Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  It’s just basical preservation of art. 😤
  
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AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Depending on the era of the game, you might well own a copy of a game on a disk, just like you own a copy of a book when you buy a book. Weaselling out of first-sale-doctrine stuff came a long time after people started buying video games. A century ago, publishers were trying exactly the same thing with books, and depending on the country, either legislation was introduced that made it explicitly illegal, or the courts determined that putting a licence agreement in a book just meant that the customer got a copy of a licence agreement with their book, not that they were bound by its terms.

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- Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I was born in '85. IBM pioneered the idea of software licensing in the '50s.
  
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grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You own your individual copy of the game software, end of. It doesn’t fucking matter if it’s on a disc or a digital download.

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