Talk:GOG.com/Archive 1

Archive 1

News coverage

To expand this article from its current mini-stub status we'll obviously need reliable sources. Those wishing to edit the article could check ["good old games" Google News] which links to a large number of relevant articles. Remember to pick reliable sources. Cynical (talk) 18:10, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Forum

I was gonna say, you could put that the earliest forum post was of July 21st for the journalism beta. check out [1] for more info. posted by weclock - - I don't feel like signing in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.109.182.4 (talk) 05:12, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if the date of the first forum post is important enough to mention here. Remember that you don't have to be logged in to edit: as this article isn't semiprotected you can change it without logging in. Cynical (talk) 18:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

List of available games

Yesterday I put up the list of games currently available from the GoG site, since I'm in the beta and this information is not widely available but a couple of people have asked about it. It was taken down because the list was deemed as advertising, but is this really accurate when Wikipedia also has extensive lists of the games available from other services like Xbox Live Arcade, the PSN store etc?Schaedenfreud82 (talk) 10:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Also since the beta is closed there MIGHT be something in the NDA about it and no one wants to break that 88.211.96.3 (talk) 14:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

In signing up for the beta I wasn't asked to sign an NDA.Schaedenfreud82 (talk) 10:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually you probably agreed to an NDA as part of the Terms of Service you clicked 'yes' on. That aside (fairly irrelevant since the beta's now over) the difference between this is that XBLA is a platform (ie it is the download service for the Xbox 360) whereas GOG is just another website selling PC games. Cynical (talk) 09:04, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Sourcecode access claims

I remember that way back around the time of the first press coverage GOG representatives claimed they have access to the games' source code. Later those claims were denied, and GOG officials stated on their own forum that they do not in fact have the source code in any form. It might be a interesting fact to add to the article. However, I can't seem to be able to find it in the news articles where I recall seeing it - looks like someone has removed any mention of this. Does anyone have a reliable source that still carries this information in unaltered form? --The Fifth Horseman (talk) 11:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Speaking personally, I don't have any such sources. Also, putting in a minor inaccurate statement from a preview into an article of stub length would probably be undue weight. Cynical (talk) 15:57, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

What is there to say?

I want to expand this article, but what is there to talk about? Look to the Steam article for inspiration. Smurfy 23:16, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

OH GOD THE SOURCES

I deleted all the sources.

Yes.

It just didn't seem like we needed to cite sources for any of these things, because you can find proof for just about all of them by going to GOG's front page.

Also the page looked awful in the edit. You had to search around to find any text amongst the lines and lines of citing.

If (read: when) you add the sources back, don't just revert the edit. Most of the claims in this article could be cited by one simple link to GOG's front page or something. All of the sources before were six-month-old news articles and previews of GOG before it was open.

Smurfy 23:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Whether the page looked awful or not is not a reason to remove the sources. I have restored them. If there are terrible inaccuracies in some references, then by all means they can be replaced but information needs to be referenced. Evidence of non-trivial coverage by reliable, independent sources is also important in establishing notability.--Drat (Talk) 11:00, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Just because we can cite GOG's front page, doesn't mean we should. Sources which are independent of the subject of an article are greatly preferred. Cynical (talk) 18:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

GOG is closed

According to their website, GOG is defunct. The article should be updated.--Azarien (talk) 22:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

They are not closed. There's a lot of misinformation going around, and we'll know more tomorrow and Thursday (23rd). See the articles sourced at the end of the History section. --MASEM (t) 22:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, yes. With the teaser trailer posted today, this is almost definitely a marketing stunt. Tomorrow we'll have some concrete info to add to the article. Whatever the outcome, this 'happening' certainly deserves some coverage. eyeball226 (talk) 23:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this article even necessary?

Feels like there is little point to this article, and the game catalog part seems to border on advertisement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.250.215.127 (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

GOG as a website/business meets the requirements for notability and is acceptable. The catalog itself is extraneous, however. --MASEM (t) 18:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Check that, the catalog of publishers/developers they offer is not a problem, as we're not listing out every game, only who they have worked deals with to republish the games. It's definitely not advertising. --MASEM (t) 18:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Second that, afaik GOG's unique it's business model of offering DRM-free games, even games that originally had some form of copy protection, which makes them very notable. In light of this, the list of publishers is relevant information imo - they do have quite a few titles stripper from all forms of copy protection from major publishers, which in many cases is quite surprising - both that GOG have managed to secure such contracts, and that notable studios apparently have agreed upon it. Looking at the other digital download game distribution services listed on Wikipedia, several articles even contain partial listings of game catalogs.

83.227.152.68 (talk) 11:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Always DRM-free or not?

The first paragraph of the Features section was recently changed to state: "[The games] are typically, but not always distributed without digital rights management.". The second paragraph of the same section contradicts this with: "Unlike some other services, the games do not use digital rights management." Of course there is some elbowroom on what is or is not considered DRM, but I think it should be at least clarified. The reasoning employed for the edit was that some games require CD keys which occasionally turned out to be invalid. My personal opinion on this is that this does not constitute DRM; the decisive factor should be whether copying, installation or execution is limited in any way for the buyer. Since CD keys are part of the digital product that is purchased, and can be backed up and copied normally alongside the program itself, there is no such limitation. Invalid keys being issued is a product defect that is resolved through customer support. --84.227.107.55 (talk) 23:29, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I tentatively agree. Product keys are not the same as DRM, although it seems like a bit of a grey area. I'm assuming that the CD keys in question are from older games and are verified off-line, right? If so, that seems like a separate case and it's not really worth mentioning in the article, in my opinion. Grayfell (talk) 01:12, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

GOG has only one such game now - Neverwinter Nights 2. And the key is not even needed for the game. It's only needed for the network gameplay, and official servers are down anyway. The only scenario when those keys are useful is local network play. I think GOG can try embedding those keys in the installer to avoid the whole hassle, but it was probably not easy for them. So I'm not really sure whether this is DRM. Probably yes for the network playing, however it's not a major part of the game which is primarily single player. --Bahaltener (talk) 19:43, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Licensing or buying games on GOG?

Recently, some significant changes of the gog pages were done, indicating that games are licensed only. Arguemntation up to now for GOG, and selling games, was that the installers are not connected to the account and could be used after the account is removed/lost or gog shuts down. Now, is tge license agreement linked now in the article (overall is this the current one?) prevent the usage of installers after loss of the account? I'm not sure... ALso, in the steam article, where games are clearly only licensed, it is spoken in several places still from buying... this should be synchronized for all articles of digital distributors. Maybe this topic in detail should be put to the Digital distribution article. Shaddim (talk) 10:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I will neutralize the current formulation as this brings an undue focus on a topic which is most probably non-problematic, has no third party refs and smells currently like propaganda. Also, as the license problematic is not discussed with in steam article where this topic is significant more critical and should be included, as this topic was discussed several times in the media with high profile. Still, some input from someone with knowledge about the legal implications of the gog formulation would be of interest. Shaddim (talk) 11:26, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Date format changes

As being changed by Totie quite often, the date format should to him be dmy. He linked WP:DATERET, which states to keep one format and that one consitently. However, when I originally used the script to align ISO dates to the dmy format as given, one can clearly see that the {{Use mdy dates}} template was dated June 2011, almost five years ago, there was set to be an alignment. The dates in the body were consistently mdy, with two minor exceptions, only the "Publishing agreements" section was heavily dmy-fied for some reason. Many citation dates were ISO (or ymd, if you like) but that is often forseeable, tough to be changed. So if you respect WP:DATERET, as Totie tells me to, we would have to keep mdy, not change to dmy. Another aspect could have been WP:DATETIES, but it outlines that articles with topics with strong national ties apply. This company is based in a European country, like a couple hundered thousand other companies as well, there is no strong national tie between the company and Cyprus (or Poland, see discussion above). Therefore, I please you, @Totie:, to not edit it any further and let WP:DATRET actually have effect. Lordtobi (✉) 19:49, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Agree that per DATERET, the long standing mdy format should stay. -- ferret (talk) 21:00, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Market Share - GOG sales numbers are inaccurate

The paragraph that starts with "Until June 9, 2015, GOG.com sold 690,000 units of CD Projekt Red's game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt." is inaccurate as written. The sources that are linked to this claim do not say that 690,000 units of Witcher 3 were sold on GOG.com, only that there were that many copies activated. The number of activated copies would include not just direct sales on GOG.com, but also from all other non-Steam digital sellers and also likely retail sales as well, because non GOG.com sales include a redemption key to activate the game on GOG.com. Number3son (talk) 02:46, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. I've tweaked it to say "units redeemed" -- ferret (talk) 11:57, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

HTTPS links

@Lordtobi: I don't understand why you removed https links [2], [3], [4] when official site only uses https (Two-Step Login & HTTPS Everywhere). Just because gog.com and www.gog.com still work (riderct to https version of website) or any other points? --Wario-Man (talk) 20:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Formatting of URLs is automatically handeled by the {{URL}} template, which is in turn called by the {{Official website}} template that is used there. If available, HTTPS protocols (or "schemes") are automatically adopted by the browser, not necessarily by the website itself (except if enforced). As an encyclopedia, we cannot warrant that this scheme is and will always be functionable, and therefore should not enforce it on our side. Furthermore, we handle websites as if a user had never visited them, an everyday person would simply type in "gog.com" and not "https://www.gog.com/", which is what we try to adpot to make this encyclopedia available to everybody. Similar can be found at MOS:COMPUTING, and although it focuses more on exposed URLs, it is valid nethertheless. Lordtobi (✉) 20:59, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough, agreed. --Wario-Man (talk) 06:45, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

out of business?

i visited their site today and it was a complete mess. last update was in december. have they gone out of business?84.212.111.156 (talk) 20:30, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any mention of them going out of business on the web, just stories about new releases and promotions. Looks like they just recently had a weekend sale and a Star Wars sale, and they just added a new game yesterday. Random character sequence (talk) 20:47, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

"last update was in december" is false since the copyright was at least update once in 2017, and more games are added still. Lordtobi (✉) 20:49, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

quite the opposite, they had a significant update of their client and website. Shaddim (talk) 00:29, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

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