(Video not by me)
PC Gamer and GamingOnLinux recently covered a few things about GOG’s usage of genAI for promotional content, but this video goes into deeper coverage about their Head of Product being responsible for their direction. (Cue scam AI Instagram girls). It also covers how the company chose to respond to the backlash regarding their usage of genAI.
It’s sad to see them being brazen about their AI usage. I advocated for them several times, owning games (anything, really) is something that should be for granted. All of this makes their store look really cheap and turns off people from thinking about the idea.
Reminder to actually download and archive all the game files you bought on gog. They might not be there for much longer.
Any projects to auto archive everything?
I hear of lgogdownloader. There’s plenty of projects like this. I second the notion to download all your stuff, or as much as you can now.
“Okay guys we’ve purchased GOG, the internet’s darling for DRM-free gaming. If we play our cards right we could take an even larger share of steams sales. Our first order of business: pivot our focus onto the one thing that DRM-conscious gamers would hate more than DRM!”
It‘s sad to see they use the very tool that has become a true menace for anyone who wants to play games right now. There are so many aspects to it that put the entire concept of ownership at risk and they just use it nilly willy. I‘m not even surprised anymore but still so very disappointed.
It’s sad to see so I’m going to keep a close eye on what GOG do from here.
I don’t care much at all that they used an AI generated banner ad for a store sale, but plenty of people do, and it was predictable that they would. If they wanted to save money, it would have only cost them a single game’s revenue to find someone on Fiverr to make a similar graphic.
I agree but if it was just used in minor or very minor places.
But the job requirements require you to use AI tools which is not fine with me(it would be fine if it was optional)If it results in less or worse work getting done, we’ll either see it manifest as the customers and it will affect my future purchasing decisions with no harm to what I’ve already bought, or they’ll stop drinking the kool aid. I worked on a game project with a die-hard NFT believer, and even he eventually backed down on trying to shoehorn them into the game after it was clear they were more controversial and less productive than monetizing the game with more ordinary methods.
Damn, I won’t be buying games on GOG at all until they fully course correct into a better state of being. I will be downloading all of my installers that I care about, because if things are this desperate, they might not have long.
tl;dw?
We all float down here
I know people hate AI (I am included in that group), however trying to get companies to stop using AI is a waste of energy. I believe that technology is going to keep progressing, potentially at the cost of the human race, unless something fundamentally changes in our system. We’ve already gotten rid of multiple jobs and destroyed the environment due to technology, so I don’t see how AI is any different. Although I suppose AI actually has the power to straight up replace human beings if it ever becomes that intelligent.
This isn’t technological progress, this is the pursuit of profit. Also the Fantastical AI that you’re thinking of is not the word calculator and image generator that you see on the commercial market, nor is that even possible with any of the Computing tools that we have
edit: additionally there isn’t even a consensus on how to quantify intelligence in the first place, let alone how you would create it through computation
As I mentioned in my previous comment, technology has already gotten rid of so many jobs. It has also allowed them to do things much more efficiently. Does that not mean more profit for companies? Technology has always helped companies make more profit, so I don’t see how AI is any different.
I know the AI I’m thinking of isn’t on the market, hence why I said “if it ever”. I’d like to add that in my opinion, the actual threat of AI is if it straight up replaces human beings and can replicate what we can do uniquely as humans, in which case we will no longer have work to do.
If you’re talking about some sysdmin and database jobs sure, but a good chunk of those jobs you see disappearing at a more technical level are just executives chasing fomo. And yes, considering how you’re engaging with the topic I’m not surprised that you don’t see understand the difference a revolution in the way we engage with labor and an executive cutting costs to justify the ever-increasing price of a limited use service.
I understand that you are expressing how you feel about the subject, but it is not based in reality, you were describing a fiction sold to you by people who are incentivized to make you believe something is happening that is not happening.
You’ve mentioned pursuit of profit and executives cutting costs, but again that isn’t a fault of AI, that is a fault of the system. AI is a tool, like any other technology that we’ve made. I think it’s a waste of time to try and stop it/argue against it, and any effort you put into stopping AI would be better spent on trying to change/rid the system as a whole.
All other technology we have created has been destroying the Earth at an unsustainable rate, your dislike of AI specifically is useless.
And how do the AI instagram scams fit?
Ah GOG, the “anti-DRM” platform that published a game with DRM protected DLC because their parent company demanded it.
If you’re talking about the phantom liberty DLC bug with the galaxy launcher, that’s been fixed since patch 2.01
Also they’ve been separated out of CDPR recently, we’ll see how that pans out for future releases.
Also they’ve been separated out of CDPR recently
Someone corrected me on this recently so I’m paying it forward.
CD Projekt owned GOG, not CDPR. CDPR is a separate company under CD Projekt and isn’t related to GOG other than both previously having the same owner.
If you’re talking about the phantom liberty DLC bug
Not a bug.
that’s been fixed since patch 2.01
After community outrage.
Also they’ve been separated out of CDPR recently
Doesn’t matter, it’s enough to prove their standards are up for sale.
If it was really mandated by the company and not a bug, GoG support would not have provided any workarounds to get around it while the situation was being looked into and hashed out with a permanent fix deployed in a subsequent patch.
Ah sure, it must have been a super accidental bug that just so happens to have be related to the main release of the parent company, sure.
Hitman: Game of the Year Edition and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided must have been bugs too. I guess this is a very buggy store.
You’ve got instances of DRM that you can count on your fingers that have all been reverted because what was easily identifiable DRM 20 years ago is a fairly blurry line these days. My own line has had to be redrawn several times, including for Hitman, because new games keep on coming up with new ways to screw with ownership.
I actually went to look into the examples mentioned above.
Hitman was apparently playable with “some targets” and other stuff locked behind online functionality but the base game was playable without. So this part definitely feeds into the “screwing people in new and exciting ways” that you mentioned.
For Deus Ex MD - apparently the binaries themselves were actually the DRM free ones, but the package that they gave GoG basically redirected all the DRM calls to Steam, which… resulted in a weird situation where it’s half stripped of some DRM measures while the other half required an actual crack to kill those calls that were redirected to a different platform entirely… so overall I wanna chuck it to a lazy “let’s get some brownie points and release it on GoG but let’s use this intern to package and ship it cuz we can’t be arsed to do a proper release” type of scenario.
Do I blame GoG for not checking it throughly? Yeah, a bit, but at the same time the onus should be on the providing party to deliver an adequate product that’s up to the requirements of the platform and if it’s not, maybe have a financial penalty clause for non-adherence in the distribution contract or something, I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer or anything.
Yeah, you nailed it. Hitman in particular is a weird one, because you can play through every level start to finish without the online checks, but the online unlocks allow you to keep replaying them with new loadouts, starting points, targets, etc. The extra content is a major part of the appeal. Fortunately for preserving those games, the community has reverse engineered the servers, but that doesn’t make me want to reward IO Interactive with my money for making it so that I need to rely on community fixes.
GOG doesn’t offer 20% of the features Steam does, but the trade off is a promise of no DRM headaches and full ownership values.
It simply took CDPR to wave some money their way to throw that away and have DRM on a major game. Removed after a literal outrage or not, this means the fundamental reason to use the platform is negotiable and relative. To me, that doesn’t make it different than Steam, and therefore, I’ll pick the store that actually works well.
GOG is hinting at Linux support after ages. Steam created Proton. This contrast tells me all I need to know.
As a GOG user, I don’t give a toss if they don’t offer even 1% of the features others may or may not offer. They promise I get a game, and I do get a game. It’s up to me to get those other features for my games provided they’re possible.
But I get it, there have been the cases like that Hitman game you mentioned, which shouldn’t have made it to the store at all. There’s a game where the news copy literally says that the DRM-free version is missing features. Ultimately though these instances are few and far, but they did have a lot of backlash to them before something happened. That’s something I agree with you on and they could do better. No signs of that getting better if their response to the LLM thing has been… Lackluster.
Also Valve did not create their fork of Wine. They just forked Wine, an already existing project. If Wine didn’t exist, Valve would have nothing. (Come to think about it, even their precious HL’s engine was IIRC a rewrite or fork of the one for Quake).
You do what you want. My headache right now is that I can’t tell if any multiplayer game I buy will be playable indefinitely into the future, and this is a headache I have with both of those stores. At least I know the single player stuff on GOG will be mine with far less effort than relying on a community maintained wiki somewhere for Steam. That you can name a select few examples that were immediately caught doesn’t shake my faith in what GOG promises on the tin. CDPR is just a matter of one hand not talking to the other, not trying to sneak a fast one by people.
