This is equally true for almost any game ever sold, including physical ones. You only ever own a license that specifies what you can and cannot do with the game. The difference is in what this license is tied to, for example either a physical copy of a given game or an account that can be remotely deactivated taking away all your games. In GOG’s case once you grab the installer, the game license cannot be easily forcibly revoked, just as with the physical copy.
The difference with physical is that you own the physical medium the license is stored on and are permitted to sell the physical medium with the license. With digital downloads you are not allowed to sell a drive with the files. Since you are technically making a copy.
With recent campaigns and rants against digital media, people often claim that “you own the game if you buy a physical copy”. That always makes me sigh, because it’s false.
Not saying there are some advantages for some use cases, but I dislike hyperbole and untruths.
With Steam, you have a ticket that will let you into Steam to download the game for as long as your account is in good standing and as long as Steam exists.
With GOG, you have a file you can use to install the game on any machine INDEFINITELY. GOG can’t revoke your access for any reason, and if GOG shuts down, you can still install the games.
I have plenty drm free games in steam where I copied the game folder into other computers and it ran offline. At that point, there’s no difference between an installer and a compressed copy of that game. For reference, Grim dawn but there’s plenty more.
“Installing” is just semantics for decompressing a file in specific folders, you can the collect that data and “install” the game wherever. As long as you can run the game without steam, it doesn’t matter that you used steam to buy it.
It doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t change the point that people think they own digital goods when they don’t. GOG may have a more consumer friendly system in place but it doesn’t change what has happened with people’s music, movies, shows, games and music in games at these digital storefronts, where people have clicked “Buy X” and later on, it’s no longer in their libraries anymore. This has happened even when the business still exists and is still providing digital goods.
With GOG, you can buy any game, and you’ll have files to keep. Once you have the installer, you can keep that forever.
Even if your GOG account is hacked, banned, and GOG goes out of business, you can forever install your game onto any compatible machine, even offline, and play the game.
That’s what GOG does differently.
It’s like buying a physical game, except there’s no disc. They can’t revoke your access or deactivate your ability to play the game.
I know that. That still misses the point. The point of the law is to clarify that on digital storefronts that you make purchases for licensed digital goods, that you can’t imply to the consumer that they actually own those goods. It doesn’t matter if there is an offline installer. It doesn’t matter if you can ‘keep your installers forever’.
This exception clearly allows for user downloadable installer for a game with offline functionality. But consoles, steam, etc where you don’t get a standalone installer, they look like they will need the warning on all titles.
Technically that also applies to Steam, since you get a digital good available at the moment of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage, just copy the game folder and you’re done. It would be the equivalent of a music store place downloading mp3s (and the equivalent to GoG would be selling an .iso to the music CD you can burn whenever you want or an installer that extracts the mp3 to a folder).
If the game itself has DRM then that would also apply to GoG (yes, there are games with DRM on GoG, there’s just proportionally less of them).
This is equally true for almost any game ever sold, including physical ones. You only ever own a license that specifies what you can and cannot do with the game. The difference is in what this license is tied to, for example either a physical copy of a given game or an account that can be remotely deactivated taking away all your games. In GOG’s case once you grab the installer, the game license cannot be easily forcibly revoked, just as with the physical copy.
The difference with physical is that you own the physical medium the license is stored on and are permitted to sell the physical medium with the license. With digital downloads you are not allowed to sell a drive with the files. Since you are technically making a copy.
Thanks for saying this.
With recent campaigns and rants against digital media, people often claim that “you own the game if you buy a physical copy”. That always makes me sigh, because it’s false.
Not saying there are some advantages for some use cases, but I dislike hyperbole and untruths.
That’s just semantics.
When you buy a CD, you don’t own the songs.
But you do have some item that belongs to you.
With Steam, you have a ticket that will let you into Steam to download the game for as long as your account is in good standing and as long as Steam exists.
With GOG, you have a file you can use to install the game on any machine INDEFINITELY. GOG can’t revoke your access for any reason, and if GOG shuts down, you can still install the games.
I have plenty drm free games in steam where I copied the game folder into other computers and it ran offline. At that point, there’s no difference between an installer and a compressed copy of that game. For reference, Grim dawn but there’s plenty more.
“Installing” is just semantics for decompressing a file in specific folders, you can the collect that data and “install” the game wherever. As long as you can run the game without steam, it doesn’t matter that you used steam to buy it.
You’re right! Some games on Steam are DRM-free.
All games on GOG are DRM-free as a rule.
It doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t change the point that people think they own digital goods when they don’t. GOG may have a more consumer friendly system in place but it doesn’t change what has happened with people’s music, movies, shows, games and music in games at these digital storefronts, where people have clicked “Buy X” and later on, it’s no longer in their libraries anymore. This has happened even when the business still exists and is still providing digital goods.
With GOG, you can buy any game, and you’ll have files to keep. Once you have the installer, you can keep that forever.
Even if your GOG account is hacked, banned, and GOG goes out of business, you can forever install your game onto any compatible machine, even offline, and play the game.
That’s what GOG does differently.
It’s like buying a physical game, except there’s no disc. They can’t revoke your access or deactivate your ability to play the game.
I know that. That still misses the point. The point of the law is to clarify that on digital storefronts that you make purchases for licensed digital goods, that you can’t imply to the consumer that they actually own those goods. It doesn’t matter if there is an offline installer. It doesn’t matter if you can ‘keep your installers forever’.
This article seems to say that it covers only digital items that have an always online requirement.
https://www.gamefile.news/p/california-ab2426-crew-call-of-duty
So i think offline games don’t need the warning, but online games, steaming movies, etc do need the warning.
Edit:
I looked a bit further and found the bill text:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB2426#99INT
This exception clearly allows for user downloadable installer for a game with offline functionality. But consoles, steam, etc where you don’t get a standalone installer, they look like they will need the warning on all titles.
Technically that also applies to Steam, since you get a digital good available at the moment of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage, just copy the game folder and you’re done. It would be the equivalent of a music store place downloading mp3s (and the equivalent to GoG would be selling an .iso to the music CD you can burn whenever you want or an installer that extracts the mp3 to a folder).
If the game itself has DRM then that would also apply to GoG (yes, there are games with DRM on GoG, there’s just proportionally less of them).