GOG: When we said we let you ‘own’ your games, we meant that no matter what happens you’ll still be able to play them thanks to our offline installers.

Just make sure you download them and back them up yourself because they certainly can revoke your ability to download them from their servers, is what they are implying here.

Sure, just like other brick and mortar stores can refuse to give you backups of a DVD you own.

As long as the installer works offline this is just as good. It's up to you to store it in whichever format you prefer so that you don't lose it - hard drive, thumb drive, DVD...

If you nuke your computers hard drive with the installers of your games, or you step on your blu rays with games and break them, then you lose access to them. As it's always been, no matter the format?
- yeah, keep backups.
  
  i've got some a few old games bought on floppies or cds that are knackered now. A few of them i've ended up buying again from gog.
Yeah, like when you buy a physical copy of a gane, it's up to you to make sure you keep that copy somewhere you can find it again, assuming it hasn't started decomposing.
Luckily there are some friendly people with eye patches and peglegs on the internet backing them up for you.
- "It's not piracy, it's federated backups!"
- Good luck finding a semi obscure 15 year old game on the high seas.
- Will they also help during a zombie apocalypse? Asking for a friend...
Well yes, of course. They sell you an installer and it's on you to download it. That the servers could be turned off at one point in the future because the company doesn't have money any more should be clear. It's on you to save the installer on your own hard drive, not the companies!

The missing context here (I think) is that California passed a law saying that digital storefronts (like steam and gog) can't say things like "buy game" because you aren't actually gaining ownership of the game, but instead just buying a license to access it. Some people were questioning if this law should apply to gog since their games are drm free and can be freely installed on any compatible devices once you download the installer.

It should because their use agreement makes it clear that you don't own the games but are licensing them. That's pretty much why they had to clarify what they said I'd imagine. IMO, proving the point of the law, really.
- 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.
Isn't the law only about always online games?
- That was my understanding as well.
Some of their games are drm-free/have offline installers

Can confirm for both Gog and steam I have always had access to the original fallout which went missing off store fronts for a number of years

sadly about 60% of the games i have through steam do not function in "offline mode"
- That might not be on steam but the way the game was made and even if it gotten thru piracy that it would still not work.

trying not to cry

cry a lot

give those people some cookies !

bursts in tears

The existence of GOG and Steam is why gaming is bearable in 2024

licensing issues

I understand that the buyer doesn't lose the de facto ability to install the game from a local copy of the installer, but is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG's end? I'm not saying it is, I'm just curious.

is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG’s end

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that no, you can't. When you buy the game, you've obtained a perpetual license to install and play that game, similar to what you'd have if you bought the game on a disk. You can lose your ability to download the game, that isn't guaranteed to be unlimited or perpetual, but installing it via the installer you downloaded, and playing it once you do, are forever. (This is in contrast to something like Steam, where you rely on their servers granting you permission to install the game, and that permission can be revoked.)
- How is backing up an installer from GoG different in any way to backup a game folder in Steam?
  
  Both can be copied to a different computer and used to run the game offline forever (unless of course the game has DRM, in which case both suffer from the same problem).
Right, if you download the offline installers, then they can't stop you from doing whatever you're going to do with it but you don't own them. Legally, you can't sell them, transfer them to someone else, etc.

There are other sections that make the lack of ownership by you clear and that you still have to abide by the publisher's/developer's licensing agreements but Section 10 states the situation outright:

Section 10 of the GOG user agreement says:

GOG content is owned by its developers/publishers and licensed by us.

Did people think they meant something else? Or was it more that they didn't really elaborate and folks didn't know quite what they meant?

I think they are clarifying due to what has happened with Ubisoft. They're also using it as an opportunity to spread the word farther that they won't do the same thing.
It's too clarify that in their case the games you buy on their platform don't require anything in particular to install (just the install file that you can download from their website directly and back up for later use), contrary to all other major stores.

Well GOG should drop the dark pattern to get you to download Galaxy. Besides that they're alright

Galaxy is a necessary convenience for them to compete with Steam tbh
- well they should make it at least slightly usable. people harp on epic launcher when this piece of shit barely functions 20% of the time. if you have a big library, it's useless.
  
  or it was, I stopped trying to make it with when i realized playnite exists.
- That doesn't mean they should abuse psychology to get us to download it.
I had a situation with The Saboteur.

When installed manually with downloaded installers it had configuration issues, IIRC it was limited to 1280x720 and the in game option to modify it didn't work.

But when installed with Galaxy it defaulted to 1920x1080 and the in game options worked.

At that point my game was working and I didn't investigate further so I don't know if it was downloading different installers, or performing post install tweaks to my game config, but from a functional perspective the game was broken when not using Galaxy. Ideally whatever the "magic" was it should be included in the standalone installers!
- Sounds like the work of saboteurs.
- GOG also manages the offline installers. Especially for older games. They are known to deliver badly configured DOSBox games. GOG put us in contact with their technical team for one such game. Their technical team just ghosted us.

Yeah, I should have gone with GoG every chance I could. I guess it's never to late to switch

Thor from Pirate Software must be absolutely seething rn

why?
- He hates StopKillingGames, because he thinks it will make bad actors try to ruin devs because he expects people to try to profit from being able to provide game access to players when the devs are out of the picture. So therefore we can't stop killing games, we need to just let games die and stop feeling entitled to the necessary code to run servers. And besides we need to get comfortable buying games with temporary licensing deals that are more convenient and cheap for the developers so they can not renew them if the game isn't successful, and if the license runs out then we need to accept that the music or car or whatever legally needs to be removed. And we need to accept that if corporate wants to delete our accounts or sew our mouth to somebody's ass then that's just gonna have to happen because it's what we agreed to. Turns out the man is a business bro shill cunt totally cool with the new bullshit because it's preferred by the suits.
- He was strawmaning the stop killing games initiative.

I need to get those Resident Evil remasters, the REMASTERS NOT The remaKES from dese guys.

Maybe it’s great, but I cant even download the installer on linux.

Um, yes, you can actually.
Installer file is a direct link to an executable file from their website. They contain the full game inside the installer. There's no reason you can't download that on Linux as long as you have internet and a browser.
GoG homepage > (your name [drop down menu] when logged in) > "Games" > Click on any game in your collection > Download offline backup game installers

You can download installers for whatever systems the game supports -- usually that's just a Windows .EXE installer (+ several .bin files if the game is large). For games intended to run on Linux w/o WINE, you can select "Linux" from a drop down where it says system and it will give you an .sh file.
- If it's an EXE and you just want extract it you can use https://github.com/dscharrer/innoextract
  It supports the special GOG Inno files. And it's a lot faster than the official installer with less temp files.

Okay gog sucks but this actually makes me wonder if I should dry them again anyway.

GOG is pretty good because of this. I check in there if I’m considering buying something on Steam. There might still be compelling reasons to buy on Steam, like I bought Parkitect on Steam because a review on GOG specifically called out how the mods really only work well on Steam, but I’m at least checking first and maybe Wishlisting the game on GOG. I have fairly reasonable trust in Valve while Gabe is running it, but I feel like I can have longer trust in keeping copies of installers myself.
What aspect of GoG did you find sucked?
- When I tried it it was buggy trash. And while I know it's been a few years since it launched, I also remember when unity launched and it was buggy trash so I still roll my eyes whenever I see their logo pop up too.
- Their software. I don't want to go to a site and download a game to find an actual functional launcher (and file management, etc) somewhere else. GOG galaxy is terrible on windows and doesn't support Linux, despite the overlap between their philosophy and Linux users.
  
  Steam isn't just a store. It manages my large library with no work on my part, including reasonably high quality tags to make it easier to find games for whatever mood I'm in. It completely seamlessly handles Linux support on almost all of my games, while giving me all the freedom I need to make changes in the rare cases their out of the box setup has issues. It has an exceptionally high quality input mapping tool that is done per game and has a large catalogue of user generated control schemes. It handles simple modding for a lot of games that don't need anything too crazy. It handles cloud saves so invisibly between devices that I almost never have to think about it.
  
  I will (and have) pay for a game on Steam when I have it on GOG for free, if I actually want to play it. I'll eventually be self hosting almost all of my other media, and have taken steps in that direction, but I definitely will not be doing so for games. Steam is just too much better than any third party options.