Companies aren't providing what customers want, but emulation largely does.
It does for console stuff pretty handily, but older PC titles are where the problem remains and where GOG does shine in some ways but still feels less than I feel is acceptable for a sold product.
I bought the original Legacy of Kain through GOG and still had to do a forum hunt to get it operational, and that's a complete failure on what they are claiming to sell me. I appreciate now having it with the standard GOG no-drm, offline available but the principle remains.
At that point I'd rather just find it on the various abandonware sites, that come with the "here is how to get it working" as part of the package instead of charging me, letting me sit down to enjoy something and realize I'm an hour away from actually playing.
but older PC titles are where the problem remains and where GOG does shine in some ways but still feels less than I feel is acceptable for a sold product.
This is where we disagree I guess. GOG has an excellent track record in my experience and nominally provides exactly the service I'm looking for, just patching old games to run as is on modern systems. Hell, I've had better luck with getting even not so old games on GOG to run rather than Steam. I had to reformat a couple years back and when I went to reinstall XCOM: Enemy Within from Steam it just straight up would not launch and no amount of scouring the forums yielded a working fix. I see GOG has it for sale so I throw down a couple bucks to pick it up there and within ten minutes I've got it installed and am directing my squad to take out some sectoids.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend they have a perfect track record, but GOG is pretty damn good.
I'm not saying they aren't good. They are literally doing the work to get games out of complete obscurity and unplayability and do so pretty well in a lot of cases. The problem I'm saying is that their pretty well is still below what I'm willing to pay in some cases. But I'm also a miser so if you ask me for money you best be putting up a lot.
went to reinstall XCOM: Enemy Within
Literally had to do the same thing with the same game, its something 2k broke within their launcher that they forced into a bunch of games and then left broken when they removed it.
It does for console stuff pretty handily, but older PC titles are where the problem remains and where GOG does shine in some ways but still feels less than I feel is acceptable for a sold product.
I bought the original Legacy of Kain through GOG and still had to do a forum hunt to get it operational, and that's a complete failure on what they are claiming to sell me. I appreciate now having it with the standard GOG no-drm, offline available but the principle remains.
At that point I'd rather just find it on the various abandonware sites, that come with the "here is how to get it working" as part of the package instead of charging me, letting me sit down to enjoy something and realize I'm an hour away from actually playing.
This is where we disagree I guess. GOG has an excellent track record in my experience and nominally provides exactly the service I'm looking for, just patching old games to run as is on modern systems. Hell, I've had better luck with getting even not so old games on GOG to run rather than Steam. I had to reformat a couple years back and when I went to reinstall XCOM: Enemy Within from Steam it just straight up would not launch and no amount of scouring the forums yielded a working fix. I see GOG has it for sale so I throw down a couple bucks to pick it up there and within ten minutes I've got it installed and am directing my squad to take out some sectoids.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend they have a perfect track record, but GOG is pretty damn good.
I'm not saying they aren't good. They are literally doing the work to get games out of complete obscurity and unplayability and do so pretty well in a lot of cases. The problem I'm saying is that their pretty well is still below what I'm willing to pay in some cases. But I'm also a miser so if you ask me for money you best be putting up a lot.
Literally had to do the same thing with the same game, its something 2k broke within their launcher that they forced into a bunch of games and then left broken when they removed it.