This could be the case, or could not be. They shared a post on Reddit 19 hours ago from their official account, and I thought it might be nice to share that here, at least to spark some discussion.
They simply shared a post titled:
Shall we? 📦💿
With the following image:
Link to the Reddit post is here if you want to see what others are saying about it!
Please don’t team up with Limited Run Games to do this.
I think physical copies are still important, and if I ever go as far as selling my own games, I plan to sell them alongside the digital copies. I’ll see how much I can put into it after losing the 30% Gaben tax, likely a small box with installer DVD (or optionally USB stick if I will be able to find quality ones for cheap) + printed manual will be the baseline, then a Big Box edition for more money with some more goodies (soundtrack CDs + artbook + posters + other tats).
That’s the thing. Steam caught on in part because compared to physical retail “only” 30% was a massive improvement for the average game company. I’ve heard 60-70+% going to buying/printing floppies/CDs, packaging, distribution, etc. at the high end. I’m sure the big companies got bulk discounts or multi-year deals for supplies.
Yes that meant that since those aspects were a significant amount of the cost anyway you could do stuff like the StarCraft Battlechest that was crammed with extras. But it also did a lot of gatekeeping in it’s own right.
Now you could probably do some kind of limited run thing that would be a lot more viable, but it’s definitely a luxury step up.
I don’t think we should create more waste in our world, so I’m voting against it.
I’d want GOG to focus more on Linux and on getting more games on their store.
Those would be collectibles, and as that more or less art pieces, so not really waste, unless you classify all art as waste which would be sad in my eyes.
I understand this.
Still plastic waste is a huge problem.
Dependeing on the price, anyone could be tempted by collecting these, where collecting psintings would be too prohibitive.
Optical media? Maybe not.
Custom flash drives? That would be gravy.
I’d kinda love to see a comeback for optical given the supply issues for flash memory, but I’ll about that a custom USB ROM stick or SDCard style carts for PC would be kinda sick
Ugh, I would love a portable/offline launcher/installer for my GoG game files.
GOG already offers offline installers for all games they sell.
Nice - I didn’t realize that the GoG installer was portable.
I wish their settings had custom connections. Like, If I could have a portable version that connects to my NAS and downloads/installs my offline/saved GoG games; that’d be the sweet spot. If anyone has suggestions for a setup like this lemme know!
You do realize that flash drives are not near stable enough for long term storage, much less archival storage, right?
Not to take away form your point at all, but optical media degrades, too. Usually much slower, though. In the long run, regular transferal between backups is the only option. (In the long-long run, we will succeed in preserving nothing and all traces of our existence will be obscured! Ahhh!)
Yes, thats my point.
You have maybe a year, if you’re lucky, on a flash drive… and very few’d probably make it that far, and the ones that did would be egregiously expensive.
on optical media you have time that can be measured in decades, possibly even a century if proper storage practices are used.
That is a significant difference in stability
I really don’t want more packaging. Just give me a download to the file.
I see zero reason to want more plastic like a disc, but I could understand why someone might want a box with a book, a manual, maybe some items from the game.
My kids order stuff like this all the time from the independent game makers they like to support. Their book shelves have their favorite books and box sets of games, and they like it.
I guess my point is: for indy game makers, this is already a thing.
GoG already does this though, so presumably it would just be the consumers choice. Some folx just like bookcases and collectibles.
Gog already makes books and collectibles like I mentioned?
They do? Where?
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If they came with manual, posters, artwork and all the goodies of old game boxes could be a win.
Also better done with completed games that are no longer to be updated.
For an empty box with a cd that once installed you need to download a 50Gb patch for it to be playable would make no sense.
Anyone know what was up with the Nazi symbolism they emailed purposefully? I would really want to support them but I need to know that it wasnt something terrible they did. Physical releases is definitely a plus as well.
They released a standard non-apology claiming it was part of their culture and that people just didn’t understand. They also stated their German team raised issue with the email and that they just ignored it
Wait really?
They went back and forth with the community more and the devs but basically repeated themselves
It was not Nazi symbolism, well not intentionally at least. They used Slavic runes that, in the intended fonts, looks very different from the Nazi symbols. It came to the issue because in some fonts the Slavic runes are displayed without serifs and with hard lines which makes them appear problematic. So it was kind of a self inflicted homographic attack.
Well, I know the cause now but it’s still not that good a reason if they were warned and decided not to use it in Germany…
Oh, it was used in germany, as I as a german had the newsletter in my inbox too, and found it very problematic.
The warning from the german team was not ignored, as far as I understood it, but just arrived too late while the newsletter team was already sending the mails. I also work in a international company with teams all over the world, stuff like that can happen without any ill intend, and so far GOG has shown no negative signs at all. So I tend to accept the explanation that it was only a error, especially with the very bad history that poland had with the nazi regime, Blitzkrieg and all.
Sure one can, and should, put GOG on a personal “watchlist” in case other strange or ugly stuff like this happens, but as long as that is not the case I don’t see any reason to change my use of GOG at all. Humans, and with that companies too, can make and will make errors and I am a big fan of second, or even third, chances. I try to judge by intend not by looks.
The warning from the german team was not ignored, as far as I understood it, but just arrived too late while the newsletter team was already sending the mails.
Nope, it was blocked. They asked, were told this is wrong and knew why.
The reason you had it delivered in Germany is because your email preferences are set to English. They only skipped Germany by blocking the German language. They knew it was wrong, avoided the German language and set it to everyone else. Rather than hitting backspace once or twice.
Except their excuse that it was part of their culture and why they use it in the first place holds no water according to the developers of the game (part of said culture) as well as many others.
Well the games name is “End of the Sun” and it is a Slavic game, so using a slavic sun rune is not that extremely far fetched. Why using it double, which lead to the SS appearance, i``s another question and it was dumb at least. But I still don’t see ill intent, when something like that happens once I am fair enough to accept that people can do things in error. I still try to see the good in people
I can’t find a official statement from GOG with that content, only statements where they say that it was a error both in the internal processes, with not waiting for the responses of all internationale, especially in this case the german, teams before sending the newsletter and with checking if the runes could be problematic in some fonts.
The runes themself are both from the intended design and from the connected meaning and symbolism unproblematic, yes they can look problematic in the wrong fonts but that is more a problem of font design then of ill intent.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txmcyd/comment/opxtour/?share_id=CwegTdIv6g3YU-MQmBT0_
Second sentence is literally the GOG rep stating is part of their culture. The reply is the dev explicitly stating they avoided several of the runes sent because of the connotations. Comments are full of people pointing out that they did not use the rune they claimed they did based on the Unicode and pointing out that in history using the double rune has had no meaning.
The developers also pointed out in a different spot they changed their logo because the old one had connotations they wanted to avoid but that GOG used the old one, despite having the new less problematic one.
Nothing GOG said passes the sniff test.
I agree, the combination of the incorrect character, the “random” doubling of it and the way they did not respect the developer’s decision to change their logo makes it hard to believe it was a mistake.
To me it really sounds like the change of logo made some piece of shit angry, and then they thought they’d “correct” it.
Would it be feasible (if thats not what’s happening here already) to just have blank boxes, blank discs, blank sleeve inserts, and just fire up the printer when an order comes in?
I could see it being “fairly easy” to automate, but no true understanding of if it would be realistically cost-effective or if it would scale appropriately or whatever.
Much rather have them create read-only (or semi read only to import patches?) flash-storage USB sticks.
Who the hell has a built-in CD player or even a BD-player in this time and age?
I have an external USB-CD player but only so I can digitize the CDs I buy online.Who the hell has a built-in CD player or even a BD-player in this time and age?
The answer is nerds. The specific answer is the type of nerds who would buy this sort of thing.
You’re looking at one right now, in fact — I have an internal 5.25" Blu-Ray burner in the lone singular bay in my current case. (The machine with the conga line of nearly every type of floppy drive ever created down the front of it lives in the basement.)
Automatic Ripping Machine doeant count ;)
Idk if ripping CDs every few months counts towards nerdy tasks :D
If they do a print to order thing, I could see it maybe working out as a cool side business. Or it could be a chance for them to go really harder into the vintage games market if they can get some publishers on board or get the rights to some older stuff. Doesn’t seem like a winning market though on a mass market front, more just a form of advertising or a specialty service for physical collectors.
Print to order is the best way I was wondering why they “announced” this and then your comment made it click I bet that is how they do it.
Actually super cool I won’t lie.
Maybe for collector editions? Otherwise digital via GoG galaxy client is preferable
Yeah, I could see this too. I see a lot of other devs / indie devs doing Design Works for their games and GoG offering something like this could be cool.
they should’ve used the meme of LOTR Frodo’s uncle or whatever - ’ after all, why shouldn’t we 📦📀☹️’
~thinks about cloth maps from Ultima games
~ heavy breathing
They used to make them out of cloth???
you used to get all kinds of really cool and amazing shit when you bought games, maps, manuals, pewter figures, and more.
They were beautiful! (this one has extra annotations written on it by the player)
do it. I don’t care about the practicality of it all I loved those big boxes. But they also need to have the big manuals inside also.
Some of those manuals were absolutely awesome. Like the one for the first Heavy Gear. or the old flight sim games. Or like the original release of Final Fantasy 7 on PC by Edios came with a brady’s strategy guide. Heck bring back strategy guides too! I remember when World of Warcraft first came out I picked up the strategy guide with it cause it was full of WoW related Penny-Arcade comics in it and I was (heck still am) a massive fan of Penny-Arcade.
100% feel you I miss picking up a game with a phat manual, I am smell the fresh ink from the manuals when I think about it hard enough lol
Or buying a large paged, glossy, color printed, gorgeous strategy guide I would read for pleasure and enjoy as a piece of art as well as a walkthrough
Ahh fuck I miss being younger. The late 90’s and early to mid 2000’s were an incredible time for video games
Maybe for certain Collector’s Editions, but overall I don’t need optical media when the games are DRM-free anyway.
Makes sense to me, actually.
It’d be an easy way to get and also store the DRM-free offline installer, in where you don’t have to permanently allocate active storage to keep the installer around.
burn it yourself
Consumer burnable CD and DVD disks often have an astonishingly short storage life, especially if they are not stored very carefully. They’re not an archival medium. Competently pressed commercial (aluminum) disks meanwhile have a storage life that is near as makes no difference to infinite provided they are not physically damaged in some way.
I’ve got tons of burned disks of pirated old games from the early aughts that don’t read anymore. This is highly annoying from a preservation standpoint as I can’t get them to play despite possessing them on disk, and they’re now unpopular enough that they’re likewise difficult to impossible to pirate again.
i realze now the guy was talking about backup. i thought it was for display. i knew dvds were bad foe navkup but didnt realize commercial dvds were so much better.
EDIT: i just checked they do seel commercial frade “archive quality” on amazon. they arent that mich more.
