What a load of bullshat. First of all GOG spent their resources to make sure that games work properly and they provide support for it. So it's not "unrelated company". Your car mechanic is unrelated and doesn't deserve money for fixing your car?

Second, as Adzeth mentioned earlier, if someone paid original creators for their rights to the game that they created, then he deserve money from sales.

It encourages companies to buy rights for old IPs and I would love to see some company that would pay original devs, original publisher and other companies that hold rights for System Shock 2, so it could be rereleased.

Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's beneficial (or "fair").

People can get "scammed" within the law. People can work for hire and then not get rehired. Companies can sell unpopular properties for peanuts. Current rightsholders can be stupid/uncooperative. Embezzlers can get hold of the assets and resell them to their own sockpuppets.

Don't count on humans being correct, sane, honest and logical, or impose that duty upon them. The world does not work like that.

Personally, I'm glad you didn't. The price for most games here is so cheap that simply cleaning your couch (I'm assuming that you have a couch) pays for a majority of games on this site.

That's the way I feel too. I don't understand the OP at all, it doesn't make any sense to me

He obviously connects beer* with GOG than with Dennaton Games. And in feeling remorse for the former, he also gives credit to the latter, but not the other way around.

*should have been "better", but I like the typo

Yeah I get why he did it. I just don't think it makes much sense. Gog aren't the only good guys in the DD world .A lack of a gog installer wouldn't have meant the game was any more worthy of being pirated, but he would have ended up pirating it if it hadn't mentioned them.

There is a difference between accepting reality and using it for PR versus having "nothing against" piracy. I think that is a difference worth clarifying.

I think most of us like and use GOG for convenience reasons, to have simple and supported archival copies.

Notch says he has no problem with people pirating his games now that he's loaded...he's not gonna really sweat it now. Besides he actually does want you to pay for his game if you like it. So he's basically saying pirate it as a demo but he wants your money

This is a good point - given that piracy is somewhat unavoidable, it makes a lot of business sense to use it to create buzz and publicity and to engender good feelings towards the developer and the game. That being said, we don't have any particular reason to doubt the developer if they say they really don't mind too much about piracy. Besides, the best community support tends to come when you are open and honest your community, so if the developer said "Piracy really bothers me, but I am not going to interfere on practicality grounds" I think they would still get a lot of the respect.

Support for the concept is a big factor for me too - encouraging DRM-free games, consistent international pricing, and the resurrection of games previously confined to the mists of history are all great things that I would wish to see continue and expand.

Let's imagine this situation here: If everyone pirated, the companies would be losing money from the cost of producing games, pretty soon they realize there's no point working in the games business so they they switch to beans making or something that actually makes money. Pretty soon, there'll be no more games companies. The only new games that get ever brought out would maybe the odd person making it as a hobby but there wouldn't be much effort put into these games, why would they bother, there's no profit in it. They wouldn't spend as much money on producing the game, time and effort.

That's pretty much all. thanks for reading :D

My GOG Story - Here is a confession... I have pirated quite a few games... Well I started pirating games when my old game discs stopped working... This happened quite a few times, after a while i just stopped buying games... Just wouldn't bother to buy a disc when eventually i had to pirate it again (I know that was wrong) ... A year back.. while looking for an old game on the web i found a torrent with a GOG version of that game.. Downloaded and installed the game and I was amazed to see the ease of install... no cracks no nothing.. During the installation I saw the GOG banner... After checking out the website and looking at the services GOG provides... I fell in love with GOG... In the coming few days after that, i came to know about more digital distribution services...

Since that day i have never pirated a single game... and have purchased that game and many others i have ever pirated at least once and made many giveaways... either on GOG or Steam...

I am not justifying anything... Just want to say thanks to GOG for the change

Not an unusual story, and a great illustration of a key point about piracy - often people pirate because the legitimate channels don't work for them. I doubt I have to convince anyone on this site about the advantages of a digital download, legitimate or not, over a damage prone cd. As soon as the developer produced a product that was better at fulfilling your needs than the pirated version, you snapped it up. Give people a good reason to buy and they often will.

There is this theory about piracy and buying knockoffs. People who pirate games, music and movies or buy knockoffs are very likely to buy them when their financial status rises.

Many of us who pirated games as kids started to buy them as soon as they had some more money.

Of course, there are always cheap bastards who pirate even if they could easily buy everything they want, but well, you can't change them.

Indeed. They also tend to buy more of the scarce goods related to the content. On this games are slightly worse off than a lot of digital content, in that the amount of development time on the pirated part of the product (the game) is very large and the number of scarce goods which can't be pirated (online services, community access, merch etc.) is considerably smaller.

"Yes you can, you can put every single one of them to jail, for years. Or letting them pay millions each for their copyright infringement."
At least that's the opinion of the legislature.

It is interesting to note, however, that in the case mentioned above by our confessor Piracy was an actual form of advertising.
Viral marketing at its best.

What does that mean, you may wonder?

Well, it means that you Sir (I'm talking to you Mr. tarunmutreja) have been the the victim of dastardly cunning and perfidiously sneaky Public Relation campaign that almost forced you instinctively to join GOG and buy your software there.
Climaxing in the most slyness of all facts that you actual feel guilty of not becoming GOGs customer earlier.

Well played GOG, well played indeed.

In other words, after stealing a Porsche you not only found out where to buy one immediately thanks to specific product placement. No you instantly bought one, and already felt guilty about not buying one 10 years ago.
Best marketing strategy I heard thus far...