(Video not by me)
PC Gamer and GamingOnLinux recently covered a few things about GOG’s usage of genAI for promotional content, but this video goes into deeper coverage about their Head of Product being responsible for their direction. (Cue scam AI Instagram girls). It also covers how the company chose to respond to the backlash regarding their usage of genAI.
It’s sad to see them being brazen about their AI usage. I advocated for them several times, owning games (anything, really) is something that should be for granted. All of this makes their store look really cheap and turns off people from thinking about the idea.
Steam do nothing: wins
Steam’s business model of “do nothing and watch every single competitor repeatedly shoot their own feet” seems to work really well.
True
Caving in to the anti-NSFW demands is “doing nothing”? Paid mods? Not offering refunds for more than a decade? Being one of the first to popularize loot boxes and with it “marketplaces” of items that don’t exist, where you aren’t even guaranteed the horse armor you want to buy? Literally destroying physical media, used games, and game ownership in one fell swoop so we have to rely on GOG to get the latter back in some form? Damn, their logo must really have the same memetic effects the Apple one has.
Alright here is my response(am not defending Valve or calling them Saints here)
Caving in to the anti-NSFW demands is “doing nothing”?
IIRC Didnt Visa and Mastercard pressure them
Paid mods?
thats a thing?
Not offering refunds for more than a decade?
i heard a government pressured them to doing this,yeah that sucks though
Being one of the first to popularize loot boxes and with it “marketplaces” of items that don’t exist, where you aren’t even guaranteed the horse armor you want to buy?
Yeah that sucks to,but for me its fine for F2P Video games and if its not P2W
Donationware would be cool too 👍literally destroying physical media, used games, and game ownership in one fell swoop so we have to rely on GOG to get the latter back in some form?
Didnt everything move digital?
but
for the most part Steam/Valve did kinda destroy physical Medium,there are sometimes video games that are sold on DVDS/CDS(Video games,Music)
i think for non-DRM Games you can Still own it on Steam???
and used games well i think the digital switch killed it, but if the franchise still has physical Medium it is still possible.IIRC Didnt Visa and Mastercard pressure them
If they did, then they caved to them despite their wealth and resources. Meanwhile GOG gave away a bundle full of NSFW games and they’re also served by Visa and MC. AFAIK only they and itch.io publicly shot themselves here.
Paid mods?
A long while ago, they thought it was an okay idea and they actually sold mods for a short while before taking it out due to backlash. Skyrim was one of the games to have paid mods. I heard a year or two ago they were reconsidering the idea but I don’t remember the details. On that note, their mod store is locked to their own versions of most games, meaning that if Skyrim still had workshop mods (free or paid), you likely wouldn’t be able to download them for the GOG version of the game. I’m sure if Epic did this, I’ll be hearing all sorts of bloody murder all day.
i heard a government pressured them to doing this,yeah that sucks though
IIRC that was Australia. But even their refund policy now is shit. Two hours after you click launch on a game? GOG back then had a 14 day money back guarantee, now extended to a full 30 days refund policy.
Yeah that sucks to,but for me its fine for F2P Video games and if its not P2W
Worth noting P2W is a direct result of the F2P model that Valve has popularized in full fat PC games. Minecraft’s first April Fool’s joke is a parody of the TF2 store, long before its Bedrock Edition had a similar store for itself. It’s not a stretch to say they planted the seeds for games like Star Wars Battlefront 2017 which had you grind for too long of a time just to play the iconic Darth Vader.
and used games well i think the digital switch killed it
The killing started very slowly with HL2, which was the first physical game to require using steam keys to even be able to play it. Selling your copy of HL2 with a used key means the other person can’t legally play it. This practice really sped up with 2011’s PC physical version of Skyrim which did the same, and at that time many more games did it. Before long, we started seeing discs that don’t even have the game files. Microsoft tried to track and limit used games for the X1 console, but backtracked due to backlash. Bethesda continued “innovating” with the Fallout 76 cardboard disc. Now the practice has bled over to current gen consoles.
Tangentially related
The PSP Go was the first digital only console and since the PS Store was discontinued for it, yep, no more buying games for it.
i think for non-DRM Games you can Still own it on Steam???
There are very few of these games and the only way to know about them is a community-made spreadsheet compiled through trial and error. Unlike GOG, they’re not guaranteed to stay DRM-free - they can suddenly become DRM’d at any moment.
I agree with a lot of this except for destroying physical media. Even consoles went digital, music and movies are digital, I don’t think steam is responsible here
They are responsible. They planted the seeds with HL2 as early as 2004. Then they essentially made it not only feasible but also popular to make the physical games of even third parties be just glorified one use digital codes, and all of this waaaaay before 2013’s Xbox One attempted to do similar things and got booed very hard.
PC games were always weird with physical media though, shareware and piracy were prevalent since the 80s. And the physical games were even worse than digital in some regards, with Starforce and Securom rootkit-like drm that crashes modern PCs or Games for Windows Live locking save files (and not even cloud saves, normal local save files) behind online service that is now dead. I resisted making a steam account for as long as I could, but today no one even owns a disc drive, steam just won on convenience
but today no one even owns a disc drive, steam just won on convenience
Few people own disc drives because of the constant attacks on physical media and ability to own things, especially games. It’s not that they “won on convenience,” but rather they “won” by making it so physical games slowly become just a more expensive one time redeem key for digital copies… which you can spend money on right now with Humble and the likes without moving an inch or waiting for the order to arrive. If it wasn’t for them, we would own more of our games.
“Okay guys we’ve purchased GOG, the internet’s darling for DRM-free gaming. If we play our cards right we could take an even larger share of steams sales. Our first order of business: pivot our focus onto the one thing that DRM-conscious gamers would hate more than DRM!”
Reminder to actually download and archive all the game files you bought on gog. They might not be there for much longer.
Any projects to auto archive everything?
I hear of lgogdownloader. There’s plenty of projects like this. I second the notion to download all your stuff, or as much as you can now.
I can vouch for lgogdownloader.
I don’t care much at all that they used an AI generated banner ad for a store sale, but plenty of people do, and it was predictable that they would. If they wanted to save money, it would have only cost them a single game’s revenue to find someone on Fiverr to make a similar graphic.
As somebody who has used Fiverr, there’s a lot of good artists on there, but it does not cost five dollars.
Not anymore, but I doubt a graphic like the one they used would have cost a pretty penny.
I agree but if it was just used in minor or very minor places.
But the job requirements require you to use AI tools which is not fine with me(it would be fine if it was optional)If it results in less or worse work getting done, we’ll either see it manifest as the customers and it will affect my future purchasing decisions with no harm to what I’ve already bought, or they’ll stop drinking the kool aid. I worked on a game project with a die-hard NFT believer, and even he eventually backed down on trying to shoehorn them into the game after it was clear they were more controversial and less productive than monetizing the game with more ordinary methods.
But people on Fiverr are probably now using AI too. So you might end up paying someone to use AI instead of just using AI yourself.
It‘s sad to see they use the very tool that has become a true menace for anyone who wants to play games right now. There are so many aspects to it that put the entire concept of ownership at risk and they just use it nilly willy. I‘m not even surprised anymore but still so very disappointed.
Damn, I won’t be buying games on GOG at all until they fully course correct into a better state of being. I will be downloading all of my installers that I care about, because if things are this desperate, they might not have long.
It’s sad to see so I’m going to keep a close eye on what GOG do from here.
deleted by creator
tl;dw?
GOG caught using AI tools, head of product tweeting AI Instagram scams
This is overblown.
How about get mad when they start using AI tools to revitalize old games or use AI code to make old games compatible to work on modern OSes.
I considered not responding to this for a bit. I’ll just cave in, if not for you then for everyone else in the room.
If you haven’t watched the video, GOG has been dabbling in genAI for two years now, thanks to their Head of Product, who unironically replied to a tweet that said something along the lines of “I made 30k USD with Instagram AI girls, here’s how you can do it.” (Also he really likes the Nazi called Musk). They’ve generated banners with questionable to outright sloppy quality as well as other images.
It’s not farfetched to assume the next step will be to “start using AI tools to revitalize old games or use AI code to make old games compatible to work on modern OSes.”
So the best time to get mad is now, not later.
Yeah totally, the best advice is always wait till things get worse, right?
We all float down here
I know people hate AI (I am included in that group), however trying to get companies to stop using AI is a waste of energy. I believe that technology is going to keep progressing, potentially at the cost of the human race, unless something fundamentally changes in our system. We’ve already gotten rid of multiple jobs and destroyed the environment due to technology, so I don’t see how AI is any different. Although I suppose AI actually has the power to straight up replace human beings if it ever becomes that intelligent.
Edit: AI is a new technology, but so was the car, computer, and smartphone. All of these things have changed the world for better or worse (I’d argue worse, I think anyone that looks at the dire state of our planet would agree). I merely make the claim that AI is the next thing of that. Hate it or like it, it is probably here to stay unless the system as a whole changes, which is where our energy should be focused.
Ironic to argue that trying to stop AI is a waste of energy given how much energy is wasted to use AI. Could have used better phrasing in your quest to get people to stop being negative towards AI.
This isn’t technological progress, this is the pursuit of profit. Also the Fantastical AI that you’re thinking of is not the word calculator and image generator that you see on the commercial market, nor is that even possible with any of the Computing tools that we have
edit: additionally there isn’t even a consensus on how to quantify intelligence in the first place, let alone how you would create it through computation
As I mentioned in my previous comment, technology has already gotten rid of so many jobs. It has also allowed them to do things much more efficiently. Does that not mean more profit for companies? Technology has always helped companies make more profit, so I don’t see how AI is any different.
I know the AI I’m thinking of isn’t on the market, hence why I said “if it ever”. I’d like to add that in my opinion, the actual threat of AI is if it straight up replaces human beings and can replicate what we can do uniquely as humans, in which case we will no longer have work to do.
If you’re talking about some sysdmin and database jobs sure, but a good chunk of those jobs you see disappearing at a more technical level are just executives chasing fomo. And yes, considering how you’re engaging with the topic I’m not surprised that you don’t see understand the difference a revolution in the way we engage with labor and an executive cutting costs to justify the ever-increasing price of a limited use service.
I understand that you are expressing how you feel about the subject, but it is not based in reality, you were describing a fiction sold to you by people who are incentivized to make you believe something is happening that is not happening.
You’ve mentioned pursuit of profit and executives cutting costs, but again that isn’t a fault of AI, that is a fault of the system. AI is a tool, like any other technology that we’ve made. I think it’s a waste of time to try and stop it, and any effort you put into stopping AI would be better spent on trying to fix/destroy the system that we have as a whole.
All other technology we have created has done what you say AI is doing, so your dislike of AI specifically doesn’t make sense to me based on those two things.
And how do the AI instagram scams fit?
My comment was in reference to the “GOG caught using AI tools” part, not the scam part. I didn’t bother to watch the video on the other half of the title.
AI is a very good summarizer, and I use it to reformat and modernise tons of legal texts into markdown and an easier-to-read format for my own reference at work, which I would not dare ask another human being to brave such mundane work. I really don’t see the appeal of AI in art other than place holder.
Ah GOG, the “anti-DRM” platform that published a game with DRM protected DLC because their parent company demanded it.
If you’re talking about the phantom liberty DLC bug with the galaxy launcher, that’s been fixed since patch 2.01
Also they’ve been separated out of CDPR recently, we’ll see how that pans out for future releases.
Also they’ve been separated out of CDPR recently
Someone corrected me on this recently so I’m paying it forward.
CD Projekt owned GOG, not CDPR. CDPR is a separate company under CD Projekt and isn’t related to GOG other than both previously having the same owner.
If you’re talking about the phantom liberty DLC bug
Not a bug.
that’s been fixed since patch 2.01
After community outrage.
Also they’ve been separated out of CDPR recently
Doesn’t matter, it’s enough to prove their standards are up for sale.
If it was really mandated by the company and not a bug, GoG support would not have provided any workarounds to get around it while the situation was being looked into and hashed out with a permanent fix deployed in a subsequent patch.
Ah sure, it must have been a super accidental bug that just so happens to have be related to the main release of the parent company, sure.
Hitman: Game of the Year Edition and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided must have been bugs too. I guess this is a very buggy store.
You’ve got instances of DRM that you can count on your fingers that have all been reverted because what was easily identifiable DRM 20 years ago is a fairly blurry line these days. My own line has had to be redrawn several times, including for Hitman, because new games keep on coming up with new ways to screw with ownership.
I actually went to look into the examples mentioned above.
Hitman was apparently playable with “some targets” and other stuff locked behind online functionality but the base game was playable without. So this part definitely feeds into the “screwing people in new and exciting ways” that you mentioned.
For Deus Ex MD - apparently the binaries themselves were actually the DRM free ones, but the package that they gave GoG basically redirected all the DRM calls to Steam, which… resulted in a weird situation where it’s half stripped of some DRM measures while the other half required an actual crack to kill those calls that were redirected to a different platform entirely… so overall I wanna chuck it to a lazy “let’s get some brownie points and release it on GoG but let’s use this intern to package and ship it cuz we can’t be arsed to do a proper release” type of scenario.
Do I blame GoG for not checking it throughly? Yeah, a bit, but at the same time the onus should be on the providing party to deliver an adequate product that’s up to the requirements of the platform and if it’s not, maybe have a financial penalty clause for non-adherence in the distribution contract or something, I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer or anything.
Yeah, you nailed it. Hitman in particular is a weird one, because you can play through every level start to finish without the online checks, but the online unlocks allow you to keep replaying them with new loadouts, starting points, targets, etc. The extra content is a major part of the appeal. Fortunately for preserving those games, the community has reverse engineered the servers, but that doesn’t make me want to reward IO Interactive with my money for making it so that I need to rely on community fixes.
GOG doesn’t offer 20% of the features Steam does, but the trade off is a promise of no DRM headaches and full ownership values.
It simply took CDPR to wave some money their way to throw that away and have DRM on a major game. Removed after a literal outrage or not, this means the fundamental reason to use the platform is negotiable and relative. To me, that doesn’t make it different than Steam, and therefore, I’ll pick the store that actually works well.
GOG is hinting at Linux support after ages. Steam created Proton. This contrast tells me all I need to know.
As a GOG user, I don’t give a toss if they don’t offer even 1% of the features others may or may not offer. They promise I get a game, and I do get a game. It’s up to me to get those other features for my games provided they’re possible.
But I get it, there have been the cases like that Hitman game you mentioned, which shouldn’t have made it to the store at all. There’s a game where the news copy literally says that the DRM-free version is missing features. Ultimately though these instances are few and far, but they did have a lot of backlash to them before something happened. That’s something I agree with you on and they could do better. No signs of that getting better if their response to the LLM thing has been… Lackluster.
Also Valve did not create their fork of Wine. They just forked Wine, an already existing project. If Wine didn’t exist, Valve would have nothing. (Come to think about it, even their precious HL’s engine was IIRC a rewrite or fork of the one for Quake).
You do what you want. My headache right now is that I can’t tell if any multiplayer game I buy will be playable indefinitely into the future, and this is a headache I have with both of those stores. At least I know the single player stuff on GOG will be mine with far less effort than relying on a community maintained wiki somewhere for Steam. That you can name a select few examples that were immediately caught doesn’t shake my faith in what GOG promises on the tin. CDPR is just a matter of one hand not talking to the other, not trying to sneak a fast one by people.
