GOG’s Game Preservation Program Gets Tested Early By Blizzard
It was only a few weeks ago that we discussed Good Old Games’ (GOG) return to its roots with the site’s “GOG Preservation Program”. While GOG never stopped selling, you know…
Good for GOG, but I don't think having games still available after they're delisted is special. It would have been news if this didn't happen.
Edit: I mean you can still download the games, if you've already bought them, not that you can still buy them.
It doesn't happen all the time... Games being kept around is the exception not the rule...
Is it? Steam does it all the time. Afaik they only completely remove games (meaning you they get removed from your account), when they break some TOS stuff.
As for Blizzard themselves (since this article is about Warcraft 1&2), they still offer downloads for old titles. I can just download Warcraft 3 or Diablo 2 right now, even though they're remastered, and the old versions not for sale anymore.
Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems.
This commitment to ongoing support is more than any other shop front offers for their delisted titles.
For these titles it probably just means updating the dosbox wrapper but its still more than we get from anywhere else something.
Yes.... But actually no. For these games, sure, they're committed to update the dosbox, but for more modern games there's nothing that can be done on GOG since if the binary breaks for windows lack of backwards compatibility, they're done because they don't have access to the code. This works for these games because they're being emulated, so they can maintain them by extracting the ROM and updating the emulator.
IMO what Valve is doing is leaps ahead, Proton can be used to maintain even broken binaries by providing compatibility with older versions of binaries from Windows. Not to mention the runtime library shipped with Steam for native titles.
It's always mind boggling to me how GOG does something which Steam is already doing (sometimes, like this, they do a worse job at it), yet they get all of the credit as if they're revolutionizing the way the industry works. Allowing people to download a game they bought, even if delisted, is the standard, and Proton is a much better preservation tool than whatever GOG is doing behind the stages, because it's open source and if Steam ever goes under it will continue to exist, whereas on GOG solution you depend on GOG for it to keep working.
Short version is that Blizzard’s removal of Warcraft I & II is the first case to be in the scope of GOG's (re)commitment to game preservation since GOG published that commitment.
Obligatory mention that ExoDos exists. Look it up.
Y'know, I kind of get why a storefront would prefer delisting when there's just a more complete or more "HD" version. I've had a friend buy an old version of a game for the same price as the "complete" version since both were up and he didn't check. Blizzard is obviously just trying to promote their remake, but I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
(I'd still prefer having options, though, and that option should be free because playing the DOS version of Warcraft 2 would likely help promote the HD version, as sort of a demo. That game is fire and deserves the love, too bad the execs are morons).
They did that with StarCraft. The original is free and the remaster is paid
