Question How does www.gog.com package its games?

[uberman]

I'm not really a gamer and the only game I play are different flavors of Unreal Tournament. I like death matches and instant action sometimes for excitement. I've got about 6 discs which I purchased when I find them. I would never play others, so no steam or gaming memberships.

I see people here using www.gog.com. . I looked at them and the prices are tolerable. Are their games sold as a disc with a key code or is it a file or a membership to a site like steam? Its not really clear on the site. Thanks in advance.

 

[SPBHM]

it's not a disc image, but it's package that you can download on it's entirety with a installer that is drm free, you can backup locally and copy it around as many times as you want and it never requires online authentication, should install on any PC with windows xp and higher.

basically, you can buy, download it from the website and forget gog exists and it should work for as long as computers and the files exist.

 

[TheELF]

They give you an installation package for windows.
No CD/DVD images and no keys,DRM (copy protection) free installation files only.

 

[uberman]

OK, I'll try an order with GOG and later I can get some more flavors of Unreal Tournament. I don't know how long my older discs will hold up.

Thank you SPBHM and TheElf.

I haven't been here much lately. I've been here since the mid-90's when we were shaking things up in the hot deals section. I was reselling deals to buy more parts to upgrade my machines. I was here thru the "Nowheremom" drama.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/18/murderer_confesses_on_anandtech_forum/

I then returned here because there are a lot of very bright people here when I'm trying to reconfigure things. I'm busy stockpiling Thinkpads today. I upgrade used ones. I'm near Silicon Valley and there are lots of deals. I'm sick of the poor quality of consumer laptops. Consumer laptops die on me fast, but old Thinkpads go on and on and they are fast when upgraded.

 

[BoomerD]

OK, I'll try an order with GOG and later I can get some more flavors of Unreal Tournament. I don't know how long my older discs will hold up.

Thank you SPBHM and TheElf.

I haven't been here much lately. I've been here since the mid-90's when we were shaking things up in the hot deals section. I was reselling deals to buy more parts to upgrade my machines. I was here thru the "Nowheremom" drama.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/18/murderer_confesses_on_anandtech_forum/

I then returned here because there are a lot of very bright people here when I'm trying to reconfigure things. I'm busy stockpiling Thinkpads today. I upgrade used ones. I'm near Silicon Valley and there are lots of deals. I'm sick of the poor quality of consumer laptops. Consumer laptops die on me fast, but old Thinkpads go on and on and they are fast when upgraded.

Then Dennil went and died.

 

[TheELF]

I don't know how long my older discs will hold up.

Usually once installed you can archive (copy/compress) the game folder and it will run on any machine.
There are exclusions for games that do write entries to the registry but most games will work straight away.
Do these old disks even have any kind of copy protection?Why don't you make some backups?

 

[uberman]

The problem is that optical media is so flippant. Back in the day there were very few standards with different chemicals and dyes being used. The most dangerous thing is simply to let optical media sit on the shelf and disentegrate. I don't really back anything up to optical media anymore.
The manufacturers want them to die, then they'll try to sell you the product again.

 

[ImpulsE69]

There are very few things that were on optical media that you can't get today in digital format. The bonus of GOG is that they do the work of making older games work on newer OS's so you don't have to.

 

[TheELF]

The problem is that optical media is so flippant. Back in the day there were very few standards with different chemicals and dyes being used. The most dangerous thing is simply to let optical media sit on the shelf and disentegrate. I don't really back anything up to optical media anymore.
The manufacturers want them to die, then they'll try to sell you the product again.

You are missing the point ,if you don't need the disks as physical disks you can still copy the content of your original disks to your HDD as an ISO or zipped folder and if your disks finally break you can burn new ones.
The only reason to pay GOG is if you can't copy them or don't have them to begin with(already broken) .