My weariness is with the subset of GOG users who hold (and forcefully argue) a far more extreme position than the one you just articulated.
I don't have a strong brand attachment (GOG just happens to be the main provider of DRM-free games atm) and I sort of ressent your implication that my point of view is "extreme".
To clarify, did anything I say indicate that I considered your particular position extreme? Possibly my use of the term "subset" was too vague, but I was trying to avoid rehashing the details of what I objected to at that particular moment.
The sort of thing I was referring to is along the lines of "the only reason any developer ever uses any form of DRM is because they want to make it harder to pirate". Which is not true in our case (we did license keys to make keeping an updated demo feasible; we did Bionic initially as steam-distribution-only so we could have a linux version that could be kept updated). But I've found that attempting to present facts, reasons, and arguments in such a case is often futile: often what the person making such a claim wants is not to understand our situation, but for us to
submit to their demands, regardless of the details of what we're currently doing or why we did it. Their liberty to use a game however they please is important to them (and I sympathize with that), but our liberty to make our development choices according to what we think is best overall is
not important to many of the folks I've seen advancing that kind of "extreme" argument, and I object to that.
That said, I'm not objecting to the core desires behind such a position. Even if they want all software to always be completely free and without restriction, etc (and I know most of them are quite happy to pay for good games, so long as they get the game rather than some kind of revocable permission to play it). My objection is when they seek to impose their desires on us in a coercive manner (rather than a persuasive one).
No matter how you feel about this, I think you should be careful about how you express yourself from a PR perspective. I bought 3 of your games on GOG and I'm sure many of my fellow "extremists" did the same.
I am careful to speak politely, and reasonably precisely, in the sense of "how" I express this. Though I appreciate the reminder. But if the situation is such that voicing objections to coercion is itself met with fallout, then in many ways that is simply an extension of the coercion. It tells me "don't reason, don't argue, just submit".
That said, I do understand that most players out there are used to being hit with the "just submit" stick by developers/publishers, so I understand if tensions are high and the players trying to fight for better treatment aren't particularly gentle about doing so. But when a developer is fundamentally on the same side of "customer service", as we are, it really helps if we can address concerns via rational discussion, rather than being treated as an enemy. Otherwise time and resources are wasted on defensive measures on both sides.
I like to think I have a pretty balanced stance between the needs to customers and the needs of content providers.
One on hand, I do strongly believe in the need for content providers to get paid for their labor (yes, I subscribe to the whole open-source movement especially for system-level/middleware software, but I don't think it applies unconditionally well to everything).
However, I also strongly believe that unless unless the content needs to be provided as a service (ex: WoW), payment should be done only once and content should be accessible in a standalone manner.
Let's take the movie industry as an example of what not to do: First there was the VHS tape, then the DVD, then the blue-ray and now the upcoming 4k format. How often are we expected to pay full price for the same product?
Similarly, closer to home in the game industry: there are games I got on DVD where the DVD broke and I had to buy the game again from digital distributors... most annoying.
And the above is not even the worst case scenario. There might be situations where content is not accessible at all when it is designed to poll a server that is no longer there.
Take Gamespy as an example: I'm sure they had the best intentions in mind, but at some point, they went down and the end result was that games that were dependent on their servers to play in multiplayer where no longer multiplayer playable. In their case, it was hard to avoid, because of the nature of matchmaking with strangers across the internet (although I do appreciate LAN support to fall back on to play with my friends when multiplayer servers for a game go down).
That brings me to the topic of game updates and "convenience": it's a lot less hard to make it server-free (or provide a server free alternatives). I appreciate that your company is doing well right now and I'm sure you have the best of intents with this, but if your company goes under 10 years from now, I still expect to have access to the game I paid for with the latest patch. Fair is fair.
I guess this is where I differ from some gamers. Many gamers play a game, finish it and never revisit it again, but I do enjoy revisiting some games down the years.
I certainly hope that you view your games as good enough that they should be included in the list of games I'll replay 10-20 years from now so why package them as a throwaway product?
I think that's basically my own position as well. It's not something I even disagree with, let alone something I would consider extreme. If I may ask, what gave you the impression that my statement about a subset of extremism applied to that? I haven't gone back and checked, but does your position differ fundamentally from the one preceding my earlier-quoted comment ("the one you just articulated")?
Anyway, on the topic of game updates and convenience, are you saying that our approach runs counter to what you're asking for there? Perhaps it would help if I recapped the details of our updating process:
1) When the game runs,
if you have auto-updates enabled (it is by default, but can be disabled), it will retrieve an xml file on our server. For AIW that's
http://arcengames.com/dl/AIWarBetaUpdates2.xml . Note: if it fails in this retrieval for whatever reason, the game will still run fine. Though we have had problems with firewalls killing the program when it tries to check, in which case disabling the auto-check is necessary.
2) It checks the entries in that xml file against the version number of the install, and if the xml file mentions a later version it downloads the zip file from the url included in that entry. The latest one as of this writing is
http://arcengames.com/dl/AIWar7042.zip (which may be replaced later, not all versions are kept up there due to a later one containing everything from the previous, but all the ones still in the xml file are kept up there).
3) The game then runs the updater itself, and closes the game. The updater just unzips the zip file into the install directory, and then re-runs the game, and closes itself.
- Note: we've recently written our own updater for TLF that will be also be used to replace the AIW updater (already has been for Bionic) that can run natively on linux (thus allowing Bionic to become not-steam-distributed-only, which is why it's on GOG now). That updater is
slightly more complex in that it's not a straight unzip operation: there's now a "dl" folder (that's the name, iirc) in the zip file that the updater then copies the contents of to 3 locations: one for windows, one for mac, one for linux. Since those platform-specific executable files are almost always the largest part of an update this really helps keep the size down.
And done.
And on our side, to do an update, all we have to do is:
1) copy the changed files to a staging location
2) zip them up
3) upload the zip
4) update the xml file to reference the new zip
Which can be done in less than 5 minutes. Actually we spend more time typing up the release-related announcements, etc.
If it took an hour to build an installer and distribute it to a bunch of different places, that would significantly cut down on our ability to quickly change things, etc. So our process significantly improves the service that players get from us.
So, what's your recourse if the server with the xml file and zip files vanishes into the warp? Basically, right now: find someone who has an updated copy of the game, and copy that (replace the settings.dat, inputbindings.dat, and Save directory with your own). The installs all work wherever they're put, and make no effort to defend themselves.
If you want a more robust solution, then what would it be? Someone could archive an updated copy of the game, or the updater zip files (you can run the updater manually, no internet connection necessary), somewhere. But wouldn't that archive be subject to the same vulnerability? The only true "server free" method I can think of is for each of you to keep your own backups locally (which is easy, just copy the game directory to a jumpdrive, and then copy it to whatever you want to run it on; or even just run it from the jumpdrive). For that matter, all those games you bought on GOG, what happens if their servers vanish? Or, since GOG is presumably more likely to stick around than an individual developer, is that an acceptable level of risk?
Best,
Keith
