The company blamed “a series of mistakes” and inconsistent font rendering.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20260606180621/https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun
The company blamed “a series of mistakes” and inconsistent font rendering.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20260606180621/https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun
“winning by doing nothing” They do stuff. Like killing ownership, buying tons of yachts because their owner is a literal billionaire, and squeezing every last cent while gaslighting everyone into thinking they’re somehow “pro-consumer”. This is how they got here in the first place. They also appear to have a growing hate problem, but I haven’t yet read the links I’ll be sharing here, so take these with a grain of salt for now: 1, 2. They get away with all this because they have a captive audience, each user doesn’t want to give up their library, or each user has already bought one of those steam devices becoming even more captive.
GOG doesn’t have a captive audience, and this is by their own design. We take their DRM-free, launcher-free nature for granted. Yet it seem they don’t understand that themselves, and continue burning the good will they earned on things like this, or continuing their obsession with LLM generated art. They can’t keep tanking controversy after controversy.
DRM-free can continue without GOG, but it’ll be handicapped severely without them. Is this what GOG wants?
Thanks for showing up. And yes you’re correct, “doing nothing” is a meme, dervied from the fact that Epic, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony are all outwardly very anti-consumer, while Valve is simply less so. Yes they have done some shady things over 20 years, however they have also done wonders in the field of Linux game compatibility, helping (with credit to the non-Valve developers) break Microsoft’s monopoly on operating systems for PC gaming. In contrast, GOG has done little besides provide the occasional script, Linux version of their official library manager is only now in development after 10 years of begging for it.
Yes, you can still play DRM-free games, FOSS games and get some games directly from the publisher, but in terms of distributors, you’re essentially left with itch.io (unless the time they removed nsfw games from CC processor pressure is also a bridge too far for you).
Which company was it that popularized the lootboxes so bad that Notch made a parody of their game in Minecraft’s earliest April Fool’s version? Oh it’s Valve. Which company has been extremely instrumental in killing the ownership of games, making the idea of having to be online and connected to an unaccountable corporation based in the USA to play a single player game so much more palatable? Look, it’s Valve again. Even their quaint “”“wonders”“” for Linux (creating yet another distro, forking wine, and porting their DRM launcher?) are such a naked embrace, extend and extinguish effort going very smoothly because they’re not Microsoft, despite being quite literally of Microsoft origins, down to the anti-trust saga.
Valve isn’t doing nothing. You think so because like you’ve noted, itch.io went into this payment processor kerfuffle, despite Valve also going into it but nobody else. Plus, GOG themselves aren’t helping matters with their own actions, not just the double sig runes and their strange and ineffective apologies, but also the obsession with LLM generated art among countless moments of getting caught with their pants down. Meanwhile, Zoom-Platform is relatively quiet, for better or worse, and I never hear anything from Fireflower Games.
It’s easy, if Neverball and Super Tux Kart are the only games one plays, nobody can claim they support monopolists, anti-consumer practices or billionaires.
I checked out the zoom platform, seems nice, majority are Windows games though.
I acknowledge that it’s important to raise awareness of bad practices, demanding change and highlighting alternatives where available. However, if you tie yourself in knots over every debacle, and permanently hold it as a grudge long after it’s addressed positively, then I’d start thinking your hobby is grudge-holding rather than gaming.
Why yes, this is what I already do. But instead of it being seen that way, it’s instead seen as
All I ask is for one corporation, working in the capitalist hellscape that is the US, to be held to the same standards as the rest within its same field. That’s apparently a bridge too far, equal to the strawman of suggesting one play only Super Tux Kart.
I think you misunderstand, there’s two parts to this discussion that are being conflated together.
Valve’s involvement with lootbox gambling mechanics deserve a lot of criticism and it is ongoing, and is part of why Newell can own many yachts. They are under suit in many jurisdictions for it and imo rightly so. Reports of hate and the like deserve investigation also.
The Linux thing I think you are getting backwards, their efforts are bringing bringing an open computing ecosystem to the mainstream, their launcher hasn’t changed but the ability to run games (including non-DRM ones from Valve’s competitors outside of Valve’s platform) on a not locked-in operating system has gotten much easier. Your genuine criticism of one seems to be clouding your analysis the other. Why I give the example of Neverball even if it sounds like a strawman, if every controversy leads to a full boycot you would be left with very few options. You can allow yourself to praise one thing an entity does while criticizing another.
Also, you talk about holding different companies to the same standards, a noble thing I’d agree, but in a previous reply you were sharing articles you stated that you haven’t read. While I appreciate the honesty, is this part of your standardized approach to judgement?
Disagree. They are bringing their own vision of an operating system, a realm in which they own the throne. Their OS abstracts Linux away so hard, it’s hard to translate into actual experience using an established distro. Even if you use say Ubuntu, you can still go back to their closed source ecosystem even if you’ve just ditched Windows. They’ve already installed themselves as the Microsoft of Linux, and it’ll be very hard to get their tentacles off. Those who are paranoid of Microsoft twitching a finger are conveniently, for lack of a better expression, in bed with Valve.
Hell, I remember when Steam had the Tux mascot to represent a game being compatible on Linux, but that has been replaced long ago with their own logo…
So yeah, I’m not praising them for Steam on Linux. Besides, I believe the total sum of their negatives vastly outweigh anything they’ve done for (or at the expense of) Linux. A full boycott really is the only appropriate response. Too bad that of the few regular storefronts just selling games to people who do such boycotts, the biggest one has incompetent management and loose moderation on their forum.
This was a lapse on my part. I didn’t have the time to read them, but I had the intention and have read them since. I was already aware of so-called “curators” creating “anti-woke” lists and shoving so many games on them, and the store selling games that explicitly demonize marginalized groups (funnily enough GOG is also selling one such game that I know of, The Great Rebellion), but I had no idea it went as far as Charlie fucking Kirk tweet curators. The level of openness these hateful people operate at on steam would make GOG blush… though I guess this still doesn’t beat the official newsletter email…
Dont forget Valve’s lootboxes.
I actually wanted to mention that and the “trading cards” that literally milk the users out of thin air, but I didn’t find a good place for them in my post. Thanks for mentioning them.
Please explain, how the trading cards, that you get for free, can just ignore or even sell for a few cents, milk anything out of anyone.
Is it because Steam forces you to complete badges for all your games, otherwise their Death Squad will come to your home?
Before, you just played the game. Now when you play the game, these things fill your “inventory” out of thin air, and you can make transactions with them including buying them (to complete your collection out of FOMO, etc), of which Valve earns a cut out of them, again, out of thin air. Now scale that up to millions of users. Hmmm, it IS milking! Can’t expect any less from the House of Valve.
You can still just play the game, nothing has changed. It’s extremely easy to just ignore everything to do with the inventory on Steam, which a lot of people do.
If you don’t want to give Valve and the dev money, you can also trade the cards with other people directly.
You could also recycle certain items into gems and use those to craft booster packs, to eventually get a full set completely by yourself.
Also, the only thing the trading cards are for at this point are the badges, that you can “show off” on your profile. All the other stuff (emoticons or wallpapers) can be bought directly in the Points Shop.
I just explained how things have changed and how the casino earns money out of thin air with little effort on their part. Better yet, you just gave more examples of this House doing just that:
These are all ways in which users get milked. Don’t forget the lootboxes.