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.

https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_from_gogwhat_does_this_mean_in_regard_to_the_gog_preservation_program

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.

[–] Nibodhika 2 points 1 week ago (7 children)

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.

[–] Kelly 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I'll be honest I'm not really across what proton does other than an general impression that it is a Wine alternative.

Is proton offering any enhanced compatibility for players running Windows as their daily driver?

[–] Nibodhika 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Proton is essentially just wine, but:

Backward compatibility in Wine is generally superior to that of Windows, as newer versions of Windows can force users to upgrade legacy Windows applications, and may break unsupported software forever as there is nobody adjusting the program for the changes in the operating system

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)

Valve's has been financing the development of Proton (and wine), so their efforts are to improve an open source tool that can be used and enhanced by anyone, which among other things provides excellent compatibility. That is a much better commitment to preserving games than choosing a handful of titles and updating their compatibility layer when the old one breaks. In other words, GOG is choosing a couple of games to update their emulator periodically, Valve is financing the development of an emulator for old games. The two things are not even in the same league for how much they help preservation of old games as a whole.

As for the question of windows users, I don't think wine runs on Windows natively, but I assume one could use WSL as a stepping stone. In any case GOG's method also doesn't address Linux or MacOS users, so I don't see how bringing platform into the mix makes any difference.

[–] Kelly 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm all for platform level comparability (one of my major gripes with xbox BC was that BC of original xbox and 360 titles was implemented per-title and while some were supported most of the library was left behind).

But from a pragmatic perspective my home PC has always been Windows and preservation efforts that allow me to run the games I know on the hardware I am running will mean more to me.

I support the principal and encourage the cross platform efforts but its unlikely to mean much to me personally until its bundled in with a plug and play solution like Batocera.

I've edited my initial comment to reflect that not everyone will share my priorities.

[–] Nibodhika 0 points 1 week ago

preservation efforts that allow me to run the games I know on the hardware I am running will mean more to me.

You mean software, your hardware is perfectly capable of running Linux+Wine. But again, this is a very personal response, my personal computer is Linux, therefore what GOG is doing means less to me by your own definition, which is why I don't think it makes any sense to try to bring platform into the table. In fact, since apparently they're responsible for the DOSBox version that a game uses, and there is a native version of DOSBox for Linux, this means that the decision of the game not being available on Linux is entirely on GOG.

Imagine Valve was financing an emulator, and GOG was compromising themselves to keep a binary updated with the latest version of that emulator whenever problems appeared on the old version, which of them is doing more for the preservation of games? The only difference is that the "emulator" Valve is financing is not the same as the one that GOG is using.

I'm not saying that there isn't value in what GOG is doing just because it doesn't affect me, but as is they can only help preserve DOS era games, so investing in DOSBox and hosting the ROMs would be a much more valuable approach (half of it they're already doing, they do in fact host the ROMs, you just get 50 extra copies of DOSBox in the process). What I'm saying is that I don't understand why everyone thinks they're so great for doing what they're doing, they could be investing in getting wine to run on windows which would be a much better effort for the preservation of games for your platform.

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