While it hasn’t been properly publicly announced yet, GOG Patrons is a new system launched by GOG to hopefully pull in more people to donate. This isn’t the first time GOG have asked for people to donate, as back in June they added a donation form to the checkout page but this goes one step further.

The main point of the GOG Patrons program appears to be directly supporting their game preservations efforts as part of the official GOG Preservation Program. Not to paywall anything on the GOG store, just as an additional way to support GOG directly.

  • FunctionallyLiterate@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 day ago

    I’m not really a gamer, so I could be wrong here. However, TBF they’re selling games cheaply, but I assume they’re having to pay who-knows-what to license them (never mind their own staff to bring the games up to par with today’s hardware). Maybe the IP owners have started turning the screws?

    • SolSerkonos@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      idk that GoG does need to license them that way? I assumed they just operated as a storefront and take a cut of the listed price like Steam or Epic. As for having their own staff, usually these kind of things have a community solution already it just might be a pain in the ass. I assumed they were either getting permission from modders to ship their fixes, or they were basically using them as guidelines to make their own. Either approach would take their development costs down.

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        Their Game Preservation Program (the thing the subscription is nominally for) is games that they maintain, so they probably do need to license them. And they do need a dev team to work on it, even if they do take advantage of things like existing community mods to make the job easier.

    • Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      That seems like a reasonable assertion, given piracy fears that would likely drive up the price, or the lengthy searches needed to find the right IP holder to grant permission for release.