Piero Bosio Social Web Site Personale

what GOG is doing is great and i commend their efforts (even tho i wish they’d relax their submission policies juuust a bit), and as a store, not having piles of shovelware is great!

but as a preservation platform, GOG’s approach is inherently limited. they can’t have every game, and they can’t keep supporting every game. that’s the fundamental problem with them as far as preservation is concerned.

the only way i can think of where we could have total game preservation is if every game ever made had it’s source code readily available, and all people were taught the programming skills necessary to make the games work on whatever future computers we have. that way, even the most obscure games which don’t have a passionate fanbase can be ported, fixed and played for years to come.

which, obviously, is not something that’s doable, by GOG or by anyone else

it also kinda devalues GOG as a preservation platform, imo. even shovelware deserves to get preserved. but GOG being a preservation platform is more marketing than fact tbf

apparently this is a big problem with GOG, they have a very strict and opinionated policy for accepting games on their store.

on one hand, this means GOG doesn't have much shovelware, unlike Steam or itch. this is good. but it also means incredible games get the pass for ridiculous reasons.

iirc they passed on Balatro because it "wasn't what they were looking for on the store right now", and they initially passed on Undertale because the game's graphics made them think it was unpolished... i wonder how many incredible indie games aren't on GOG because of this?