Nerdrage: The Backlash

So GOG is back in business. Back to normal, I guess. But now a lot of users are aware of the fragility of downloadable games. After this ill-advised PR strunt, a lot of fans have now become haters, stating that they won't buy anything from them ever again because they feel betrayed. Yes, it was not nice, but I think they are overreacting, because we only lost access to downloads for a few days, and some trust. The games are still there, no-DRM and all.

I've read some great comments in RPS, but in this case comparatively few users have stopped to think about this in a calm manner. One of them named "Kurina" wrote this opinion. I couldn't agree more:

I am definitely not a fan of the actions they have taken, temporarily closing down their website and leaving a cryptic message. It was not the smartest move, and has brought them some bad PR that they really do not need.

On that note though, I believe people are also overreacting to some degree. While access to the service was suspended, the website also clearly stated that games would be able to be downloaded again this Thursday. This was never in question or hinted at by cryptic statements. Games and accounts were not lost, and everyone would still be able to claim titles they purchased in the past.

This does bring to light how fragile our dependence on these services are though. All it takes is one problem, decision, or marketing stunt to impede our access to games. I hope many people are beginning to realize how they truly are putting all their eggs in one basket, by focusing on services such as Steam. The interesting part being, at least with GOG, their stunts do not prevent you from playing downloaded and archived games. If another service did this, good luck reinstalling and accessing them in the future.

While I do not appreciate the stunt, this will not prevent me from purchasing GOG titles in the future, solely for the fact that I know I can back them up and play games indefinitely regardless of what happens to the company itself.

I knew this would happen...

...but this was much sooner than I expected.

GOG is down. I repeat, GOG is down.

I knew about the risks of spending money to buy non-physical games, and I wrote about them. But I never expected something like this to happen so soon, and I never expected it to happen to GOG. I trusted them. Many people trusted them, because they seemed to care about customers, and they were so nice... This shows the main issue against digital purchases: you are just "renting" the games and they could take them away from you unexpectedly.

This is just bad, any way you look at it. Some customers say "oh, but you should keep backups for your games", but then again:

-If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't buy digital games in the first place, I'd buy discs with nice cover art and goodies.
-I own 150+ games on GOG. How long would it take to download all those games, and where do I put them? Should I buy a couple of hard disk drives just for them? And hard disks fail after a while, you know.

We are now waiting to see if this is just a really stupid PR stunt for the end of the Beta stage or something, but nobody is OK with this. The trust is gone. We've been warned about the risks, and many people will think twice about buying digital next time.

The new censorship

As you can see in the comments from users here, the Steam software forces you to upgrade your version of Plants vs Zombies to the GOTY release even if you don't want it. Yes, even if you have disabled automatic updates for that game. They have blatantly ignored the choice made by players to keep the old version of the game, following the rules set by Valve to handle Steam.

This kind of disregard for what the player wants, taking advantage of the power they hold when they fully control your access to the games, is what makes me skeptical about digital downloads. They can tamper with your game in any way they think appropriate. Now they are saying, "oh, sorry, some character in the game may get us sued so we are removing it", but at some point you can log in to your game account and be confronted with a disclaimer telling you that "sorry, a big Earthquake killed 100,000 people in California so the Quake games are in bad taste and you can no longer play them". Or maybe one day you try to play "Rock and Roll Part 2" in a Guitar Hero / Rock Band game but then Gary Glitter is arrested for molesting a child, so then the song gets patched out of the game because some parents complained about it... You know what I mean!

And then I, as a player, will yell "stop screwing me! I just want to play my game in peace! Don't take anything away from me!". But now there's nothing I can do, because in the digital era nobody can hear you scream.