So let me get this straight, GOG, a privately owned company, wants me to donate money to them so that they can buy the rights to games in order to sell them to me?
It is true, but occasionally it is a practice in some companies with certain business models to leave part of users contributions free up to the users to decide. I have bought some games from their preservation program, and gave me the option to add some extra donation for the project, which I did. I guess this is similar to that.
Moreover, if somebody is really into these old games, they may want to support it and get access to the behind the scenes material, discord, vote for which games to prioritize etc. I don't think this is very different than eg subscribing to the patreon of a creator to get some extra content.
That's what it looks like. I kind of get it, as there's no guarantee that a game they make available again will sell enough to cover the costs - it's as much a preservation effort as a commercial one.
For a lot of games it's just a matter of configuring dosbox and packaging it, I can't see how that would be very expensive. But for others it's a lot more involved.
But either case we talk about commercial products. The games are still copyrighted commodities to be sold. I assume they get licensed by the copyright holders to update them and sell them in gog. I do not see how a "charity"-based process would make sense or be honest here.
What are you talking about? Charities can sell products, they're just not supposed to make a profit, so all profits would have to go back into preservation.
I mean we can go off on a tangent about why IKEA should not get away with being registered as a charity, but as long as GoG is not doing tax evasion I don't see the problem.
The copyright holders still make profit from the sales as for-profit entities. I do agree that non-profit status would make more sense for the preservation program though. But it still would not mean that nobody makes profit out of the result.
Simplified, but yes, more or less correct. I'm a patron of theirs, and see it more or less as a donation (obviously isn't, in the eyes of the tax agency).
Yeah my first reaction was, what the heck is is this ?
Now I can imagine having specific campaigns. Let's say they need $50,000 to release an upgraded port of Shining Force.
Cool, I might be open to pre-ordering it at $25 so they can see if there's enough interest to proceed. But why am I going to literally just donate to a private company. I think the entire world has gone mad, there's not even a real product here. It's not like for that $5 a month they give you a random game or something. They just want money.
I would be happy to donate to campaigns to buy old ip (video games, but also music, movies, old tabletop rpgs etc) to then slap an open license on and release for free. Seems like a good investment for the future, to get as much content as possible away from rights hoarders.
I am also happy to buy more old games from GOG than I ever have the time to play, so they already get my money.
For many of those who like and buy from gog, that would not go well at all. The whole point of gog is that you actually own a copy of the game when you buy it. A subscription-based access to games would be antithetical to that. It is the main, if not the only, selling point of gog currently.
Moreover, if somebody is really into these old games, they may want to support it and get access to the behind the scenes material, discord, vote for which games to prioritize etc. I don't think this is very different than eg subscribing to the patreon of a creator to get some extra content.