“if you can obtain a copy of a court order...we’ll do our best to make it happen" Unlike Steam, Good Old Games claims they are willing to transfer accounts to entitled parties after a user's death
“if you can obtain a copy of a court order...we’ll do our best to make it happen" Unlike Steam, Good Old Games claims they are willing to transfer accounts to entitled parties after a user's death
Wouldn't Steam also need to follow a Court Order? Like, wouldn't they be legally forced to? Because if they didn't adhere to it they would be found in Contempt of Court, which is a pretty big deal legally speaking.
IANAL, but.. I'm guessing GOG is of the opinion that they're selling you a license that you own, and can thus bequeath to your heirs, where Steam is of the opinion they're selling you a nontransferable license, so a will bequeathing it to someone would be seeking to enforce something you lack permission to do.
I think is a bit strange that Steam is so adamant on that. Sure in total every game of an inherited account might be a lot, but most are old games they sell for 5 bucks or less. How many of these old games would've been bought again from the new owner? I have little time for old games or old media, so it would be like getting grandpa Joes old book collection. It's not worthless but the emotional value is probably higher than the real use. Steam gets 30% of every game sold, seams enough to cover account forwarding.
I think the phrasing is wrong. GoG wants a public document detailing the legal estate transfer. Can’t just email them a death certificate and claim your a beloved grandson.
People have died because of wills. Shit gets messy.
I think they may have meant a probate court. Steam can ignore or argue against a probate court on several grounds and might have to be taken to a judicial court, GOG may be claiming they would accept the judgement of a probate court. Definitely needs to be expanded upon and clarified.
Imagine inheriting a GOG account originally registered by your great-great grandpa containing ungodly amount of games you can't possibly play all of them in a lifetime.
ungodly amount of games
And 90% of them are hentai visual novels.
if u dont have that grandpa, please, be that grandpa
excuse me daddy's got a taste for pigeon
Typical Grandpa
All for a CPU and OS that no longer exists. Anybody got a "PC" emulator? What's a mouse?
To be fair, a lot of GOG games are already for CPUs and OS's that don't exist. Like, a significant amount of their library was meant to run in DOS on a 486. They're pretty fucking good at making that not be a problem.
Like other mentioned, a lot of old games sold right now actually packaged with dosbox. Some even packaged with Wine so it can run on different platforms. The real problem would be emulating current modern graphic stacks but that would be future preservists' problem.
There is VM software like VirtualBox you can use the run older versions of Windows. I’ve had better experience running old games through Windows XP in VirtualBox than directly on Windows 10.
That's either awesome or diplomatic. But a court order shouldn't be needed, that implies going to court which isn't necessary in some countries.
You always need some kind of proof of death. I assume a death certificate would be enough
A death certificate is very much not a court order. A death certificate is often available to anyone who wants to demonstrate that someone is dead.
It'd be like using mailing address as proof of identity. Someone's mailing address is in some ways less public than their death certificate.
the fact that gog is even in business is impressive to me.
You mean to tell me you can actually make money and run a successful company by just, respecting the customers? And giving them what they want? Even in late stage capitalism?
we don't deserve GOG.
If the words on the internet are to be believed, GOG's been running at a loss all this while, with papa Witcher covering the costs. Maintaining a large library of games is expensive.
that would make sense.
God speed GOG.