GOG.com

[Azalin]

First Grimoire, now this
GOG on its way to redemption

Hopefully Knights of the Chalice will be next as a present for the new year

 

[FuckLiefeldGiveMeChew]

Blade Runner is fucking awesome, just like the movies. I can cross an entry off my list of classic computer games that should be on GOG: I still have the Discworld games, Mechwarrior 2 and 4, Countdown, Amazon: Guardians of Eden, Heavy Gear 2, Rama, Leather Goddesses of Phobos to go.

 

[DalekFlay]

Can't believe they got Blade Runner. Way to go, GOG. I bought those shitty Atlantis games with it as a special thank you.

 

[mwnn85]

It's really the ScummVM folks that deserve all the praise - they've been the ones who've been working away at it for years.

Apparently they've even restored some extra bits to it.
Hopefully all the CPU timing issues and other quirks are fixed.

 

[Lacrymas]

(If you're from Germany, POSTAL 1 and 2 are geolocked for you, but since both are free now, just ask a non-German user - either on the gog forum or a fellow Codexer - to get a gift code for you and you should be all set. There is no restriction on redeeming gift codes. This should work for POSTAL 2 until the 18th and permanently for POSTAL.)

You can get around the region lock by using GOG Galaxy. I'm in Germany right now and could get Postal 2 through it, and I can also buy Mortal Kombat 1-3. So, yeah, weird.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Goddamn, they released Blade Runner and the true Warlords games? OK, I take everything back, I'm their no. 1 fan now.

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

(If you're from Germany, POSTAL 1 and 2 are geolocked for you, but since both are free now, just ask a non-German user - either on the gog forum or a fellow Codexer - to get a gift code for you and you should be all set. There is no restriction on redeeming gift codes. This should work for POSTAL 2 until the 18th and permanently for POSTAL.)

You can get around the region lock by using GOG Galaxy. I'm in Germany right now and could get Postal 2 through it, and I can also buy Mortal Kombat 1-3. So, yeah, weird.

Are you using Galaxy from a notebook? If so, the likely explanation is that Galaxy still has your home country's cookies stored on your machine, which is why the storefront from your country shows up. When buying a game, gog checks your location cookies twice: once when you go to checkout, then again when you proceed to payment. If it detects during either check that you're in another country, the purchase will fail and you're sent back to the main page. Did you go through with the Mortal Kombat purchase or were you just able to see the store page? Because normally, it would decide during either check that you've been a bad boy and reset your cookies to the German storefront (likewise, when you make another purchase from your home country, it will reset the cookies to your home country again). If you were really able to actually buy MK via Galaxy from Germany, that would be an interesting exploit.

 

[cw8]

https://af.gog.com/game/blade_runner?as=1649904300

Alcon Interactive Group

https://www.alconent.com/aig/

Alcon Interactive Group (AIG), Alcon’s newly formed division, emerged as a natural extension of the company’s core medium of feature films. George Collins joined AIG as President along with Al Cuenca, SVP of Digital and New Media, to produce digital entertainment products rooted in internally developed and acquired properties. AIG will base their initial ventures on the upcoming Blade Runner 2049 film. The first of which is a partnership with leading virtual reality company Oculus where they will create and distribute virtual reality experiences (VRE).

Huh, so it's finally happened because the film production company behind Blade Runner 2049 also started doing video game business.

I find it extremely comforting that I do not have to give EA a single cent for GOG's Blade Runner.

 

[Blackstaff]

It's really the ScummVM folks that deserve all the praise - they've been the ones who've been working away at it for years.

Apparently they've even restored some extra bits to it.
Hopefully all the CPU timing issues and other quirks are fixed.

How about no ?

https://af.gog.com/forum/general/re...ssic_blade_runner_be9f8/post208?as=1649904300

 

[Lacrymas]

Are you using Galaxy from a notebook? If so, the likely explanation is that Galaxy still has your home country's cookies stored on your machine, which is why the storefront from your country shows up. When buying a game, gog checks your location cookies twice: once when you go to checkout, then again when you proceed to payment. If it detects during either check that you're in another country, the purchase will fail and you're sent back to the main page. Did you go through with the Mortal Kombat purchase or were you just able to see the store page? Because normally, it would decide during either check that you've been a bad boy and reset your cookies to the German storefront (likewise, when you make another purchase from your home country, it will reset the cookies to your home country again). If you were really able to actually buy MK via Galaxy from Germany, that would be an interesting exploit.

It's on my PC. I haven't tried to buy MK because I already have them on my laptop, but I did get the Postal 2 free offer and it's in my library now.

 

[markec]

I was at work when I saw Blade Runner got released on GoG. Bought it the moment I came home and my vacation starts in few days, such great Christmas gift.

 

[Boleskine]

GOG sent me an e-mail that I can get the remastered D&D games for 85%.

Worth it?

 

[Lacrymas]

It's worth it in the sense if you don't have originals and that's the only way to get them digitally nowadays. I got this offer as well. Here's the code if someone is interested -

327HA8B9FA62D391E6

 

[Boleskine]

 

[mwnn85]

How about no ?
https://af.gog.com/forum/general/re...ssic_blade_runner_be9f8/post208?as=1649904300

From the first post in this thread with added emphasis...

You’ve done a man’s job, sir. I guess you’re through, huh?
Like they say - where there’s a will, there’s a way. Restoring the Blade Runner video game to its former glory required one useful tool and loads of passion for retro games. The first one came in a form of ScummVM program, previously used to emulate classic LucasArts adventure games, which currently supports many classic games available on GOG.COM. The passion came from the programmers who spend around 8 years dissecting the code from Blade Runner’s original CDs and then painstakingly putting it together again to form the digital version.

Even the installers GOG uses were made by others i.e. innosetup, mojosetup.
It's nice to see it available again but let's not get too excited about what GOG do 99% of the time.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

GOG sent me an e-mail that I can get the remastered D&D games for 85%.

Worth it?

There are lots of reasons not to give Beamdog any money at all.

That said... I may have thrown $15 their way in an act of drunken sillyness, so someone over there can at least afford a drink at my expense.

 

[Curratum]

GOG sent me an e-mail that I can get the remastered D&D games for 85%.

Worth it?

Of course it's worth it! Grab the 2 BGs, IWD and PST. NWN is a wreck of a port in terms of performance and actual QoL enhancements.

 

[Melcar]

IWD and PST are the only EEs that are worth it really.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Doesn't every EE come with original version included in extras?

 

[Uncreation]

It's worth it in the sense if you don't have originals and that's the only way to get them digitally nowadays. I got this offer as well. Here's the code if someone is interested -

327HA8B9FA62D391E6

Hm, i never checked, but i doubt you can't find the originals online somewhere, most likely on some torrent site.

 

[Lacrymas]

I meant legit.

 

[Uncreation]

Well excuse me, i didn't know your highness is too good for piracy!

 

[DalekFlay]

It's nice to see it available again but let's not get too excited about what GOG do 99% of the time.

GOG definitely relies on the community a lot. They have done some of their own nice work to get wonky games working though. I believe they got Shadows of the Empire working again for example, and I know for a fact it was impossible to run on Windows 7 before that.

 

[LESS T_T]

GOG's Kick tactic: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/how-westwoods-long-lost-blade-runner-adventure-game-landed-on-gog

In emails with USgamer, GOG's business development director for the US offices Mark Hill emphasizes that Blade Runner has been one of the most requested games on GOG, dating back to its launch in 2008.

"For years everyone, including us, thought it was impossible to release due to scattered rights, technical issues, and lost source code," Hill tells USG. "But we never gave up and kept looking for even the smallest opportunities, like we did in the past with [the] Monkey Island series, Star Wars - Episode I: Racer, Diablo, Stranglehold, and other classic games."

GOG has a history of resurrecting games, as Hill mentions. In 2019 alone, it's given games like John Woo's Stranglehold and Blizzard's Diablo a new home on digital platforms. Retro games are its specialty, but Westwood's 1997 adventure posed a number of problems.

The infamous issue is the rights to Blade Runner itself. Hill says that GOG had been chasing the rights to Blade Runner for over 10 years, but couldn't make much progress. Both the game code and its IP rights were in a "precarious situation" which made the release seem impossible.

But a few years ago, Hill says GOG got in touch with Alcon Entertainment, the production company that was working on Blade Runner 2049 at the time. "I literally went over to their office and asked to talk to someone about Blade Runner and GOG," Hill says, adding an aside: "I don't recommend this."

Alcon, as it turns out, was happy to help. It had the legal rights for Blade Runner, and entered a publishing agreement with GOG. Though it took a few more years to get everything in order-when asked how GOG and Alcon navigated the licensing issues, Hill says, "If you knew I would have to retire you"-everything slid into place and GOG turned to the people working on ScummVM, a program for running classic point-and-click adventure games on modern computers, to get a version of Blade Runner it could put on the store.

Getting an old game working on a digital platform and modern computers is one issue, but Blade Runner's source code had also been famously lost since the closure of Westwood in 2003. (Other bits of Westwood data, like EVA's original voice lines for Command & Conquer, have also been lost to the sands of time.)

Luckily, the ScummVM team had already started the recreation process eight years ago. The final team was a group of four people who had been working on making Blade Runner playable, even exploring a host of unused content in the game's assets—"he started by tinkering with the code and digging up unused or cut out content, like dialogue lines or entire story branches," Hill says. But it still required a hard copy of the game to run.

Once the legal obstacles cleared, the ScummVM team helped get a version put together that could go live on GOG. ScummVM had already worked for past games like the Monkey Island series, Broken Sword, and Myst. Blade Runner was fully in the ScummVM team's wheelhouse. The current build is based on the original box edition—the source code is, as far as anyone can tell, still lost—but paired with ScummVM, the team got the game working on Windows 7, 8, and 10, as well as Linux and Mac OS X.

Now, the game that won the Interactive Achievement Award for Computer Adventure Game of the year is available once again, this time without a four-CD requirement. Blade Runner is one of many games that have been lost to ancient systems as technology rapidly advances forward, but at least now, we have an archival work to carry forward for the foreseeable future.

 

[Valky]

Did A Boring GOG Bot's self ejection have anything to do with this?

It's the same guy alright, as confirmed by himself in this post. I also asked him on the gog forum if that's really him (thought it was weird that a gog regular just up and went spamming links on the 'dex of all places) and got this reply.


edit:



From what I've heard, that archived link has been making the rounds on some gog Discord server ahead of the Grimoire release. Apparently, people there were wondering about the controversies surrounding the game and Cleve and someone posted that link. It's entirely possible that this is how A_boring_GOG_bot got a hold of that link and he wasn't actually the one who archived it in the first place.