I've got a sizeable collection of 90s to 00s boxed games on optical media that use all kinds of copy protection (SafeDisc, SecuROM, disc checks, etc.)

I haven't played them much due to a lack of time over the years (work, family, etc.), but also inconvenience. It's a hassle pulling an old game out of storage and then spending hours unsuccessfully trying to get it to work on a modern machine. (I do have a couple of older 98SE/XP machines also in storage that I kept for playing old games, but they mostly collect dust these days).

So, I'd like to simplify things by replacing my old disc-based games with drm-free installers that are easily backed up and (mostly) just work on modern 64-bit Windows 10 machines.

From what I've read, GOG appears to be the best (only?) way to do this. (I should mention that I'm not that interested in Galaxy as I don't care about achievements, cloud saves, etc. I'm only really interested in GOG's 'DRM-Free' standalone installers).

However, after reading dozens of posts, (the 'GOG Galaxy to start selling EPIC games' thread is of particular interest), I have a few concerns:

- Standalone installers appear to be neglected, abandoned even, when compared to their Galaxy equivalents, (i.e. some games don't include the latest patches).

- Installers for some older games have been rebuilt to include Galaxy features (like achievements) which impacts performance, (e.g. BioShock).

- Installers of earlier builds aren't readily available. (I understand Galaxy can roll back versions, but I want installers I can back-up and archive).

- Installers and extras lack a way to check file integrity, (e.g. checksum files).

- Some games may still include DRM which causes bugs, (e.g SecuROM in F.E.A.R. expansions).

So my question is: for those of you who've already done this, are these concerns valid? Are there any other pitfalls or gotchas I should be aware of? Or is it all plain sailing?

Please share your experiences, thoughts and views.

Yes those concerns are still valid.

If you have a treasured disc based collection and you don't want to risk losing access to your games, don't throw it away. The best thing you can do is back everything up (disc images, cd keys, what have you), maybe hunt down cracks and patches and mods and store them on a big NAS or something like that. Make sure you have an offline copy too. GOG isn't an archival service.

Mostly yes. But as clarry mentions not all situations are covered by GOG (for example the version of King of Dragon Pass you now get is the mobile phone port and not the original PC version).

But overall, in general, you will find most of the older game options here easier to run well on current hardware vs the old CD/DVD disk (especially if that is full of nasty DRM). I still have a wallet with about 300 game CD's (all originals) from the early 1990's onwards but i know mostly use GOG versions of many of them. It's what made GOG great back in the day, and still holds up well today vs other sites and services.

1) This is unfortunate.

2) Well, have you given WINE a try? I've got it to resurrect old Windows 3.11 games before.

3) Fair enough.

4) Well GOG isn't the only way, but as a large service provider the only mass market way.

5) These are valid things to have.

6) Sure. But if you're only buying older games, there's not need to worry.

7) But would that matter in an airgapped setup?

8) They've advertised this and I'm still not sure I've ever seen it.

9) The weird thing is, they have included this for larger installers past a certain size.

10) Which is an arguing point over "developer control/publisher request vs GOG Control".

For all practical purposes GOG is generally speaking your best option.

There are game-specific alternatives too, but nothing that would be a single solution for everything you want.

- You can use third party programs, such as ScummVM to make some games compatible with many systems.
- There are some alternative stores that offer DRM-free installers, but nothing on the same scale as GOG.
- Some games on Steam are DRM-free, so you can back them up and then use them without Steam client.
- If disc checks are the problem, there are no-cd patches/cracks that have been around for decades, so downloading those work for certain games.

I would estimate that GOG option offers you 95% satisfaction, and there may be that 5% that you are disappointed for some reason - maybe missing some expansion files, maybe missing some translation or localisation, or just having something else to complain about.

I wouldn't consider GOG's update pace a problem with older games, they aren't getting too much, if any, updates anyway. With some recent indie games or whatever it can be a problem, when Steam and other places have latest versions which GOG doesn't have.

You're not the only one. I have some very dear titles that I can't run any more due to SecuROM madness. A classic example of DRM being DRM. This is sometimes a problem, but it's unlikely you'll come across it if you stick to the old classics. They don't really get updates any more. Can't say I've ever noticed impacts to performance due to Galaxy integrations, BioShock included. This is true - only the latest version of an offline installer will be available at any given time. If you don't download an older version and GOG replaces it, it's gone for good. Installers will check their integrity before installation if you chose to do so. There's no need for external checksumming really, unless you're worried about the long-term consistency of offline backups. F.E.A.R. is, as far as I'm aware, a singular example where traces of SecuROM have been left by the developer/publisher not caring enough to write them out. As others have said, it's one of your few options if you're looking for DRM-free, client-free (at least up till now) games. Probably the best, though it has its issues.

GOG does put a lot of work in their "refurbishment" of older games, but I can't help they've bitten off more than they can chew as a store and are struggling to keep up the good work we've known in the days of "Good Old Games", not GOG.com.

IME the biggest problem is that some GOG games dont work on some machines.

Just as a note here, you also get the 1999 Windows version, it's among the extras.

Most of the concerns are valid, except adding Achievements to older games does not really "impact performance." That sounds like an old wives tales fabricated by someone who hates Achievements.

You should also be aware that GOG only offers the latest version of the game to download as an offline installer (presuming that game is up to date with its offline installer in the first place)...which can often be a bad thing. Because if the latest version contains a game-breaking bug and/or censored content, then you are stuck only having a copy of that crappy version, and with no option to download an offline installer of an earlier pure version from before the bug(s) were introduced and/or the content got censored. And sometimes those bugs come within a game's final patch ever, and hence they never will get fixed.

As for is GOG the best/only place to replace your games in the ways how you mentioned: unfortunately, yes it is. DRM-free is an extremely small niche of the games market. Very few gamers actually care about DRM in their games or buying games without it.

And GOG has a monopoly over that tiny niche market.

So people who care about DRM-free are kind of stuck with GOG, despite its innumerable flaws, since there is no other viable choice for DRM-free.

Ah yes, you are correct. Thanks for that clarification. Has it always been there since they changed versions? I've had the Windows version since it first arrived here, then later had a go of the mobile port and decided i liked the original version the most.

As far as I know, yes it was.

Most of the concerns you presented are more relevant to new-ish games, than the older GOG games on GOG catalog. Over a decade old games don't receive updates anymore so they are not affected by some game publishers not sending updates to their GOG games in a timely manner or at all, or GOG staff taking its time to incorporate those updates to e.g. offline installers. So, irrelevant to the older games that you are meant to replace.

GOG is a good option for replacing your old CD/DVD games as GOG versions generally include modifications that make them runnable on modern PCs, that you'd have to apply manually with your CD/DVD games, including possible noCD cracks to remove the copy protections that don't work on Windows 10 anymore.

For the older classic GOG games, my only complaint would be some MS-DOS era games that e.g. miss the setup program that lets you change the sound card configurations with the game. In those (rather rare) cases I consider the original floppy or CD version of the game to be superior. I haven't checked if e.g. Ultima Underworld nowadays includes that setup program, but earlier I recall I had to run my original floppy version of the game in DOSBox, in order to see what were the correct configuration options in the game's config file, so that I could manually edit that config file with Notepad to change the sound card options.

EDIT: It was this discussion:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/music_and_sound_effects/post2

So as the GOG version of Ultima Underworld 1-2 missed the UINSTALL.EXE utility which is used in the original games to change e.g. sound card settings, you have to edit the UW.CFG file directly if you want to change them, and you have to know what to write to them (I had to check with my original UUW1-2 installations how the UW.CFG files looked like after I had changed the settings with UINSTALL.EXE).

Oh and there may have been also some cases here and there with some other games where e.g. the game music was not functioning correctly, ie. the GOG version is playing only the first music track over and over again while the original retail CD game plays the audio CD music tracks correctly (that was a fictitious example, but I recall there have been some similar issues with some GOG games where the original game had music as audio CD tracks).

So it might still be a good idea to keep at least some of your old CD/DVD games around as well, just in case.

why replace?:O just expand

Oh specifically about that: there are some ways.

First of all, extras are generally compressed zip files (except for some making-of video files and such), so naturally you can check their data integrity by testing them with e.g. 7-zip or some other compress utility.

For the game installers themselves:

- If the game is small so that the installer is just one .exe file, I don't think there is an option to run an integrity check just before you install the game.

- If the game is bigger and the installer consists of one .exe file and one or several .bin files, it (usually?) has the option to check data integrity before it goes ahead to install the game. However, this is indeed available only when you install the game, there is no separate data integrity check in the installers.

A second option: almost all GOG game installers do have a md5 checksum on GOG servers. There are some ways to obtain those md5 checksums, and e.g. the gogrepoc.py tool (which is an user-made tool to mass-download all your GOG game installers in one swoop) automatically uses those md5 checksums to verify the data integrity of all your downloaded GOG game installers. (For extras which are zip files, it uses the zip file integrity test mentioned above).

Also, I am not sure but I presume there is some way to test or uncompress the GOG game installers with innoextract or some other similar utility? Performing that would of course verify the data integrity as well. I think that is referring to the reports that if you don't have Galaxy installed on your system, some games (I think Bioshock was one of them) has a long pause at the start when you launch the game, apparently looking for the missing Galaxy installation or something. If you have Galaxy installed, then the game starts instantly.

There was some thread about this many months ago. I don't recall it would affect the game performance otherwise, except that extra pause when you launch the game. Also how long that pause would last seemed to differ between different people.