Over the weekend, we’ve seen Steam started adding a notice at the checkout page when you “buy” games that you’re only paying for the license for it. Third party EULAs by devs or publishers are also made a bit more visible. All of this is likely to pre-empt the implementation of an upcoming California AB 2426 law. Seeing an easy shot to be taken, CD Projekt’s own digital store front and game launcher GOG took it with a post on X.
In said post, the official account of the platform put up what is suggested to be a teaser of something it is adding to its own store front. This looks to be its own counterpart of Steam’s notice, except this reads “A purchase of a digital product on GOG grants you its Offline Installers, which cannot be taken away from you”.
Since checkout banners are trending, we're thinking of putting one up ourselves. Thoughts on this one? pic.twitter.com/d3y66PrL7Q
— GOG.COM (@GOGcom) October 11, 2024
On one hand, the devil is in the details, and if you comb through it enough, you’ll see that purchases on GOG don’t actually grant you a perpetual license to games. Of course, the very important flip side is that even when that happens, as long as you’ve kept a copy of the offline installer for the game, you will still be able to install and play it to your heart’s content.
What GOG has here – something it has had going for it for the longest time – is probably what the tech-savvy digital consumer crowd was hoping for when the California AB 2426 was initially passed. Instead, in its current form it only gives sellers of digital goods an easy way to sidestep customer concerns about buying and ownership.
