TTripweed: Sooo paladin, are you ever going to address my points? Because frankly, it is rather insulting that you flat out skip everything I say, yet continue to address other people (solely those that agree with you it seems at that) in my very topic.
Lack of respect.
Kids these days. psch.

TTripweed: Paladin, not to be "that guy", but I just said that most of us don't have access to mommies and daddies credit card to buy the games.
Most of us work a job and have bills to pay. So when we already own a game physically, the want to buy it digitally is rather low.

You're pretty much victim blaming here son.

TTripweed: I don't like your insinuation that I am a fool for not buying it when it was there earlier when, as I said before, I already bought it twice as a physical copy. However, one of my copies died. The other is in a location where I have no access to at this point, and the chance that it is damaged is pretty big as well.

You say that I had "ample time" to buy it. Unlike some people buying things off of daddy and mommies credit card, I have to work. I have bills to pay. For me, 10 Euroes is money I shouldn't waste cautiously.
Now, a birthday of a friend approaches, and my CDs are dead anyway. This is the moment where one thinks "Well, it is broken, I might as well replace it and get my friend a gift. I can spare 20 this month".

Lo and behold! The corporate greed prevents it.

You also seem to not know the difference between bethesda and Beamdog.
Now Beth does some very crappy things, definitely. But Beth isn't pretty much insulting the original games and lauds their "improvements" as "enhanced", when these "enhancements" are questionable in quality at best when it comes to new and original content.
I am not going to pay 10 Euroes on some damned NPC mods and some awful NPC mod level sidequests that feel jarring and out of place.
Hell, Siege of Dragonspear was 27 Euroes at launch.
TWENTY! SEVEN!
That is ridiculous, especially as it was extremely short, linear and, again, NPC mod level quality.

Say what you want, but even Beth knows that housemods aren't worth much, and that when you charge more than 20 Euroes for something, you'd better get a lot of content.

TTripweed: I never assumed you were a child, nice assuming there. I called you a child, guess why I did as such.
Hint hint: Attitude.
My POINT however, remains the same.
Not all of us can afford, or want to, buy a game again which we own physically. Sometimes twice.
There is, once again *NO* reason to remove the original, aside from greed. And only one company would do this, namely Beamdog. Gog has literally no stake in losing a potential bestseller. Beamdog however, does.

I never said I should get the entire thing for free, I said that the "extra content" doesn't warrant double the price, and releasing the soundtrack separately in itself is pure greed (especially as Beamdog didn't even make the soundtrack, yet they still reap the profits from this one!)

The quality of the "additions" are almost universally panned. Now, if they were to fix a typo here and there, or add a description to what certain abilities do, sure.
But you can't with a straight face say that the added NPCs in the BG "Enhanced" Editions were of quality. They stuck out like sore thumbs, and, let's face it, Beamdog can't write a good character or dialogue if their lives depended on it.
This was also forced into your face, like Dorns "encounter" where he is flat out stealing the spotlight and has a really overpowered sword only he can use

Again, you seem to think that I don't think that work shouldn't be rewarded. It does.
But ripping the soundtrack out (which was *NOT* made by them) and sell it at the same cost as the original *GAME*? No, that is greedy.
Do the EE warrant DOUBLE the price of the originals? Hell no they don't. Too little enhancement, too much crap added into the mix, for literally double the price. Instead of 20 Euroes (Seriously, that is way too much), 15 would have been more appropriate. SoD isn't even worth 10 and was sold for 27.
Then they pretty much decide "oh the originals. yeah, they have to go."
This is what I mean with greed.

As for Bethesda:
Uhm... you know that Fallout 1 and 2 were not really available anywhere but on GoG or physical copy (and out of print, so good luck on that) right? Now they are on Steam and Bethesdas own store. It's also cheaper than when it was on GoG.
This is literally the least bad thing you can do.
As for "mods for Oblivion released as DLC for Skyrim" what?
Which ones? I can't see anything if I do a google search.
Now, Dawnguard? Vampire hunters, able to become a vampire lord.
Might have been a mod around for this for Oblivion, sure. Guess what though. It was still made entirely in-house by Beth.
Hearthfire. Is this what you mean? making your own home? Player Housing isn't exactly new to the TES series. I don't recall any "build your own home" mods for Oblivion.
Dragonborn: If you say that this one has stolen content, I am sorry, I need to seriously ask for evidence.
They have have taken some inspirational things from mods, but with the huge number of mods out there you are bound to run into something similar.
And it still isn't a literal copy-paste what Beamdog did.
Furthermore, Beth actually offered a job to a Skyrim modder (Farskaal I think?)
A better opportunity for you here was paid mods, which actually was a thing for a while. And still is, in a different shape. But they claim they'll do quality control.
And it still isn't as bad as Beamdog. Damn.

I loooove how you say that my mom and dad can't give me their credit card when I said that I am working and pay for the bills.
I literally mean "the bills". Mine. And theirs.

And yeah, my principles are in the way here.
I don't support Beamdog. You didn't even address the part where they flat out screwed over their iOS customers by nto rleasing a critical patch by simply not submitting said patch to the Apple Store. (I don't even use an Apple device and I'm insulted by such actions as a professional who works with technology of any kind)

I'm not missing out. I already had the games, I just need to replace a faulty CD. I just want to give someone else the game as well, and I refuse to give them a game with additional, literal, garbage. I want to give a game without a soundtrack that costs as much as the original did.
Thus, I am at a dilemma. One that has been solved at this point.
And it did not involve sending a single cent to the scamming company.

TTripweed: As I said, my assumption was solely from the way you post. You post in a rather trollish manner. Immature, and thus, childish.

You say that Beamdog didn't do a copy-paste, but the "results were very similar".
Where there is smoke...
The problem is that they outright said they added the fixpacks and only provided token credit to the original creators. Making money over the backs of others.

I doubt it is HASBRO, because why would they do this? Your reasoning is flawed as, as was pointed out before, the originals and the "Enhanced" Editions were sold side by side for a long time.
It makes literally zero sense for Hasbro to do this.

My facts are that.
Facts.
They outright credited the authors of the original fixpack mods. Some other Beamdog enthusiast said that they even paid the original creators, but failed to provide evidence for that claim.
The fact remains is that they credited the original authors for the fixpacks, and the fixes of the fixpack are in the EE. A big selling point of the EE was "no need to install the fixpacks".
Again, where there is smoke...

Further, do provide some evidence on Bethesda using Oblivion mods and repackaging them as DLC in Skyrim. I did not find any evidence of your claim (And seriously dude, you make me defend Bethesda here because your facts are off or without evidence, or hell, even a hypothesis like I provided)

And again, I need no keys.
The matter has been resolved.

king_mosiah: As a Linux user, I want the original games to run in GemRB. The EE versions don't work in GRB so they're worth less to me personally,

TTripweed: There is, once again *NO* reason to remove the original, aside from greed. And only one company would do this, namely Beamdog. Gog has literally no stake in losing a potential bestseller. Beamdog however, does.

Pangaea666: Successful companies make good products, which makes the company money.

Beamdog don't operate that way.

Put out a shit product, remove its only competition, cross your fingers and hope people are dumb enough to buy the inferior product.

Then again, Microsoft got big...

hummer010: Hasbro owns the rights. Beamdog has a license. Hasbro will likely get a cut from the EE sales (which is why they cost so much - two companies to pay!). It's in Hasbro's best interest to not compete with themselves, and the obvious solution is to pull the originals. Why? Because lots of people already own them - there are more potential sales available by promoting the EE versions. In the end, it all comes down to money. And as much as you want to call it greed, its actually just business. Successful companies make money. Thats part of what makes them successful.

Maighstir: People would prefer to not add to the statistics of the Beamdog Editions, but get the originals on their own. I would wager that this is at least part of the reason they merged them at all, Beamdog realised that the originals were selling too well and wanted to increase the sales of their -more expensive- "enhanced" editions, and GOG -knowing their userbase- proposed to bundle the originals rather than remove them alltogether.

paladin181: Some people hate Beamdog for trying to make a good thing better and making it so that using complex mods to get the games working on modern systems isn't necessary for inexperienced users. They see it as a "cash-grab" (despite all the work Beamdog actually put into the games) and resent that. So they don't want to support Beamdog. Their prerogative, but I think it's childish to cut off your nose to spite your face. Most of the people grumbling are like you and me; we already owned the original and so did they, so their access to the original titles was never altered or reduced. I personally love the enhanced editions and think they look great. I'd love to see the games ported to Obsidian's newer version of the Infinity Engine built in Unity. It won't happen because of the sheer amount of work to make all the character sprites into 3D models, but it would be impressive none the less.



paladin181: Which is impressive in itself as well considering HASBRO, not Beamdog would be the only entity capable of making that decision since Beamdog doesn't own the rights to the originals and has no control over whether they are sold here or not. But people want to continue to make Beamdog the villains here so, please go ahead and continue.

TTripweed: Beamdog has had a wonderful run with iOS customers for BG2 "EE". You see, there was a patch that PC users got. iOS users... well, didn't. Then PC users got another patch. Meanwhile, iOS users were still 2 patches earlier.
When asked about this on the forums, they at first deleted the messages, and later said they submitted the patches but that Apple didn't approve.
Meanwhile, Apple said that nothing was ever submitted to them in the first place, so there was nothing to approve.

TL;DR
Beamdog screwed over their iOS customers by not patching the game, and then lied about having submitted it, trying to shift blame.

As well Paladin, you are *EXACTLY* the White Knight I am talking about.
Ignore the cashgrabby nature they constantly display and claim they "worked a lot" when most of the work was directly lifted from patches released almost a decade earlier.
The only original content made by these people were bad NPC mod level stuff.
Let's not even go towards PR disasters where the Beamdog lead writer for SoD said that BG1 was "sexist" and how a lot of critics on the expansion were silenced with "you just hate transpeople!" (Seriously, it seems like that was the only reason the character was put in, have an easy straw to grasp when someone criticizes the rather bad and way too overpriced expansion pack)

I don't like companies who lie to their customers, derrive them of a playable product and pretty much just take other peoples work, slap their name on it and an afterthought "thank you" in the credits and sell it.

You seem to act as if the originals needed computer coding knowledge to set up, when that isn't the case. Because the fix packs acted like a patch.
You download it. You run it. Ta-daaaaa.
The only thing they got right is multiplayer, and even that was still a rather buggy mess.

Stig79: The problem with the trans person isn't that she is there. Far from it. A character is a great character if well written. This one was just a bad case of tokenism, though. You can't even be rude to the character either. It is a roleplaying game. Good and bad options in conversations is a must. Her name is actually the Czech word for "man-woman" with a letter shuffled about. So...trans person who is basically called Shemale.

The problem, apart from tokenism, is that being trans is absolutely no issue in the Forgotten Realms. All sexualities are accepted too, so they don't have the social issues our world has. Now if a woman is born a man and wants to change into her real gender there are items that do that permanently. Want a female body? Put the item on. There is even a belt in BG1 that lets you do that. Items like that are all over the Realms. In addition to this there are spells that lets you change gender as well. Some for just a few hours, others can do it permanently. Clerics, in particular can do this. The trans character was a cleric so....Yeah. I guess the writer didn't really read up on the lore at all.

If you want an example of a great trans character look at Dragon Age Inquisition. Krem is a kickass character and very much fleshed out. No outcry over that character either. This is what happens when the writer creates a character that just happens to be trans. Instead of trans-character. Character first. Important.

paladin181: Glad you understand. I never said the additional characters were any good. I bought Spear of whatever it was and I'll be honest, I didn't like it. To say they felt the original game was sexist or whatnot is a slap in the face of an incredible game that worked very well. Not every experience has to be an exercise in friendly world love for all all the time. But the fact that they re released the game with a new engine update is not to be disparaged, nor is the fact that someone had the originals removed from sale to bolster the sales of the newer versions. GOG helped by getting the original games included in the new version rather than lost forever anyway, and people still complain and call those involved villains. You're the first one to respond in a manner that makes it seem like SOMEONE understands that these people do what they do to make money. I do my job to make money, and because I like helping people. These guys do their jobs to make money. Most of those complaining probably work for their money. But Gods forbid someone who sells you something make a penny of profit from it.

I'm far more upset with people who re release original works that they've purchased the rights to without doing ANYTHING to make them better or any work on them at all because they are raking in profits for something they did NOTHING for except buy rights. They are many times worse than teams like Beamdog who tried to improve the work they had the licenses for.

hummer010: Are you aware that there's a native Linux version of the EE games? No need for GemRB or WINE.

For me, there are two reasons why I prefer the EE versions.

1.) Native Linux. No GemRB. No WINE.
2.) Interface. I play on a 13" 1920x1080 laptop display. With the widescreen mod on the originals, I could either have an unusable tiny interface at native resolution, or I could have a usable interface that was fuzzy from being non-native resolution. Neither option was great. The EE games have a fully scalable interface that looks great on my display. Even if I don't care for some of the aesthetics of the interface, the scalability of it wins me over.