TTripweed: The only thing they got right is multiplayer, and even that was still a rather buggy mess.

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.

hummer010: I'd argue they got the more modern, scalable interface right too. IMO a widescreen modded original is no where near as a playable as the EE interface. The higher your resolution, the more apparent this becomes.

As a Linux user, they also got the Linux native version right. GemRB is good, but the native versions of the EE games are better.

I'm not real keen on the Beamdog content, but luckily I've played the games enough times that I just avoid it. I didn't find Seige of Dragonspear nearly as bad as the Beamdog haters did. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible, I just enjoyed playing new content in the BG world.

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.

Leroux: This doesn't make much sense though. When that guy from Beamdog's support is mentioning it being GOG's idea, I think what he's talking about is actually adding the originals as bonus, not removing the originals from the store. And he also mentions that someone from Beamdog decided it was a good idea, only to go on and say that they're not the ones making the decisions, which sounds a bit hypocritical or at the very least confusing. In any case, he doesn't sound like really knows the whole story. Blaming Beamdog without having any evidence that they're responsible is wrong, but there is no real evidence yet that GOG are the bad guys here either. If anything, if for some reason other than their own decision they had to remove the originals from store and then they convinced Beamdog to bundle the games, we should be thankful for that.

Stig79: That guy has been caught lying plenty of times actually. He is their damage-control guy.

https://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/trolling_and_censorship_in_the_beamdog_forum/page3

Stig79: The classic Planescape:Torment had the soundtrack included under Extras. It was included with the purchase of the game.

The EE version now has the classic version bundled. So you have to pay 3 times as much if you just want the classic now. The soundtrack for the Classic version has also been removed. If you want the PS:T soundtrack now, you have to buy it separately. For about 10 bucks.

The classic PS:t cost about 10 bucks with the soundtrack included. Beamdog removed it so they could make more money.

Classy company.
Beamdog has the rights to the classic versions of the game. They currently "own" the BG franchise and all that. That includes the right to sell them via what store they want to. This is standard when getting the rights to a franchise.

Disney owns the Day of the Tentacle franchise, but the people who made the remake get to sell it where they want. They actually pulled a Beamdog too. The classic DoTT is not for sale anywhere, is it?

Do you think Hasbro made the decision to remove the PS:T soundtrack from the EE bundle in order to sell it separately? That was Beamdog all the way.

Another thing to remember is that the BG games got bundled with the classics right after the SoD mess backfired on Beamdog. Bad reviews came in, and SoD didn't sell well at all. Need money? Force people to buy our EE versions if they want the classic versions.

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.

paladin181: They see it as a "cash-grab".

Ancient-Red-Dragon: They see it as a cash grab because it is.

Beamdog is riding off the coattails of the original developers who did all the real work to make the game(s). By way of removing the original game(s) from the market unless it is bundled with the Beamdog-modded version(s), Beamdog is therefore forcing people who do not want to buy their mod(s) - namely, almost everyone - to buy them. Because Beamdog knows that almost no one would buy their mods otherwise. But knowledge that almost no one wants their mods does not excuse their unethical practices.

paladin181: They added improvements to a 20 year old game and because they aren't a charity, they desire to be paid for their efforts.

paladin181: That is your opinion and has no factual evidence to support it. Beamdog took a 20 year old game and improved it (in their eyes). But yes, tell me about riding the coattails of the original developers who are no longer in business and don't support their own game any more. Remasters and improved versions by different studios than the original are quite common these days, and these games are no different. It's not worth fighting over because in the end, actions are going to upset some people. No matter the action. They added improvements to a 20 year old game and because they aren't a charity, they desire to be paid for their efforts.

paladin181: The Classic DotT hasn't been available for sale anywhere digitally, your argument is apples and oranges. Also, having a license to produce a modified version of a product is not owning the rights to the franchise. I don't know the specifics of the license agreement any more than you do, except I'll assume it works in the most logical way for HASBRO, the company that owns the rights rather than shilling out complete franchise license that would block HASBRO from being able to generate future income on their property.