- Released
- March 3, 1999
- Developer(s)
- New World Computing
- Publisher(s)
- The 3DO Company
2025-10-1718:44259140www.thegamer.com
Good 'ol detective work.
Approximately seventy years after video games first became a medium, the act of preserving older games has become more important than ever. The CDPR-owned GOG.com specialises in game preservation, tinkering with older games to ensure people can play these games without jumping through convoluted hoops to make them run on new hardware.
However, the company's noble mission is far harder than the team behind the storefront initially expected. In an interview with The Game Business, Marcin Paczynski, GOG's senior business development manager, opened up about just how difficult game preservation can be.
A Noble Goal
"To be perfectly honest, it's harder than we thought it would be," Paczynski explained. "What we've found out is that games and how they work has deteriorated way faster than what we thought. And we are not talking only about the game not launching. We are talking about more subtle things as well, like the game not supporting modern controllers, or the game not supporting ultra-widescreen or modern resolutions, or even a simple thing like not being able to minimise the game, which is an essential feature today."
On top of the software troubles, there's also the small matter of obtaining the intellectual property rights of an old game. Paczynski says they once hired a private investigator to find someone living off the grid in the UK. He had unknowingly inherited the rights to several games, but was super supportive of "preserving his family's legacy" when GOG tracked him down.
Nightdive, a studio that primarily focuses on remastering and remaking classic titles, was actually created because the founder was annoyed he couldn't play System Shock. He tracked down the insurance company that inherited the rights to the franchise and purchased them, and then began working on remaking the iconic immersive sim.
Pacyznski says digital rights management (DRM) features are especially frustrating to circumvent, which means they're working as designed. Heck, some rather famous games are unplayable without third-party patches because of DRM — any old Xbox-to-PC that's saddled with a "Games for Windows Live" log-in comes to mind.
Pacyznski suggests that triple-A developers remove DRM from games after a few years to make life easier for future game preservationists. Of course, this will never happen because executives don't care about preserving games.
Read the original article
Comments
I like GOG a lot but it's wild to me that their GOG Galaxy client doesn't work on Linux! A lot of gamers who care about preservation and availability are spending money with Valve because Steam's DRM is mostly inoffensive and the Linux support is so good.
The addressable market segment of people who play PC games and also care about DRM-free accessibility would be larger if GOG's launcher ran on Linux and targeted Linux users. It seems like a logical overlap to me.
Valve is eating GOG's lunch in this segment but it could easily change. Sure it might be small but it's bigger than ever, still growing, and seems to fit GOG's mission.
I would definitely start repurchasing my Steam games DRM-free on GOG if only they provided a launcher with the tooling necessary to download & run them on my system.
As things stand now, and for all the good GOG does... it's not enough to be DRM-free but only distribute Windows installers. You've just outsourced the DRM scheme to Microsoft. If the software doesn't run on a DRM-free OS, the job is only halfway done.
And in the meantime, GOG's product is tragically subject to piracy, (I believe) partially enabled by their decision to _only_ package games for the OS upon which most piracy traditionally takes place! :( I hope this could be offset by packaging for a crowd with more ideological overlap.
By ntoskrnl_exe 2025-10-1720:552 reply I'm a Linux user who buys a lot of games on GOG and I've never had a problem running them using Wine stable, with the only exception being games that supposedly don't even work on Proton yet.
Majority of the games there don't even come in a native Linux form, and those that do can be a hit or miss when it comes to compatibility - at least one game I tried needed a dependency from a no longer available package. Alternatively a few titles come shipped with some kind of wrapper that's really just an outdated version of Wine surrounding a win32 EXE.
Also, isn't the point of buying something DRM free that you don't have to use a client or any other online feature? The offline installer has always been GOG's killer feature in my book, that's how you make sure the game gets truly preserved.
By klingon6786 2025-10-182:39 > Also, isn't the point of buying something DRM free that you don't have to use a client or any other online feature?
Agreed. I thought this was the whole point of GOG.
The problem with buying movies from streaming providers, games from Epic and Steam, etc. is that you don’t own them. They say you do, but even something like Movies Anywhere isn’t guaranteed for life. Downloading digital content is the surest way to ensure that in-theory you could against use it someday. Anything else is a false promise of forever.
By ensignavenger 2025-10-183:246 reply How do you download the games? I tried logging in to download cyberpunk which I purchased on gog, and they wanted me to download tons of files individually! I couldn't even just click a "download all" button.
You could always use something like Heroic Launcher. https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ It can connect to GOG and other services.
By ksynwa 2025-10-188:07
By ntoskrnl_exe 2025-10-186:17 Every installer there comes with an executable and those files you mentioned, for some reason they are always split into 4GB chunks, that’s why there’s so many.
AFAIK download all is not available, you will have to get them one by one. But after that they’re yours to keep forever.
By M95D 2025-10-1820:05 I have Aria2 download manager installed on my router (OpenWrt) and Aria2 Integration plugin in the browser with "Capture downloads" option. I click on each file and it gets sent to the router which downloads them one at a time over night.
By selfhoster11 2025-10-188:45 There is a third-party downloader that uses an API to grab binaries for all games in your library. I just download the individual files one by one, though.
By whatevaa 2025-10-1912:53 Silksong was downloaded by downloading a 2GB shell script. Basically a self-extracting archive in shell script form.
> Valve is eating GOG's lunch in this segment
I think you are comparing apples and organges
valve will give you a game license, gog will sell you a game.
you can download, install and play all gog games forever with no drm.
(I use lgogdownloader and download all games to linux)
By branon 2025-10-1720:08 Apples and oranges yes, but to most users (even Linux users) there's only a very blurry line between these concepts. I admit this is not ideal.
I believe choice of storefront is more a service and support problem, and less about the product itself.
Game licensure and game ownership are equivalent products at the end of the day in most instances. Rugs could be pulled, yes, but thus far haven't been very often or to any significant extent (that I know of).
Most paying customers are fine to run proprietary code, accept DRM, or buy a license instead of owning a game. Even Linux users will do this if the company (Valve) has a decent track record at practicing "don't be evil" (they do).
As a Linux user, when you purchase a game from GOG (and I concede that this is ideologically superior to a license from Valve) you are on your own afterwards. Windows users can get a bit of help from Galaxy and I think GOG even does tech support now but this doesn't apply to our segment.
You must now divine a scheme whereby your game is made runnable. Cue fighting with distro repositories and Wine versions/prefixes/winetricks, or depending on a third party launcher (Bottles/Lutris/Heroic/pick one), or adding the game to the Steam client (that you probably have installed already anyway) because Steam knows how to run things with Proton... and then you must maintain this going forward.
This might not bother you or you may even find it therapeutic (and I do, for certain games). But the majority of the segment doesn't like it, and it won't scale as well as a first-party solution, not even for an individual user.
My assertion is that exchanging game ownership for game licensure currently looks like a pretty fair deal if I receive first-party support for running the game on my OS. But GOG could change that!
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-1723:573 reply > you can download, install and play all gog games forever with no drm.
Many games that GOG sells and a very large share of the new releases are DRMed. The Galaxy client is often how the DRM gets applied.
Want to play HoMM3 with your friends? You can still do that.
Try doing the same thing with a more recent "DRM-free" game.
By JohnFen 2025-10-1814:01 > Many games that GOG sells and a very large share of the new releases are DRMed. The Galaxy client is often how the DRM gets applied.
I haven't ever encountered this, nor have I ever encountered a GOG game that requires the use of the Galaxy client.
> Many games that GOG sells and a very large share of the new releases are DRMed. The Galaxy client is often how the DRM gets applied.
Can you explain that assertion?
That's not in any way what gog says. Even california law says gog sells you games (while steam only licenses them)
I have a disconnected windows 11 vm, and install and play gog games in it all the time. Never an issue.
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-182:021 reply > That's not in any way what gog says.
Jesus Christ. It's exactly what GOG says. Compare https://www.gog.com/en/news/bgog_2022_update_2b_our_commitme...
> 1. The single-player mode has to be accessible offline.
> 2. Games you bought and downloaded can never be taken from you or altered against your will.
> 3. The GOG GALAXY client is and will remain optional for accessing single-player offline mode.
> Having said that, we believe that you have the right to make an informed choice about the content that you choose to enjoy and we won’t tell you how and where you can access or store your games. To make it easier to discover titles that include features like multiplayer, unlockable cosmetics, timed events, or user-generated content, we’re adding information about such functionalities on product pages. In short, you’ll always know.
If you want to play multiplayer HoMM3, you can. That's how the game was commercially released and it hasn't been updated to add DRM.
Modern releases DRM the game as a matter of course, and GOG defied their user base to say that that's fine with them. Do you want to play with your friend? You need an internet connection and multiple accounts registered with the vendor.
For a concrete example of Galaxy being the DRM implementation, the Gloomhaven executable you can download from GOG has the button to play multiplayer disabled. It will still work if you get around that - the functionality itself doesn't check anything. But the executable will only enable the button if you start it with Galaxy running and logged in to an account that, according to GOG, has purchased the game.
That doesn't sound like "digital rights management" to you?
That sounds like the game has implemented multiplayer in a way that requires an external server to me, not like DRM proper. DRM would block single player as well.
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-194:341 reply [flagged]
> In the first place, you do not appear to have any idea what "DRM" means.
I know perfectly well what DRM means. No need to get nasty.
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-202:24 > I know perfectly well what DRM means.
This statement is not compatible with your prior comments. Do you know what it means or not?
By throaway1988 2025-10-1916:13 I’ve never used Gog galaxy and i have over 250 games in my library?
You have an executable with gog, but playing it forever requires long term support.
I don’t expect whatever windows may or may not be available in 2060 to be able to support such a download from 2025 in a playable fashion.
By 3abiton 2025-10-1722:06 I think this is a moot argument, especially for x86 arch. I can run nearly almost any game built for windows 98 - till now, on linux.
Any game ever can run very well on any modern hardware using emulators or virtual machines.
By tsimionescu 2025-10-1721:334 reply That is quite false, especially if you mean "out of the box". And it's likely a temporary situation - there's no guarantee whatsoever that people will maintain x86 and some specific Nvidia Pixel Shader emulation support 50 years from now.
By keyringlight 2025-10-1721:53 This has already happened, PC Gaming Wiki has entries for lots of games where support for various old methods of doing things no longer work, on real hardware on windows, and you need to use a variety of workarounds like dgvoodoo or a fix by a random third party modder to get the game to operate correctly. And that's before you consider defunct copy protection or trying to add improvements.
By CJefferson 2025-10-180:50 Given the amount of work emulator authors go to supporting consoles like the Neo Geo CD, with 8 not very good games (they had to do serious work, over many years, breaking the encryption), and the amazing cycle accurate emulators for consoles like NES and SNES, I’m confident we will continue to have good emulators in the future for any system anyone cares about.
By mananaysiempre 2025-10-1721:48 nVidia has dropped 32-bit PhysX support in 50-series cards, significantly impacting some older-but-not-old games, and there’s no real solution yet except to own an older card.
By cwillu 2025-10-1721:17 There was an awkward period of 3d accelerated games that required 16-bit framebuffers; I've had no success getting them to run in emulation
By Tuna-Fish 2025-10-180:22 I fully expect windows to not support such games.
And I also fully expect wine on linux to support them all. I like a lot of old games, and they run much better under wine than in windows these days.
By 2OEH8eoCRo0 2025-10-1720:40 There is also minigalaxy
I don't know about the overall market analysis so I'm not commenting on that. But I do know that personally, GOG meets my needs in spades and Valve doesn't, so I've spent a lot of money at GOG and will for the foreseeable future. I am a Linux guy and don't own any Windows machines. I couldn't care less about the Galaxy client. To be honest, I'm not even sure what it does -- I just know that I get along just fine without it.
For me, GOG is as close to perfect as I've found.
it's like the steam client but for gog + all the other markets like epic/xbox apparently including messaging.
By unsnap_biceps 2025-10-1722:22 the unification of other game stores is just largely broken. They haven't maintained their plugins for many years and as the stores change, functionality breaks in weird ways.
By JohnFen 2025-10-1721:00 Yeah, I just looked it up. It doesn't look like it does anything that I need, so I'm not troubled by the absence of a Linux version.
A bigger problem for me is not lack of Linux Galaxy client, but that a bunch of developers only release Linux versions on Steam (Larian with BG3 is a recent example).
But I agree in general. The issue is probably that GOG is a smaller store than Steam and Linux segment for them in result is also way smaller than for Steam, so they don't see it as a priority.
Meanwhile you can use lgogdownloader.
It's sort of interesting that they support Linux as platform for games sales to begin with. Besides them, Steam and itch.io who even does?
>Linux versions on Steam (Larian with BG3 is a recent example)
Not just on Steam but only for Steam Deck
But I think that's an understandable position. One single distro with one single hardware (okay two because the LCD and OLED versions has some differences).
Once you go down the "full Linux support" way it's a hellhole of different distros, compositors, proprietary and open source hardware drivers etc. This is where Flatpak, AppImage, snap etc. could actually play a good part imo if done well but I'm not sure I've seen any games released on Steam for Linux in those formats (maybe Steam not even allow it)
Edit: you can download BG3 for any Linux distro not just the Steam Deck
By shmerl 2025-10-1720:52 Good chance that this version will run on most up to date distros without much issue. So I don't see it as a reason not to release it.
> proprietary and open source hardware drivers etc
Somewhat of a problem, but not so much anymore, most Linux gamers know to use AMD and Mesa. So I'd say their focus on SteamOS is a good base of support.
> A bigger problem for me is not lack of Linux Galaxy client, but that a bunch of developers only release Linux versions on Steam (Larian with BG3 is a recent example).
It's because building for Linux expects specific versions of system libraries like glibc, if you compile your game on newer glibc, it may not run on older version of glibc at all. Steam solves it with Steam Linux Runtime compatibility layer which forces the game to run with specific glibc (and others) shipped with Steam on Linux, other video game stores have no equivalent solutions.
By shmerl 2025-10-1919:43 I don't think Steam runtime provides custom glibc. Above is cited sometimes as a complication, but a bunch of projects solve it without much hassle (appimage is one example).
Anyway, Steam runtime is a massive overkill especially when its libraries get outdated.
By ThatPlayer 2025-10-1720:351 reply Those are sometimes related. I know Tooth and Tail never released on Linux on GoG because they use the stores networking for multiplayer. So you can't do that on Linux without Galaxy but can on Steam.
By shmerl 2025-10-1720:46 Yeah, that's a good point.
To be fair I could have sworn that BG3 had a Linux version.
Using heroic and wine is so seamless that I don't even remember if I have been running a game natively or not. It just works.
By blooalien 2025-10-232:36 > Using heroic and wine is so seamless that I don't even remember if I have been running a game natively or not. It just works.
If you're using Heroic on Linux, then there's no question whether you're running games natively or not. You are running a Windows game in WINE (or Proton, a WINE fork). Epic Store doesn't carry any Linux native games (even when a native Linux version exists).
By shmerl 2025-10-191:40 Supposedly their native version is more optimized, but yeah, it runs well otherwise.
Bad QA for actual Linux games was the main reason I stopped buying on gog. Even when a game had a (gog exclusive) Linux port using their weird "game inside a shell script" approach[0], often times I would run into more problems than just using wine/proton on the Windows build.
[0] apparently using this https://icculus.org/mojosetup/
By throwaway48476 2025-10-1720:235 reply Linux doesn't not prioritize backwards compatibility. It's time to stop trying to make linux native gaming work without a stable ABI.
I agree. Game devs are better off targeting proton as a platform, but Linux purists complain if there is no native port and you don't get the brownie points for putting in the effort.
I think there's plenty of brownie points to be had for making sure a game runs well under Proton... There's very little reason that GoG cannot do what Steam does with Proton for Windows games.
By tracker1 2025-10-2015:40 That's not the same as a native client that launches games under Proton... GoG would be better served with something native/adaptive (even web/electrion/tauri based) that also installs/manages a Proton install along with the games.
By tremon 2025-10-180:54 I only run Linux at home, but on GOG I download the Windows versions and run them via Wine. This for me has had a higher success rate than keeping the native Linux versions around.
Linux has a very stable ABI. It's considered a bug if userland breaks.
If you want a stable userland, you can try using flatpaks. When I tried it, it downloaded entire root filesystems for Fedora and Ubuntu just so the applications would run.
It does work. The application appears to be unaware of the outer, incompatible distro.
I don't quite see how this approach wouldn't work for games.
By sznio 2025-10-1810:15 Steam provides the Steam Linux Runtime, which gives a stable environment to compile games against.
By tsimionescu 2025-10-1721:25 Don't conflate mobile free to play games (i.e. gambling simulators with a thin veneer) with actual games. I wouldn't be surprised if there were fewer actual games playable on Android than the full catalog for Sony PSP. Mobile free to play games are exclusively a way to prey on people's addictions in the hopes of finding enough "whales".
By Frenchgeek 2025-10-1723:19 The Android version of the game Fractal no longer work (So I use the Windows version). And the only way to play the Steam version of Dungeon Defenders on Linux is to use the Windows version instead of the native one.
Even if Windows ever did disappear as an OS, it would remain as a backwards compatibility layer apparently...
By privacyking 2025-10-182:481 reply It has a stable interface on top of Linux, which desktop linux does not have.
Android is not backward compatible. Many old apps are crashing or refuse to work on newer Androids.
By izacus 2025-10-1818:41 Most of them aren't though. Significantly more old games work on Android than they do on Linux desktop distros.
This is why everyone is dropping Linux support and targeting Proton instead.
By tredre3 2025-10-1821:29 The only time I've seen old Android games stop working is when they use native 32bit libraries and most Android devices are now unable to run them.
Other than that Android backwards compatibility has been quite good, much better than Desktop Linux anyway!
I agree that GOG needs to port their client to Linux for all the reasons you stated, but as a workaround you can use Lutris which lets you log into your GOG account and download+install games (Windows games too).
It's not as pain free as Steam, because you sometimes still have to apply wine fixes, but it works well with the most popular games.
Heroic is way easier to use imo, but both are good options https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
By cholantesh 2025-10-1720:342 reply My primary gripes with Lutris are:
1. it doesn't (at least recently?) always do a great job of handling multiple displays, either launching games on my second monitor, which I orient vertically or getting confused about which monitor to use and switching back and forth until eventually the instance (but not the Lutris client) crashes
2. I find myself getting into launcher hell where I'll use a different wine version for one game and when I switch to a different game, it's using this new wine version and stops working
Not sure if Heroic solves these issues but I would try it again (didn't have any luck setting it up initially) if it does
By haunter 2025-10-1720:39 I can answer the first on at least:
If you are using KDE then there is a global Window rules setting and Heroic actually obey those rules, so you can force to launch a game always on X display, always minimized etc.
https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kwin/kcontrol/windowspecific... (not sure that's the most up to date manual)
By epakai 2025-10-184:35 I've been using Lutris on i3 with multiple monitors. Enabling gamescope has been extremely helpful. I just get a window that tells the game to render at some fixed resolution, and it is happy to scale fullscreen or any size. I've been using i3's fullscreen toggle, it goes to the current monitor, or I can move it to another with my regular i3 binds.
It looks like gamescope has it's own fullscreen shortcut (super + f), but people complain about it about it going to the wrong display. Maybe your window manager offers a more consistent full screen option like i3 does.
By apayan 2025-10-1722:56 I hadn't heard of Heroic before. I'll check it out. Thank you.
How long has it been? Like a decade? That's when I bought my last GOG game and decided to wait for a proper Linux client.
Having a nice way to view and manage a game library is essential at this point. I don't want to do it manually.
By BaardFigur 2025-10-1723:321 reply I believe the problem is that most of the games they host are Windows games, so in that regard, Linux doesn't make sense.
And maintaining something like Proton is pretty complex, there's so many different distros. Actually ensuring the game works probably was too big of a task for them.
You can always add your gog games to Lutris though.
> I believe the problem is that most of the games they host are Windows games, so in that regard, Linux doesn't make sense.
The vast majority of games on Steam are Windows games, yet the Linux Steam client runs them fine via Proton.
I don't think people are asking for GOG to make Linux-native games. People are asking for an official GOG client that can handle installing games via Proton/Wine, handles cloud saves, account management, etc.
If a bunch of open source hobbyists can create a viable multi-platform client (see Heroic Games Launcher), then so can GOG.
By throwaway106382 2025-10-180:03 Just use Heroic launcher. Works great.
By noAnswer 2025-10-1722:29 I use https://lutris.net for this. One starter for all.
By mathieudombrock 2025-10-1719:392 reply It really does seem like the idea of DRM free games and Linux goes hand in hand. I would be really interested to hear about why they don't currently offer Linux support for their launcher.
I'm in the same boat here. I would be more than willing to rebuy some games on GOG if they supported Linux.
By tsimionescu 2025-10-1721:381 reply The idea of running old Windows games definitely doesn't go hand in hand with Linux. And I think GoG simply has way more Windows experience, lots of work to do, and little realistic chance of tapping some huge market if they spent all the time you need to support 2-3 major Linux distros - especially when you need to offer things like Multi-player support as well on those, plus maybe game recording and whatever else the overlay offers (GoG Galaxy is not just a storefront).
By Ferret7446 2025-10-1723:10 Why not? My experience has been that old games run easier and better on Linux than Windows thanks to Wine and Microsoft's stupidity
By lawlessone 2025-10-1720:121 reply Does it work with wine/proton? anecdotal but even in apps/games where they make a linux port the wine/proton version sometimes works better.
By 0cf8612b2e1e 2025-10-1720:16 I have Linux GOG games which refuse to run for one reason or another. Some outdated library, compiler, whatever that is not on a modern distribution.
If you want easiest future proofing, you have to use the windows release.
By throwaway106382 2025-10-180:02 Heroic launcher works great and also doubles up as an Epic client and you can just run your own installers with it too (this is how I install Battle Net and Diablo 4).
By A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2025-10-1723:41 I give GOG a lot of leeway, because in my heart of hearts, I know I will eventually curse steam lockin ( that day may be far away, but it is in our collective future ) so I throw them some money every now and then.
Still, you do have a point, by comparison Steam is a lot more polished on that front. I would complain more, but my personal hangup is very niche to begin with so it does not seem fair ( remote view in vm ). It is small things, but small things add up.
By thiht 2025-10-1812:40 But IIRC you don’t even need to use the launcher, that’s the whole point of DRM free games
You can just download them from GOG and play, so no Linux launcher is not a big deal, just a convenience (some would argue launchers are an inconvenience)
It would be great if everyone could release Linux binaries, but smaller studios are extremely stretched and with no shortage of work as it is. Considering the quality of Windows emulation today, it's quite possible that the windows API simply becomes the new "Java for games", where studios test their games on Linux and never release a native binary.
By blooalien 2025-10-235:12 > ... "but smaller studios are extremely stretched and with no shortage of work as it is."
My experience is that it's never been the "smaller studios" that give Linux the middle-finger the way the so-called "AAA" publishers do. I see a shocking number of small studios and indie developers consistently releasing for Linux, Mac, and Windows and managing to do a surprisingly reliable job of it, where "AAA" companies sometimes can't seem to manage to keep a game running reliably even on the one platform they support.
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-1723:561 reply > I like GOG a lot but it's wild to me that their GOG Galaxy client doesn't work on Linux!
The client is a bad thing. What you want is for it to stop working on Windows.
Why would you want it to work on Linux?
By Anamon 2025-10-239:31 I've tried using it, and CDPR already have that covered -- it almost doesn't work on Windows.
By rpdillon 2025-10-1813:44 I recommend downloading Heroic Launcher.
By m-p-3 2025-10-1720:59 For now I rely on Heroic Launcher and it does a decent job for my GOG games on Bazzite.
By mathnode 2025-10-180:31 Honestly thanks to Lutris, I have no want of a native linux GOG client and would rather GOG and others contributed to an already excellent solution and for there to be less distributor owned clients.
By izacus 2025-10-188:14 The client works very well on Linux via Proton.
I don't think a niche store like GoG has to put a massive investment into marginal platform like Linux when Proton makes it work very well by itself.
By xinayder 2025-10-1811:35 Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris both authenticate with GOG and allow you to install their games.
By jszymborski 2025-10-185:46 Honestly Heroic Launcher is way better than Galaxy, integrates with Proton, and includes other shitty launchers like Epic
>Paczynski says they once hired a private investigator to find someone living off the grid in the UK. He had unknowingly inherited the rights to several games
My grandfather was a "landman" for oil companies tracking down mineral rights and has all sorts of stories like this. It can all get messy and weird fast.
Stuff like tracking down people you'd assume would be dead but are in fact ancient and alive at 103 in a nursing home. Convincing a bank that through a series of mergers and acquisitions that they are the rightful owners of the mineral rights to a piece of land foreclosed on in the great depression by a bank that itself failed. Generations of poor people dying without wills or settling probate. Inheritance battles spanning generations until no one alive was around for the start. Step mother that swooped in and married a man at the end of his life, inherited everything, remarried, had kids and left everything to them instead of the step kids.
By nihilist_t21 2025-10-1721:37 I work for an oil and gas brokerage company. What you say is absolutely true (Especially your last sentence!). Some wild stories. We've certainly dug up some family drama throughout the whole process.
By thaumasiotes 2025-10-183:521 reply > Convincing a bank that through a series of mergers and acquisitions that they are the rightful owners of the mineral rights to a piece of land foreclosed on in the great depression by a bank that itself failed.
What's the goal of convincing the bank that they own some land? Is this a case where the original bank foreclosed on the property, resold the surface while carefully keeping the mineral rights, and then failed? And the current owner of everything-but-the-mineral-rights is fully aware of not possessing them?
If you determine that someone else is the owner of some land, and they deny it, you can just start doing whatever it is that you want to do on the land, and you'll become the owner.
By bragr 2025-10-185:41 >What's the goal of convincing the bank that they own some land? Is this a case where the original bank foreclosed on the property, resold the surface while carefully keeping the mineral rights, and then failed? And the current owner of everything-but-the-mineral-rights is fully aware of not possessing them?
Pretty much exactly. It's pretty common if not the norm. Splitting the rights is normal when say a large ranch is broken up into plots. It would be very rare for say the deed to a suburban home to include the mineral rights.
By nocoiner 2025-10-183:38 Tracing ownership of land back 400 years to some Spanish land grant…
Maybe we should bring back copyright renewal. If you had to file a renewal with the government every 20 years it would solve a lot of the problems with abandonware.
By t-writescode 2025-10-1719:412 reply Copyright was 20+20. MOST problems with it come from endless extensions and no format shifting exemption.
Fix those and we’d be muuuuch better off.
By jaggederest 2025-10-1720:302 reply You also have to charge a fee/pigouvian tax on the renewals. When renewal is free, there's a substantial deadweight drag on society as a result from everyone renewing by default.
By bawolff 2025-10-1721:53 Even without a fee, requiring renewal at least means stuff that people have totally forgotten about doesn't get renewed, and stuff that does get renewed at least has a recentish owner on record.
It would be a large improvement over the status quo of having a term of 70 years after the death of the author.
By Bratmon 2025-10-1723:07 Even if all it required was one to sign an affidavit saying they are the current copyright holder, that would solve a LOT of archiving problems.
By cxr 2025-10-312:28 28, not 20.
