Gen X here.

Didn't need gog - all that shit was new. I still play Might and Magic 4 and 5, yearly. Still playing 6-8. Still play wizardry 6-8. Still play vampire the masquerade. Still have the original Wolfenstein, no, not that one, the OG stick figure ones from the early 80s, on disc.

We were forced into steam. Since vampire came out 1 week before half life 2 in November, it forced us to make an account to play. Whatever.

As for games - we used to pirate games in a manner y'all are too stupid or lazy to do. And it's still thriving: usenet. Usenet was an standard part of all Internet service back then. And in fact, it's the oldest part of the Internet. Just message boards in space.

And I discovered BBSs for old games like dungeon master, and chaos strikes back, raid over Moscow, mail order monsters, Ultima, etc back in 1983 with a 16k bps modem. Jesus, it took ungodly long to get 1 disc worth.

The region I lived in had an annual/Xmas time meet up. On a Saturday near Christmas at a national chain daycare center called La Petite. How we got access to the place, I have no idea other than some employee must have been on he scene. We'd show up with our decks and a stack of empties and copy each other's stuff. Not a few of us, I'm talking near a hundred crammed into this daycare.

Shit was wild times back then. Oh, and getting around early copy protection: I forget the name, some German software crack program was the shit. Sometimes we had to hexedit something small. Protection back then was ridiculous.

Now, as for OPs original assertion re: boomers (my parents), well, where do you think I learned all this from? Boomers.

I preferred his work with Trent and Robin Williams