Here’s another reminder to sign this initiative if you live in the EU.
I’d totally sign…if the Russian funded tory party hadn’t decided we should leave because they were scared of the far right taking votes.
Spread the word, then.
Unpopular opinion: if I have to fudge with Wine instead of Proton, I simply will not bother. It’s 2024. I’m not going to fiddle with configs, or get a setup together just to play a single game. That’s ridiculous. A game should 100% be one click to run, whether it’s native or not. and if that’s not what is expected in 2024, Linux get it together. sincerely: a full time Linux gamer that is a single parent and doesn’t have time to fiddle just to play a game. Wine and most of its front ends need a major overhaul.
Then just use Proton? You don’t need Steam for it. And sitting there and demanding “Linux” to get it “together” because it is 2024 is rather ignorant due to the fact that it is not Linux’ fault that the software in question needs additional workarounds in order to make it run. People out there are using their freetime to come up with solutions for problems caused by corporations using proprietary libraries and software. I don’t think that your opinion is unpopular. I get what you want, I do wish the same, and a lot of peoole would agree with it as well, but the context in which we operate here matters a lot.
Linux get it together
Who are you making demands to, precisely?
You need to “get it together” and buy games for your platform.
“That’s ridiculous”
Heroic is decent imo. It lets you download Wine, manage prefixes, enable/disable dxvk/vkd3d, configure gamescope & mangohud and so on.
So does lutris and bottles. Don’t know what OP is talking about.
Removed by mod
I test games for a living and most of the time wine runs perfectly fine. You can also just use umu laucher which does everything for you.
Also I don’t really get your point. Who’s forcing you to use wine instead of proton?
I’m not aware of how things are now, but at least previously you couldn’t really use Proton outside of Steam.
So I assume OC defends Steam as the only platform that can smoothly run games with Proton instead of regular Wine, which does not work as well for certain games and/or requires tedious configuration.
You are right about proton. But the tedious configuration part is not true. Proton and ge-wine(now UMU) do the same thing, i.e applying custom patches. Wine base package is not expected to do this.
I see, thanks!
Which neatly sums up why I do not and will not even have a Steam account, but buy many games from GOG.
You realise GOG sells DRM games right?
Like…?
I believe Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has DRM and is still sold on GOG.
Okay, let’s see…
No mention of DRM in the reviews or anywhere in the forum…
No mention of DRM anywhere…
You’re right I was misremembering the reviews complaining about the UELA instead
Love gog but fuck them for spamming my email. I found out to claim the new games it’ll auto subscribe you to the news letter. So I stopped claiming the games. But still I get emails for promotions and crap. More annoying then freaking scam callers. I’ve unsubscribed every time I get one and stopped claiming free games. I’m so close to just cut my loses and delete my account but I feel like that still won’t stop those parasites
How weird, I wonder if there’s something wrong with my GOG account? I don’t think I’ve received an email from them in years?
No, if you claim the giveaways you have to subscribe to their newsletter. That’s all. If you aren’t doing that, you’ll almost never get an email.
Ye that’s why I stopped claiming games
I see, that makes sense. Thanks!
You should not be getting promotional emails if you opt out, so something is wrong with your account/settings specifically. Contact them or filter your emails.
That’s what I figured… Some bug on their end or something because every time I get one I unsubscribe. I plan to just delete my account and go back to a mix of pirating and steam
Okay steam, if its just a digital license and not ownership… Then surely you’ll be significantly lowering prices, Since you charge full ownership prices for games, not license prices… Right?
G*mers really don’t want the industry to evaluate the $60 price point and apply inflationary adjustments going back to when it became the standard.
The $60 was based on 55%+ going to distribution channels, +physical media costs, so it could be down from there.
regular reminder that digital distribution was sold to us under the false promise that games would be cheaper, because they wouldnt have to pay for printing boxes, CDs, manuals, greebles, Wouldnt have to pay for shipping or storage, or any other burden addition of physical media.
That we’d be able to buy games for 30 dollars, and that that the developers and everyone involved would make more money than they would have paying 50 for a physical game.
Yeah, this is the original sin, they just banked the cost the whole time until they could cry that they need to charge more because of inflation.
and now, they are wanting to sell games for 70-80 bucks for AAA titles.
Its not cause the games are 50 dollars that they arent making enough hundreds of millions. The only reason these AAA games arent making bank is because they’re shit
Can anyone honestly remember the last AAA title that wasnt an absolute dog pile?
Fr tho people seem to forget abt inflation a lot when talking abt the old days
Why compare oranges and apples? Console and PC games were never the same from a price perspective.
This is a really interesting chart. A lot of N64 games were $70 and even $80 at launch which is upwards of $150 today. Just crazy.
People keep saying SNES/N64/etc games were super expensive…and i just wanna ask where they were buying them?
Cause everytime I went into the stores to get one they were 49.99.
People seem to forget that just moderately decent games sell magnitudes more today than they did 20 years ago, too, thus continuing to bring in insane cash (as long as you arent sony or other companies that are obscenely wasteful…) despite inflation, this stable pricing making them a good entertainment investment for people whose minimum wage hasnt changed in like 15 years
I don’t think it’s Steam setting the prices.
They indirectly are inflating it with their 30% cut
So games sold on storefronts owned by the same publishers as the game should be 30% cheaper right? Right?
Should be cheaper, emphasis on should, but at the same time if they sell directly and take the same cut, that’s one less intermediary in the chain so more money going to the devs.
None of the managerial class are good people, wake up, all billionaires are taking advantage of us.
They are also deflating it by providing services that developers would otherwise have to spend time and money on to develop themselves.
Their 30% cuts allowed Gabe to start collecting yachts, they could charge a lot less while still offering the same services and only Gabe would see his finances take the hit, no one else in the world would be poorer if they charged 20% instead.
Does GOG work on Linux?
Many of their games do have native linux versions, and a lot do work under wine or proton, which can be used as a Non-steam game in Steam or even without Steam.
Their launcher doesn’t yet have a native linux version but it’s completely optional, and does still run under wine if you really want it.
If I’m not going to use their game manager, then why would I buy the game from them instead of just buying it directly from the game studio? I guess because game studios rarely distribute their own games anymore?
Exactly, the game publishers and distributors are often not the developers themselves. Only one to distribute direct in recent memory was World Of Goo 2, and even that was sold primarily through the Epic store.
Tarkov is only direct to my knowledge
If it works on Steam it works on GOG. Nothing about proton is limited to Steam.
There’s a Linux specific Steam program though. Is there a Linux specific GOG program?
You mean a native version of GOG? I don’t think so, but you can use it through Lutris.
Nowadays the Heroic Games Launcher is the preferred solution for downloading and running GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
Cool, thank you.
The Heroic Games Launcher can download and run GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.
How does GOG support Heroic?
They set up a commission with gog if you buy games through heroic
Is this an actual, specific deal with Heroic, or some general affiliate linking thing?
No clue if it’s heroic exclusive but it’s more than just affiliate linking. Heroic embeds the actual gog store page in the launcher and gets a percentage of anything you buy per their agreement with gog
Cool, thanks.
What the hell happened to Steam’s built in offline backup system, anyway? It used to have that when it was brand new.
It technically still exists in the game properties -> installed files tab, but it doesn’t really work. The backup files you get require you to be online to meaningfully restore and will trigger a patch to the latest game version.
Practically speaking it’s better to just make a copy of the game install directory manually, gives you a better chance of things working (even though most games require some kind of external tooling for that).
What file format does the Steam backup use?
For current exports, it’s some custom .csm/.csd file combo. Not sure if there’s any tools for working with it, seems like it’d be more annoying than just using a normal archive format either way.
That’s bad. I guess if I want to back up my Steam games, it’s going to be tarballs.
It’s still there. But I never tried it and it probably won’t work with DRMed games.
I don’t remember that ever being a thing. It’s had an offline mode for decades, but for the longest time it never worked properly.
It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
Now if we could just have GOG Galaxy for Linux. It would make my life so much easier.
Lutris lets you add your GOG account and download/install games directly. its not Galaxy, but its pretty flawless.
Lutris is awesome.
Open source games, games with their own launcher, games on steam, gog, etc are all in it. Can pick to run things natively on Linux, use proton (pick your version or just use latest), wine, or choose from others, and it does it seamlessly. For games you already have installed on steam, you don’t need to reinstall them, it finds them and makes them runnable from within lutris once you connect your steam account, you can also install games that you own on any of your connected launchers, and browse/download your undownloaded games from themExamples for some of the stuff I have all in it now:
Catacyslm: DDA catapult launcher (free and open source game - highly recommend you try it out. Takes some getting used to, but there isn’t much you can’t do. Also, make sure you get cataclysm-tiles or use a launcher. ASCII is pure, but hard to get used to. Also, DO NOT buy it on steam.)
All of my installed steam games
Cyberpunk 2077 and the witcher 3 via gog
FFXIV (the official launcher, not steam)
Vintage story (open source but not free - highly recommend if you like open world survival crafting games with a big emphasis on survival)
I feel you. Installing Fallout London was such a pain in the ass for Linux.
I wrote a guide for getting fallout london up and running if you need a hand
I have it installed already, but thank you for the guide. I’ll refer to it in case something breaks lol.
Heroic Game Launcher is pretty cool. It does game save sync with GOG games too.
I know, I use it. I’d prefer an official Galaxy port though.
Doesn’t owning something mean you can sell it? That doesn’t apply to GOG, though.
By the definition of this California law, they seem to count as offering ownership.
Put the installer on a USB stick and sell it. I assume you’ve never gone back to the electronics store where you bought your dishwasher and expected to sell your used dishwasher there.
But that’s against the User Agreement with GOG. You don’t have that right, DRM or not.
GOG are not selling you something you own, just like the rest of the gaming platforms. They just give you the right to download and keep DRM-free installers (for the most part) for games you license / purchase.
I like GOG, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t own anything you buy from them, you just possess. Ownership means you have control over that possession too which is only really true of a minuscule fraction of FOSS games that are licensed with MIT-0, 0BSD, Unlicense, CC0 or some other public domain license (which doesn’t include GPL, MIT, Apache licenses).
Ownership in terms distribution of digital software is a bit funky I guess, but from a consumers point of view, there’s really nothing GOG/game companies can do once you got the installer. You’re effectively owning the bits on your hard drive and there’s nothing they can do to control what you do with those bits. I guess from a lawyers perspective it may be different, but in practice there isn’t much.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the licenses though? A game licensed under MIT would be free to share, attribution shouldn’t be much of problem.
MIT still has copyright attribution which means you don’t own it, just have lots and lots of rights. You own the code, but you don’t own the name etc.
MIT-0 is public domain, there is no copyright by the creators, that right is assigned to all of us. You own that content and idea. It’s why anyone can use Sherlock Holmes and do anything they want with the character as he’s public domain. You don’t have to call him Schmerlock Hoves.
But yeah, for all intents and purposes to the thread, you’re right. MIT etc you can sell the code/binaries so gives you practical ownership.
Now can we get proton support for GoG that is as convient and reliable as it is in Steam?
Lutris + GE-Proton + umu works. If you use GE-Proton as the runner, Lutris automatically uses umu to launch the game which launches within the Steam Pressure Vessel container.
You can manage GE-Proton downloads using Protonplus. The latest version, last I checked, is GE-Proton9-15.
I’ve been playing more GoG games with Lutris + Wine in Linux than Steam games with Proton and I even have one situation of a game were the copy I bought in Steam doesn’t work with Proton, but the pirated copy I downloaded to see if that would work runs absolutely fine with Lutris + Wine.
For me at least it’s actually easier to sort problems out with games when using Lutris + Wine than it is with Proton and I can even make sure all games I run from Lutris are wrapped in a “firejail” sandbox, which amongst other things blocks all network access, something I can’t do with Proton.
It’s a vendor-tied solution meant to keep you in the Steam ecosystem, so for all the great work they did in past getting it to have broad compatibility, the future is not Proton, it’s Wine.
Proton in Steam is absolutely easier. Lutris just automates work that some other user did, and if you’re doing it in something like Heroic launcher instead, you have to figure that out yourself. It often involves things like installing other Microsoft components that are bundled with the application on Steam, and in one case, even though the game was verified on Steam, there was no Lutris script, and I just couldn’t get it working on the GOG version.
Proton too just automates the work that somebody did in the form of install instructions, same as Lutris.
The difference is that those making the install scripts for Proton are paid for and you don’t get the option to fix them or make your own, which means that there are in fact fewer games with Steam install instructions (i.e. Steam Support) than games with Lutris install scripts.
Further, there are fewer things you can tweak in Proton and they’re all either changing the proton version or some badly documented text parameters that get fed to its command line, whilst Lutris actually has most such options in menus: the learning curve for just starting a game is lower in Steam that in Lutris when it works but the learning curve for fixing it when it does not work is lower in Lutris and sometimes you simply don’t have access to change what’s needed to fix it in Steam but you do in Lutris.
If you use Lutris with its GoG integration the experience is generally the same kind of Click & Play as Proton of Steam and whilst the rate of problems seems to still be a bit bigger in Lutris, surprisingly (at least for me) it’s not by much.
For me in Lutris having to go and install Microsoft components using Winetricks is generally only needed for some standalone installer executables, not when using GoG integration.
Steam is great when it works and a massive headache and pretty limited on what you can do when it doesn’t, whilst at least with GoG integration Lutris is great when it works and still a headache when it doesn’t but not as much as Steam and it gives you a lot more options to try and get it to work, plus the coverage of pre-made installer scripts in Lutris (which is what makes games “just work” in it) seems to be broader than in Steam, including covering older and more obscure titles, plus that coverage is probably growing faster because the scripts are user contributed rather than the work that can be done adding support being limited by how many people Valve (who are notorious for having very few employees for a company that size) hired to work on it.
Paying someone else to do it and verify that it works is exactly part of why I parted with my money in the first place. At least GOG has a very generous refund policy, but it’s a lot more work on my end.
Oh, absolutely.
The point I’m making is that with its process Lutris + Wine are scaling up much faster to seamlessly make all sorts of Windows games Click & Play in Linux, than Steam can or even will try to (don’t expect Steam to get around to cover older games that aren’t successful AAA titles).
It’s the same old same old, open source software solution vs closed corporate software solution that happens in so many other domains: the open source one starts clunky and quirky and it will always tend towards the side of “giving users enough rope to hang themselves with” (too many option, many very powerful) whilst the closed corporate one will from the very start be slick and easier to use but very limited when it comes to what users can do to customize it or even fix it when it doesn’t work, but over time and if it manages to survive the open source one will be better and far more capable and flexible than the corporate one simply because contributions to it scale up with interest in it and number of users whilst that’s not so for the corporate one.
It’s what you see with for example Blender vs Adobe’s suit of 3D modelling programs or Linux vs Windows (if it weren’t for the well entrenched ecosystem of Windows-only applications, I doubt Windows would still be around).
That’s why I think something like Lutris + Wine are the future, not Proton integrated into the Store application of Steam.
But really what I’m asking for, as a customer, is for GOG to do this work for me before I buy. Because it’s all open source, there’s nothing stopping them. Valve pumped a bunch of money into the projects to improve things for everyone, but they’re still doing more work on their end.
Valve is a much, much bigger company than GoG, plus Valve’s Linux strategy is really a “have our own console on the cheap” strategy.
But yeah, GoG should be doing more for gaming on Linux, maybe not as much as Valve but proportionally so. At the moment they’re doing almost nothing at all: they have Linux offline installers available for games which do support Linux directly, but that’s it.
So whilst I find it unrealistic to expect that GoG should be contributing to gaming on Linux as much as Valve, I do agree they should be doing more.
PS: Mind you, I’m not trying to make the case that GoG is perfect and Steam is shit, I’m trying to make the case that open and flexible to use is better than closed and tightly integrated with a specific store, which is why I generally prefer GoG with their offline installers, as well as Lutris + Wine (quite independently of GoG) and would be happy enough even if Lutris had no GoG integration since long before moving my gaming rig to Linux I had the habit of downloading and using the offline installers and did not at all use GoG Galaxy.
If there’s one thing that 30 years of being a Software Engineer have taught me is that you want your system to be as decoupled as possible from any business, because even if they are nice at the moment that’s no guarantee that at a later date they won’t leverage people having their systems integrated with theirs to take advantage of their customers (the phenomenon of enshittification being a good example of that).
I’m not saying it doesn’t work. I’ve set several things from GoG up using Lutris. But in Steam it’s a two step process:
- Click Install
- Click Play
I want that level of ease from GoG.
Heroic gets a lot closer in this regard.
Lutris has GoG integration and it’s exactly that same 2 step process if you use it (I believe it passes you through 3 screens of options were you invariably do nothing but click “Continue”, so strictly it’s 5 steps were 3 of the are just “Press Continue”)
The difference is that when it does NOT just work, it’s easier to figure out and there are more options to fix it with Lutris + Wine.
I even have some weird weird cases on Steam - like Borderlands 2 were Steam would often and randomly, before actually starting the game spend almost 1h doing shader conversions that if you stopped it the game would fail to start (the solution was to force an older Proton version and now you just get random downloads from the Internet that last a few minutes before the game starts).
IMHO, here too what one sees is the general design philosophy difference between open source software and corporate solutions - the former gives you tons of options and lots of ways to tune it so it looks more complicated to use and has a steeper learning curve but that also means when things go wrong you have a lot more ways to try to fix it, whilst the latter is click & play until things go wrong and then you have very little info and just a few things you can change to try and fix it.
Mind you, Lutris itself seems to be an attempt to also be click & play (hence why you generally get a steam-like experience if you use its GoG integration) but all the “buttons and knobs” are still there (those 3 screens of options that’s usually fine to just press “Continue” on that I mentioned above) just in case you want to muck about with them, making it look daunting to use.
Dafuq is a proton
A proton is a positively charged subatomic particle doing in the nucleus of an atom. But in this context, Proton is a translation layer that allows games that were built for Windows to run on Linux.
it’s what people on linux use to play windows games on linux
That’s Wine
Yes, that is the upstream. Valve’s downstream of wine is called proton.
Are you being purposefully obtuse? Proton is based on Wine yes, but it is it’s own distinct project.
Remember when they said Galaxy would get linux support? That didn’t happen, and that promise got quietly retracted…
That said, Heroic is unofficial but has worked quite well.
Heroic giving GOG an excuse not to get their shit together.
If you buy through Heroic, Heroic gets a cut. So it creates a data point that they can use to see how big that market is, so they know what they have to do to get 100% of my sale in their own pocket.
As long as you understand the terms of your agreement with Steam as a platform, everything is fine. Physical media for games are outdated anyway, especially with frequent updates, patches, and DLC releases. Regarding older titles that are no longer supported, well, as the saying goes: “If buying isn’t owing…”
People use steam because it’s good service, and a good product.
In fact, they also gave Linux a boost
They also have things like cloud saving
Developers use them because apparently they have some awesome features too for things like multiplayer and such and a great API
I like steam as a user but it’s still proprietary software and I’m slightly concerned about what is going to happen when Gabe Newell steps down as president and ceo of Valve.
Even DRM-free, all digital purchases are still just a license, legally speaking.
Pragmatically speaking, they can’t forcibly take the bits off my hard drive. But it also bears pointing out that these days most games on Steam don’t bother enabling Steamworks DRM either.
The vast majority of the bestsellers on steam either have normal DRM or DRM via being an online service. At least the bestsellers in 2023.
100% agreed. just wish GOG was more linux friendly.
best of both worlds: piracy.
Much of the pirated games though will be GOG installers so might as well just install it with lutris/wine
yes
i wouldn’t pirate an indie game tho
Unless you already bought it
Sure, and if you don’t uninstall Galaxy, go through some hidden menus and download the installers then your GOG games will be gone regardless.
That’s a failure to download the installers to begin with, not them being taken away from you after the fact.
You don’t need to ever interact with Galaxy to play your games, not even to download the offline installer. And the download option is not hidden on the website.
NGL This feels disingenuous coming from GOG, Yes, you can keep the installers, but you do NOT own the game.
Plus, unless the installers have the full package, it’ll still require an internet connection. Usually installers download the files and then install them.
When have they not had the full package on GOG?
They’re called offline installers for a reason.
I’ll give gog this, I have never seen an installer from them that needed an internet connection, That being said, they actively call it licensing in their own agreement
Yeah? And whats the difference in practice?
Seriously not trying to just be contradictory:
What’s the difference? In practical terms, what does this mean for me as the consumer? We don’t own the intellectual property, but may use the software as-is? From a practical, consumer standpoint that feels the same as the days of owning your software on a disc, unable to be taken as long as you have physical control over the device. I’m fine with calling this “owning” personally.
I’m absolutely willing to be wrong on this. I’m by no means an expert. Please, if I have missed something, let me know.
There really is no difference. For almost all intents and purposes, GOG’s offline installers can be treated the same way as physical CDs of way back then, with one of the only exceptions being that you cannot resell them.
Depending on your perspective, the sell/trade/loan aspect of physical can be a huge deal. I outlined in another comment, selling/trading games was never my thing, but it was my cousins. From my perspective, there’s marginal difference, but there IS a difference.
Can you sell them? or trade, give, even lend them? My guess is you can’t. And when I was a kid I did all those things.
It’s not anedoctal IMO, but a change in paradigm. I’m not saying it’s all bad. I buy games on GOG. But I don’t own them really
A 2015 study in France showed 54% where more willing to buy a game when they knew they could sell them when done
I can see the functional difference there, with regards to sell/trade/loan. You could of course emulate the functionality, or rely on the honor system for abandon ware stuff, but that’s clunky, inefficient, not worth the energy.
I hadn’t considered the second hand aspect. Even as a kid, I was always more a “build a library” kind of person versus a “cycle my catalog” kind of person. I was considering things from an availability to play the game perspective alone. Thanks for the different perspective!
I don’t want to advocate for shoveling money into any company, but if you could sell your steam games it would screw over indie devs in a big way. Many games made by small studies or one person don’t have as much content as AAA studies and would be far more prone to a small handful of copies being distributed back and forth on the used market instead of each being a sale that goes to the developer.
Some devs would see a drop in sales as much as 90% and I just don’t think it’s worth it to shoot the gaming industry in the foot like that.
Just to be clear: my main point was that you don’t own any more the game bought on GOG than on Steam.
And there are definitely upsides to this type of market.
Although nowadays I wouldn’t buy a just released triple A 70€ game knowing I can’t sell or give it (not that I play those much anymore). The games I actually want to keep a few and far between.
I buy second hand Switch games for my nephews. It’s cheap, I’m actually giving them something, and they can trade them with their friends or sell them to buy fortnite skins the little shitsAgain, not hating on GOG, I’ve been a customer for a long time. Mainly because I don’t want any kind of launcher. I play 99% solo games, don’t need no updates or multiple clicks to launch a game.
I would ABSOLUTELY argue that you more own a game purchased on gog, with an offline installer, than one purchased on steam. I now see the functional difference between owning a drm-free installer vs owning a physical game, but there’s also a gulf of difference between steam and gog
Just to be entirely fair. The rest of what you said is absolutely spot on.
I agree, you are “more owner” with a GOG game.
There is no drm so zip the installer and everything to your friend and call it a day
We were talking about legal offers. Are you legally the owner of your game.
Of course you can share, reproduce, pirate … but that’s not the point here.
