I’d like to get back into playing video games, but I don’t want to have to sign up for an online service like Steam or Ubisoft Connect.
I love technical sandbox games like Scrap Mechanic, especially if they have a “creative mode” that allows me to just make stuff.
Starsector is amazing, even though buying it on the website made me wonder if the storefront was made in the 90s.
Second this. Amazing game that I’ve been following since it was called Starfarer. Highly recommend.
I enjoy all the games I bought from GOG (3?)—in case you are wondering they are DRM free so you can keep using them forever (in theory).
But honestly I don’t get people who have a big hang-up about digital stores. Regardless of ownership/ license-ship—these are all pieces of software designed to run on specific software and WILL eventually be unplayable regardless of how they were acquired.
Unless you’re going back to platforms from the 90s or early 2000s, everything needs updates from the internet / downloads to work so even if you have a physical copy of a lot of games on a console, they’re gonna stop working eventually.
Just pay the marginal fee and enjoy. Its a low amount of money to pay for hours of entertainment in like 99% of the cases.
Open source does help keep games be forward-ported and playable, but I can think of at least a couple of open-source games that I remember playing that I don’t see any more.
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Nighthawk, an open-source [Paradroid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradroid1 clone, was in Red Hat Linux 5.2, IIRC, but seems to have fallen out of Linux distros at some point.
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Lacewing, an Asteroids-genre game done by Linley Henzell, the guy who did Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, was definitely ported to Linux at some point, as I remember running it, but I haven’t seen it in distros for a long time. A successor game he made, Overgod, does appear to be in current Debian.
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fheroes2 occasionally. Reimplementation of the homm2 engine
Desktop Dungeons
Dwarf Fortress
a bunch of roguelikes
emulated SNES games
If you’re worried about DRM then look at GOG.com - they sell DRM free games, and you can download the installers direct from their website if you don’t want to use their client and want permanent backups. The installers are not online either. I have a large library of classics and new games from them.
escape from tarkov and world of warcraft
Chess, now and then. Was a fairly active player many years ago, though never became good.
Minecraft
Quite a few, actually. And it’s worth mentioning that many games, while sold via steam, can also be bought directly from the makers. Factorio and Songs of Syx come to mind.
2nd Factorio and Factorio Space Age. Once you get your key (which doesn’t require Steam) there’s even a package in AUR for installing it and keeping it updated on Arch.
You forgot to include the most important phrase… “I use arch BTW” :)
“I use Arch, BTW” is so gauche. Now, we mention Arch in an off-hand way, the way you mention your yacht, or how absurd the taxes on your third home are, or how having two doctorates is becoming so common.
Subtle boasting is the “in” thing.
Beyond all reason. Pretty sure it’s open source too. Or partly? I looked it up a while ago and can’t remember the details.
Minecraft.
You can get partway to Scrap Mechanic with Minecraft and the Create Mod.
Minecraft itself requires an online account, though, yes? Is linked to some sort of central authentication system, needs to be connected to play?
You need a Microsoft account to sign in to the launcher, download the game and play online, but if you already have the game installed you can launch it and play singleplayer without an internet connection.
Dcss is the best game ever and I’m still playing it after 20 years
I think itch.io might allow game purchases without any account, depending in the game, but even getting drm-free games is almost always going to require some kind of account somewhere. There’s always the “high seas”, but that’s not something everyone is comfortable with.
GOG is probably your best option for completely DRM free games, and fwiw, a lot of Steam games don’t require you to use Steam to launch them. A fairly thorough list is kept here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
