• yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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    16 days ago

    This makes me sad. I wanna believe in gog. The last bastion of hope for gaming.

    • Alk@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      In what way? I know it’s great but I don’t know if I’d call it the last hope for all of gaming. It’s a good store front. Their application has better FOSS alternatives and there are other pretty okay ways to buy games too. I don’t follow them closely. Are they doing anything particular that warrants that description?

      • Darorad@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        They’re like the only store that actually sells you the game and not a revokable license to a game

        • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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          15 days ago

          That’s just wrong. They just sell you a license and provide a DRM free game. You are not supposed to continue playing the game if the publisher terminates your license. They just give you the ability to do it, but it has no legal value

        • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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          16 days ago

          You really need to look at what you’re buying. Whether it’s a download, a DVD, or damn floppy disk, you’re still just buying a license. A very revokable license. If it’s online, the publisher can cut you off.

            • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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              15 days ago

              GoG isn’t the publisher. Y’all don’t read the shit you agree to, and know fuck all about media distribution. You’ve never owned a video game, a movie, or even a book that isn’t in the public domain. You’ve only ever owned licenses for personal use, and those licenses have always been provisional and revokable. Always. Your ignorance is not change that.

              • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                15 days ago

                Enhance your calm. I was merely pointing out that the game installers are offline for GOG, meaning there’s not a physical mechanism to cut you off. As you mentioned, if it’s online, then they can cut you off, which is true for Steam but not GOG.

            • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              And how does that work when they close down and servers that host the games can no longer be accessed to download your license free game?

              Wheter you have a revokabke license or not, you still won’t ever be able to access the game…… how do people need this explained to them? And yet use this single reason like it matters lmfao.

              • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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                15 days ago

                GOG installer is offline

                You download it immediately after purchase, and should archive it somewhere, same as everything else you purchase digitally

                how does that work

              • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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                15 days ago

                When you buy a game on a CD or Cartidge, it’s up to you to make sure you continue to own it from then on. That is the same model as GoGs digital downloads. You own it, you make sure you still have it on hand for as long as you want to still have it on hand for.

                • Auli@lemmy.ca
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                  14 days ago

                  You own the media but just have a license for the game. You have never owned a game the media has always given you a license to play the game.

        • Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
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          15 days ago

          I hope you’re paid well to spread this easily disproven lie.

          https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog

          We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.

          • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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            15 days ago

            This is just the license to download the game installer, not to install it.

            Once you’ve downloaded the software they can’t revoke the license for that installer file.

            • Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
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              15 days ago

              Yes they can. They cannot stop you from installing the game, but once they revoke your license, it would be piracy.

              GOG shills always twist reality to try to make it conform to the “you own you games” lie, but the truth is GOG is no different than Steam.

              • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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                15 days ago

                They can’t, actually, because they don’t hold the rights to that content, only to GOG and the installer. Once it’s installed their distribution and license rights end.

                If the game you install has its own license from the rights holder that gets revoked then you’ll be in breach of that license, if anything.

              • Azzu@lemm.ee
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                15 days ago

                How do you use a Steam game after its license was revoked?

          • Azzu@lemm.ee
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            15 days ago

            How do you disprove that this “GOG content” are offline installer files that, as long as you keep them backed up, work indefinitely even if GOG revokes your license to download them again?

        • Alk@sh.itjust.works
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          16 days ago

          Yeah I was aware of that. I don’t know if that constitutes the last hope for all gaming, but it’s definitely a positive. Other stores have a much better user experience, and until they rival stores like Steam in functionality and ease of use, actually owning your own game is just a very nice to have feature and nothing more. Of course, I wish all stores did that. I don’t want to have to resort to piracy if my steam library goes poof, but so far I haven’t had to, and piracy is still an ethical choice in that scenario.

          My point isn’t that steam is better, but that GOG has a couple nice features and several downsides, and it is by no means changing or saving the industry. They have a long way to go, and I don’t think saving the industry is the end goal for them.

          • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            No, but saving the industry is their “hook”, if not explicitly stated as such. I know that every game I buy from them will be impossible to take away from me if I backed up the installers first.

            • MinFapper@startrek.website
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              16 days ago

              I don’t know if that’s true anymore. There are games on there that require login into PSN after installing.

        • Auli@lemmy.ca
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          14 days ago

          You never have bought a game even when buying it on physical media. You always purchase a license to the game.

    • nutsack@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      they need to use super generic popular idioms in order to be search engine optimized. technology killed journalism

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      15 days ago

      The other day I was thinking about the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray, and how during one of the Scenes of Christmas Passed he got his girlfriend a pack of Ginsu knives for Christmas and how that’s on-theme for his character who is obsessed with TV because Ginsu knives were a big As Seen On TV product and how someone on the writing staff must have went to college to think of that.

  • aggelalex@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Let’s be honest, this was apparent for a long time. Steam, a centralised platform, has been making strides in Linux gaming and has been making innovation after innovation together with its steam deck. Gog, a forefront to freedom in gaming, barely did anything for the Linux gaming scene. No innovation either. Its just the simple (and well needed) premise of no DRM. It’s necessary, but not enough. It didn’t cater to its niche, it just committing to creating one under a premise. That’s not how you go forward. How does this connect to bad management? Well, I think that with good management gog would make different moves. And wouldn’t rest on its laurels so much.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      15 days ago

      It’s pretty hard for GOG. Many of the things people don’t like about GOG are not really GOG’s fault, they are just a result of small market share. Steam is the bigger platform, and so naturally it gets priority for basically everything.

      You game doesn’t work on Steam? Then you’d better fix it immediately, because that’s where the bulk of players are. But if your game doesn’t work on GOG… well… maybe fix it when you get some spare time. (Or maybe don’t have a GOG version, because you don’t want to have to keep multiple platforms up-to-date.)

      So publishers and developers are generally less cooperative with GOG. And GOG themselves obviously have much more limited resources to do stuff themselves.

      Steam’s recent work with Linux has been great. And I do wish GOG would have something like that. But again, Valve has vast resources for that kind of thing - and they’ve been working on it ever since the Windows 8 appstore threatened to wipe them out. (That threat fizzled out; but nevertheless, that was what got the Linux ball rolling for Valve.) I’m in two minds about whether GOG should try to boost their Linux support. On the one hand, GOG is all about preservation and compatibility… and so it makes sense to have better Linux compatibility. On the other hand, it would be leaning further into a niche; and working on a problem that is kind of solved already. i.e. We can already run GOG games on Linux with or without a native linux version… it just could be nicer… Maybe it’s not a good use of GOG’s resources to go for that.

      (That said, when I look at their linux start.sh scripts and see cd "${CURRENT_DIR}/game" chmod +x * it makes me think they could probably put at least a bit more effort into their linux support.)

        • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
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          14 days ago

          experienced this with BG3 on gog while my friends had the steam version, when it launched. Patches on gog were delayed by sometime a week, preventing us to play together.

        • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          It adds the executable permission (without which, things can’t be executed) to all the files in the game’s directory. You only need to be able to execute a few of those files, and there’s a dedicated permission to control what can and can’t be executed for a reason. Windows doesn’t have a direct equivalent, so setting it for everything gives the impression that they’re trying to make it behave like Windows rather than working with the OS.

          • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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            14 days ago

            I mean i assume thats just easier to deal with updates where a game has multiple exe files that may or may not change names. Assuming everything in the directory is assumed to be safe, is there any downside to applying it to everything, aside from opening up the possibility of a user accidentally trying to execute like a texture file or something which I assume just wouldnt work? I actually don’t know and im curious.

            • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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              14 days ago

              You’ve pretty much got it. It’s bad, but it’s not horrible. Trying to execute some random file such as a texture basically just doesn’t work… but only by luck. It’s possible, but unlikely that the data might look enough like an actual program to run and do something unpredictable.

              I’m not aware of any major reasons why its a problem to make everything as executable (and I know that when I open an NTFS drive from linux, all the files are executable by default - because NTFS doesn’t have that flag). From my point of view I just think its sloppy. I figure it can’t be hard for GOG to just correctly identify which files are meant to be executable. For most games its just a single executable file - the same one that GOG’s script is launching. And presumably the files that developers provided GOG have the correct flags in the first place.

              Anyway, not really a big deal. Like I said, I just think it’s a bit low-effort.

              • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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                14 days ago

                Yeah that’s fair, and im not defending the practice, it just made me think of some games that Ive seen that have multiple executables, usually with an inbuilt launcher that i have to bypass. Or when games used to come with a dx11 and dx12 executable. Personally i find that in itself super sloppy and annoying as well, but it makes a kind of lazy sense to just apply it to all the game files, in that its just one less thing to have to change if you make an alteration to the name of the executable file or add a new executable for whatever reason. Just one less possible failure point. But yeah I can see how its definitely not best practice.

    • Nyxicas@kbin.melroy.org
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      14 days ago

      The hell do you mean “barely did anything for the Linux gaming scene”? Listen, I’m up to my neck with Linux gamer crybabies always bitching about how someone doesn’t throw them a bone, for years. Valve is doing Linux gamers a great service and since Linux was all about free-this and open source that, DRM-free is at least a thing. Fucking can’t please whiny Linux gamers.

      • aggelalex@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        You’re missing the point. DRM free is something I respect, both as a Linux gamer and as a gamer overall. But what’s important is that a game runs before I get to bitch about DRM. Valve has done strides to make games work on Linux and I respect that. What I’m saying is GOG could do it too and it would fit their business model more than Valve’s.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      That’s… Largely a financials problem.

      Steam: $8-10 billion/y

      GOG: $80-120 million/y

      Steam can throw 10 GOGs worth of resources at a problem and barely break a sweat. Yeah, of course they are making huge strides, that’s how consolidation of wealth works when that wealth is actually reinvested.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Shit I really like GOG as it’s the only competition to steam

      There are plenty of competing PC game online stores, it’s just that they all suck monkey balls when you’re not using Windows. Microsoft is currently using their old monopolist playbook and release Blizzard games to the fucking Microsoft Store and Game Pass and not a single 3rd party store.

      And don’t forget that the other publisher-owned storefronts like EA’s and Ubisoft’s are also still alive. They suck hard but they exist and apparently they do well enough to continue to be around.

      Steam is the only PC games store that fights Microsoft’s Windows monopoly. GOG Galaxy has been written using the Qt framework. Making a Linux version of an existing Qt application is relatively easy (at least compared to a full port). Do that, integrate umu-Launcher for Windows games, bundle everything up and release GOG Galaxy on Flathub. Boom, done. But they don’t do that despite their massive pile of Witcher and Cyberpunk money.

      So plenty of competition exists but if you happen to not be Windows-exclusive, everyone but Steam is bad.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I mean, the Epic Store exists. Well, not on Linux. And it’s missing a lot of features the other storefronts have.

        • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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          16 days ago

          So, they’re both out to fuck everyone, and just playing for different teams?

          • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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            16 days ago

            Yes yes, bitch eating crackers and all that.

            But can we maybe focus on what they actually are shit at (which is a lot) rather than manufacturing virtue for other companies?

        • TheEntity@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          Not nearly the same degree. GOG sells actual Linux games with no 3rd party software necessary to play them. The same cannot be said about EGS, one simply cannot launch an EGS game in an officially supported way.

          • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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            15 days ago

            For a very limited subset of games, they provide linux binaries. For the rest? You are up a creek and in the realm of “Figure it out”. Which… is generally the Heroic Launcher (or Lutris for a subset) which puts you in the same boat as Epic.

            If you insist upon saying one store is more virtuous than the other… okay? I personally don’t like defending companies but you do you.

            But for the vast majority of games? Epic and GoG are in the same category as basically everything but Steam. And both are in the exact same category regarding launchers and download services since they both heavily rely on the Heroic Launcher (which is awesome).

            And, to be clear, neither should be applauded for Linux support.


            Well, to be clearer. The folk behind the Heroic Launcher (and Lutris) SHOULD be applauded. And I think there is actually a very strong argument that store fronts should not be expected to build out entire social media ecosystems with attached updaters (what launchers basically are). But both Epic and GoG have decided to half ass that so they should be called out for not doing it “right”.

            • TheEntity@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              If you insist upon saying one store is more virtuous than the other… okay? I personally don’t like defending companies but you do you.

              Could you please not put words into my mouth? Neither is “virtuous” and I am not defending them. Let’s stick to the facts instead. It’s clear that EGS is being actively hostile towards Linux, while GOG is merely negligent. EGS actively removed Linux support from previously supported games on at least one occasion (Rocket League).

              • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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                15 days ago

                You’re doing it again.

                As a publisher: Yes, Epic stopped the Rocket League devs from continuing to build Linux binaries. To my knowledge, they have not disabled “support” for Proton in any of the anti-cheat solutions.

                Similarly, the development branch of CD Projekt (the parent company of GoG), apparently had Linux binaries for The Witcher 2. They do not for The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk.

                Both companies decided it was not worth internally supporting Linux and instead rely on Proton/Wine to do it for them. Whether that is good for gaming is debatable, but both are “actively hostile towards Linux” in that regard.


                If you do want to criticize the handling of Linux then I would suggest looking into the Unreal Engine marketplace (or whatever they call it now) being a complete shitshow for Linux developers. Which is ironic since the UE documentation is actually great for Linux devs. I cannot speak to the CDPR efforts with their modding SDKs since I haven’t opened one since The Witcher 1 (when it was either a hacked version of the NWN toolkit or an officially hacked version of the NWN toolkit).

                But that is Epic and CDP not EGS and GoG.

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    GOG was good for acquiring and re-releasing OLD GAMES. somewhere along the way they decided they wanted to compete with the big platforms and be “We’re just like them but without DRM”

    I haven’t used GOG for years, they allowed me to relive a few of my old adolescence favorites, but stopped being useful to me a long time ago :/

    • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Selling old games and new games isn’t mutually exclusive, and more money tends to be spent on new games than old ones. It’s not unreasonable to expect that selling new games too could subsidise the work to make old games run on modern platforms.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    15 days ago

    There’s nothing wrong with the business model of selling older games at affordable prices. This is about poor management. (Or deliberately bad management by a “CEO” who was hired to destroy GOG to remove a popular choice from us).

  • TipRing@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Unfortunate. Competition is generally good for the consumer and I’d hate to see one of more more customer-friendly storefronts go away.

    • stardust@lemmy.ca
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      15 days ago

      Especially competition that actually delivers something unique a segment of the population wants as opposed to simply existing. Their DRM free stance and standalone installers are a pro consumer move giving control back to the consumer once they download the files.

  • Rooty@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Too bad, I use Steam and it works wonderfully on Linux, but i don’t want it to be the only option.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        That’s not how copyright laws work anywhere. You don’t own anything, it’s just a license.

          • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            No you don’t. You get the same license as you do on Steam, here’s the license btw https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/16034990432541-GOG-User-Agreement-effective-from-17-February-2024?product=gog :

            We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.

            Which is very similar to Steam. In both cases you can keep the files you’ve downloaded on your machine, and on most cases you can copy those files to a different machine and keep playing it. GOG has better marketing on this regard, but they’re both very similar, neither enforces DRM nor forbids it entirely, although GOG does tend to be a bit stricter (but they still allow it) whereas steam is a bit looser but knowingly implemented a weak DRM and let’s you know in the game page if the game has any stronger form of DRM.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            With GOG I get an actual license key & terms that state my ownership.

            No, the intellectual property is not transferred to you. You have no clue how copyright works.

            • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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              15 days ago

              I totally understand your point, but when people talk about “you own nothing” they don’t really mean you “own” the content on physical media, they mean it doesn’t have DRM that requires an online service. You’re technically correct, but your pedantry is making you miss the forest for the trees, basically.

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                15 days ago

                but your pedantry is making you miss the forest for the trees, basically.

                No. People here claim, that just because GOG cannot remote wipe your drive, people buying off GOG have a perpetual right to the games they’ve bought. But they don’t because that’s not how copyright works. If a game’s license is revoked, to keep playing the game is copyright violation.

                Not only do so many people not grasp basic concepts of copyright, they claim Valve could take away all downloaded games. No, Valve cannot remote wipe my drive either. I can back up my Steam folder. Many games on Steam don’t have DRM at all. It’s opt-in and the actual Steam documentation outright says not to rely on Steam DRM because “it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.” If games rely on crap like Denuvo, 3rd party launchers, or invasive anti-cheat, the publishers are required to clearly state so on the store page in one of those orange boxes. Users can make an informed decision on a per-game basis even with Steam. And those games that ship crap like Denuvo aren’t on GOG in the first place.

                So in the end GOG is a store that stretches the truth about game ownership in their marketing and despite all their Witcher and Cyberpunk money, they don’t care about users of platforms competing against Windows at all.

                • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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                  15 days ago

                  People here claim, that just because GOG cannot remote wipe your drive, people buying off GOG have a perpetual right to the games they’ve bought.

                  I think it’s pretty clear from context that they mean they have the ability to perpetually play the games because of the lack of DRM, not the right.

        • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          GoG Vault would disagree with you on that.

          You can download the full installers and keep them, nobody can take them away or disable it remotely

          • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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            14 days ago

            How is that different from backing up the game folder on steam? In both cases it’s true that:

            • You’re not doing anything illegal at the moment you do it
            • You can use it to play the game on a different computer (as long as the game is DRM free which is not granted on either platform)
            • The company (Valve/GOG) can’t remotely erase your copy
            • If the company removes the license from you your backup is now technically illegal but it’s unlikely to be enforced

            I fail to see how GOGs approach is any different, they still sell you a license and you’re backing up the installer in case the license gets removed and/or you’re forbidden from redownloading the game.

            • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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              14 days ago

              So you can just pop that folder on any computer and run it, without installing Steam and without a Steam account?

              • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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                14 days ago

                On most games yes, like I said before I’ve copied games from my computer to others to play in lan to convince friends to buy a game.

                Then there are badly implemented games, where you need to either delete the steam library from the game folder or replace it with an open implementation.

                And the rest are the ones that have DRM (which are not available on GOG anyways so they don’t matter for this discussion).

                • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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                  14 days ago

                  Actually, some games have DRM on steam and have a DRM free version on GOG. I even saw a game that had a DRM free epic and gog edition but the steam version had DRM. Might be a edge case, but still exists

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            GoG Vault would disagree with you on that.

            They are free to disagree on laws but they are still bound by them.

            You can download the full installers and keep them, nobody can take them away or disable it remotely

            That’s true but if your license is revoked, you’re illegally in possession of the game assets.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      i don’t want it to be the only option.

      Neither do I but it is. GOG doesn’t support Linux. Heroic is a 3rd party community effort. Valve is currently the only company making financial investments into Linux gaming.

      • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyz
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        15 days ago

        It does support Linux: it lets you download Linux installer for games that have a Linux port.

        The lack of GOG Galaxy on Linux just means you have to manually manage your games.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          It does support Linux: it lets you download Linux installer for games that have a Linux port.

          GOG lets publishers upload various installers but GOG does nothing to support them, let alone offer something like Proton (which is open source, so they could take and integrate it for free).

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            15 days ago

            No one needs to “offer” Proton. It’s available freely for anyone. I think some people think Proton is a Steam thing. It isn’t. Yeah, Valve did a lot of work on it, which is great, but it isn’t limited to them. Vlave has essentially unlimited resources, and I’m happy they spent some making improvements for WINE, but GOG does not have nearly the same resources. I wouldn’t expect them to put their effort into that. Valve only did because they were building hardware that they wanted to run Linux.

            • Hawke@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              Valve only did because they were building hardware that they wanted to run Linux.

              That was part of it clearly but I think more so they wanted an escape route as Microsoft enshittifies (further)

            • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              No one needs to “offer” Proton. It’s available freely for anyone.

              And that’s how GOG does not support Linux: Paying customers need to figure it out on their own. They don’t even value their customers to a degree to take and integrate existing open source solutions.

                • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                  15 days ago

                  Is proton entirely FOSS?

                  Of course it is. Proton-GE and umu wouldn’t exist if it weren’t.

                  but now that I think about it, I am not sure.

                  You could have headed to Github and just looked for yourself…

            • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              On steam I can click install and run and most games windows and Linux just work without further effort. This makes gog worthless to me. I could just use wine I don’t know why I’d bother.

    • Nyxicas@kbin.melroy.org
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      14 days ago

      You have it backwards.

      If GOG goes down, you actually lose what you own.

      If Steam goes down, you lose your privileges.

          • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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            13 days ago

            It depends on the game and how they handle steam, if they see steam as a requirement then the game is choosing to use steam as a very rudimentary (and easily bypassed) DRM. But this is more about lazy development than DRM, essentially they’re not expecting the steam APIs to fail, which is ridiculous considering they have non-steam versions, so a simple if statement would solve this issue. Also this paints those games in a very bad light to me, because if they’re doing that with some API call on steam they might be doing it with another and now the game needs to be online always.

            There are plenty of multiplayer games that don’t require steam, iirc all of the paradox games you can just copy the folder to a different computer without steam and run the binaries.

            And while not ideal, someone else pointed in another comment that there’s an open source implementation of the steam API, so worst case scenario you just replace the library in your backup and you’re done.

    • Aido@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Gabe Newell has promised that if Steam goes down you won’t lose your library, but we only have his word as assurance.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Gabe Newell is much more likely to go down before steam does. his words mean nothing for the future.

      • ugjka@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        Anything that uses steam apis and services won’t work without steam and steam offers a lot of that to game devs

        • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          But the APIs are public, so they can be reimplemented in open source. There just hasn’t been any reason for it since currently that would only be used for piracy (in fact some “cracked” games have a mockup of the steam API that just returns the expected things as if it had contacted the servers). But the moment steam goes away I give it a couple of weeks until there’s a GitHub implementing most of the basic stuff.

  • 7rokhym@lemmy.ca
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    16 days ago

    I’m really happy with my experience with GOG, but they put a lot of effort into their Windows app and i ws pretty blunt with my feedback, it is pretty useless to me and I find it unhelpful. Heroic game launcher on Linux great and cost GOG $0.00. My thought is that they have been focusing on the wrong things, fundamentally I love their strong DRM stance and when I am travelling internationally,the games I bought off GOG work, unlike Steam😡😡😡😡. So if they have come to this realization, then nothing about these changes are disturbing as a customer, but sad to hear their employees taking the hit. 😢

      • ika_chan@lemmy.ml
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        15 days ago

        I don’t follow the logic here. You said it yourself – GoG has only allowed DRM onto their platform four times. This is a violation of their anti-DRM policy but it still means like 99% of games on GoG have no DRM. It’s good to be principled about these things but I don’t see how this merits a knee-jerk response to run to Steam (a platform where 99% of games do have DRM and no guarantee other than an informal promise that they’ll do “something” to make their games available if Steam were to shut down).

      • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        GOG is owned by CD Projekt Red who included DRM into their own DLC for Cyberpunk, including on GOG. That’s not “strong” in any sense of the word.

        The DRM:

        Get a fucking grip man 😅

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      the games I bought off GOG work, unlike Steam

      Which games from steam don’t work? I’ve never had any issues at all and I have traveled internationally for years while playing my whole library. I think that might be something specific to some game and that game wouldn’t be available on GOG anyways so it’s a moot point. In other words games work or don’t by their own stance on DRM, and I’m sorry to tell you but

      I love their strong DRM stance

      That’s a myth. They do allow DRM on their store, there’s a huge thread discussing which games have DRM: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1

      And that’s just focusing on SP, any MP game has DRM. So I’ll ask again, which game didn’t work on steam when traveling?

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        any MP game has DRM

        Well, that’s not true either. I hate this trend of developers only relying on the platform-provided servers for multiplayer, but you have to find a game with LAN. That limits your selection a lot, but I for sure played Star Wars: Episode I - Racer from GOG in LAN without talking to their servers at all.

          • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            I can’t say conclusively that every LAN game on GOG is DRM-free on Steam, but there are times where Steam’s DRM has caused annoyances for me when trying to play offline on Steam Deck that I would not run into with side loaded GOG games, which I detailed in another comment here.

            • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              You can’t also say conclusively that every LAN game on GOG is DRM-free on GOG either.

              I read that other comment, that’s an issue with the specific game. I’ve played dozens of games without connection and not putting it on offline mode, if that specific game tries to phone home on login that game is wrong. I wished Steam would have a DRM-free tag to be able to differentiate them easily.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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        15 days ago

        Note, if you actually look at that list you’ll see it’s a very loose interpretation of DRM. All of the games on that list work without any kind of phone-home security check, or unlock code, or anything like that. The list is stuff like “getting the DLC requires a third party account”. It’s definitely a list of things people don’t like, but whether it is or isn’t ‘DRM’ is not so clear cut.

        GOG’s official position is that the store doesn’t allow DRM at all. They describe what they mean by DRM on that same page, and it sounds fairly reasonable; but its certainly understandable that some people would prefer a stricter set of rules.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          All of the games on that list work without any kind of phone-home security check, or unlock code, or anything like that.

          You didn’t scroll down the linked forum post, did you?

          • DEFCON - Linux: Game contacts a key verification server as described here. Win and Mac have offline executables that skip the verification. But under Linux there is no DRM-free offline executable.

          • F.E.A.R. - arguably a bug that stays unfixed. Securom remnants weren’t removed and can cause the single player game not to start.

          That’s pretty DRM-y.

  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    I’d certainly love to hear that they’re at least turning a profit. It’s my default store now, but given the ambiguity of what I’m buying in the multiplayer space, and the lesser experience I get as a Linux customer, they’re not making it easy.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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    16 days ago

    “GOG regularly adapts its structure to its strategy and ongoing projects, sometimes this means eliminating certain roles — as was the case recently.”

    Yeah, but firing 30% of your entire contract workforce reveals that you don’t give a flying fuck about sustaining the lifespan of the storefront and prefer to pad the executives golden parachutes from the stock valuation.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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      15 days ago

      perhaps - i didn’t read the article, but going by your comment: if it’s your contract workforce rather than full time then sometimes you just want to transition from expensive “temporary” employees to permanent positions

      • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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        15 days ago

        No permanent positions were created or filled, if you read the article. The article also says you need to PM me your credit card info. Don’t worry about reading shit for yourself anywhere, just believe what we say about anything in the comments without question so that you dont need to formulate an independent opinion.

  • khaleer@sopuli.xyz
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    15 days ago

    Ah yes, poles fucking up another good idea cuz they are not able to create a good working condotions yay