Interesting seeing Hotline Miami make the list since I just watched a short video essay the other day explaining how OTXO is just a better game in basically every way.
I’m still in the 80s working my way down the list, but I searched and OTXO doesn’t appear to be on the page.
Edit: Conversely, I’m pleased to see Portal included instead of Portal 2. The Portal 2 goo was unnecessary and led to more boring puzzle solutions. Portal is a more pure, timeless game. And it has a lot of amazing mods… I should probably look into how to install Portal mods on the Deck…
OTXO just might have been better than Hotline Miami if it was actually released in 2012. My personal gripe with it is how using a mouse at 60fps in [current year] just feels awful.
Offline installer. So a game gets removed from your library for any reason. Now you get a new PC and can’t play the game anymore. At GoG you get an installer that doesn’t check servers and can work with no internet connection etc. So even if they were forced to remove a game from your library, you still have the installer and can install it whenever you want. So if you keep a hard drive of installers, you will forever own the game as long as you don’t lose that data.
To install a game you have bought on steam you need the steam client, the steam servers, internet and your steam account. If any of those stops being available you can no longer install the games you have bought. So while you can play the games once installed without most of the above, you can lose access to your not currently installed games.
Also, on steam you purchase licenses to the games which they can revoke. I.e. if steam turned evil they could take away games from your library and you couldn’t do anything about it really.
Comparatively on GOG, you get a binary installer you can download and can keep forever without DRM so you don’t need anything else to install the game in the future, even if it disappeared from your GOG account for some reason, you could still install and play the game.
If Steam stops working, you could replace the Steam API with the Goldberg emulator, and an already installed game should work, if there is no other DRM.
Combination of anti large company sentiment + people feeling entitled to get things for free if I had to guess. It also usually feels wrong when a corporation threatens a lawsuit over a single person since the US court system heavily favors the person with more money and it’s probably a true statement to say that Nintendo has more resources than the lead dev.
Modern Vintage Gamer on YouTube had an interesting take in that by stifling emulator development now it will hurt the industry in the long run because Switch exclusives will become increasingly difficult to play once support ends (an argument I myself don’t find all that compelling)
Nerrel on YouTube has a well put together and researched video on emulation where at least in the US it’s been tested in court several times that emulators are legal, but obtaining the code for the emulators to run is almost always not since you usually have to make a copy and that violates the publisher’s right to copy
About 20 years ago when it first came about this was also a question and Valve said they would “find a way” to unlock games for everyone. Now back then, that was when they only had Valve games on Steam, and a weird ninja game that I bought but never played, setting a president for all time…
pcgamer.com
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