Thanks for the reminder to pick up Sable. I had already bought it on GOG when it came out and played on another type of handheld, the GPD Win Max and didn’t have any performance issues really. I loved the movement and exploration and obviously the visuals. To me it had the great feeling movement of BOTW, without the bad combat. Highly recommended.
Speaking of Playnite, that’s what I was using when I had the GPD Win Max as my game library manager and I really miss it. Now that I basically only play on Steam Deck, I miss its UI. I love the simplicity of remapping controls with the Steam Deck and it’s a much more comfortable device, but Steam is a worse client. I’m really looking forward to the Linux release so then I can use it on my laptop too.
On the topic of Steam Deck, how reliably do the GOG achievements and cloud saves work with Heroic Launcher? I’ve been using Non-Steam game launcher for Non-Steam games, but it doesn’t always add the game reliably to Steam so I’m stuck doing it manually.
Finally, I’ve just started buying games I already own and love on different store fronts, that way I give more money to developers I like and not feel like I’m missing out on the sale while at the same time not having to feel bad for buying new games I don’t have time to play. That said, I bought third copies of Tux and Fanny and Sumatra: The Fate of Yandi on GOG and picked up the Case & Consequence Collection Bundle on Humble Bundle for BROK the Investigator and Heavy Rain
On the topic of Steam Deck, how reliably do the GOG achievements and cloud saves work with Heroic Launcher? I’ve been using Non-Steam game launcher for Non-Steam games, but it doesn’t always add the game reliably to Steam so I’m stuck doing it manually.
I’ve had some bad blood with the ‘developer’ of NSL in the past. But that’s all ancient history. My main issue with NSL (still to this day) is that it has everything installed under one prefix. This is just insane to me, if one thing goes wrong…everything disappears. But, of course it’s all personal choice and lots of people enjoyed using it before NSL got kicked off Decky Loader, publicly denounced by Kyle (developer of Bazzite) added religious scripture to his work, generally proved themselves to be a shitty person.
Anyway! On to Heroic:
Achievements:
GOG achievements work flawlessly. My good friend imLinguin is in charge of the GOG integration on Heroic, and his work with Comet (how the achievements are logged) is amazing! There’s no on-screen pop up for the achievement, but it is logged on your profile on GOG’s site, as is your playtime.
Adding the game to Steam:
Its in the settings - automatically add the game to Steam, and it’ll do it for you! As well as populate the game with all the required artwork for the title (capsule, capsule wide, logo etc). It does require a restart however to add it to your Steam game library - under non Steam games tab!
Cloud Saves:
They’ve not failed me yet, but the team and imLinguin do warn that it is not finalized yet. It’s ‘experimental’ - that being said, it’s perfect for me. It ‘just works’. Once you set it in the game’s settings you can double-checl (if you like) on the GOG site: www.gog.com/account/cloud-saves/page/1 - you’ll see it listed once it is done and you know you’re safe!
^ Here’s an example of the last game I played via Heroic - TOEM, and the saves were uploaded and are sitting there nicely :)
Lastly if you’re super curious, my friend Gardiner has a server on Revolt where quite a few dev friends of mine, including imLinguin drop by now and then to share their news and work and chat. You could ask him in the server if you’ve any questions! Here’s the link to the Revolt server, if you’re wanting to see!
Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I’m going to try to install Heroic again later this week. I’ve tried to get away from Discord, but I’ll give Revolt a try because I do want to get more involved in the Linux community.
I tried installing a game on Heroic, but it didn’t detect my cloud saves, so maybe it’s not on by default. I’m going to try installing a few more things and try a few settings to see if I can get it to work. Some of my recently installed GOG Galaxy games through NSL are not working either, so it might need a deeper fix.
No, they’re not on by default! It’s no error, just making it a choice rather than choosing for you.
I’m not surprised by NSL showing errors, being that it was coded with GPT.
Go to the installed game’s settings and then turn on cloud saves. It’ll have a warning telling you it’s basically in beta, but again - it’s worked flawlessly for me!
Man, Masquerade was my go to repacker when i was younger. After the website vanished i couldn’t find them and assumed they quit. Glad to see they’re still around!
Do you ever hunt around Facebook Marketplace? When electronics drop in value enough, often times, people will just give them away. I have. It’s (sometimes) less hassle than trying to haggle with people over a few dollars for severely outdated hardware, and my goal at that point is to get it into someone’s hands who will use it rather than have the stuff go to a landfill. Even a very outdated PC will still play tons and tons of great games for cheap or free. They frequently won’t be the latest and greatest, but there’s less and less correlation these days with high game quality and high system requirements.
I’ve been loving Rematch. This kind of team game reveals that, at least to some people, positivity and learning through mistakes will make a team stronger than negativity and shouting. Most of my games have been amazing, and the angry players seldom win. I always hit left dpad early on to get the ball rolling.
To be fair, I’ve seen a lot less sarcastic “Good job” messages recently. Everyone fucks up at some point usually, plus the desync issues cause “mistakes” that are absolutely not the player’s fault, and people seem to be recognising that.
I feel like the gameplay itself fundamentally refuses to accept spiteful/selfish players and they filter themselves out within a few hours of playtime
You have to play the team game, even if you’re the one. You cant outplay 4 people focusing you lol as long as youre clearly trying and not spamming everyone usually gives each other grace
This is a great interview, thank you! It (sadly) confirms some stuff I’ve been suspecting for a while about the piracy scene: that repackers are a very rare bunch, repacking is getting more complex and liveservice/streamed games would truly be the end for piracy.
Repacking main challenge is simply the huge amount of games coming out now. Live service is really not the problem. I won’t be surprised if new genre based repackers come out. But yes repackers are rare cause it’s a huge time investment for no return in any form.
I often defuse like this by referring to my age. “My reflexes were great when I first started playing video games in the 1970s—now I am just slower and not much I can do about it.”
sufficient performance > sufficient beauty > power usage > max beauty > max performance
I set a frame rate limit in most 3D games, to avoid inflating my electricity bill for barely noticeable effects or FPS improvements. Plugging my system into a Kill A Watt was enlightening.
sufficient performance > sufficient beauty > power usage > max beauty > max performance
This is basically alien to me. I think it has to be game specific.
Euro Truck Simulator? Beauty is more important than performance, unless playing it on my handheld, in which case I can knock the FPS limiter down to 40 and crank the settings down
Satisfactory? Performance over everything.
Granted most of the games I play are older (so I don’t need to choose) or CPU-bound simulation games (Raising the graphics doesn’t make it run meaningfully slower if your CPU is the bottleneck).
Although I must also point out that I think the current trend of “fidelity=beauty” is ridiculous. I recently played INFRA, a game built in Source, and while the fidelity was clearly “outdated”, the game looked fantastic.
Plugging my system into a Kill A Watt was enlightening.
Laptop gaming is a harsh but educational mistress re: power consumption (even when it’s plugged in), I’ll tell you that. All the heat you generate is right in front of your face, as is all the airflow (and noise) needed to wick it away.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’re a loving parent and just want what’s best for your daughter. But what you’re essentially doing, is giving your kid pocket money to go play slot machines at the local dive bar.
The reason why mobile phone gaming is so bad, is because there are barely any actual games. The reason your daughter thinks it’s fun to play candy crush is not because the game itself is good, it’s because the game makes her addicted to it. This is bad. Really bad. This will have consequences on how her brain handles dopamine. Please, for the love of your family, get her off that shit immediately.
I think I know my kid better than you, a random Internet stranger who’s never met her before in her life. And consequently, has no understanding of what her actual needs are.
I understand just fine. The only good mobile games aren’t mobile games. They are ports of normal games for mobile devices. Which is a super incredibly small number of games.
And latching onto Gatcha games as a good thing for kids? Might as well get them cigarettes and alcohol too if you wanna get them addicted earlier.
Wow, an expert on all mobile games—based on exactly how many hours scrolling and judging from your porch?
There are over 700,000 mobile games on Google Play and the App Store combined. Over seven hundred thousand. You really think you’ve played, let alone fathomed, the quality of that entire universe?
Lumping all mobile games together because of a few gacha titles is like calling all movies “just commercials” because of some awful reality TV. Face it: the world’s moved on, but you’re still shouting at clouds.
I don’t need to have played every game ever made. But I do own several thousand and have played thousands more.
From that experience, I can tell you this: you never truly understand a game until you play it yourself. That’s why I don’t waste time forming opinions about games I haven’t actually tried.
If you can’t be bothered to actually try what you’re criticizing, you have zero business judging it. That’s not opinion—that’s ignorance.
If there are 700,000 games then you must judge games without trying them. Otherwise you’d be constantly playing games to see if they’re any good and would still not get through them all.
Buddy please. Its like a farmer ok? Knows fruit, knows what makes it good and or bad, often. And perilously for your world view, at a glance. Effectively your kinda saying you can’t judge a game accurately without playing it through. So then no one can. And it comes off as rather immature/inexperienced masquerading as thoughtful or mature
Its not a person OK. Its a product and sometimes its more then that OK? But a lot of addictiveness isn’t good game. Like addictiveness isn’t a good drug or food or lifestyle choice (looking at gambling and cigs and stuff 👀)
We make it special we get that, what you don’t get is bad fruit your making special cause it is your holiday gift is still when looked at objectively and compared to the greater whole of produce. In general. Its bad fruit. Though genshin seems like its a legit game, not fully legit, cause of all the predatory design. So there. Objectively worse. Predatory by design is bad. Period. Now its better then many others. So with the greater whole it isn’t as bad. Or candy crush. Like don’t feel like a bad parent or anything but its definitely not getting a judgement pass, sorry
Also explain to your kids there tech bros toys when they play and insist upon the addictive games. They can decide but an informed person is always got a better chance of making well reasoned, informed decisions that makes there brains develop away from that bull 💩 you know
I’m skeptical that people here are as knowledgeable as they claim.
I know from several other threads that the majority of folks here stick to a few handfuls of games and sink 1,000s of hours into them. That might make them an expert at a specific MMO, but it certainly doesn’t make them experts in every game at a glance.
You’re judging the gaming habits of the entire population of Lemmy based on a couple anecdotes from random threads? And you want to talk about not making snap judgements?
Lemmy isn’t a big place. People who populate gaming threads are an even smaller fraction of the userbase. So to see the same handful of opinions, repeated again and again, upvoted ad infinitum – that’s a pretty good sample size.
I deliberately posted this thread as a contrarian take. And what do you know, it proved to be contrarian.
I didn’t say anything outrageous or mean-spirited. Everything has been quite reasonable. But judging by the responses – you all think every mobile game is a gacha game – I can safely say few of you have nearly as much experience with games as you believe you do.
By the way, this is why I generally put little stock into self-declared “gamers” opinions. Most of you are obsessed with playing things in a prescribed manner, in a particular way, regarding a specific canon. And you generally adhere to the same bland culture with little appreciation for diversity.
The hypocrisy of claiming that you can’t judge any game without physically playing it yourself, then turning around and judging thousands of people you’ve never interacted with based on a couple interactions, is absolutely staggering.
Consider giving human beings the same benefit of the doubt that you give to software.
And yet you jumped all over people claiming to have played enough games to be able to recognize crap when they see it. Again, you’re dismissing real people while standing up for what exactly? Defending corporate garbage?
I enjoy the occasional mobile game too, I don’t have an issue with your general opinion. But you certainly aren’t convincing anyone with the childish attitude and ridiculous reasoning.
Calling out groupthink when I see the same tired talking points—no research, no citations, just noise? Hell yeah, I’m gonna call that out.
I’ve never defended “corporate garbage.” I’ve said straight up: there are hundreds of thousands of mobile games, some you can buy outright—no microtransactions attached. More premium paid games on iOS alone than the entire NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube libraries combined.
Let me say it again: you don’t have to play gacha games. Plenty of premium mobile titles exist if you’re willing to look.
But here? Everyone ignores that fact, chooses groupthink instead, and barks the same tired lines.
And yeah, I know this won’t convince anyone here. They’re too busy flexing their Lemmy in-group credentials to entertain anything that breaks the echo chamber.
I’m saying it anyway, loud and clear.
There are literally people here insisting all mobile games are gacha. When I drop hard stats proving otherwise, instead of reconsidering, suddenly I’m a secret shill pushing for some stats company.
That’s the quality of convo I’m dealing with in this thread. And you? No different.
You’re inventing a lot of enemies here and listening to no one.
Nobody is claiming all mobile games are gacha, just pointing out that all the ones you talked about initially are, and they wildly dominate the market.
Honestly I don’t know why I’m bothering, I have more to say but this a waste of my time.
I get you there, and its true they are often over-certain of how the easy to share intellectual take version applies to the reality of the truth
Its a struggle but just wanted to defend the main idea not their participation in it, but I agree that you never REALLY know if its fun till you play it and they would likely be more understanding if they tried out some. There are many mobile games that have no right to be that addictive or “fun” (pleasing or pleasurable weird words here tho) as they are.
But as the overall human shift to focus on profit/retention is where most of the actual resentment comes in from not that your entirely wrong, they just don’t support your opinion because they see it as a much bigger problem that you dont seem to acknowledge
Thanks for being this involved and really having the convo here. Its important as fuck even if we dont acknowledge it. Fucking being alive and thinking and talking about it. That’s what got us everything.
Be good tho I see a lot of taking fights and your not on the right side of several lol but I fucking remember myself so carry on and do what you feel you must till you know yourself 👍
My point is that you need to decide which games to play and that you have already judged a game when you decide not to play it.
You might not like the art style, or the gameplay, or the reviews or whatever but you have definitely judged it without playing it. The only other alternative is to literally download and play every game that you see.
There are over 700,000 games on the play store. … and 699,900 of them are basic, traditional mobile games that are basically a gamified e-store for imaginary goods…
How about we stick to facts instead of making things up?
As of July 2025, there are 14,139 premium, paid games on the iOS App Store—meaning games that are not free-to-play, not gacha, and have no microtransactions.
To put that in perspective: iOS alone has more complete, self-contained games than the NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube libraries combined.
Bro are you a sales rep for this data company and this whole post is just a way to drive people to your product? Because that’s about the only explanation I have for, all t h i s.
Wow, that’s some next-level conspiracy thinking—just because I share stats with a source, you leap straight to “sales rep for the statistics company” territory?
What’s next, claiming schools teach math just to line Texas Instruments’ pockets?
Here’s the simple truth: I’m tired of hearing people mindlessly parrot the same tired talking points with zero facts to back them up.
If having an unpopular opinion rattles your echo chamber, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with that.
Bro this entire post and every reply you’ve made is just next level unhinged, I was giving you a generous benefit of doubt here, because you being a sales rep is about the only way this isn’t insane cringe.
It means I’ve hit a nerve and said something so contrary that it actually rattles you.
Funny thing is, you haven’t actually told me how or why I’m wrong—just that I’m cringe.
You have a really inflated sense of your impact on me buddy. I’m not here to tell you you’re right or wrong, I have no opinion on this whole inane debate at all. I play video games for fun, and if other people are having fun playing video games I’m happy for them, I don’t give a single solitary fuck whether they do it on a pc, console, phone, tablet, or by uploading Doom to a cock ring with lcd display and play it by popping their dick with kegels.
I’m just here to tell you that you’re giving off major “meth head arguing with a brick wall in the alley behind 7-11” energy.
It was obvious hyperbole to point at how you are still hilariously wrong. Congratulations on being too stupid to understand how speech works. No wonder you let your kids engage with addictive games… You’re too simple to understand how it’s still bad.
true on the only good mobile games not being mobile games, though you’re wrong about the number being small. Emulation means that entire console libraries are available. I’ve been plinking away at the SNES library for the past couple of years on my phone and am still spoiled for choice.
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Aktywne