Yeah. And also choice not as wide as Steam exactly because of DRM free. Can’t buy monhunt or any of Capcom’s game on GOG. But if you want to play old game then GOG is the place to go, they make sure everything run.
Plus, unless the installers have the full package, it’ll still require an internet connection. Usually installers download the files and then install them.
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.
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 shits
Again, 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 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 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.
If GOG are such a freedom heroes why do they rely on megacorp Windows OS? That’s what I like about steam - it makes gaming on linux dumb easy. And not just on linux, their “package” is ridiculously good - mods, cummunity, reviews, friends, non stop sales, mobile app (although I hate they removed chat to standalone app), and much, much more.
I’m not shitting on GOG. I love those guys, they brought back so much memories with reviving long forgotten games, I have hundreds of purchases there. But… it just needs a lite more polish (pun intended).
Not sire how it’s now, but couple years ago that “new galaxy” thing felt like it was precisely crafted to NOT run on linux. I tried multiple ways to run it, but all of them were unstable, crashing and very laggy. The best one was through Bottles but still… Heroic came and was instantly way ahead.
Yeah. I intentionally buy my games on Steam for ethical reasons because Valve contributes to a positive gaming ecosystem by making things run seamlessly on Linux.
GOG contributes to a negative gaming ecosystem by making Windows the “easy” option and not making use of Proton (or similar tech). Hopefully they fix that one day, but they don’t seem to care.
I’d take a guess that from their perspective, putting all that time + money into developing and supporting a Linux version isn’t worth it when probably ~3% of the user base is using it.
These articles are basically just advertising for GoG.
They have the same issues as steam does regarding only selling licenses, or not having inheritable or transferable accounts.
DRM free is great, but as a service they aren’t fundamentally different from steam. They just like to market themselves like they are.
This has been posted a million times already, but I am still going to repeat it. Yes you are right, in their own legal docs they also only talk about licenses.
Difference for the consumer however is that you get the installation files which are supposed to work offline. Meaning if you take care to store that, it will not be gone ever, no matter if GOG goes down. With Steam this gets more complicated and may only work for some games.
I get that. DRM free is great and better. I just don’t like the advertisement that casts it as “you own the game”, or entire articles built around posts by their marketing department.
It feels very ambulance-chaser-y.
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.
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.
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
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 them
Examples 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)
Ugh, I hate that the actual ethical issues in games journalism got swallowed up by all the other hateful bullshit.
Like, sponsored articles weren’t being disclosed, and some games journalists were being fired for refusing to give favorable reviews to games that were advertising on their site. There were private mailing lists where behind the scenes coordination was happening to push kinder reviews of one member of the list’s friend’s indie game. White jounalists were claiming themselves as mouthpieces for minority gamers who never asked for someone else to speak for them.
Which gave cover for explicit mysogyny and hate… then further got twisted by far-right idealogues like Milo Yannopolous and Breitbart.
It’s made much worse by the games “journalists” industry paying too much attention to X. They find some crackpot spouting off controversy, elevate that shit to the moon, and suddenly other people are talking about this opinion that only lives in a vacuum.
IGN, PCGamer, RPS, Kotaku… they all live for this shit.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
pcgamer.com
Aktywne