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.
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.
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)
Unpopular opinion: if I have to fudge with Wine instead of Proton, I simply will not bother. It’s 2024. I’m not going to fiddle with configs, or get a setup together just to play a single game. That’s ridiculous. A game should 100% be one click to run, whether it’s native or not. and if that’s not what is expected in 2024, Linux get it together. sincerely: a full time Linux gamer that is a single parent and doesn’t have time to fiddle just to play a game. Wine and most of its front ends need a major overhaul.
Then just use Proton? You don’t need Steam for it. And sitting there and demanding “Linux” to get it “together” because it is 2024 is rather ignorant due to the fact that it is not Linux’ fault that the software in question needs additional workarounds in order to make it run. People out there are using their freetime to come up with solutions for problems caused by corporations using proprietary libraries and software. I don’t think that your opinion is unpopular. I get what you want, I do wish the same, and a lot of peoole would agree with it as well, but the context in which we operate here matters a lot.
I’m not aware of how things are now, but at least previously you couldn’t really use Proton outside of Steam.
So I assume OC defends Steam as the only platform that can smoothly run games with Proton instead of regular Wine, which does not work as well for certain games and/or requires tedious configuration.
You are right about proton. But the tedious configuration part is not true. Proton and ge-wine(now UMU) do the same thing, i.e applying custom patches. Wine base package is not expected to do this.
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
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!
Steam does not provide installers for games, this means that whatever game you want, needs to be 100% functional and already be parsed/deployed/installed by steam on your hard drive.
That game needs to be DRM free, meaning that it has an executable available that can be launched without steam running or requiring any sort of authentication or input from the steam servers/services before being able to launch, play or even interact with the menus
So only the DRM free games will remain, and only the installed ones at that. Anything that wasn’t will be lost to the wind the moment the distribution service or storage (yours or theirs) bits the dust…
installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam’s standardized format. I’ve done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library
It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it
DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it’s generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction
Ultimately, it’s not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn’t have to use it if they don’t want to
I don’t know if it’s a clause but Gabe said it at one point. Is that legally binding though? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit that whatever VC eventually buys steam and then runs it into the ground would have no problem changing the user agreement to whatever suited them…
I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document
And yes, if a VC buys out steam I’d be horrified, but it’s structurally resistant to that. It’s largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society’s problems
I like GOG and I like steam too. While it is true that GOG can’t take the offline installer from me, this does not make it true I can play the game forever since many games are dynamically linked to libraries that may not be available in the future. This happened to me with games I just had bought. Steam also dynamically links to libraries but what I like about the way they are doing it is that these are part of the base installation so as long as you keep these files, the games should keep working. Nothing being perfect, I think they both try to do things in their own way and try to convince us that it is the best one.
2.1 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.
GOG has the same drawbacks as Steam without any of the useful features. They should cut down on their “owning games” lies and spend time improving their platform instead.
It does not. You can download and backup all your GOG installers, making the games functionally equal to games you purchased on CD ROMs back in the day. They can revoke your license all they want, they wouldn’t be able to keep you from using the software you acquired this way. That makes all the difference.
and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content.
Which they define as:
1.3 Also, when we’re talking about games, in-game content, virtual items or currency or GOG videos or other content or services which you can purchase or access via GOG services, we’ll just call them “GOG games” or “GOG videos” respectively and when we talk about them all together they are “GOG content”.
The license is with regards to “GOG Service”, not “GOG Contents”. You need the former to get access to the latter, sure. But what isn’t clear about this?
You still own the contents (though, as mentioned, individual titles may have additional blablabla). If you don’t think this distinction makes sense when it comes to GoG vs Steam, then maybe you’re just discussing something entirely different?
It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
It technically still exists in the game properties -> installed files tab, but it doesn't really work. The backup files you get require you to be online to meaningfully restore and will trigger a patch to the latest game version.
Practically speaking it's better to just make a copy of the game install directory manually, gives you a better chance of things working (even though most games require some kind of external tooling for that).
For current exports, it's some custom .csm/.csd file combo. Not sure if there's any tools for working with it, seems like it'd be more annoying than just using a normal archive format either way.
I’ll stick with my Steam cloud saves and game notes and community forums and community guides and custom controller configurations and community controller configurations and overlay and workshop and screenshots and steam deck and steam link and …
Also, the very first game I ever bought on Steam was almost 15 years ago, and it was delisted and has not been available on Steam for over 10 years. Yet I can still re-download and play it right now.
Steam is not the evil corporation people pretend it is. Take your rage to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.
Steam is not the evil corporation people pretend it is.
Indeed. They’re not saints either but for my personal demands, they offer the best arguments right now. I rank funding improvements to the FOSS Linux stack higher than a DRM-free pile of shame. That may change in the future but for now I prefer Steam over GOG. CD Project is a rich company. They could make a Linux version of Galaxy, put it onto Flathub, make it behave well under Steam Deck Game Mode, and put a tiny fraction of their revenue into Linux improvements.
GOG is funding the FOSS Heroic Games Launcher through an affiliate partnership
GOG has an affiliate links program. Heroic signed up for that. GOG isn’t specifically funding Heroic. Wake me up when CD Project / GOG is hiring a developer of Mesa or something along those lines. You know, an actual part of the technology foundation that’s being used by a wide range of Linux distributions.
An office worker sitting at a desk somewhere at a Linux-running PC is benefiting from technology advancements upstreamed by Valve as part of Steam Deck performance improvements.
Steam colludes with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It’s all one big club meant to extract as much profit as possible.
Steam could charge 2% and Gaben would still be able to afford the 75 to 100 million he spends every year to maintained his fleet of 6 mega yatchs, worth an estimated 1 billion.
Meanwhile I’m over here thinking about how I greatly prefer to put my saves in my own cloud storage (too many games these days not giving me as many slots as I’d like), the community forums are some of the most toxic places on the Internet right now, it’s a coin flip whether Steam’s going to give me a problem with my DualShock4, I hate how the Workshop is a walled garden, and I’m so much happier with my streaming now that I’ve dropped Steam Link and moved to Moonlight.
I guess the guides and Big Picture Mode can be nice?
Steam’s still the #2 best option for me on PC storefronts; the battle.net launcher has some aggressive advertising, as an example of hellscape we’re avoiding here. But Steam continues to not offer me much added value. I go there only because some of my games aren’t available on GOG.
I will say I appreciate what Valve is doing with the Steam Deck, and I’m really hoping it continues to grow an ecosystem that directly competes with Nintendo. They are actively burning up banked goodwill right now, and that segment of the market is getting unhealthy without someone keeping them in check.
Probably the same reason it’s happening all over the corporate web: fewer eyeballs moderating content. I was never enough of a regular on Steam communities to be sure, unlike GameFAQs (which I can tell you has always been that way).
I do agree the community discussions have gone to shit. But that’s true of the entire fucking internet. People are assholes when veiled behind anonymity. That’s not a Steam issue. It’s a human issue.
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