I reckon this is a really good game, and it’s great to see it on GOG.
Missing features always feels bad though, even if those features are not important. (The multiplayer modes are ok, but the playerbase isn’t there anymore anyway. I never used snapmap at all.) But it’s kind of a philosophical thing. Missing features just make it feel like a worse. But on the other hand GOG does have one cool feature compared to the previous release: DRM free. Not as visible, but perhaps more important.
(I still probably won’t buy it on GOG though, because I don’t love the game so much that I need a second copy.)
Making porting gog to linux a priority which has by far the smallest market share for computer gaming is the dumbest thing anyone in this thread is saying
Building a bridge across the river is totally stupid, because no one crosses that river to get to where they are going.
Building a house on that hill is dumb, because no one lives there.
Creating that new type of device is a waste of time, because no one has ever bought one like that.
…
You see the point, right? Not that I’m trying to give business advice. I’m just saying that these things aren’t necessarily as stupid as you seem to think.
Civ is a bit exploitative in that they deliberately release a half-arsed base product with glaring flaws, charging big $$$ for it; and then release a chain of expansion packs to flesh it out and make it complete.
I was on the beta team for Civ 5; and it was a real eye-opener to see that this is a deliberate strategy. It isn’t just that games are hard to get right. They deliberately hold back to squeeze more cash out. I haven’t bought any civ game since then.
But yeah, I agree that it isn’t the same type of exploitation as gambling.
I thought the connection to the initial comment was made very clear. The initial comment said:
Someone is going to make a long post about how women is being portrayed as sexual objects in games and will absolutely refuse to acknowledge this post.
audaxreik’s initial reaction basically just berated them for saying this, but in the most recent post audaxreik explained this hostility. Loosely speaking, the initial comment was an unprovoked strawman attack against feminism - and audaxreik wanted to push back against that.
In any case, I think the discussion here has run its course.
You pretty much said it. The Steam version often has all sorts of stuff for Steam integration… and the Steam version is the default version. So various hooks for achievements and networking and mod installation may be different. Messing with any of that could easily break something. Furthermore, GOG does have its own API that some games use (again, for achievements and cloud saves); so if a game has chosen to use those features they may accidentally break something.
But even aside from possible difference between versions; bugs in the game itself still have to be addressed on every platform. Even if they don’t bother testing the new version, they still have to at least push the update - which is still more work than zero work. This is why it is fairly common to see games that are under active development only have their beta version on Steam (or in some cases only Epic), even when they intend to launch on a bunch of platforms.
So for some games (certainly not all, but definitely some), patches come on Steam first and GOG at some point later. Maybe a day later, or a week later, or in some rare cases not at all. Similarly for DLC. And that definitely isn’t GOG’s fault. There isn’t really anything GOG can do about it. It’s just a side-effect of Steam being the far bigger platform.
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.
Are you seriously asking how a piece of computer software might fail to operate correctly? As much as DRM sucks, it isn’t the only thing that can cause something to not work.
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.)
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.
I don’t like it when something is only available on Epic either. I also don’t like it when someone is only available on Steam - which happens far more often.
I don’t think so. On my screen I see that post I responded to said this:
The game will be removed on 13. December?
So in my post I tried to explain that the games will still be available to download from GOG, but it will no longer be purchasable. Different people mean different things when they say “removed from GOG”, so I thought this was good to clarify.
It will be removed from sale on 13 of December, but everyone who already bought it will continue to be able to download it from GOG indefinitely. Furthermore, GOG has stated their commitment to ensure the game remains compatible with newer computer and operating systems. That’s what the preservation project mentioned in the post is about.
I’ve been a great fan of gaming for my entire long life. But I don’t play online games any more, because so many gamers are toxic. Obviously there are good individuals and some good outposts, but taken as a whole it is a toxic community.