Anon uses GOG

Know your enemy

Requires TPM 2.0? Wtf??
- Tense Penile Member 2.0. Some refer to it as a rock hard dick.
At least you're warned about the bullshit requirements for a particular game.
Reminds me of what fdroid and aurora-store do, warning the users of potential "disgusting" features. That's respect for its users
- I like that fdroid is "this doesn't meet what our users expect from our service, here's why, and here it is anyway if you want cancer"
- Pretty common in flatpak managers as well
We always knew that battlefield would be like that. It's an EA product after all.
I'm genuinely amazed it doesn't have day one microtransactions, maybe that's going later.
- There will be a season one battle pass with skins, but the guns, maps, etc. will be free.
EA
Yeah, don't need to read further. I just avoid their crap on reflex.
They even game me a refund after I bought KOTOR 1 without realising it was an EA game, saying I wanted to get a refund because I was boycotting EA.
I did comply with the less than an hour playtime for refunds, so they might have given it regardless, but it's nice to know they accept refunds labelled as boycotts.
It used to be even worse. In 2042, you had to install the EA app.

Anon discovers what it’s like to own a piece of media

It's getting rare to own anything. Everything is just a temporary license or subscription or even if you own the thing it's dongled to the vendor and when the vendor is in a bad mood or goes bankrupt your thing can't be used any more...
- It's all gotta get commodified
That's how bad things have become. People don't even realise what it's like to own something.
I’ve been asked what a dvd is by a teenager. When I amended and said Blu-ray, they still had no clue. It’s only going to get worse.

Bro, I've got like 25 hours in the Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster, on my Steam Deck and laptop.

Yesterday, an update caused the game to launch with a black screen. So I tried a few different Proton versions, before I start getting a new error.

I take a look at the discussion board for the game on Steam... Fucking Denuvo considers each version of Proton to be a separate "activation" and it will only allow five BEFORE LOCKING YOU OUT OF THE GAME FOR 24 HOURS.

I have never really given a shit about Denuvo before, but this is so fucking infuriating. I paid for this game. I've already played 25 hours of this game. Now I can't fucking play it?

Unbelievable. Denuvo is fucking trash, and I guess now I'm one of those people who avoids it.

DRM is never for the benefit of the consumers.
Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster has fucking denuvo in it? What the fuck? Does it have multiplayer or something?
- I know. Not that I'm aware of, no.
Thanks for the heads up, was going to get that for my wife to try. I'll just spin up the ISO instead.
- The game itself is outstanding (but I may be biased since the original is one of my favorite games of all time)
Happened with the new DOOM too. I just wait for AAA games to remove DRM as a precaution.
Paid for your product like a little corpo slave bitch. Got what you deserved.
You dont own it unless you take it.
- Fuck... So cool....

It sounds like gog is pretty great, with their DRM free software.

I'm generally indifferent towards steam but I'm under the impression that they've contributed a lot to the recent developments in Linux gaming compatibility, and this has removed a pretty big hurdle for people who want to move away from windows, and I just think that's swell.

They could try to offer a proper Linux Galaxy client, though. Especially since CP2077 locks some minor things behind being launched from Galaxy.
- There will likely never be an official GOG Galaxy client for Linux, judging by the company's utter disregard for Linux users. It was the most requested position on their community wish list, and they just removed it saying they have no plans on adding Linux support.
- heroic game launcher?
- There is some CP2077 content you only get through GoG Galaxy ?!?

Half or more of all the games Amazon gives away through Prime are actually just GOG keys. If you already have Prime for some reason or another, you should be redeeming those free GOG keys.

This.
I hate Amazon, but I'm subscribed to Prime and I'm getting a lot of free GOG keys.
I wondered why some guy on my Discord kept giving out tons of free GOG keys. Guess it's probably that?
I have so many games I might not have even thought to go out and buy because of this.
Amazon is doing what now? Well, I'll be damned. That's never been made apparent to me.
- They have been doing it, quietly, for years and they have given away amazing titles too.

I own ~670 games on GOG and lease 292 on Steam.

I’ve played maybe five of my GOG games to completion. I’m a gamer, dammit!

"and lease on steam"
This hurts to read considering my hundreds of games on steam 🥲 I want to stay in denial and pray for no enshittification
- It could happen to Steam one day. Definitely not any time soon. But as the company grows and ownership changes, there is the risk they could go public and IPO. After that point, it's all downhill from there. However at this point in time and based on their history, GOG and Steam are both excellent platforms to do business with.
  I didn't start using GOG until I got a slap in the face with reality that I don't own my games. I was ignorant and complacent back in the day when App Store purchases on Apple's platform disappeared or I couldn't download them again. "That sucks. Oh well. Damn." is what I used to always say to myself over a decade ago. Funny that it took a beloved game - parts of it anyway - to where it finally sunk in how important digital ownership is.
  Ubisoft is the company that taught me this valuable lesson. In August 2022, Ubisoft announced they would shut down legacy activation servers for their old single player games - https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/help/gameplay/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-september-2022/000102396. While multiplayer would disappear and was accepted (running online PvP servers for very old games doesn't make financial sense), the termination of these servers would also mean that my DLC would disappear. I was a day one owner of Splinter Cell: Blacklist on Wii U, and I spent my hard-earned money buying all the content for it back in 2012. Ubisoft was going to take away parts of my video game on a physical disc sitting on my shelf, because if I tried to run the game and install the DLC, the console would make a call to an activation server that no longer existed and preclude me from accessing my paid for content. Now, all those video games sitting on my shelf from multiple console generations suddenly looked less permanent. How many of those single player games required online functionality to work? I always (and still today) buy cartridges and discs where possible because I believe physical copies are superior. Splinter Cell I purchased at least three times because I loved that game - on Wii U, on Uplay, and then on Steam. In 2022, Ubisoft shut down those activation servers and they took my purchases away from me forever. Now, I can only play parts of the game that I paid for. And Ubisoft doesn't get my money any more (although they haven't been for a long time since they keep release middling games).
  Since that day, I learned a valuable lesson and have since directed most of my game purchases to GOG, where my GOG library has significantly skyrocketed past my Steam library.
  P.S. - To this day, I still email Supergiant annually to beg them to release Hades on GOG, and show them the growing interest for their game in GOG's Dreamlist: https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/hades-2020
It's like Pokemon. Collecting is the game.

I would love to buy all my games from gog, but they lack steam's regional pricing in my region, so most games are 4x the price on gog.

- You try being happy about it when a game costs $240
- If the worst should happen, I will sail the seas to reclaim my ownership.
  When you don't earn dollars, it's a lot of money.

TBH I'm too addicted to achievements to use GOG (AFAIK you can get achievements on GOG if you use their launcher, but it doesn't work on Linux). I'm going to regret that later for sure ...

I feel you.
Let's stay in denial together 🫂
There is a reimplementation of the Galaxy Communication Service that allows you to get achievements, leaderboards, etc.
Heroic Launcher has it bundeled automatically.
https://github.com/imLinguin/comet
- Heroic is so freaking... Well... Legendary. :D

GOG is awesome!

I love having to individually download all 50 parts to a game and write my own install script (the GOG experience on Linux).

Heroic works pretty well.
- I can second this.
You- you what????? Why. Lutris. Just use lutris, holy shit.
- Lutris downloads files from GoG using their API, which has heavily throttled download speeds. It was going to take 19 hours for CP2077 to download using Lutris.
  Downloading the 50 pieces individually from GoG through the browser took under and hour, but was quite annoying.
  If you don't play any large games, you might not have noticed, but Lutris and GoG do not work very well together.
Maybe this was true five years ago, but with heroic I've never had any setup issues.
There's like 5 managers that support one click install on Linux. Why are you pretending to live in the stone age?
How common is that? I have maybe 5 games from GOG and none of them are like this.
- Lutris communicates with GoG through their API, which is heavily throttled for downloading games. CP2077 was going to take almost an entire day to install using Lutris alone.
  Going to the website and downloading the pieces myself was much faster, but then of course I needed to manage the rest of the install.
  Small games are fine since you won't feel as much pain on the download step.

I wish games would host their own downloads like Factorio. Managing keys and such is probably not worth it since they can use Steam, GOG, or even Itch, buts it’s just so nice to be able to download stuff without a middle man.

I’m just glad I only play 2 games instead of the hundreds I’m reading about in these comments. I didn’t even know that was a thing people did!

Factorio devs are goated for their no-bullshit, high-quality product. I make damn sure I have a recent copy secured on my server, just in case. Inspirational humans like this keep me from the doldrums.
- You might wanna reconsider that gushing praise. The Factorio dev is a screaming bigot with a long history of sexism, homophobia, and racism. And, when this is mentioned, complaining about "cancel culture".
I don't play hundreds, but I do play dozens, and yeah, being able to just set 5 or so to download in the background when I'm running low is nice. I mostly play through single player games and uninstall when I'm done.
That said, I also really like how Factorio did it. I bought it directly from them way back in 2012 or something, then they gave me a Steam key, and I can still play the game today with all the updates more than 10 years later. They only made one DLC in the meantime, and that's basically a new game, so I'm totally happy with that.

GOG does have its issues and controversies, but it's still the only online gaming store with conditions I find acceptable. If the game is not available DRM Free, I don't need to play it.

If only they gave a shit about their users enough to respect their requests for official Linux support. Various forms of this made 3 of the top 5 requests on their community wish list. Which they casually deleted and told people to use wine/proton.

This is not a consumer-friendly company. It just so happens that their consumer-oriented decisions led to profits. The moment this is not the case, they immediately change course every time. Same might be true for Valve, but at the very least we can clearly observe them sacrificing extra profits for a tiny minority of Linux users.

GOG is still mostly fine for Windows builds of games. You can support the devs and get DRM-free copies to store indefinitely. However, we shouldn't blindly praise them and ignore the obvious bullshit they take part in.

I imagine that we Linux users are a very small share of their users. I don't see anything malicious in it.
- I disagree. It depends how you define 'malicious', but in any case I strongly condemn this practice.
  CDPR is perfectly happy to pretend they're consumer-friendly whenever it requires no actual work and brings profits. But the moment they have to spend a cent on changes to actually fulfill their users' wishes (which they themselves published a wish list for, mind you) - it gets absolutely shit on and the users are told to stop bothering them.
  This is nothing but a clear display of what kind of company this is. People keep praising them for doing so much for the users. Meanwhile Valve has been losing money for years, just to help a handful of Linux gamers. No corporation is your friend, but if you really want to go with the 'least evil' option - just buy the game on Steam and then pirate it for indefinite storage.
Same might be true for Valve, but at the very least we can clearly observe them sacrificing extra profits for a tiny minority of Linux users.
Considering the Steam Deck exists, which necessitates Linux support, I'm fairly certain Valve is actively making profit from Linux support.
Which is a perfectly fine thing to do, and I really like it. But it's not exactly altruism that's driving their investments
- It's not altruistic, but it's also not the behavior of a publicly traded company lol

I've only bought one game from GOG. It was Morrowind and I'm playing via OpenMW. Good experience over all. Though I didn't use the installer or the executable that came with the game.

I really want to see more FOSS reimplementations of game engines come into existence. Wine is fine and all, but I'd much rather have a native FOSS engine.

That reminds me that Morrowind is currently discounted in GOG and I've been meaning to buy it and play it via OpenMW ever since I heard about the latter ...

Seriously. I pretty much only buy things off GoG nowadays. I can back it up to my own storage, and take it wherever I want. High-five to GoG.

I do love Steam, but at the same time, it required me to intall significant 32 bit support on my system. It's just sitting there, using 2GB of RAM and 20% of a cpu while the window isn't even open.

I love gog. Sure it means I need to pay (a small amount) for some decades old stuff, but it will work perfectly every time.

It's just how games used to be before the age of enshittification began

Maybe I'm not old enough but I don't remember a time before game DRM, when it was physical games they required you to have the disk inserted to play. The only difference was they were easier to crack and less invasive without online requirement.
- I remember everyone freaking out when Spore was gonna have SecuROM that limited it to like 5 installs on a disc, and you were gonna have to ask EA for more if you needed them.
  Some of the oldest DRM was weird little cipher wheels or puzzle books required to answer a challenge every time the game booted before it would actually start.
  I dare say what GoG is doing is better than we've ever had it!
- Yeah I remember having a copied Spyro game on the PS1 back in the 90's where the fairy would warn you in game that it knows it's been pirated and will fuck with the game to stop you from being able to finish it.
  Not actually sure what it did as I never got very far, as I was a dumb kid only interested in charging around and breathing fire at the scenery.
- A lot of games just came with a key printed on the user manual or the disk packaging, which was just an alphanumeric code the user entered during game install or on first launch and which was validated algorithmically (no "phone home" to check a database of installs).
  Some games did required the disk to be inserted to play: the floppy, CD or DVD were mastered with strange characteristics that could only be there in mastered read-only media - this was especially easy in CDs and DVDs as the read-only ones were literally stamped - and could not be replicated in recorded media, so they worked like a physical key that allowed only one instance of the game to run at any one time. I would say this was a form of DRM, but non-intrusive since it didn't try to take over parts of the OS and only affected that game when it was running.
  The era of highly intrusive DRM whose impact went beyond the game itself started in the 00s when the use of the Internet became widespread, i suppose partly because taking over the OS and blocking other programs is the cheap-ass solution for the problems of cheating in online games (the costly solution involves proper game server and systems architecture design and is more computationally demending on the server side) and online gaming was becoming big during that decade (for example, WOW is from 2004) and partly as a counter to how the Internet made it much easier to distribute first game keys and later game cracks so really all it took to subvert "game keys" or the physical-media-as-a-key was for somebody out there putting on the Internet the game key code they got when they bought the game or cracking the game and then posting that on the Internet and suddenly hundreds of thousands or millions of people could bypass the game "protections".
  The stuff we see in Steam is basically a centralized online keycheck, so the kind of thing which became increasingly common in the early 00s, only this one is more intrusive because it will check the key EVERYTIME YOU LAUNCH THE GAME, whilst the original key checking (both the earlier algorithmic check and later the "phone home" online checking) only checked once, either during install or at first launch, so with the Steam version you have less freedom: in the old days, algorithmic key check meant games could be installed and run entirelly offline, plus you were able to install the game in more than one machine, whilst online validation did require online during install or first launch but never again after that so you could play offline forever from then onwards, whilst the Steam kind at best only lets you be offline for a certain time period and then requires online again to revalidate.
  The stuff in GOG is mainly how it was way back in the 90s before even game keys or, at most (and only for a handful of games), you get a game key which is validated algorithmically on install or first start, thus online is never required and nothing restricts you from installing the game in more than one machine (which is absolutelly legit if they're all your machines and you only ever play the game in one of them at a time).
it's how indie games are

No regional pricing though. GOG is outrageously expensive in my country compared to steam.

Regional pricing is usually set up by the developer. Contact the developer of your favourite games and they may consider regional pricing, provided GoG allows them.
- The site itself only accepts a limited amount of currencies, it's even missing a few of the worlds most major ones. I think it's most likely a limitation on GoGs side.
That's surprising. I wonder of it's actually not supported, or if companies just don't bother to set it up? Seems weird they would do it on one platform and not the other though.

I'll buy when there's a native linux client.

Until then, "arr, maties!"

...and no, I'm not having a morality discussion about piracy. I do it full-well knowing it's wrong.

Just use Heroic. A native linux client would just be worse and proprietary.
That's an odd thing to get hung up on. I buy more from Steam because the client is way nicer on Linux and they actually release interesting features for it. I could buy from GOG through Heroic, but they why should I expect them to properly support me on Linux when they don't even bother to explicitly support Heroic (they do profit share, but that's not quite the same), much less port Galaxy?
I personally don't see piracy (i.e. boycotting) as a reasonable reaction here. It sounds more like you're looking to justify piracy a deal looking for an excuse.
I'll leave it there, but that's my read here.

It really is great if you're on Windows, but I've run into issues installing GOG content on Linux.

I almost always used the windows version on Linux too. Personally I install via the exe installer like a caveman lol, but you can add your GOG account on Lutris and other programs to make it easier. Just found out about Minigalaxy, looks nice might try it.
It ain't great that there isn't an official Gog Galaxy for Linux. But we're still super grateful for the lack of DRM.
I haven't. Works great with Heroic Games Launcher.
Just about everything works fine with the default settings in Lutris.
It's rare for me, but yeah, it does happen. I usually try Epic Games Launcher, Lutris, then Steam. If it doesn't work with any of those, I ask for my money back.
it is literally the main thing I miss about windows