Supposedly if Steam ever goes under they’ll unlock everything, but if you ask me: GOG is just the thing for you!
Or set sail if it’s a shitty company that stole the game you bought, arrr…
If you are a Linux user, check out Lutris for installing GOG games. I’ve been using it with Bazzite lately and its been pretty good but they also have native standalone installers for some games. Also, standalone Windows and MacOS installers where applicable.
Edit: Evidently, there are some games on Steam that are also DRM free. You just have to sign in to download it, which is reasonable as you need a good way to download it more than once without letting any random person with the link download it. Not exactly 1:1 for how GOG can work but could be worse.
Look, with things like the Goldberg Emulator almost all games that use the Steam API can work without Steam as it provides you with a drop-in replacement to the steam api dll.
The main practical differences between Steam and GOG is are:
You need to have certain technical skills to work around Steam’s (often very weak) locking. Not crazy high (basically how to navigate a filesystem), but some.
In Steam you do NOT know at the time of the purchase if that will actually work or not (games heavily integrated with the Steam API still won’t work with the Emulator) or if the game has or not further DRM, so you CANNOT make an informed purchasing decision in terms of “will I still have access to these games in the future no matter what”.
You know for certain that games in GOG have no DRM, theirs or from the publisher’s, because CONTRACTUALLY GOG forces the publishers to not have DRM in their games to sell via GOG.
Personally I buy tons of games from GOG and only a handful from Steam because I do value the certainty that if I have the hardware and OS for it (or an emulator), I can still have fun with those games 10 or 20 years in the future. Then again I’ve been gaming for almost 4 decades hence have enough experience with getting to a point were I miss a game that was fun but can’t run it anymore.
PS: Funny enough, my latest return to sailing the seven seas was because of an oldish game I have in Steam that wouldn’t run in Linux with Proton, probably because of the original DRM from the game itself. The pirated version runs just fine. I strongly suspect that if that game ever got sold in GOG it would also run just fine in Linux.
Thank you, that is much clearer!
Supposedly if Steam ever goes under they’ll unlock everything, but if you ask me: GOG is just the thing for you!
Or set sail if it’s a shitty company that stole the game you bought, arrr…
If you are a Linux user, check out Lutris for installing GOG games. I’ve been using it with Bazzite lately and its been pretty good but they also have native standalone installers for some games. Also, standalone Windows and MacOS installers where applicable.
Edit: Evidently, there are some games on Steam that are also DRM free. You just have to sign in to download it, which is reasonable as you need a good way to download it more than once without letting any random person with the link download it. Not exactly 1:1 for how GOG can work but could be worse.
Look, with things like the Goldberg Emulator almost all games that use the Steam API can work without Steam as it provides you with a drop-in replacement to the steam api dll.
The main practical differences between Steam and GOG is are:
Personally I buy tons of games from GOG and only a handful from Steam because I do value the certainty that if I have the hardware and OS for it (or an emulator), I can still have fun with those games 10 or 20 years in the future. Then again I’ve been gaming for almost 4 decades hence have enough experience with getting to a point were I miss a game that was fun but can’t run it anymore.
PS: Funny enough, my latest return to sailing the seven seas was because of an oldish game I have in Steam that wouldn’t run in Linux with Proton, probably because of the original DRM from the game itself. The pirated version runs just fine. I strongly suspect that if that game ever got sold in GOG it would also run just fine in Linux.
Yeah, GOG i awesome, i currently only sail the seven seas for economic reasons but i will absolutely use GOG when i can
Support the devs when you can.
Fun related fact: Most pirates end up spending far more on games and other media than the average person in the long run.