That's why I print out all my downloaded games
NoForwadSlashS 67 points 3 months ago
I hope you also laminate them for longevity.
Aceofspades 27 points 3 months ago
I laminate my punch cards for longevity. Wouldn't want them breaking down.
Janx 8 points 3 months ago
Sure, but what if there's a fire!? My favorite game is Ocarina of Time. I don't want to risk losing it, so I memorized the binary digits that comprise the code. Can't be too careful!
BlackVenom 16 points 3 months ago
You should really move to microfilm. It saves so much space!
GreyEyedGhost 6 points 3 months ago
Print them on clay tablets. Those will stand the test of time, especially with the right level of error correction. (Sorry for the ad cancer - I didn't want to promote a specific brand or spend forever finding a good review site.)
thatKamGuy 4 points 3 months ago
Can confirm, clay tablets can last thousands of years to archive your grievances data.
Onyxonblack 25 points 3 months ago
Use M-Disc media. It's said to last 1000 years. It's expensive and very slow to rip at the suggested 4x speed.
I've been very satisfied with them, and you just need a regular Blu-Ray drive.
Onyxonblack 4 points 3 months ago
I mean they are games that i no longer have to worry about data corruption or loss. Like ever. And i can Will these to family & friends. The cost is easily worth that!
Buddahriffic 6 points 3 months ago
Yeah, normal burners are more like printers, where the write laser activates or deactivates a pigment which then either reflects or absorbs the read laser to represent 0/1. But that pigment can degrade over time, turning 1s into 0s.
M-discs are instead etched and iirc use constructive and destructive interference so the reader (which is the same reader as normal discs, just the writer needs to specifically support M-disc) reads the 0/1. It will also degrade over time, but since it's a thicker layer of difference, it will last significantly longer than a thin layer of pigment. And I bet that special m-disc specific readers could be made to read it again after it degrades to the point where the interference technique stops working, since an image could still show where the high and low points are, even if the waves don't align perfectly anymore.
In practice, I've found that the drive was way easier to find than the media for m-disc. Like most optical disc writers these days seem to support it but the discs are expensive af compared to non m-disc.
Though when I was going through my old burnt CDs and DVDs, I was surprised at how well they were holding up. I was expecting at least some read errors by now but everything has been fine so far.
Well, other than the data quality lol. Not like the readability of the file but stuff that took days to download back then would download today in seconds and a good monitor I got well after my early files was only 720p for its resolution. The data I prized as a youth is kinda sad today.
protogen420 4 points 3 months ago
blu ray in this economy?
mesamunefire 3 points 3 months ago
Are tape drives still a thing?
Eat_Your_Paisley 8 points 3 months ago
Yup
mesamunefire 3 points 3 months ago
If I were more serous I would probably get a couple of those. I remember it being part of our procedures at a gov office.
wylinka 3 points 3 months ago
Verbatim Datalife HTL BD-R discs are supposedly made in a similar technology (some folk on r/datahoarder think they're exactly the same but idk). At the very least they won't have the same problem as DVDs (no organic dye) and they actually work out cheaper than half decent HDDs. I can get 25GBx50 cake for £30. I've only started burning them a year or two ago so time will tell if I lose my data :x.
testaccount789 2 points 3 months ago
What about Verbatim AZO? I've heard good stuff about those, and they're not expensive.
Also, as far as CDs go, I've found that an old degraded player which doesn't read burned discs anymore but plays pressed discs will still play burned AZO discs just fine.
kilgore_trout 1 point 3 months ago
You need an M-DISC BluRay drive.
testaccount789 10 points 3 months ago
It can happen even faster if you use low-quality discs.
Yep. I got some no-name DVDs at Kaufland as they were just EUR 1 for a 10-pack. They started having read issues after just 4 years.
Also, they easily peel apart with just fingers and no effort.
Edit:
Packaging: 
Media ID: MBI 01RG40
napoleonsdumbcousin 6 points 3 months ago
The worst case I experienced was a disc that disintegrated after a couple years. It got an actual extra hole in it, in a way that looked like somebody spilled acid on it and the acid burned right through the disc. In reality it just lay in my drawer.
locahosr443 6 points 3 months ago
In your acid draw?
ProdigalFrog 4 points 3 months ago
From what I recall, only self-burnt CD's and DVD's degrade quickly, while self-burnt blu-rays last significantly longer, even if not m-discs.
napoleonsdumbcousin 3 points 3 months ago
Apparently blu-rays are even worse than other discs. This is from the abstract of an accelerated ageing study (sadly I don't have access to the whole paper):
Overall, the stability of the Blu-ray formats was poor with many discs significantly degraded after only 21 days of accelerated ageing. In addition to large increases in error rates, many discs showed easily identifiable visible degradation in several different forms. In a comparison with other optical disc formats examined previously, Blu-ray stability ranked very low.
michaelalf 2 points 3 months ago
Yep! Quote from digitalfaq
The BD-R write-once type is based on a completely new concept for the recording layer utilizing a two-layer structure composed of silicon (Si) and copper alloy (Cu) inorganic materials. When heated by the recording laser beam, these melt and the Si and Cu alloy become a composite forming recording marks. Because the material is inorganic, it is not affected by light, thus realizing a disc with outstandingly high reliability in terms of archivability.
And another quote from the same source
Write-once recordable DVD-R/DVD+R media (as well as CD-R media) all uses synthetic organic based dyes -- usually azoic dyes (metallized azo chelates or azo metal chelate). Some of them are based on other synthetic organics, such as cyanine, dipyrrometheme or oxonol.
napoleonsdumbcousin 2 points 3 months ago
Your source is just a forum quoting manufacturer marketing texts.
In an accelerated ageing study blu-ray performed worse than other discs:
Overall, the stability of the Blu-ray formats was poor with many discs significantly degraded after only 21 days of accelerated ageing. In addition to large increases in error rates, many discs showed easily identifiable visible degradation in several different forms. In a comparison with other optical disc formats examined previously, Blu-ray stability ranked very low.
HerbGrower 1 point 3 months ago
Plus you can store more games on each one. Don't they cost quite a bit per disc though?
michaelalf 1 point 3 months ago
You can get a 50 pack of Verbatim's standard BD-R for ~$40 AUD, or their premium Datalifeplus discs for ~$100 AUD. I've used both of these discs, and I've run burn quality tests and they're both great. This is just talking about single layer discs, so 25GB per disc. 50GB discs are reasonably priced, 100GB and 128GB start getting a bit rich.
MangoPenguin 3 points 3 months ago
Yeah a HDD with another for periodic backups would be a lot more reliable.
chunes 108 points 3 months ago
This is the message we need to hear. The bread and butter. I get so tired of people nitpicking GOG and Mozilla over every relatively minor thing when they are some of the only people trying to hold back the deluge of bullshit.
Goodeye8 9 points 3 months ago
Do they? Maybe for minor releases but I'm pretty sure Firefox is currently doing major releases every 4 weeks and starting from September they're going to do it byweekly. Personally I don't see what the big deal is but I can absolutely see someone on the fediverse being outraged by the idea of a more frequent release schedule.
vandsjov 3 points 3 months ago
Ran into someone complaining about the same with Edge and updates going to every 4 weeks. Showed them the release log where they have been releasing one to two times a week - minor updates but still updates that require the browser to be restarted but that the person never noticed.
mnemonicmonkeys -4 points 3 months ago
byweekly I think you mean semi-weekly. Bi-weekly is twice per week
mortemtyrannis 14 points 3 months ago
Mozilla is the best browser to ever exist and I will die on this hill.
Doc_Crankenstein 3 points 3 months ago
Yea, they mean Firefox. Mozilla is the non-profit foundation, along with its subsidiary company by the same name, that makes it along with other open-source software.
flying_sheep 12 points 3 months ago
The Nazi thing is nota nitpick though. They need to address that properly instead of the “sorry we got caught” response they gave.
ericwdhs 9 points 3 months ago
GOG's founder did eventually give a better reply here (scroll to Mikee's comment): https://www.gog.com/...
I'm not convinced GOG owes us any explanation beyond that. Even in the worst case where the accusers are right and it was an intentional dog-whistle, the marketing guy who did it probably gave his superiors the same explanation we got, in which case GOG management genuinely believes they already 100% told us what happened.
Also, the argument that GOG not sending the email to Germany proves they knew that it was bad ahead of time on an organizational level is common enough to be worth addressing here. It ignores how localization is often done, one person writing a template that then goes to others to localize and send out individually. I assume adding some review time between localization and send out is among the process changes they mentioned.
flying_sheep 1 point 3 months ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. The first half of mikee’s comment is exactly what I was missing from the official “apology”.
Syrc 8 points 3 months ago
Is this about the Gog Newsletter thing? I’m not 100% informed, but didn’t they pretty much admit that they weren’t aware that ᛋ displayed as ϟ in some devices?
It’s not even a “sorry we got caught” thing, they had nothing to gain by sending a Nazi symbol in their newsletter. What more are they supposed to say?
Jako302 0 points 3 months ago
They specifically didn't send it to German accounts cause they knew it could be shown as Nazi symbolism.
This isn't a "sorry we fucked up" this is a "we knew it could go wrong but didn't care enough to do anything about it".
Personally I don't really care that much. These promotional emails aren't reviewed by every company member, so even if it was deliberately used Nazi symbolism, its at most someone in the advertising department. But I also understand why people are really upset about this.
Doc_Crankenstein 6 points 3 months ago
An explanation for them not sending it to Germany could be that the localization team for the German region, probably being more aware of such nuances, spotted it and removed it whereas those who did the localization for other regions just didn't spot it, so it slipped through.
There could be arguments about communication between teams but, honestly, localization teams don't really need to communicate with one another so it isn't surprising that they didn't.
Most likely it actually is a "oops we fucked up" situation.
starman2112 6 points 3 months ago
It's not a nitpick, but also that newsletter is not indicative of GOG being a Nazi organization. The idea that they specifically decided to advertise a new game based on Slavic mythology specifically so that they could send a mass advertisement to half their user base intentionally using Nazi symbolism is wild. It is much more likely that some marketing dimwit Googled "Slavic runes," and copied some random ones from the first site they found.
Screenshot of the first result for "slavic emoji" on google
It's one data point, not a pattern. Definitely something to watch out for, but there's literally nothing else in the history of the company to suggest that they have any white supremacist tendencies
starman2112 1 point 3 months ago
Given it was an advertisement for a game inspired by Slavic mythology, "Slavic emoji" means "advertisement for a game inspired by Slavic mythology" in this case. Do you think the developers of The End Of The Sun are nazis?
flying_sheep 1 point 3 months ago
Yeah I agree with most of what you said. It's concerning though, they could have easily responded with a responding “Nazi shit has no place here, super sorry we let that slip through”
It is much more likely that some marketing dimwit Googled "Slavic runes," and copied some random ones from the first site they found.
That's the part I find doubtful, this sequence can only be found on a site by or about Nazis. I feel like even the dumbest idiot would clock that, but I've underestimated idiots before
starman2112 2 points 3 months ago
this sequence can only be found on a site by or about Nazis.
I mean, that exact sequence is in the header of the first result for an ostensibly innocent google search. Spend some time where normal people hang out, and you'll find that a lot of them can't clock Nazi dogwhistles. I've personally had to explain the significance of "14/88" to people who thought I was nuts for calling the My Pillow guy a nazi
Aceticon 4 points 3 months ago
I've been a gamer for almost 4 decades, so I have quite a lot of experience wanting to run games that I remember were a lot of fun and it turns out they are so old they won't run anymore.
Typically it's one of 3 things:
- The hardware I have now won't support it (say, I don't have a floopy drive anymore, or they're from an entirelly different architecture such as the pre-PC game consoles). There's also quirky ones such as games made at a time when CPUs were so slow that the game just runs as fast as it can (which was fine for older CPUs, but not for CPUs which are thousands of times faster) rather than use the system clock to set its tempo.
- The OS I have won't support it. Say, it's a DOS or Windows 3.1 game
- The game has DRM which relies on shit which doesn't apply anymore (for example, OS quirks that aren't present in newer OS versions).
There are often ways around the first two - for the hardware sometimes you can get modern versions of older hardware (for example you can actually get an external USB Floppy Disk Drive) and if it's old enough there will be emulators, whilst for the OS it's either emulators or adaptor layers.
Only way around the third is either a game crack or the game having no DRM to begin with.
Now, outside the transition of hardware architectures (say, from Amiga to PC) this used to apply maybe after a game was out 10 - 20 years. In the Phone-home DRM generation this seems to apply much faster - the game maker just turns off their servers 5 - 10 years after the game is out and now you can't legally play that game anymore.
All this to say that GOG and Pirates are the only ones fighting the good fight on making sure we won't suffer this shit some years from now, which is even more important now that we're in the Phone-home DRM age.
deft 28 points 3 months ago
That's because the German team flagged it.
I don't think it's a good look but to decry they're nazis for an email showing runic alphabet and slavic symbols doesn't exactly trigger me too hard. It really sounds like someone fucked up.
People out there still buying Bayer products and they genuinely were part of the Holocaust, a huge part of it. Ford, Volkswagen, etc.
hzl 10 points 3 months ago
There's a world where someone uses a kolovrat or a sigel without intending to relate them to the Nazis. There is not a world where they use both a kolovrat and two sigels in a row and don't know what it means. Maybe someone at GOG didn't catch on, but the devs knew what was up.
flying_sheep 6 points 3 months ago
No matter who flags “you platformed Nazi shit”, you immediately escalate this, halt all outgoing communication until you got a lid on this and fix whatever led to that happening.
Impractical_Island -11 points 3 months ago
No one listens to the logos of God. It's either the pathos or the ethos; the emotional arguments or the ones that fall squarely on authority holding up what they say is true. Like, I can explain to you that everything you experience is in your brain, so all experiences must correlate with something in your neurons, so these words you're reading on this device are actually inside you, and thus the Earth isn't real as the Buddha and the kid that bent spoons at the Oracle's in the Matrix explain. Cognitive dissonance is king in this world, because the rift between what we're told is going on and what is really going on is absolutely enormous. Some game studio trying to capitalize on a demographic doesn't perturb me. Corporations are going to corporate. What bothers me is how the sheep behave in response to such dipshit shepherds who have taken the reins of the flock. You've let this happen to yerselves.
flying_sheep 5 points 3 months ago
Combined with a kolovrat.
There's no clearer way to say “we are Nazis” other than saying “we are Nazis”.
bridgeburner -4 points 3 months ago
You guys really trying to make an elephant out of a gnat.
Doug 14 points 3 months ago
sorry I like to remind people not to get cozy rooting for for-profit corporations that’ve shown some ick recently. took as much effort to remind as it did for the post, but whatever constitutes “elephant” in your book.
flying_sheep 3 points 3 months ago
“SS” runes and a kolovrat is completely impossible to be interpreted as anything else but “we are immense fucking Nazis”
The only way you could be clearer is by writing “we are Nazis”.
These symbols appearing together means that someone put them there who is a Nazi or wants to teach others about Nazi symbols.
Last time I checked, platforming Nazis is very much an elephant kind of thing.
Aceticon 14 points 3 months ago
It's exactly GOG's thing that games sold there can't have any DRM, so this scenario is out. (Also, no disk with GOG games ;))
Probably why you won't find things like Red Dead Redeption II (PC) in GOG, since Rockstar wants to force you to register in their systems to get your sweet, sweet private info. (Curiously, the pirated version has no such anti-consumer crap)
In my experience as a gamer for almost 4 decades, the most likely scenario with a really old game is that it simply won't install or run in the OS version or even hardware that you have now, though give it enough time and somebody out there will have created an emulator or adaptor layer for it (like DOSBox).
But yeah, any game from the Phone-home DRM generation which isn't bought from a seller which has No DRM policy (which only GOG has, as far as I know - even itch.io doesn't have a No DRM policy) will almost certainly have an artificially created end-of-life that has nothing to do with the OS or hardware you have being too new for the game.
doctor0710 3 points 3 months ago
They sometimes also provide alternative versions of games. I was very happy to buy Kane and Lynch (1 and 2), but the co-op feature is missing (both local and online). I guess that part was licensed differently or something
Doc_Crankenstein 0 points 3 months ago
no disk with GOG games
Did you just miss the context of the post about burning the installers onto a disc so it's yours forever?
Sorry, I know this is nitpicking but that line just bugged me.
HerbGrower 8 points 3 months ago
I don't think GOG allow games like that on their platform.
cardfire 31 points 3 months ago
I absolutely adore GOG for being like this, and for consistently applying pressure to publishers and other marketplace vendors alike.
I just also have A Steam Library with like 1200+ titles, and it's measured in Terabytes. And butrot in my physical media will be non zero, in long enough timescale.
I consider my continued patronage of buying games to be my subscription costs to the platform vendors. 🤣
AstralPath 8 points 3 months ago
Bit rot is already happening to my PS2 games. MGS2 is completely dead for me now. Its a copy I've had since I was a kid when it came out.
Tattorack 5 points 3 months ago
The only way to be sure is to save it on a quartz matrix. Only issue is it's read-only. Not rewritable ever. Once you etch your data into quartz that's it.
Storage is amazing, though. All of human knowledge (so far) has already been etched into such a storage medium by the UN a few years ago. It fits in the palm of your hand.
dreamkeeper 1 point 3 months ago
GOG also has a 30 day refund policy which blows everyone else out of the water, and they've honored it the few times I used it
cardfire 1 point 3 months ago
Yes! GOG is absolutely excellent! For what it's worth, Steam Support from Valve can absolutely issue refunds past the two weeks window, and I've done it for me in the past if the request was justified. The inside two weeks window that everyone knows is just for a no-questions-asked refund as long as the hours count is below two played.
I'm glad to hear GOG has an even better method of handling.
Axolotl_cpp 27 points 3 months ago
If only they would post more stuff on Bluesky or even use Mastodon instead of TwitterX
(Yes, i am aware they have a bluesky profile but they post less stuff on there, it seems)
mesamunefire 27 points 3 months ago
I should get more things on gog.
Steam just makes things work on linux without issue so thats why we still get steam games.
marxismtomorrow 25 points 3 months ago
You can add any gog game to steam and run it through whatever proton compatibility layer you would like. The Heroic launcher and Lutris both also allow this.
scutiger 5 points 3 months ago
Heroic lets you log in on your GOG, Epic, and Amazon accounts and then can install your games directly from your library and sets up Proton like on Steam. It's not 100% as user-friendly, but it's pretty effective.
Goodeye8 1 point 3 months ago
Lutris does the same. I don't know if it has Amazon integration but it has itch integration which is more relevant to me. It also used to have pretty good gog integration where you just log in with your gog account, pick a game, click install and play. It would even find all the DLCs you have for the game and offer easy installation of those as well.
But recently gog has started changing the names of their install executables so the installation scripts lutris autogenerates fail due to not finding the correct installer. It's not every game as some games still use the old naming convention but some games require manual installation and if those games have DLCs then those become an extra annoyance due to how gog handles the installation of DLC.
That's why I'm interested in Heroic because if it's still as convenient as Lutris used to be then I'm willing to sacrifice itch for better integration with gog because my gog library is much bigger than my itch library. But if it's having the same issues as Lutris I don't see a reason to pick Heroic over Lutris because Lutris has more relevant (to me) integrations and I'm pretty familiar with how to use it as a tool to get troublesome games running. I just don't the benefit of learning a different software if it's not going to give me any benefits over what I already use.
WereHacker 26 points 3 months ago
To preserve "pagan" games or are we talking about another GOG?
NotSteve_ 53 points 3 months ago
Yeah I'm still pretty concerned about that whole event but it seems like everyone has just forgotten about it.
I could have forgiven the initial email as a rogue nazi intern but their official response being "we made sure not to send it to Germans and its on you all for seeing nazi symbols as nazi symbols" is pretty fucking problematic. Also before anyone defends them as just being pagan symbols, the ones they chose to use were both modern creations by nazi germany
For anyone who's not up to date: https://www.pcgamer.com/...
SatyrSack -6 points 3 months ago
I definitely agree that using those innocuous Unicode characters in the way they did was someone's subtle attempt at evoking Nazi imagery, but the whole Germany part of this story is meaningless. Germany is known for having excessive language restrictions, to the point where every marketing department has their standard library of phrases and whatnot to not use in Germany. They are used to making substitutions for the German market to swap out genuinely innocuous phrases simply because they have a different connotation in Germany or whatever. As far as we can tell, that was just yet another piece of marketing material that went through some automated regex filter for German subscribers and no one thought twice about it after seeing that fact.
chortle_tortle 32 points 3 months ago
From their reddit post in trying to cover up:
... I also recognize that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime. This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.
They knew and actively chose to not send it to the country that criminalizes Nazi imagery. To me the Germany stuff is the most damning part.
NotSteve_ 21 points 3 months ago
Yeah 100%. Their response to the event is pretty much where all of my feelings come from on the subject. They explicitly state they knew they were releasing literal nazi iconography and then explicitly chose to put it out where it wouldn't get them in legal trouble.
Not only that but IIRC they actually changed the original game dev's marketing material to use the symbols without the devs even knowing.
It's all pretty fucking damning and it makes me incredibly sad
dreamkeeper 2 points 3 months ago
Does anyone else offer DRM free games? This blows
VeganCheesecake -3 points 3 months ago
That was about their German language newsletter though. They have separate, localised newsletters for several markets, which I'd assume are manually translated. Also, as a native German speaker, I really don't think it's all that different than other European language regions regarding sensitivities.
VitoRobles 8 points 3 months ago
Their marketing team was warned that there was some offense images and it would stir trouble in Germany.
Rather than say, "Oh shit this will look bad." They said, "Oh let's just change it for Germany."
Do you not understand the root issue?
dsilverz 1 point 3 months ago
Hey, as a "pagan" (practitioner of a Left-Hand Path centered on Lilith) myself, I'd warn you not to commit to religious intolerance conflating paganism, which includes Rodnovery, a Slavic Native Faith likely the one depicted in the The End of the Sun game, with the shitty nazi dog whistle done at the sole discretion of GOG. The devs of the game made it clear that they had absolutely nothing to do with the infamous GOG newsletter and its nazi dog whistle. We pagans have nothing to do with shitty far-right bigotry.
WereHacker 1 point 3 months ago
Sorry I should have written "pagan". I know nazis will do anything to legitimize themselves. I just dont want to white wash GOG.
brucethemoose 26 points 3 months ago
Sadly, based on market share, people seem to be picking Steam over GoG.
They almost always pick what’s most convenient/familiar over what’s principled and better in the long term.
brucethemoose 4 points 3 months ago
Yeah.
I know it must seem like a small market to them, but Linux should really be higher on their priority list. As it’s growing at Windows' expense.
pressanykeynow 2 points 3 months ago
Why do you need a first party client when third party client works fine?
pressanykeynow 1 point 3 months ago
Fair point but it's also true that first party client can break at any time just as well.
alexquiniou 15 points 3 months ago
I'm in the opposite team ! I always buy in gog store first then steam. But yeah, steam is here.
starman2112 5 points 3 months ago
I don't even buy on Steam anymore. I'm tired of my shit being stored on other people's computers. If I won't own the game I buy, then I don't buy the game.
brucethemoose 2 points 3 months ago
Same.
So many games aren’t there, though. And Steams pricing policy means they can’t be cheaper on GoG, anyway, otherwise Valve would delist them.
GreyCat 0 points 3 months ago
Steam does not have such a pricing policy though. You can sell your game for cheaper on other stores just fine as long as it's not a Steam key generated on steam that you are selling.
locahosr443 13 points 3 months ago
I buy on steam mostly cos it has a Linux client and Proton is built in. I still go to gog for some 90s stuff cos they fix them up a bit.
When gog release a Linux client, it'll get the same consideration as steam, that's all they've gotta do, I'm not even asking for any packaged compatibility like proton
locahosr443 1 point 3 months ago
Why would I bother to take the extra steps when they can't even be arsed to release a client for my os?
Elshender 9 points 3 months ago
GoG is doing well in the convenience category too though. Their GoG launcher is amazing and syncs with all your online libraries (steam, ea, epic, etc).
But yeah, I think until Steam screws up or goes public or something, and gives people a reason to switch, there's not gonna be a ton of people jumping ship.
rants_unnecessarily 4 points 3 months ago
Can I play my gog games on my Steam Deck?
uninvitedguest 9 points 3 months ago
path: 0 24779066 24781846 24782625, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
brucethemoose 8 points 3 months ago
Nah, they sell tons of big budget and new indie games.
But this is their biggest problem. Most don't even know they exist, and sell modern games.
ObsidianZed 2 points 3 months ago
I pick whichever is cheaper with a heavy preference towards GOG. I am also a patient gamer, so I'll watch and wait for deals so I can get it on GOG but that doesn't always happen. Also Steam bundles can skew price deals for me making it more attractive.
Fredselfish 21 points 3 months ago
Does GOG support Linux?
FauxLiving 44 points 3 months ago
More like, Linux supports GOG and they don't try to stop it.
The thing you want is the Heroic Games Launcher, you can login to your GOG/Epic/Amazon and install/launch games (using WINE/Proton) pretty much like using Steam.
It's even available as a Flatpak so you can use it on the Steam Deck.
mirshafie 8 points 3 months ago
But why do you need a launcher though? Is it to play games socially or something?
I just launch from the start menu. My issue is that there aren't enough Linux titles, but at least GOG is very good about marking Linux titles and making them searchable.
radiouser 8 points 3 months ago
So I can keep my library of games I own in one place, install it on my OS and (ideally) maintain them (patches, mods, scripts etc).
If they really wanted to be a source of competition maybe even something like the community hub of sorts where you could download the aforementioned patches or fixes for your games but primarily for centralisation of my library in app form.
mirshafie 5 points 3 months ago
Yeah, patches and updates is probably a good use case. GOG should probably just make a command line tool for Linux modeled after something like apt, with the difference that you need to log in to access your purchases. I think many users would also appreciate a curated directory of mods.
C8r9VwDUTeY3ZufQRYvq 4 points 3 months ago
Use heroic? It allows GOG login (amongst others), and does all that.
doublah 1 point 3 months ago
There's this revolutionary new technology I guess the start menu gamers haven't caught onto yet known as "cloud saves" which make it a lot easier to continue playing games on different devices and through uninstalls.
mirshafie 1 point 3 months ago
I bring my home directory with me across installs, but I never felt the need to continue on a year-old save. Across devices I can maybe see, if you have both a gaming PC and a Steam Deck, but I think that's a fraction of players and I don't think I'll join that group any time soon.
NewNewAugustEast 18 points 3 months ago
But gog makes a launcher and library tool. But not for Linux.
SatyrSack 3 points 3 months ago
That is GOG Galaxy. So, "Does GOG Galaxy support Linux?" is a different question than "Does GOG support Linux?", and the answer to that question is "no". But if you really need a local launcher software like that for some reason, there is Heroic Launcher, which definitely does support Linux. Though realistically, you don't need GOG Galaxy, Heroic Launcher, or any similar software to play the games. GOG is just a storefront to purchase DRM-free games. You can simply download those game install files using a web browser and install/run them normally.
NewNewAugustEast 4 points 3 months ago
Yeah, but if they dobt put any effort in, I consider them non supporting. They used to say things like working on it or coming soon. But they never did.
So as far as I am concerned, they dobt support Linux.
Tattorack 13 points 3 months ago
GOG does not have a Linux launcher. There were some rumblings about focusing on Linux development when there was a change of hands, but we still have to see anything coming from that.
However, GOG does host Linux builds of games where available.
codexarcanum 11 points 3 months ago
Yes and no.
GOG games run just fine on Linux, some native and some under Wine\Proton (almost entirely on the game's devs, but GOG does have their support program to get Wine working on older unsupported games).
GOG Galaxy, their launcher app, does not have a Linux version. You have to download games off their website directly or use Lutris, Heroic, or some other third party management platform to manage them. The advantage of using a game manager--aside from easier monitored game downloads, automatic updates, and community features--is that they're usually set up Wine for you as well, which can be annoying to set up and use correctly.
Aceticon 1 point 3 months ago
I did not at all like using launchers back when I gamed in Windows, but I really got around to liking Lutris now that I game in Linux - it integrates with my entire games collection (including older titles from physical media), is not trying at all to push me to buy, buy, buy and it doesn't get in my way when all I want is to start a game and have fun (i.e. no waiting for store app or game updates).
Also I figured out how to configure it to run my games sandboxed with networking disabled, so that's my default game launch config now. Can't do that at all with Steam.
Finally, it's way more flexible when it comes to force the more stubborn Windows games to run in Linux (including the funny and more extreme case of a certain game that wouldn't run in Steam no matter what I did, but the pirated version wasn't that hard to get to run fine in Lutris).
SkaveRat 11 points 3 months ago
Kind of. You can install stuff like lutris or steamdeck plugins that connect to gog and download games for you
The cover question is: do the games support Linux? And with proton, a lot of them do
testaccount789 4 points 3 months ago
What does the "Linux" filter refer to then?
https://www.gog.com/en/games/new?systems=linux
Edit: I tried with a random free game. Provided was a shell script with binary data appended to it.
testaccount789 2 points 3 months ago
Yeah, I thought that was the question. I never considered downloader/launcher, or whatever their software does.
cloudskater 3 points 3 months ago
I'd recommend Bottles over Lutris due to the latter's unfortunate use of LLMs/AI.
TheGreenWizard 4 points 3 months ago
No, but they support MAC now. I had a little reactionary chuckle reading that. I know the Apple arm chipsets have been really good, and most games from gog are not very demanding, its just funny to me that historically Mac has not been known for gaming and they get support before Linux. Shout out to the Heroic Launcher Team.
FatherPeanut 2 points 3 months ago
I just made my first purchases from GOG a few weeks ago, and did it from a Linux machine. I believe it auto-detected I'm on Linux and said "Hey, this game does not natively support Linux" right at the top of the game's page, and even said "Hey, X games in your library dont natively support Linux" when I was at the checkout. As for the ones that did, it changed to saying "This game does support Linux" on the game's store page.
Honestly, feels good to see this sorta stuff, but this is just each game on an individual basis, independent of GOG's launcher.
Edit: Thankfully, throw in a smidgen of wine or proton, and it's likely all the incompatibilities are compatible.
Maultasche 16 points 3 months ago
I'm already designing covers and checking what disc type is needed for some of my favourite games
Dookieman12 18 points 3 months ago
Optical media will eventually suffer bit rot and be useless. Save them to an old HDD, SD card, or USB drive, they'll last longer.
tigeruppercut 6 points 3 months ago
I've been wondering if my 3.25" floppies copy of Doom from the 90s still works but I haven't gotten around to buying a usb adapter drive to try them.
Maultasche 3 points 3 months ago
I already have the installers on an HDD, I just like keeping games on my shelf
John_CalebBradberton 15 points 3 months ago
Love to see it from GOG. Now if only they had a Linux launcher akin to Steam Big Picture Mode.
They would be the dream imo
auntieclokwise 10 points 3 months ago
Check out Heroic Games Launcher. Launches games from Epic, Steam, and GOG. Runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS.
CaptPretentious 2 points 3 months ago
I wouldn't hold my breath. When they release their latest launcher (2019), it still had example code from the Windows Vista days. Using extremely old libraries to manage storage I believe (or at least accessing storage). So they can't even actually develop a launcher for Windows. When I messaged then about it, they didn't care.
creamfresh 15 points 3 months ago
this won't buy anyone a yacht, though
NoForwadSlashS 7 points 3 months ago
Sounds holey
Karjalan 1 point 3 months ago
I imagine what they mean is that, in the future, GoG does what seemingly every other successful company that has "good morals" does when they get rich and famous... Renegs for more $$$
See Netflix "we'll never have ads" and using sharing accounts as a promotional tool. And Googles "do no evil". Etc.
Obviously they can't undo your ability to install what you already have, but they could prevent you doing it in the future.
starman2112 5 points 3 months ago
Literally impossible for it to age like milk. They can't remove games from your library, the way every other storefront can
ArmchairAce1944 8 points 3 months ago
Going forward any gaming purchase I make will be from GOG.
Kaligalis 6 points 3 months ago
You don't need to back up games yourself. Piracy exists. If a storefront disappears, or otherwise you lose access to a game you licensed, you can always just fish it back from the high seas. Just only buy games without DRM or which's DRM has been cracked already.
FordBeeblebrox 0 points 3 months ago
Assuming the cables feeding the interwebs into your place are still working, and a nice long download time for newer titles
DebatableRaccoon 6 points 3 months ago
At least someone's taking the easy opportunity Sony is handing out. cough Hint hint, Xbox cough
Polisheocket 5 points 3 months ago
I’m not understand. I’ve had an Xbox for many years. Have many games and have no physical discs. All games still work
deft 5 points 3 months ago
Anyone ITT saying GOG is run by Nazis because some AI or intern or something used slavic symbols on an email newsletter better not use any of the following brands:
Volkswagen, Porsche, BMW, Bayer, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, Ford, General Motors, Chanel, Fanta, Shein, Temu, Zara, H&M, Nike, Adidas, Puma, Gucci, Prada, Dior, Armani, Versace, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Louis Vuitton, L'Oréal, Estée Lauder, McDonald’s, KFC, Tyson Foods.
If you've ever bought any of these brands or even used one of their products once you're also a Nazi, you exploit humans and animals and should be blacklisted from all jobs probably even killed or something idk.
There's probably more brands. Comment them as you see fit!
/s
purplemonkeymad 4 points 3 months ago
Only 3, but I don't know some of the brands so not sure if they own other stuff I do. Probably safer to assume all brands are unless proven otherwise.
hakunawazo 6 points 3 months ago
(carribean proverb: maybe less to download if properly compressed)
michaelalf 2 points 3 months ago
Try using IDM or Jdownloader, IDM worked well for me.
CriticalMiss 1 point 3 months ago
Could be something wrong with CDNs in your area. I personally downloaded Witcher 3 offline version 2 days ago and I got the full 600mbps my ISP provides.
58008 3 points 3 months ago
Witcher 3 hard copies required activation to your GOG account before they could work. Hitman (2016) was 70% locked behind the worst DRM in human history, but they sold it on their store until they were pressured by customers not to.
And Devotion still ain't 'preserved' because the CCCP hivemind told them not to have it on their site, and they obeyed instantly.
GOG can suck all the dicks with that self-righteous bullshit.
omarfw 8 points 3 months ago
So your examples for why they're bad are something they did a decade ago and something they did because the alternative was losing their entire Chinese market.
You're scraping the barrel. GOG must be doing things right if this is all you can come up with.
yardratianSoma 1 point 2 months ago
Always confuses me how the one outlier thing always catches flack for not being PERFECT, like fuck, do you want DRM-free games or nah? What other legal sources are there????
clay_pidgin 2 points 3 months ago
I have bought many games from GOG, but I think there's a flaw in this argument.
If a publisher decides to revoke GOG's license to sell a game, wouldn't they require GOG to remove the game files from their servers? As in, wouldn't the installer break?
The offline installers aren't fully complete, are they?
book 28 points 3 months ago
They work offline. If you're on Linux you can automate the archiving with https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader
clay_pidgin 1 point 3 months ago
That looks cool; I'll try that.
clay_pidgin 1 point 3 months ago
Got it, thank you.
kilgore_trout 5 points 3 months ago
All installers from GOG.com already contain the entirety of the game's data.
clay_pidgin 1 point 3 months ago
That's excellent, I was suspicious.
Aceticon 2 points 3 months ago
You raise a good point: with all online game stores, including GOG, if you don't have the game installer in your system you risk losing it because of some licensing reasons.
So to fully protect yourself from that risk with GOG you have to download the game offline installers.
The difference in this between GOG and other stores is that:
- GOG actually has offline installers and makes it easy for you to get them (either from their web pages or, as explained by somebody else below, using software that connects to their systems and just fetches them automatically)
- GOG enforces that games sold via their store do not have DRM and cannot require networking access to install or run
For all their games GOG makes available the tools for you to protect yourself from losing games due to the store having to pull them door or going bankrupt, plus makes sure they won't stop working (at least for single player mode) at some point due to some 3rd party switching their servers off, but you still have to do your part.
The other stores don't even give you that option or protection. I mean, sometimes for some games you can make it happen (for example some game installers can be copied from the Steam cache and later used and the game run without Steam), just not reliably, not seamlessly and you're not told upfront for which ones that works, so you don't get to make an informed purchasing decision if you care about still being able to play a game a decade from now.
Unlike the others GOG give you the option and the guarantee that it works, the rest if up to you.
clay_pidgin 2 points 3 months ago
I appreciate the write up!
ltxrtquq 13 points 3 months ago
path: 0 24785423 24787068 24787681, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 2
NikkiDimes 6 points 3 months ago
What's this now?
Quokka 5 points 3 months ago
They sent out an email for a game, and included a bunch of very sus Nazi related runes in the title.
They first said they noticed how it would look and opted not to include them in the German email, showing they knew how it would be seen and still did it.
They changed their story a few times and later issued a weak apology without explaining anything or showing how they plan to ensure it doesn’t happen again or hold anyone accountable.
NikkiDimes 1 point 3 months ago
Oh boy, that's fun :(
IEatDaFeesh 1 point 3 months ago path: 0 24785423 24785990 24787107, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Imgonnatrythis 0 points 3 months ago
How do you load it on your gaming system without a drive?
GregorGizeh 1 point 3 months ago
You buy some random external drive for 20 bucks (or use a USB medium)
Dookieman12 0 points 3 months ago
How is this not also true for Steam? Unless the game itself has DRM, I can copy game files to an offline machine that doesn't have Steam installed and launch and play them normally.
Edit: Glazing GOG for this while insisting "sTeAm iS dIfFeReNt" is like buying the cereal box that says "Asbestos Free!" on it.
Ever since that Sony tweet, all these kids are, overnight, developing all these strong opinions about shit they never cared about before, based on nothing but hype, memes, and regurgitated streamer slop.
Physical media has licenses too. GOG purchases come with licenses too. Optical media rots. And Steam isn't secretly Sony (yet. They probably will be after Gabe dies).
Downvote me all you want, it doesn't change the truth and reveals much more about you than me.
bluelander 11 points 3 months ago
"Unless the game itselfhas DRM" is the key phrase. Steam itself is a form of DRM if you must install it and login to install and/or run a game.
DRM-free Steam games are the exception, not the rule, unfortunately.
Dookieman12 -11 points 3 months ago
If the game itself has DRM, then it has DRM on GOG too.
Steam itself is a form of DRM if you must install it and login to install and/or run a game.
Did you read what I wrote?
industrialdeerfluff 17 points 3 months ago
GOG is drm free and provides offline installers for the games, updates, and dlcs. Even games with drm on steam.
You don't even need to install their client to download the installers or extras.
Dookieman12 -7 points 3 months ago
If a game has DRM on one platform, but not another, that's because the publisher required it. That can be for any number of reasons that don't have anything to do with the platform.
I guess what I'm asking is, what's the benefit to having the installer instead of the game files?
You have to be online to download the installer. The end result is being able to play normally, offline, from portable storage if you choose. Besides a few gigabytes, it seems like a distinction without a difference.
bluelander 0 points 3 months ago
Yes.
Einhornyordle -1 points 3 months ago
I'm amazed that noone here is complaining about the fact that the offline installer for the product you paid for contains ads. Yes, offline ads that do not track you and only for other games on their plattform, but still ads. Not the worst thing in the world, I know, but still annoying.
CriticalMiss 1 point 3 months ago
Steam has a splash screen with ads whenever you open the launcher, I don’t have a console but I assume Xbox/PS/NSW2 also have some sort of advertisements. If the ads bother you that much, you can use innoextract instead of running their installer.
Einhornyordle 1 point 3 months ago
If you are talking about the smaller, seperate news window, you can disable that in the settings. My switch (1) also has a news feed but you can decide for yourself which news channel you want to subscribe too, or none at all. For GOG, there is no ad free version of the installer, you'd have to use third party tools or maybe powershell/cmd (I never tried the latter).
Mwa -3 points 3 months ago
I still don't like their AI stance.
- can't you just copy the game files to another engine, Only Buy non steam DRM games or copy some DLLS that makes the game playable on Steam(not sure if this is fine to do) ?
Logical 1 point 3 months ago
Use AI for what purpose, to what extent, and with which mindset? I think you'll be hard pressed to find dev organizations today that don't at all use AI tools to some degree. There's a difference between pushing vibecoded slop that no one understands (including the developer that prompted it), and using LLMs as productivity tools in a responsible way, with sufficient oversight.
Angular -1 points 3 months ago
path: 0 24788966 24789000 24789017, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 13
omarfw 18 points 3 months ago
ngl if this is the only proof there is of them being nazis then I don't believe they're nazis. If they were, there would be more evidence beyond an email subject and I doubt a nazi organization would put these symbols in a random email anyway.
This is just fodder for people who like to performatively accuse everyone of being a nazi for their dopamine fix while knowing zero about how actual nazi organizations function or behave.
robear 8 points 3 months ago
I never actually saw the mail before. I read the GOG apology and assumed they used runes that looked a bit too similar, but looking at the screenshot they full on used the Siegrune at least.
Rereading the apology, they might not be Nazi's but they're definitely not sorry enough to give a proper apology for using Nazi imagery. That's not a good look either.
drosophila 2 points 3 months ago
They knew it was a nazi symbol and intentionally didn't send it to German users where it could get them into legal trouble. They said as much in their """apology""".
Sorry, but you can't say "it was an accident, I didn't know" if I catch you sneaking around trying to avoid being caught doing something.
At the very least more than one person knew what was happening, including, apparently, the person in charge of that PR message.
Given that, and the fact that no one was fired for this, it seems a lot like like they're infested with nazis to me. Hell of a lot of smoke for there not to be a fire.
Psythik 7 points 3 months ago
So basically some idiot intern stuck Nazi symbols in a mass email to see if they would get away with it. I'm sorry but I'm going to need stronger evidence than this before I believe the claim that "GOG is being run by Nazis".
doublah 4 points 3 months ago
Sounds like they should apologize for the obvious use of Nazi symbols and state they fired the intern responsible, not apologize for an "unfortunate visual association".
drosophila 2 points 3 months ago
They don't get to say "sorry it was an accident" when they specifically didn't send the message to German users (which could get them into legal trouble).
They also don't get to say "it was one Nazi intern acting on their own" when no one was fired for it.
And by the way, the "it was one rogue intern" narrative is not something they ever claimed or implied in any of their PR messages. They would look a hell of a lot better if that's what happened, but that's not the case.
starman2112 2 points 3 months ago
Is there literally even one other time in the entire history of their company that they've shown anything that suggests sympathy towards white supremacy? Hanlan's razor applies until there's at least one other use of a questionable emoji
Angular -2 points 3 months ago
path: 0 24788966 24789000 24789021, hotness: undefined, score: -2, children: 2
starman2112 1 point 3 months ago
This is what you get when you google "Slavic emoji" BTW
Oh hey look all of those emoji from the email are on there
pcgaming
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Just a quick reminder that discs that you burn yourself at home do degrade pretty quickly, much faster than pressed discs. I personally have had burned discs that failed after approx. 6 years. It can happen even faster if you use low-quality discs. Even pressed discs can fail after 20 years if you are unlucky.
Using 2 big HDDs (2 for redundancy) full of your installers might be safer in the long run and also easier to manage and backup.
https://digital-archivist.com/...
save