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Comment by mrfinn | Hacker News Reader

GOG is the way to go. Enough with the DRM BS. Is not only about ethical costs, all that people that invested thousands creating a huge library better pray Valve doesn't get into any trouble... or they get into any trouble with Valve. Buying and in the end, not owning anything doesn't look like buying at all!.

PS. I'm not angry with Valve because they use DRM in their platform, I'm angry with Valve because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

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>I'm angry with Valve because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

Yes they do. There are plenty of DRM free games on Steam. DRM is optional on Steam.

> because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

What does this mean? You can still publish your game through other channels if you publish through steam right? I mean there are games that are on Steam and other platforms.

I think he means that you can't have the thing you get when you buy from steam be an offline installer (though actually I think some older games are just this, or you can copy the installed files around afterwards; think running Morrowind with OpenMW).

Exactly. I don't get why people keep repeating the "but not all games are DRM" mantra. Everyone with a minimal experience in PC gaming knows that without a proper installer most of the time you'll be in trouble just by doing a game folder backup and restore afterwards. Not to mention as well that the DRM free games lists aren't supported in any way by Valve itself (Information about that in the game profile? A filter in the search page?), as they are simply a community effort.

Have to say I'm not anti-Valve at all, I appreciate their commitment to the PC platform and their contribution to the free source cause. I'm just very critical about lack of proper support of DRM-free options AND allowing people to not to depend on a working account after some product is supposedly purchased. DRM is the wrong answer to the wrong question aka how to stop people from doing something that current technology makes incredibly easy to do, instead of properly thinking about the real issue, how we keep fairly paying authors.

PS. Also I think that people should be a bit more concerned about data harvesting through the launcher.

The platform that didn't/doesn't bother with a Linux client? Why should I bother?

Well, because it provides offline, DRM‐free installers for your games, often including Linux installers.

Steam does it much, much better.

GoG ostensibly cared about Linux in the beginning, but by now it's very clear that they don't.

It's their choice of course, and among all the alternatives to Steam I guess they're the best choice.

But they obviously don't want me as a customer, so I largely ignore them and don't recommend them to anyone.

In almost every single aspect, Steam is just the superior product.

So does Steam for games that want it. In the end GOG can't override publishers' wishes either.

It works completely fine in a browser though

One of the rare cases where I want a native application, something that can update and launch my games.

I thought that it was possible to have DRM-free games on Steam?

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...

It is. Allowing DRM seems to be a concession to publishers, since there is no real benefit for Valve. If anything it's a significant hindrance that is obstructing their effort to get as much Steam Deck support as possible. Windows-only DRM and anticheat are some of the worst offenders for breaking Proton compatibility.

The point is that Steam itself is DRM. Even if game itself can work standalone you can't install or update it without Steam client. This is the difference between Steam and GOG.

What is the Steam client doing that makes it a problem?

Like making me login again into Steam at random for whatever reason Valve come up with? I guess there was bug on older macOS where it asked me for password every single time I restarted Steam. Now this is fixed though. There is offline mode, but it's unreliable.

I know that some games might run without Steam, but it's not comfortable at all.

And yeah It's not a problem. It's just a difference between Steam and DRM-free platforms like GOG.

> There is offline mode, but it's unreliable.

Even when it's working, eventually it stops working and you'll be forced to connect to the internet. I learned this the hard way once. When you're already dealing with the fact that you don't have internet access, having your access to your single player offline games taken from you is just cruel!

It's like man in middle that doesn't have to be there.

I'm buying games exclusively on GoG because DRM free policy.

GoG doesn't have a DRM-free policy. DRM is allowed. Has been for quite a while.

GoG galaxy is not must like Steam.

That depends what you're trying to do.

Galaxy also has an SDK that devs can choose to require for their game; if they don't it's for lack of adoption.

Their docs do admittedly ask devs to make integration optional for the user, but their definition of optional includes "no multiplayer" as well.

> but their definition of optional includes "no multiplayer" as well.

I don't think this is ideal by any means, but I do think it's a reasonable compromise.

For better or worse, many/most modern multiplayer games are architected to use a centralized, company-run software. The server software is not built to be deployed by end-users, and getting it to that state would involve very significant engineering effort. It's just not a reasonable ask.

Steam also allows DRM free games, it's probably just not very popular with game developers.

One advantage of GoG is that they seem to actually care that old games on their store are actually working on new Windows versions, while on Steam it's more or less a gamble (at least you can return broken games though).

In some ways I think we've reached a point where it's easier to run old Windows games on Linux via Wine/Proton, than on the latest version of Windows.

When I hear this complaint it usually refers to games that provide certain features, multiplayer, rewards like skins, etc., only through the use of an online account.

I’m not saying those things aren’t worth complaining about, but frankly, they aren’t what come to mind when I think of problematic DRM in video games. What comes to mind is the inability to install and play a game without an internet connection. GOG still provides real installers, and remains the most prominent platform committed to it.

To get a sense of what people are referring to as DRM on GOG, I reference this thread: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singlep...

You don't think multiplayer counts as playing the game?

I think having an online account for multiplayer is a categorically different kind of requirement than having an online account for single player.

Until there’s a storefront that only sells games that include multiplayer servers that can be self‐hosted on your LAN, I think GOG’s explicit policy of no‐DRM installers is worth praising.

They didn't have a problem releasing Northgard without the ability to play single-player offline.

There was enough complaining about that that it got fixed, I believe, but that's how they released it.

Yes, that was mentioned in the thread I linked. According to the thread, both GOG and the game developer claimed it was a bug, and fixed it. This does not convince me of your statement that GOG has de facto eliminated its no‐DRM policy. A more plausible explanation is that GOG, not rolling in money like Steam, is subject to a certain amount of jank including high‐impact bugs that take longer than they should to get fixed. And GOG’s jankiness is a common complaint throughout these HN comments. I don’t think anyone contests that Valve provides a generally slick experience in comparison to its competitors.

> Until there’s a storefront that only sells games that include multiplayer servers that can be self‐hosted on your LAN

IIRC from a discussion in their official Discord (by one of the people who work there) that is basically Zoom Platform[0]'s approach - if a game has a multiplayer component it has to allow you to run your own server.

[0] https://www.zoom-platform.com/

> GOG still provides real installers, and remains the most prominent platform committed to it.

Is steam's backup/restore game files option much different in practice?

My understanding is those are DRMed: you can’t play a restored game without connecting online to your Steam account at least once.

It provides a storefront, authentication, distribution and an updater, at least. That is valuable to a lot of games.

That is service. Not DRM.

I think Steam requires that the Steam client connect to Steamservers at least once every two weeks, to validate your licenses.

How is it different than having to use GOG's website to install a purchase you made or download an updated version?

Developers on Steam can ship their own update mechanism separate from Steam if they want to.

I feel like people don't actually know the policies of Steam and how it mostly just leaves it up to the developer, for better or worse.

If Steam decided to block developers from being able to do DRM, it wouldn't mean all the games would go DRM free, it'd mean the games wouldn't go on Steam, like they don't go on GOG - they'd go to their own launchers.

As much as people like to believe Steam has a monopoly, publishers have been able to bring out their own launchers reasonably successfully. People will go to their launchers if that's the only way to get anticipated games. Some of the most successful games started and remained outside of Steam.

The industry would look significantly different if Steam had an actual monopoly.

>How is it different than having to use GOG's website to install a purchase you made or download an updated version?

You buy game on GOG, dowload the installers, move it to a external HDD and you can install that game forever. This is the only thing that is actually DRM free.

Needless to say, you can't to that with ANY other store (be it Steam, Epic etc). All of them requires you to install their crap to access your bought games and they don't give you full offline installers.

> Needless to say, you can't to that with ANY other store (be it Steam, Epic etc). All of them requires you to install their crap to access your bought games and they don't give you full offline installers.

You don't get an installer but many games are DRM-free on Steam so you can just zip up the directory under steamapps/common and you're good to go. I have ~180 games on my storage HDD from Steam.

I always try to have an offline copy of every game i buy (and i try to buy them from "proper" DRM-free stores than Steam where possible) and while it'd be nice if there was an offline installer, it isn't really much of an issue in practice. The biggest issue with Steam is that you don't know if a game is DRM-free or not before buying it and trying to figure out yourself (which is why i prefer other stores like Zoom Platform and GOG in the first place).

This is just false. As sibling comment mentioned Valve doesn't do third party exclusivity, but also the Steam DRM is completely optional and there are many games for which Steam just acts as a downloader and automatic update system. You can just copy these games' folder to another PC and run them without issue.

GOG used to be my first choice for buying games, but I stopped making purchases from them after they delisted a Taiwanese game dev for making a joke about Xi Jinping: https://www.pcgamer.com/devotion-returns-almost-two-years-af...

This seems like an extreme niche. What is the benefit of offline installers? Doomsday prepping? Because it’s certainly not more convenient than what Steam does, and Steam doesn’t require an internet connection to play games.

Steam is dropping support for Windows 7 and 8. If you don't switch OS, you'll lose the ability to install (and for most games with DRM, to play) the games you already purchased.

Windows 7 reached EOL three years ago. Do you expect them to support a dead OS forever?

I expect them to let me access the things I purchased. Not a problem with offline installers from GoG.

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