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.

Heroic launcher pretty much does the same for GOG games. Sad that it needs a third-party launcher, but it works quite well.

Agreed. Someone complained Firefox moved to updates every few days or something.

They had no clue Firefox updates like all the time.

Mozilla is the best browser to ever exist and I will die on this hill.

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.

The Nazi thing is nota nitpick though. They need to address that properly instead of the “sorry we got caught” response they gave.

Check out Heroic Games Launcher. Launches games from Epic, Steam, and GOG. Runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS.

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.

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.

butt rot

🥹

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

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.

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.

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.

GOG is just a storefront. The specific titles you purchase on that storefront may or may not offer Linux files.

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

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.

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.

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.

I don't think GOG allow games like that on their platform.

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.

The Nazi rune company hangs out at the Nazi bar? I'm shocked.