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Drop OSS - an open-source, self-hosted alternative to platforms like Steam and Epic. (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
68 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49721314

I just discovered this. Has anyone tried it?

Basically, you install it on your home server and use it to stash your DRM-free games, and then install the client on your PC, Steam Deck, whatever... log in to your server and just use it like your own, selfhosted Steam app. Any PC gamer already running Jellyfin, RomM, or other selfhosted entertainment-related server might be interested in trying it, if you do... please share your experience! I'll try it myself when I have time and post back here. If you know of any other alternatives, please share!

  • Self-hosted & open-source. Run Drop entirely on your own hardware. Your library, your data, your rules — all under the AGPLv3.

  • Rich metadata editing. Customise names, descriptions, and icons with full Markdown and image support.

  • Automatic imports. Pull cover art and game details straight from IGDB, GiantBomb, and PCGamingWiki.

  • A built-in store. Let users browse, filter, and collect games through a fully featured store.

  • Flexible authentication. Use simple accounts or hook into your existing SSO.

  • Native desktop client. Download, install, and play your whole library through a cross-platform desktop client.

Available for Windows, Mac & Linux (their web page lists a deb, their github repo publishes packages for all major distros and also an Appimage)

Website:
https://droposs.org/

Docs:
https://droposs.org/docs/admin/quickstart/

all 68 comments

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[–] 25 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (13 children)

Oh neat!

Ive always had a inling in my mind if valve wanted to be assholes it would suck in many ways. Projects like this may help in the long run.

Im just glad valve has proven to have integrity and actively helps open source.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (12 children)

    Its a matter of when. Theres no way they'll keep enshittification at bay into 2030. Start planning now.

    Steam subscription, limits of downloads/reinstalls on games, the end of family sharing, will be the norm.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Citation needed.

    Steam is a privately owned corporation that has no need to justify their extraction of maximum profits to shareholders. There's no reason to expect them to risk destroying their incredibly profitable business to chase short-term profits.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    When Gabe dies.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    Yupp. It will be a power vacuum almost like how dictators take over countries every single facet of it will change. It is inevitable.

    Sure is bitchin for now though while he is alive. Buy I like this project a LOT I'm going to use it

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    This is such an ignorant statement.

    It's his company, and I would assume he instills his views to those, who would replace him, instead of leaving the company up for grabs.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Whyzzat? Do you have some foreknowledge that others dont? Why 2030 specifically?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Just a guess. I can't imagine steam will continue being profitable when data storage costs $300 per terabyte, youre not gonna get free unlimited game download data for much longer. Also taking into account the inevitable great depression thats on the way, a game company is going to struggle and do anything they can for profit.

    Steam is fine. Theyre still a capitalistic corporation that must grow to infinity and feed off consumption. Best to be prepared for the shitshow.

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    • [–] 21 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Looks like their desktop app is archived on github

    https://github.com/Drop-OSS/drop-app

    Wonder what happened

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Apparently they are rewriting it in another repo in the same org.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Is it a private repo? I couldn't see any other public repos about a desktop app that are active (there's a kotlin one, also archived)

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    • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Too many of my games collection are from Steam, so I don't think I can get much use out of this, if I'm understanding correctly. If I wanted to prep for the day Valve enshittifies, would I have to pirate the copies of games I own?

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

    You might have some DRM free games in your Steam library, maybe you could backup those folders.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Oh, I'm such a dummy. I didn't know Steam games could be DRM-free. Thank you!

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  • [–] [S] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It would be awesome if someone wrote a Drop plugin to import DRM free games from a steam account.

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    • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (17 children)

    This is cool as shit.

    What’s it for though? Lan parties where guests are instructed NOT to bring games?

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  • [–] [S] 23 points 3 months ago (15 children)

    Think Plex / Jellyfin, but for games. Stash them on an old PC with lots of long term storage space. Install them whenever you want on your gaming rig, uninstall when you're done. Your game is still safe on your server, ready to re-install in the future.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    Are people reinstalling the same game often enough to want something like this? Maybe I am just not the target audience, but this looks like a solution in search of a problem. I imagine I wouldn't find much benefit to this over just searching in my NAS file system for the relevant install files when I need them.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago (10 children)

    Yeah, some people do that too also for movies and music. Selfhosting an entertainment server is not for everyone.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (9 children)

    I run a Jellyfin server and get a lot of use out of it because I recognize the benefits that offers compared to just browsing the filesystem and playing files manually. Media streaming, tracking watched/unwatched state, etc. But I just cannot tell what benefits this offers for video games. If it was a game streaming server (like Steam Link, Moonlight, etc.), I would get it. But I just don't think I am the target audience for this tool. More power to you, for anyone who finds this useful.

    EDIT: I can see this being useful for a game you have to update. I only play completed games, so that is not something that I am used to doing often. But for someone who plays games like Fortnite, Stardew Valley, etc., and has to install updates often, I could find a program like this to handle tracking updates useful.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago* (8 children)

    I want to understand, if Steam didn't have streaming, you would prefer to not use it? Are there any other features you like?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (7 children)

    I think what SatyrSack meant is that this offers no additional benefit to just storing the game files on a NAS. It makes more sense to have a dedicated server for streaming as you would then be able to enjoy the same copy everywhere, but with games you would have to download it again anyway so why don't you cut the middleman and download directly from your NAS/storage system or even the original source.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (6 children)

    The latency not to mention the speed of NAS would be limited compared to local NVMe. So if you install a game on NAS, it may take a while to load. Of course it also depends on the specific games, but generally it is not a good idea to install heavy programs on a network unless that program is specifically made for network use (think, collabora)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

    They are saying there's option 1 and 2. 1 is, you copy the files to your local drive from the NAS via CLI/your file manager. Option 2 is you run this and download them via a Browser or Desktop Client. They are saying they don't see what utility Option 2 provides, and that it might be more sensible if the software where to also provide Game Streaming (game runs on server, a video stream is provided to the client, inputs are are streamed back to the server).

    This make it more clear?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    I feel like I'm missing something still. From my understanding just copying the file doesn't always work (unless it is an installer). So option 1 would still need more work? That's why my assumption goes to running the game directly off of the NAS

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    From my experience, you usually have a single executable inside the game folder. You'd of course have to point e.g. Lutris at that, but depending on how often you install/uninstall games, this isn't a huge hurdle.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Oh I know that to run it you only need a single executable. What I'm talking about is more like sometimes there's a registry that is needed somehow by the game (maybe a form of DRM since the installer asks for keys back then without internet). But then again, the last time I tried doing that is when copying data over CD/DVD was still a thing. I have no idea how modern games actually handle the registry now or if they are needed at all because I use steam and if anything is wrong with the game after reinstalling windows, they do some magic in the background to fix it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (1 child)

    As I said, as long as it's drm free, you usually just have the executable that just runs. Even under Windows, though I haven't run a game under Windows in years. The reference to Lutris was cause I assumed most people who'd consider self-hosting this would likely be running Linux anyway.

    And this project is only targeting drm free games anyway.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    I re-read the post and somehow missed the DRM free part so that is on me. Thanks, yeah I can see why someone would be confused by this. Still I think it has merit because of the possible metadata in addition to the game itself

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    • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    So how do updates work? If I download an Offline Installer, then the original developers/publishers post an Update to the game will this grab that update for me automatically or do I have to redownload a new version of the Offline Installer and stash it on the box running this?

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I guess it depends. Where does the update come from? GOG? Then there's a CLI tool that automates that.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah GOG is where I get my current offline installers from. Could you point me in the direction of the CLI tool that automates updates?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    You are literally the distributor of the games on Drop. You add the game installer to the Drop backend and from the client you and friends can run the installer. If there’s ever an update, you will have to replace the original game installer files with the new ones and then you and your friends can update the game on the Drop client.

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    • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    The server side doesn't seem to have a container-free install. I hope it works well for you but for me and mine it ceases to exist.

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    • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    This looks awesome, not gonna lie. I thought to check the Unraid app store and found the Drop OSS docker there! It dropped yesterday! (Pun intended)

    Sweet!

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    That's amazing, I didn't know about it until today, that's why I made the post. I didn't know it was already popular enough to pop up in the Unraid app store. Great news! The more popular it gets, better the chances it gets supported long term.

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    • [–] 6 points 3 months ago*

    Seems like a really cool project! I might start running this at home to make it easier to keep track of my humble bundle collection, open source games, and emulators. Looks like a good way to get friends set up those games for multiplayer as well.

    Looks like there's plans to implement cloud saves as well, that would be really cool for syncing emulator saves across my systems. I think retrodeck was doing something similar but there's so much local configuration.

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    [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    This greatly interest me. I may check this out.

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    [–] 3 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    This looks awesome, although i might be occupied converting my existing storage into something that can work with this. installing 20k repacks to pack them into archives again might take a while ... fuck.

    My watercooler for my CPU comes in about 2 weeks - after moving my PC into it's nice new case i'm gonna start migrating lol

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Are you sure you need to unpack them? That part of the isn't very clear to me.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I'm not sure either. I saw someone including their Gog installers on github, which would mean i don't have to do all of this. Let's see, i'm gonna get myself the docker container in the next days and will add a comment regarding progress.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Thank you, if you find anything noteworthy please create an issue so they update their docs.

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    • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Does it have cloud saves ?

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