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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.
That's why I print out all my downloaded games
I hope you also laminate them for longevity.
I laminate my punch cards for longevity. Wouldn't want them breaking down.
I prefer to cut archival cards from 0.7mm 316 stainless steel sheet 👍
Clay tablets have been demonstrated to last much longer than paper or metal
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!
You should really move to microfilm. It saves so much space!
It just doesn't smell the same
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.
And reminder that solid state drives (including thumb drives) can lose data after a couple years if they are not plugged in from time to time
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.
Agreed. Someone complained Firefox moved to updates every few days or something.
They had no clue Firefox updates like all the time.
GOG trying to drum up positive pr after that Nazi symbol newsletter.
Yeah, that was a major WTF moment
Didn't they instantly flag that? It was for some slavic game thing and all of those symbols are rooted in cultures long gone that nazis appropriated.
The symbol alone was OK, but they doubled it to read SS, and they didn’t send it to Germany; which means it was 100% intentional and not just a little oopsie.
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.
Pull out disc with a game from 10 years ago
Installs just fine and launches
"Connecting to online services..."
"Timeout: Retry? Quit?"
Huh?
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 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. 🤣
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)
I should get more things on gog.
Steam just makes things work on linux without issue so thats why we still get steam games.
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.
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.
Until gog finally gets a good first(!) party linux client buying games there is not really worth it yet.
I'm in the opposite team ! I always buy in gog store first then steam. But yeah, steam is here.
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
They don’t have regional pricing, so games there are typically a lot more expensive.
Does GOG support Linux?
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.
4 replies and all of them "yes but actually no".
I've been waiting for GOG Galaxy to be Linux compatible for over a decade. When they start supporting my OS I'll start supporting their store.
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.
GOG is just a storefront. The specific titles you purchase on that storefront may or may not offer Linux files.
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.
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
I'm already designing covers and checking what disc type is needed for some of my favourite games
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.
this won't buy anyone a yacht, though
What if I build my own yacht out of the CDs I burned my GOG installers to?
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