this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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I can't find any GOG stats. Doesn't seem like they offer any numbers. I bought the game on Steam, GOG and also the collectors edition, and gave that steam key away. I'm currently only playing on Steam, but I do want to get BG3 up and running on GOG as I do prefer that platform.
How would GOG know? The attraction of the platform is they hand you the game file and are done with you, no DRM, no tracking, no nothing.
Well, GOG certainly has sales numbers at least. And Larian certainly knows how many people are playing the game. Just look at the stats they published last Friday.
Presumably that’s the whole point of the absolutely necessary launcher.
"--skip-launcher" is your friend. Supposedly improves in game performance as well. https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-disable-launcher/
Oh believe me, it was the first thing I looked up after being greeted with the launcher. But good to spread the message, the game is great but god the spam of launchers all over gaming is awful.
Amen. Not sure if the launcher has anything to do with the stats they collect, though. Would be nice to know. But Larian is one of a very few companies I don't mind hoovering up my data.
Does that launch it in vulkan though? Or just skip to dx11
I think that depends on what executable you are calling. The default shortcut installed with Steam is to some online steam BS. I switched to using a shortcut directly to "bg3_dx11.exe" but I assume you could do the same with "bg3.exe", which I assume is Vulcan. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
EDIT: Reddit says I'm right:
Here's how to do it directly in Steam, too, if you want: https://eip.gg/bg3/guides/how-to-skip-the-launcher/
EDIT 2: @Hairyblue commented here: "Thankfully, you can use the launch command --skip-launcher to boot straight into the DX11 version of the game, or use --skip-launcher --vulkan to boot straight into Vulkan."
In addition to this the launcher appears to be working properly now, so if you first launch it with the launcher and choose vulkan, then next launch do it with --skip-launcher, it will keep launching the vulkan version. At least it does for me on proton. That wasn't working when the game first released, but is now.
When I tried just launching the executable directly, it didn't recognize my save games. So that's something to keep in mind for anyone that changes the launch options to the exe file directly.
I assume a lot of people that use gog also use gog galaxy. It's nice to know you actually have the game files drm free, but I still prefer having the features in gog galaxy like automatic updates for example.
Good luck with that. I bought it on gog, had to jump through hoops to have it install, only to have the download stall again the next day on a patch. They have to get their act together, I just wanted to play so got a refund and bought it on steam where it downloaded, installed and patched without a hitch...
That makes me sad. But I guess there was a reason I chose to install via Steam on launch day instead of GOG. But as I said, I do prefer the platform. I played all of early access on GOG without a hitch.
Curiosity, why do you prefer GOG? I haven't used it much.
I think many like the DRM free games. I have gotten a few very old games (Ultima series, Neverwinter) from them. I like to use Steam over GOG because of the Big Picture Mode and Proton. I even added GOG Neverwinter to my non-Steam games to be able to access it with Big Picture Mode.
It's just plainly more consumer friendly, a decidedly solid lack of DRM is one reason. Steam is more convenient, for sure, and can be a smoother experience (as OP has indicated). How bad do you want to OWN your games?
https://levelskip.com/consoles/I-prefer-GOG