I thought this way in the beginning, but the way gog never even built a Linux client while valve literally made Linux a viable gaming platform from proton to steam deck, I buy all my games from steam now.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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@nieceandtows Yeah, I love GOG's DRM-free ethos and I'd love to support them, but they sure don't seem interested in supporting me.
I'd like for Steam to have good competition because monoculture is bad and competition is good for everybody. But if you're a Linux gamer, nobody else compares to Valve.
Itch.io is really the only other game store that shows anything like Valve's level of support for Linux, and it's great but it's not a Steam competitor.
True. Linux client is a must for me. Their Windows launcher is kinda crap too. It has so much focus on trying to get all your games in one launcher but it's not great as a launcher for any platform..
So, do you use Lutris instead?
I use Windows on Desktop and I use Steam Deck OS on my Steam Deck. On my Deck I usually just don't play GOG games lol
From what I've heard, the Steam version also lacks DRM. Once you've downloaded it you can close Steam and just launch the game with the exe. Obviously GOG or Steam is still handy for updates.
Updates are the main reason I stick with Steam. If GOG Galaxy worked on Linux, I'd probably buy a lot more from them.
But for something like this that's likely to get more frequent updates, I'll stick to Steam.
I link my GoG account to Heroic Launcher. It works just fine, updates included, store front included. I'm on Nobara Linux.
Yes, I have Heroic installed as well on my desktop and Steam Deck, but that's third party support, not first class support. First class support to me means they're investing in my platform, which is important to me.
So most of my purchases go to Steam, because Steam supports Linux as a first class platform. Because if this, they make an effort to get games supported on Linux (either through Proton or natively), and that's really valuable to me.
I'm not expecting Steam-level of support, but I do expect a little more than just making binaries available through the web interface. I'll occasionally buy from GOG, but until they decide to actually support Linux, I'll keep buying most of my games from Steam.
That's understandable. I think my take on Galaxy has always been that it's just a utility for managing your library, because they don't do DRM on any games they sell, they don't need to have a client like Steam does. That's a big reason why I don't have an issue with their client Linux support as their client isn't a requirement to use your library of games. I will also say that Heroic runs better than the Steam client for me. I get a lot of weird flickering and stuff with the Steam launcher. Additionally it downloads some games insanely slowly. I have tried different servers and a number of the fixes I've found online to no avail. I bought BG3 on Steam and ended up waiting overnight for it to download. Heroic doesn't have that issue at all and can take advantage of my connection speed. Obviously those are issues that don't affect everyone though.
Huh weird, I haven't had an issue with Steam for a long time, and that's on both NVIDIA and AMD. Granted, this is on a desktop, not a laptop, so if there's any kind of issues switching with the iGP, I'm not going to see it. I've also never had an issue with download speed, but my Internet connection isn't super fast anyway (just 50 down).
My issue is that Heroic doesn't seem to fix controller issues, so games are hit and miss on my Steam Deck. It works fine on desktop though.
I really wish I could figure out the download issue. My connection:
Steam:
Heroic:
I have tried a few solutions I've seen in various Steam forum posts, and asked for advice on the Discord for Nobara. I'm a Linux newbie though and I don't have much knowledge to sort stuff like this out. I have also been having the disappearing cursor issue in some Steam games. Again, can't track down a solution that works, though I've tried a few things. My overall experience with Linux has been great, and I almost never boot Windows anymore, but there are some issues for sure.
Yeah, that's weird. Maybe a bad mirror?
Have you tried Limiting download speed in steam settings?. I followed a tip somewhere and set it to 10000000 (10gb/s) and it worked for me (I was having similar speed issues).
Could they not just support the Heroic Game Launcher and call it official? That's what I'd do. By support I mean mostly financial.
Sure! But by support I mean:
- officially link to it and offer some level of customer support
- at least financially contribute to it, and perhaps provide dev resources as well
- provide Heroic developers access to pre-release versions of any new API they introduce so support could theoretically land day 1
But not being hostile toward it is not enough for me to call it "support," so I'm going to feel like a second-class citizen until GOG does something official.
@sugar_in_your_tea @Holzkohlen heroic doesn’t have a forum or an accessible place to get support. It’s AI and then discord or GitHub. Contact needs to be easier. Gog feels like I’m buying from a emulator site with no human contact for help
@sugar_in_your_tea @Holzkohlen so DRM free on steam is legit as it is on gog? If so, then I I just buy it on steam and not need a launcher or have any worries about not owning the purchase.
YMMV of course, but I've played several Steam games without Steam running at all when my kids were playing on my account on another computer. I just killed the Steam process and ran the games from the commandline, and it worked fine.
These were Linux native games, so I'm not exactly sure on the best method to play Windows games without Steam (I guess lutris like anything else, but I haven't needed to).
@sugar_in_your_tea @Privatepower42 I've got some tar.xz compressed archives with win32 or win64 Steam games and Proton on my NAS. Sometimes one needs to replace the steam_api.dll or steam_api64.dll with a fake dll if the game relies upon it but it works most of the time. I'm downloading them with steamcmd.
That’s good to know, my sons were interested in it, now we can all have a good gaming session together before they decide if they want to buy it. Sadly there is no PS5 cross play (although saves can be linked) so I am going to have to buy the PS5 version to play with friends. Still I don’t mind giving Larian some more money as the game is just fantastic, relatively bug free and even performs pretty well on the steam deck.
You should be able to add it to your steam library as a non-steam game and then in game options in Steam set up using Proton as long as you have Proton enabled for all games, not just verified games.
I recommend Heroic Games Launcher for GOG games, it's much nicer to use, IMO.
You can log into GOG through Lutris too, and install and launch games through that.
I thought Heroic was an alternative launcher for Epic Games, I guess I didn't consider that it would work for GOG games as well.
Heroic supports Epic, GoG, and now Amazon games. Supports installs, updates, file validation, and uninstalls perfectly. I think for Epic it supports cloud saves as well, but I don't use that feature and have heard horror stories from early adopters of it.
They added support for gog platform for a while now.
Plays fine for me on Arch using the wine-ge-custom AUR package on a WINEPREFIX set up with winetricks dxvk. I had a little bit more success with the _dx11 version for some odd reason.
BG3ModManager is... probably don't try it just yet.
I bought BG3 on Steam and Divinity Original Sin 2 (previous Larian game) on GOG, running it through Lutris. They both have the same quirks, but work perfectly on Linux (Arch, GE-Proton, RTX 2060 Super with proprietary driver).
The one serious issue I've seen is flickering when the game window is not focused. Using Gamescope fixed it completely, it's a simple toggle in Lutris and a wrapper in Heroic.
I have it. Installed/updated using Heroic. Works perfectly. I use the latest Proton-GE with it, and run the Vulkan backend (seems to have fewer bugs for me on AMD GPU than the DX11 version).
Running the latest Mint with the 6.1 OEM kernel and kisak-mesa drivers.
My wife has it installed with Galaxy on Windows. DRM-free means we can play co-op over LAN instead of being stuck with split-screen.
The steam version is also DRM free IIRC.
Why does that make you able to play co-op over LAN?
Because she has my copy of the game installed on her PC too, so with one copy we're able to play together on two different computers instead of sharing a screen.
The lack of DRM means GoG doesn't care about whether I'm online on more than one PC. Steam does, meaning one of us would need to be in offline mode. In games that implement the Steam DRM this would mean that the person in offline mode wouldn't be able to play multiplayer.
Apparently that isn't the case with this game but I didn't realize that.
The steam version is also DRM free IIRC.
steam IS drm...
No, Steam is a store and a content delivery mechanism. It has the option to add DRM, which developers may choose to do, but don't have to. There are games which can be purchased on Steam and which can be launched without the Steam client, just like any normal program.
@schizosfera @endDRM could use your thoughts on this.
Are you being sarcastic or are you asking for assistance? Please clarify.
I was able to run it with Lutris from GOG, Arch
Great experience with lutris.
So I installed Galaxy and run it through lutris...next I installed bg3 through Galaxy.
Now I open lutris, open Galaxy through it, launch the larian launcher and launch the game 😅
It seems an extra step, but running Galaxy through lutris works with the cloud saving and multiplayer flawlessly.
Playing without problems around 200hours now with Vulkan and dx11
Why do you do it this way instead of using the heroic launcher?
@Gnorv I don't have any problem with GoG really, it works fine. Even better than Steam, as I could see from my brother who bought it on steam