GOG Announces Open Beta For New Game Distribution Platform 104
New submitter Donaithnen writes: Like many geeks, I'm against the idea of DRM in general and have championed GOG.com's DRM-free approach to selling games online. Yet like many geeks, I've also often succumbed to the temptation of Steam because of the convenience of tracking, installing, and playing my PC game purchases through the launcher (not to mention the compulsion of collecting achievements, and watching the total playtime for my favorite games (to my occasional dismay). Now, GOG has announced the open beta for GOG Galaxy, an entirely optional launcher to allow those who want (and only those who want) to have all the same features when playing GOG games.
Like multiplayer? (Score:3)
'Cause Steam integration for multiplayer is a pretty serious upgrade from the days of the good old Gamespy server search program.
Yes, according to the FAQ (Score:2)
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Re:Like multiplayer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Invitations are absolutely an awesome feature, but you know what would blow my socks off? If the GOG launcher handled all the bullshit firewall crap.
I still get games where the authors have failed to bother to document the port(s) their server uses or where they think it's awesome to have the server start up on a random port from 1024 to 65534. Usually 30 pages deep in the game forum there's a thread where you find posts like "i forwarded UDP 19228 and the server showed up on the browser for 30 seconds but nobody could connect and I couldn't get it to show up again after a restart". If, along with all the other brilliant work GOG has done to get the games working in current versions of windows, GOG's launcher popped up a window like steams cdkey window that said
I think my socks loosened a bit just thinking about it.
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That suggestion isn't about letting GoG change it...just about telling the user what they need to change. And yes, that would be a killer feature for old games.
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Actually my suggestion was to let people decide whether or not to let GOG try to change it since not all users trust apps to change the firewall, not all firewalls allow apps to change it, and so on. Maybe for maximum paranoia there could be a setting that hides the uPNP option completely so nobody accidentally checks it.
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I think uPnP is cool. Obviously, so do malware authors, but I still think it's cool — if you do gaming on windows. And that's where most of the action is... It'd probably be wise to turn it off when not using it, though. I never save firewall rules automagically, so it would be easy to fire the firewall script when terminating it and know that something sensible would happen.
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Eh? How do you propose they do that, with hundreds of games originally written in dozens of development environments, the source code for many of which probably now exists only moldering in a landfill?
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I expect it could be done with a proxy process (eg., the launcher) listening on the official GoG ports and forwarding packets to whatever ports the actu
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I expect it could be done with a proxy process (eg., the launcher) listening on the official GoG ports and forwarding packets to whatever ports the actual game wants.
It seems like the right level at which to do this would be the virtual machine level, at least for DOS games. Create a VPN between the players, and put virtual machines with only the games running in them on that VPN with no firewalling between the players on that network. It seems like this would actually reduce the security considerations. It might require a move from dosemu to qemu or similar, but that would also enable virtualization on supporting hosts which seems as though it would enhance security.
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> netstat -b -a
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Or, for those that prefer a GUI experience, Resource Monitor (can be launched directly, or from the "Performance" tab of Task Manager) has a "Network" tab that shows all processes with network activity or listening ports, and what those ports and protocols are. It's basically the same info as you get from Netstat, but in a conveniently clickable format.
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"'Cause Steam integration for multiplayer is a pretty serious upgrade from the days of the good old Gamespy server search program."
I'm sorry but Kali and other server browsers were superior and steam is worse - no dedicated servers and forced matchmaking, aka people can't host their own. No mods either for matchmaking games.
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Ok I'll bite.
You can download dedicated servers for all Source-based Valve games, like Left 4 Dead, Counterstrike & TF2, right from the interface in Steam, and customise/mod to your hearts content.
Third party developers generally don't do this (there are some that do*) but yeah, you get what you pay for - however whether it is or isn't an option has nothing to do with Steam.
* You can enable the server browser AND host dedicated servers for CoD: Modern Warfare 3 and I assume later (I stopped playing CoD
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>You can download dedicated servers for all Source-based Valve games,
We're talking AAA games in general. Valve is an outlier. You used to get dedicated servers and had level editors/mod support. Steam/drm has up and screwed that up for so many games.
Since Valve games have those features, the lack of them is obviously not a limitation inherent to Steam. They have been removed from most big budget "AAA" games because of publisher greed (why allow free mods when they compete with paid DLC ?), and AAA development focus shifting to consoles. This is a change that would have happened even if Steam did not exist. Fortunately, there are alternatives to those games (which are actually not that popular on Steam/PC anyway, for example, CoD games have less than 10
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Steam overlay is the first thing I turn off. I don't see the point of it at all.
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Games have screenshot capabilities. I don't know the last time I played a game that didn't. And modern nvidia cards paired with even vaguely modern CPUs let you use Shadowplay to record video, to boot. I haven't tried it because I'm not currently so good at any games that I think anyone would want to watch me play them, but allegedly if you have a bundle of cores you don't even notice.
Cross Play (Score:5, Informative)
Crossplay-enabled games offer online play between GOG and Steam. Because where you buy your games shouldn't prevent you from playing with friends.
Cross-play doesn't require any setup or configuration. Steam users won't need to create GOG.com accounts or install GOG Galaxy, while GOG.com users won't need to create Steam accounts. Just log in, launch your game, and start playing online!
That is the killer feature, IMHO. I was scrolling through expecting to just ignore this like I did the downloader, but that actually provides something of value above what you can do with the website.
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I was scrolling through expecting to just ignore this like I did the downloader, but that actually provides something of value above what you can do with the website.
The website also kind of sucks. My connection definitely sucks, and their website is slow to load and pretty choppy. I'd rather use an app. I don't have to complain about the site if there's an app.
GOG = Good Old Games (Originally) (Score:2)
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I'm guessing that much like KFC trying to avoid the stigma of "Fried", GOG is trying to dodge the stigma of "Old" for a big market segment out there.
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I've paid five bucks for a game I already physically own so that I don't need to dig the CD out of the garage more times than I'd like to admit, and probably a lot of old CDs and low quality CDRs don't even work anymore, it's not like I've checked them in a decade or two. Used to pirate them (surely it's ethical if I still have the box?) but that's even more of a hassle. Convenience can be worth one hell of a premium, and who cares if I could have dug up a working wrapper or working DosBox configuration s
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Yes, I've used it for that purpose. Though I tend to go for the $2.50 titles for things that tend to grind the DVD a lot while trying to install a game.
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Magog [an-ovel.com] is an unofficial search engine for the gog.com catalog.
Give it a whirl (Score:2)
While I don't have many games from GOG (I have no qualms with Steam and a huge backlog already), this could be worthwhile, especially if they beat out Origin and UPlay in the quality department. Doubly so if they can match Steam Sales. I put my name in for a beta invite and hope it goes well.
I can't find it in the announcement, but I read somewhere else that part of GOG Galaxy will be downloading the installers for games to your computer, so you can install them outside Galaxy or if the service ever termina
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I haven't received my invite yet so I can't comment on the Galaxy experience, but I can tell you sales are certainly not a problem. If you ever pay the asking price on GOG, you have no patience, they have a minimum of one sale a week. The sales are frequently every game in a series, or every game from a publisher, and I've saved as much as 85% off the normal price.
What's also nice is that if they do a sale like save 10% if you buy this game, 45% if you buy the whole series type of sale, and you already own
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Oh ho, didn't know about the whole series thing, thanks! That's nice, as I've bought base games on Steam while they were on sale and later wanted the DLC, and it was as cheap to buy the base+DLC/GoTY Edition as it was just the DLC. Always a small annoyance of mine.
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Forgot to mention that once every so often (maybe yearly?) I'll log in and have a free game in my account.
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especially if they beat out Origin and UPlay in the quality department.
My dog left something on the lawn this morning which beats Origin and UPlay in the quality department.
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I did for awhile. Then I went and bought a physical copy of a game, from a series that never had DRM or even really serious copy protection, only to find out when it showed up in the mail that it required Steam...
Since then I've gotten a few more. Usually when there's a really cheap summer sale and the price is low enough that the DRM is ok, because $3 for a game that is only "rented" and with forced upgrades seems a reasonable price.
In particular, Portal and especially Portal 2 are worth selling a pound o
Re:The appeal of GoG for me (Score:4, Funny)
There are some serious stinkers on GOG.
Daikatana, for instance.
Someone actually put forth the effort to repackage Daikatana.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
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Daikatana needed repackaging?
Seems to work fine over here, Windows 7, original install CD.
What got fucked up that it needed a repackage (besides the entire game being a nerfed piece of shit?)
Daikatana for GBC (Score:2)
The Game Boy Color version of Daikatana actually didn't suck [blogspot.com]. So perhaps what they needed to do was repackage the GBC game and wrap it up in one of those newfangled hi-res emulators that replaces each of the game's 8x8 pixel tiles with a redrawn high-res 32x32 pixel tile. (See "HiSMS".) This would blow the game up to a 640x576 window.
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Bah, you had to mention tiles and tile sizes. Now I'm looking back at this project I abandoned because I couldn't find a pixel artist to help me get tiles and avatars made (I was able to fix the engines inherent timing/movement problems,) and still kicking myself.
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There are some serious stinkers on GOG.
Daikatana, for instance.
Daikatana seems to be the "Ribbon interface" of games. It's the game everyone has learned to whine about, but in reality there is not anything terribly bad about it.
Daikatana has overly bad reputation. SiN has overly good reputation. They both are on the same line. Not best shooters on the planet, but still quite nice snacks. There are waaay worse games than those.
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Shades of the LotR movies here... (Score:4, Funny)
"The DRM passed to Gabe, who had this one chance to destroy evil forever, but the hearts of men are easily corrupted. And the power of DRM has a will of its own. It betrayed Gabe, to the death of consumer rights. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And from the year two thousand and three, consumer freedoms passed on only to GoG. Until, when chance came, DRM ensnared a new bearer. DRM came to the creators of GoG, who took it and swore it would be optional, and but as with all others it will inevitably consume them. DRM will give to GoG unnatural power over consumers. For as long as they hold such power it will poison their minds; and in the gloom of an admin's cave, it waits. Darkness creeps back into the filefolders of the world. Rumor grows of a shadow in the C:\, whispers of a nameless fear, and one day DRM will perceive: Its time has now come. "
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Rumor grows of a shadow in the C:\, "
What gamer in their right mind installs their games on their system drive.
Doubly so for their SteamApps folder. I don't want to have to re-download 100 odd GB of games when windows goes tits up.
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You realise that's how Steam started out, right?
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Not really. When Steam first started, it had their Half-Life branch of games on it. It's disingenuous to say that because Half-Life was an existing offline game, so naturally remained DRM-free even once you activated your serial number on Steam, that Steam was trying to be a DRM-free platform. Steam always was, and still is, incidentally DRM-free in many cases, where publishers don't choose to implement Valve's (or their own) DRM. There's many games you can just copy the folder out and keep playing without
This is great (Score:2)
I've been avoiding GOG for purchases simply because their downloader was/is horrible. I had a Witcher update that required me to download the entire game install all over again in multiple installer files. No proper launcher, no proper game library, just a mess.
Maybe it's time to look into GOG again.
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One insane "feature" of GOG is that you get game updates for Linux only by downloading the whole installer again, while the other two platforms get incremental patches*. I really hope that GOG Galaxy fixes that, I'm fed up with constantly redownloading Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity.
* yes, I know there are fan-made incremental patches for Linux, but this really should be a core functionality in GOG itself.
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One insane "feature" of GOG is that you get game updates for Linux only by downloading the whole installer again, while the other two platforms get incremental patches*
Do they? I've had to download complete games for both Windows and Mac for the updates. As long as they keep both, I'm happy. I'd hate to go back to the era of installing a game and then having to install all of the updates. With the speed of Internet connections now, even a 10-20GB download is not really a bottleneck for enjoyment.
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With the speed of Internet connections now, even a 10-20GB download is not really a bottleneck for enjoyment.
Speak for yourself, I have 6/1. It's okay when downloads support resume properly, but a lot of the time that fails. Even Steam used to get it wrong regularly, but they seem to have it pretty well-nailed down now. uplay, on the other hand, totally doesn't. Not sure about Origin.
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Depends, 20GB would take me 2-4 days to download... I wouldn't care after 4 days, I'd have done something else...
Geez... (Score:2)
They *still* haven't implemented compressed downloads. During the Alpha, that was understandable, but come on now.
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Troll cleanup requested in aisle 5, please.
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Did you somehow miss this part of the summary? "an entirely optional launcher"
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Re:Watch this mutate into actual DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
They can drop the 'optional' part at any time without warning.
If you care, then make sure to save the installers for posterity. If they ever do institute DRM, which I doubt will happen but hey whatever, you'll still have the DRM-free installers.
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True, GOG can't retroactively add DRM to games you already have purchased and downloaded.
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And you can always keep the original installers on an external hard drive that only gets plugged in when you want to install the game. They "flick the switch", you say "fuck off", uninstall their shite, and go back to playing the game how it was meant to played.
I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight, it's giving you comprehension problems.
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And - to be honest - I do not expect they would make that 90 degrees U-turn.
That's pretty hard to do, unless you're driving on a hypercube.
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DRM-free is one of the fundamentals that people buy on G.O.G. for.
To play devil's advocate, so was the absence of regional pricing, and yeah, when they went back on that, there was a hell of a shitstorm.
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But they could issue an update through their new updater launcher which adds DRM.
One of their core ideologies is to be DRM-free. Breaking that promise would upset a lot of customers, so it's unlikely that they are going to do it.
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You don't have to use the launcher. Even with Steam you don't need their crappy launcher (you can't use the launcher for things like Skyrim if you want to use the script extender).