They are dangerously close to that though and had to scrap Hitman sales, due to backlash. Always online bullshit progress system remained intact.

I have over 540 games on Steam, almost 540 on GOG, and I'm guessing another half of either amount as boxed copies. And of those boxed copies, I have burned copies of those for use in DOS/9X/NT/2000 machines, as I don't want to damage the discs. XP and later, I use the GOG or steam version where applicable. I even have boxed copies (as long as they came with a disc inside the package) of newer games like Devil May Cry V, Resident Evil 2, etc., which are all still sealed. I was disappointed there wasn't a PC disc version of Resident Evil 3 Remake to complete the collection, but I have the artwork to make a disc and box myself, though.

I've converted all but a handful of Steam games for offline use, which I don't have covered by GOG or disc. It was a great day when I was able to get Tomb Raider (2013, Tomb Raider Legend/Underworld/Anniversary) on GOG. I always look forward to not having to rip out discs, or use NoCD patches, or use the offline steam versions.

I still buy physical copies of games because (in addition to looking cool on the shelf) I have several old computers with flaky CD-ROM drives that don't play well with CD-Rs. (Yes, I could always crack them, but prefer it this way.)

ratfink wrote on 2022-04-18, 20:05:

I had a steam account but never bought anything, always-online pisses me off

Steam can be used in offline mode. I once lost my internet for 3 weeks straight and was able to keep playing all the Steam games I had downloaded and installed (single player only obviously).

Steam apparently has a contingency plan for keeping access to the games you've bought. Should Valve go under.

I remember reading that i believe.

dr_st wrote on 2022-04-18, 21:15:

They also sometimes have giveaways. At one point they offered about 50 games for free at the same time. Maybe you racked those up as well?

GOG did this? I remember they gave FTP games like this but not the paid ones.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-04-19, 05:32:

dr_st wrote on 2022-04-18, 21:15:

They also sometimes have giveaways. At one point they offered about 50 games for free at the same time. Maybe you racked those up as well?

GOG did this? I remember they gave FTP games like this but not the paid ones.

Yeah, they did. Maybe more than once? Anyway GoG often has free giveaways. They had 2 in the past 2 weeks I think. I think I got over half my GoG games for free.

Just checked, they have (unless I miscounted) 218 free games/demos. So I added a few more, but not the whole lot (yet) because that would be silly.

I'll do that later.

FioGermi wrote:

Steam apparently has a contingency plan for keeping access to the games you've bought. Should Valve go under.

That's coming from a company which is actively trying to fool customers that they don't own anything on account and just "rent" it. The saving grace here is that their DRM is not intrusive and could be cracked on client level, should Steam go under. But Valve is just too big to fail now.

Between EPIC, Gog and Steam I have way more games than I will ever play. And I have a large boxed collection of different games too, and loose CDs. Luckily I have ranked my top ten games from every year from 80s through to 2021 so I have limited myself to what I consider the best games from every year (still hundreds but better than thousands).

There was a time when GOG would have really deep discounts in seasonal sales, some flash sales would go as low as 50c or thereabouts for DOS games. Back then I collected about 200+ games, so it has become a sizeable collection. These days though, the prices don't really move me that much. Most Sierra/Lucas games don't go lower than $2.5 or so, for example. I mean, that's not a bad deal, but I own most of them physically so I can't bring myself to double dip for those when Steam has very, very favorable local pricing for all of its library and I can buy fantastic contemporary games there for about the same price.. I also have 250+ games on Steam, but very few of them are <1998 titles.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-04-19, 09:51:

FioGermi wrote:

Steam apparently has a contingency plan for keeping access to the games you've bought. Should Valve go under.

That's coming from a company which is actively trying to fool customers that they don't own anything on account and just "rent" it. The saving grace here is that their DRM is not intrusive and could be cracked on client level, should Steam go under. But Valve is just too big to fail now.

I usually never buy games on full price. I don't get the things I would get when buying on disc, and also the Steam DRM bugging out and always wanting online connection (I had to turn the Internet many times to set Go Offline). For instance, I purchased the Witcher 3 and expansions at a sale of around $2.79.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-04-15, 13:12:

My take on GOG games: […]
Show full quote

My take on GOG games:

PROs:

• DRM free, which is especially nice for games which originally shipped with rootkit crap like StarForce
• Standalone offline installers. These make it very easy to transfer games to an offline WinXP retro rig
• DOS GOG games can be installed on a modern system (via included DOSBox) and then copied over to a real DOS rig with relative ease
• Games are fully up to date, so there's no need to hunt for 20+ year old patches all over the internet
• Manuals, reference cards, cloth maps (scanned), developer diaries, soundtracks and other goodies are included with many games
• Multiple language support, including localized audio. This makes me very happy since I'm able to play German made games such as the Gothic series with the original, German voices. These sound better to me than the English dubbed ones
• Active community forums where members help each other and sometimes also offer technical solutions and workarounds for problematic games

CONs:

• The GOG version of some games integrate fan-made patches and tweaks of debatable quality by default. There is no way to play the clean, stock version of such games. Examples: Master of Orion 2, Thief 1&2, VTM: Bloodlines
• A few GOG games have certain features removed, such as EAX3 support missing in the GOG version of Splinter Cell
• It's a bit difficult to install GOG games on a Win9x machine. Basically, you need to install a games on a modern machine, then copy over the files and hope that the missing registry entries won't be a problem
• Games which originally featured CD audio music have their music tracks converted to the OGG format. I wish they went with FLAC instead, since OGG can be lossy depending on what compression settings are used

Granted, most of my nitpicks are non-issues for people who play GOG games on modern hardware. But I do wish they would make any fan-made patches/tweaks optional instead of integrating them by default. As things are right now, I need to check the PC Gaming Wiki before using a GOG game on a retro machine to see if any unwanted things were added. Still, I'll take that over having to deal with crap like StarForce and SecuROM.

I didn't know they applied fan-made patches to MoO 2 and Thief. Those games are very old, especially MoO 2 which is DOS, and Thief I imagine they got the patches from System Shock 2 considering they use the same engines.

twiz11 wrote on 2022-04-20, 22:49:

I didn't know they applied fan-made patches to MoO 2 and Thief. Those games are very old, especially MoO 2 which is DOS, and Thief I imagine they got the patches from System Shock 2 considering they use the same engines.

What baffles me is that the fan patch they added to MOO2 is primarily a game balance tweak. More info here. Since they ship the game with DOSBox, there is no justification for pre-applying that mod, as the game works just fine in its default state.Fortunately, you can revert to the stock version of the game by restoring the original executable from the official 1.31 patch.

For Thief, the situation is a bit different since they integrate TFix which actually improves the game's compatibility with modern systems. I would have still liked to have the option to download the stock game for the purposes of playing it on a retro rig, but I do realize that it's a fairly rare use case.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-04-19, 01:30:

ratfink wrote on 2022-04-18, 20:05:

I had a steam account but never bought anything, always-online pisses me off

Steam can be used in offline mode. I once lost my internet for 3 weeks straight and was able to keep playing all the Steam games I had downloaded and installed (single player only obviously).

This only works for a limited time. It will stop you at some point and force you to log in again.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-04-19, 09:51:

FioGermi wrote:

Steam apparently has a contingency plan for keeping access to the games you've bought. Should Valve go under.

That's coming from a company which is actively trying to fool customers that they don't own anything on account and just "rent" it. The saving grace here is that their DRM is not intrusive and could be cracked on client level, should Steam go under. But Valve is just too big to fail now.

Yes, this is a lie, valve never said anything like that. All you have to do is ask how could valve legally remove protections from games they signed contracts to distribute? Answer: They can't.

Shagittarius wrote on 2022-04-21, 04:58:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-04-19, 09:51:

FioGermi wrote:

Steam apparently has a contingency plan for keeping access to the games you've bought. Should Valve go under.

That's coming from a company which is actively trying to fool customers that they don't own anything on account and just "rent" it. The saving grace here is that their DRM is not intrusive and could be cracked on client level, should Steam go under. But Valve is just too big to fail now.

Yes, this is a lie, valve never said anything like that. All you have to do is ask how could valve legally remove protections from games they signed contracts to distribute? Answer: They can't.

Probably they can't. But can they arrange that you can move your library to a different service? Something like GoG connect. Though that would cost money to an already failing company.

Shagittarius wrote:

This only works for a limited time

Currently there's no time restriction and there were evidences that it worked offline for months on ship deployments, oil rigs, etc. It might not like hardware changes though.

RandomStranger wrote:

But can they arrange that you can move your library to a different service? Something like GoG connect.

Hardly possible on full scale, because it depends on publishers, which use Steam to sell games. Also some games are in legal limbo and probably impossible to transfer with current laws.

More games are gonna be sent to Steam considering Bethesda Launcher is going away.

Shagittarius wrote on 2022-04-21, 04:58:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-04-19, 09:51:

FioGermi wrote:

Steam apparently has a contingency plan for keeping access to the games you've bought. Should Valve go under.

That's coming from a company which is actively trying to fool customers that they don't own anything on account and just "rent" it. The saving grace here is that their DRM is not intrusive and could be cracked on client level, should Steam go under. But Valve is just too big to fail now.

Yes, this is a lie, valve never said anything like that. All you have to do is ask how could valve legally remove protections from games they signed contracts to distribute? Answer: They can't.

I was able to search for games on steam with either no DRM, or a way to run them offline without steam present, most of them just require a steam_id.txt file with the Id number to be in the same directory as the exe. I cant remember where I found it but it works since its just a local check. DOS games are DRM free anywhere as well as say OpenTTD on steam, but its cool that people have a list of games that really don't need much to work offline permanently