DosFreak wrote on 2022-08-01, 17:05:

For Portal 2 (Build v7293 was last build I tested) on Vista and above I use the command "portal2.exe -steam", also drop the .dll in the bin folder.
As far as Goldberg version it shouldn't matter. I want to say Vista compatibility is broken but 7 should still be fine and I haven't yet had to revert to an older version of Goldberg to get a game to work (except for Vista).

If the above doesn't work let me know and I'll do another test.

Awesome, works perfectly! Thanks! Now I can play every game I have on steam without it, I won't be bothered by loss of OS support or anything else like that going forward.

Or had on steam, the account is gone. Only thing I had left was a Windows 7 install with Steam on offline mode and a few games installed you still can't get anywhere else than from Steam.

Have you made any efforts at getting them to work with achievements? I have had a lot of success so far by using different versions of SSE and the Goldberg's that have overlays. The achievement watcher isn't necessary unless wanted all in one place. SSE 4.3, 4.7 or the newest Goldbergs are the best, but I have had to use Goldberg versions from last year and earlier as well, mostly the experimentals. However, the Goldberg overlays don't work a decent part of the time. SSE overlays have no problem with RIvatuner/Afterburner running but Goldberg overlays won't work and even in some games without them it still won't work like in Doom 2016. So I usually try SSE first and move to the Goldberg's. Also it is needed to turn on the inject dll and/or persist dlls for some games. I don't see that you used different versions. I guess because you don't want/need achievements, but I thought I would share my results here for others that want them.

I have less than o% interest in achievements but if someone wants to put in the work and post it I won't complain.
I've been house sitting for someone for the past two months (so shit internet and without my server) so hoping to get caught back up on projects once I get caught up on other things heh.

Thanks for the info here. Pulled out my older XPsp3 box and was able to get into the Steam games from 2009 and play a bit. iirc last time tried was in 2019.
Merry Christmas !

I'll be fleshing out the offlinegames github this coming year. Main delay was research on dcma and attempting to keep up with constant game updates. Almost always the method to bypass or remove the DRM never changes so the knowledge on how to do so is the most important.

Focus will be on operating systems where online game launchers dropped support and CD/DVD. Also listing versions of games where is compatibility was dropped.

The "list of removed games" link no longer works.

Also Goldberg EMU has been discontinued. Any "legal" alternative to add over that?

Here is a fork that continues development: https://github.com/Detanup01/gbe_fork/releases
Keep in mind that original Goldberg still works for games that don't use newer Steam APIs.
I continue to use Goldberg by default in hopes the original dev continues development.

I added list of delisted steam games
https://delistedgames.com/all-delisted-steam-games/

Updated the offline games txt on the offlinegamesrepo: https://github.com/vogonsorg/OfflineGames/blo … es_03052025.txt

Currently I've consolidated all the old versions of game store games into a single directory and am going through and identifying OS compatibility and then going to match them up with the above txt as well as creating binary diffs. Once done this will be compared to current versions of the games. Only way I can think to do this since the game store games are updated so rapidly and the DRM protection doesn't change much so the method to bypass for an old version will apply to the new.

How do we keep launchers other than Steam from updating? Albeit not that useful considering you can just download an installer, I found that following works for GoG Galaxy: rename %AllUsersProfile%\GOG.com\Galaxy\redists\GalaxyUpdater.exe or launch with shortcut option /runWithoutUpdating. But what about eg Epic, Ubisoft? Those are notorious on pushing frequent updates. Epic situation is specially sad because lots of games are drm-free too if you launch directly from executable and noone canceled emulators like Goldbergs anyway. On Ubi you can use offline login to play already downloaded games but that's about it.

So for gog galaxy I don't care since I backup with gog repo.
If you don't use gog repo then you'll have to take steps, easiest is to stop automatic updating of games and then backup the games before you update.

For launchers other than steam I have all of the downloaded games on a iscsi volume that I sync to another share once a month so when I go to update games once a month I copy those games from the share to another location so I have the old version.

Currently my game launcher VM (I dont use launchers on my gaming system ) is 16TB used, this doesn't include steam since steam is the only launcher that works well to sync games over a share. In the process now of moving these games to a new volume since with 4kb clusters I'm limited to 16Tb. First world problems.

Barely any launcher updates their games, the top are steam, epic, gog, blizzard, amazon, ea in that order. Amazon and EA the updates are extremely rare except for multiplayer for EA games.

FYI, epic only automatically updates games you've launched before. Unknown how you can reset that value and hopefully not wipe installed value.

My method above is the simplest solution I could think of without having to jump through tons of hoops. KISS

Something to keep in mind is in windows you can block outbound with the windows firewall. You can create the block rule in the GUI or create a cmd file to enable or disable as needed. If you use the launcher to play games then if the credentials are cached you should be good until they expire. I'm sure you can do the same on Linux abs macOS.

DosFreak wrote on 2025-04-20, 20:00:

So for gog galaxy I don't care since I backup with gog repo. If you don't use gog repo then you'll have to take steps, easiest i […]
Show full quote

So for gog galaxy I don't care since I backup with gog repo.
If you don't use gog repo then you'll have to take steps, easiest is to stop automatic updating of games and then backup the games before you update.

For launchers other than steam I have all of the downloaded games on a iscsi volume that I sync to another share once a month so when I go to update games once a month I copy those games from the share to another location so I have the old version.

Currently my game launcher VM (I dont use launchers on my gaming system ) is 16TB used, this doesn't include steam since steam is the only launcher that works well to sync games over a share. In the process now of moving these games to a new volume since with 4kb clusters I'm limited to 16Tb. First world problems.

Barely any launcher updates their games, the top are steam, epic, gog, blizzard, amazon, ea in that order. Amazon and EA the updates are extremely rare except for multiplayer for EA games.

FYI, epic only automatically updates games you've launched before. Unknown how you can reset that value and hopefully not wipe installed value.

My method above is the simplest solution I could think of without having to jump through tons of hoops. KISS

Something to keep in mind is in windows you can block outbound with the windows firewall. You can create the block rule in the GUI or create a cmd file to enable or disable as needed. If you use the launcher to play games then if the credentials are cached you should be good until they expire. I'm sure you can do the same on Linux abs macOS.

how old are some of your gog installers? I remember having to wait for it to verify the file

I run the cleanup switch and move installers out to a different directory. Verifying doesn't take long but downloading does especially for cases like bg3 and stalker 2 where a small patch results in a huge installed.

DosFreak wrote on 2025-04-22, 20:55:

I run the cleanup switch and move installers out to a different directory. Verifying doesn't take long but downloading does especially for cases like bg3 and stalker 2 where a small patch results in a huge installed.

Oh I see but have you kept the old installers from the early days of gog? I imagine some of the games no longer work for newer systems hmm the old binaries from 2011 and earlier

I do have some old installers pre-gog repo but can't share them.

DosFreak wrote on 2025-04-20, 20:00:

So for gog galaxy I don't care since I backup with gog repo. If you don't use gog repo then you'll have to take steps, easiest i […]
Show full quote

So for gog galaxy I don't care since I backup with gog repo.
If you don't use gog repo then you'll have to take steps, easiest is to stop automatic updating of games and then backup the games before you update.

For launchers other than steam I have all of the downloaded games on a iscsi volume that I sync to another share once a month so when I go to update games once a month I copy those games from the share to another location so I have the old version.

Currently my game launcher VM (I dont use launchers on my gaming system ) is 16TB used, this doesn't include steam since steam is the only launcher that works well to sync games over a share. In the process now of moving these games to a new volume since with 4kb clusters I'm limited to 16Tb. First world problems.

Barely any launcher updates their games, the top are steam, epic, gog, blizzard, amazon, ea in that order. Amazon and EA the updates are extremely rare except for multiplayer for EA games.

FYI, epic only automatically updates games you've launched before. Unknown how you can reset that value and hopefully not wipe installed value.

My method above is the simplest solution I could think of without having to jump through tons of hoops. KISS

Something to keep in mind is in windows you can block outbound with the windows firewall. You can create the block rule in the GUI or create a cmd file to enable or disable as needed. If you use the launcher to play games then if the credentials are cached you should be good until they expire. I'm sure you can do the same on Linux abs macOS.

I think you did not understand me, I'm not talking about updating games, but launchers themselves. Because I don't care about new Epic Launcher version I just want to download a game from it, and I can't do that being on not-up-to-date version. Found a method for Ubi, didn't test: you first have to downgrade the launcher to version 140.0.10857 (dated April 2023). Before starting it, manually change its version number to the latest one in the version.txt file, which is in your Ubisoft Game Launcher directory. You can obtain the latest version number by checking the ubisoftconnect homepage for any new installers. I would recommend doing this regularly, especially if you haven't started the launcher for a couple weeks or more.

Download the connect installer to a separate location, right click the exe file without starting the installation process, select properties, then in the tab details you will see the product version number. Note the last five digits. That's the number you need to paste into the abovementioned version.txt file and save the change. Doing so will prevent the launcher from auto-updating as your old connect installation is now officially registered as being 'up to date'.

Yeah I don't care about launcher version.
Use the latest version of the launcher to download the games so I never have to worry about the Launcher again except for when updating games in the launcher vm.

DosFreak wrote on 2025-04-23, 18:31:

Use the latest version of the launcher

I would prefer not to do that and hope someone knows or will come up with a workaround. I dont see the point of messing with goldberg for example if i still have to update launchers every time they decided i have to.

The point of golderberg and similar is to to never have to have a game require a launcher .....until you need to download or update. That's a plus not a minus.