Dragnansia

What’s wrong with just downloading a patch and pointing it to the directory the game was installed in?

Nothing, but you can be sure that’s not how it’s going to work. A simple example with Steam and certain games: you have one launcher with Steam, but you have another launcher between the game and Steam, and I don’t see why that’s necessary.

But the way you want to do it requires a bit more work, but nothing too complicated, and more and more people want something simple and easy to use, which is not the case with your proposal because they have to do more steps to be able to play.

I don’t want Gog to change in order to have more games in its store. In fact, I have a lot of games on Steam because of the simplicity on Linux and I don’t want Gog to become like Steam, I want a DRM-free alternative.

Yes, but you can’t launch the game without Steam (I think some game can be start without Steam but I’m not sure). And i prefer to own my game, and the possibility to change how i launch the game (with or without the launcher).

As Blu Rays are read only, you obviously can’t apply the patch there. The patches were always downloaded and applied to the game parts you had on your hard drive. What was wrong with that?

You need a “launcher” just to download update, and it’s not the most ideal for me. I prefer to have nothing between the button play (or click on the executable), and the game launch.

At some point, steam will enshittify or shut down. That’s when we will realize that online only distribution might not have been such a great idea.

I agree with you, only online is totally stupid because the moment the service shutdown you lose everything. This is why GOG is good, because after buying a game, I can create backup on external disk. The only biggest problem for me is they don’t have a good Linux integration for GOG Galaxy 2.

This is not perfect, but it’s a better start than nothing. And it’s difficult to do this because of DRM on other store.

I see some problem with physical media :

• Storage: ~100Go (Blu-ray), ~5Go on DVD
  • For all the non opti game who take more than 100Go of space ? Multiple DVD/Blu-ray ?
• Update: actually if a game need a update how to do this ?
  • Download a zip file to apply the patch ? Possibility to directly write the patch on the DVD/Blu-ray for future install ?

If we use DVD/Blu-ray we need a player to install the game (I really prefer to have one on my computer/laptop than nothing, but it’s not how things work now 😭).

I totally prefer the physical media, but it’s not perfect. To have something easy for consumer, the game industry need to do some change like : opti the game size, find a good method to update the game, and no DRM on the physical media.

If like you say Steam is only garbage, make a list of good alternative.

• Epic Game (worst)

  • Launcher -> horrible and worst than Steam. Actually you can use heroic games launcher (less problems)
  • Store -> really bad
  • DRM
  • Need update to play game
  • Only Windows / Mac (i don’t care about mobile for the small amount of game)
  • Not version for Linux and Tim Sweeney not like Linux and say a big amount of stupidity.
  • Doesn’t have all the tools and feature for dev like Steam
  • No Workshop alternative

• Gog (need more game and feature)

  • Gog galaxy (latest test in 2022) -> good launcher but no Linux version
  • Games for Windows, Linux, Mac
  • Not all game can be found here because it’s only DRM free game
  • Doesn’t have all the tools and feature for dev like Steam
  • No Workshop alternative

From what i can see, Steam is not perfect but it’s better than Epic for sure, and have more feature and game than Gog. I don’t include itch because for me it’s not a gaming store.

If anyone have another store, or want to correct anything.