Hi all,

I'm a huge fan of GOG and the DRM free experience, and I try to support them whenever I can (as opposed to a steam monopoly and their DRM turning us all into Valve's b*tches).

However, I'm concerned at games being updated on steam and not on GOG. I don;t know how often this happens, or if it's something to be concerned about. I can stomach this happening on games that I've bought at a greatly reduced price in a sale, but on full price purchases, it's a concern.

Does anyone have any thoughts/advice on this?

Thanks.

Rob.

It happens quite often. It is definitely something to be concerned about. GOG has on occassion removed a game from sale because the devs would not/could not keep it up to date.

There are lots of threads on this. I don't follow them so I don't have any at hand. Perhaps another poster will link you to them.

Cheers.

Yes, people are concerned. Boatload of threads on it, and there's also a gOgMix of those games. Someone will line that gOgMix thread soon, I'm sure.

Myself, it depends on the update. If it's just correcting some text and typos, meh. If it fixes game-breaking stuff then it should be here. But I'm also leery of updates that change a game for the worse, by changing game mechanics, AI, what have yiu.

Thanks for the replies. I'm not very active on the forum, but you've kind of answered my query, that it's not an isolated issue sadly.

What a shame, surely there should be something in the contract that says a game should be kept up to date on GOG. If they take the money, they should have to provide the same service (publishers and developers I'm referring to).

Oh well, I would still prefer to support GOG though and likely still will.

Rob.

Personally I don't understand how anyone can stomach buying games with DRM at all.

To me it is the only choice to opt for a non-updated DRM-free game versus an updated game that is laden with DRM.

Of course, I am also one who thinks update culture around PCs and PC gaming is grossly out of hand to begin with, but still...

Hey there,

you may want to take a look at the games listed in this gog-mix

https://www.gog.com/mix/games_that_treat_gog_customers_as_second_class_citizens</span>https://www.gog.com/mix/games_that_treat_gog_customers_as_second_class_citizens

the related thread can be found here

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/concerns_about_gog_games_not_being_updated</span>https://www.gog.com/forum/general/concerns_about_gog_games_not_being_updated

Hope this helps

It was revealed that there is something in GOGs contract that games should be kept up to date, and when a game on both Steam and GOG gets a Steam update first, GOG sends and email asking the dev to update the GOG version.

That still means a number of devs just simply won't. If something is grossly out of date, your best bet is to bug them about it until you get an answer or boycott that dev/publishers games on GOG.

GOG now has a dev portal that makes updating games similar to Steam (piss easy) so it's going to be up to the dev/publisher to update the game in most cases.

I do think that most of the games removed from the catalogue this year is due to the fact that gog enforcing the publisher to keep the game updated.

Yeah, there does seem to have been a sharp increase and I interpret that as GOG being more on the ball with these things.

Take into account though that people tend to mix up several different things under this same discussion:

1. Updates to single-player games (or single-player part of games that have also multiplayer).

- Quite often such updates come somewhat later to GOG than e,g, on Steam, and some developers tend to update the game several times on Steam, and at some point release a bigger update to GOG that contains all the previous, missing updates.

2. The GOG version lacking e.g. multiplayer.

- This is a trickier one. Earlier it was kinda expected the GOG version would lack multiplayer (which is Steam-only), but now more and more people feel the GOG version should have the same multiplayer support as the Steam version.

- Then again, even if the GOG version has Galaxy-multiplayer, many feel it is inferior to the Steam multiplayer as there isn't necessarily a possibility to play against Steam users, only other Galaxy users, which usually means a smaller playerbase.

3. The GOG version lacking level editor or access to user-made content

- The usual reason for this seems to be that the developer is relying on Steamworks for the level-editor and the created user-content. Not sure what GOG can really do about this, other than rejecting the game from the GOG store.

4. Lately, many have also started complaining that the GOG version is lacking achievements that the Steam version has.

So, depending how important each of these is to you, the GOG version might seem ok, or wanting, to you. For instance, I personally couldn't care less whether the GOG version has achievements, and for 99% of the games, I don't care for the multiplayer nor user-made content. To someone else they are much more important.

What I don't like though is that now GOG seems to be pulling away some games which lack e.g. multiplayer. I'd still want to buy such games from GOG (as long as they are not too much focused on only multiplayer, in which case I wouldn't probably buy them at all because to me multiplayer games are the synonym for free-to-play, e.g. TeamFortress 2 and Fortnite). I just want the single-player part DRM-free, dammit.

To me the better approach would be that GOG still releases such games, but clearly states that it is lacking multiplayer (or the level editor, or achievements, or the Steam badges). That's what the multiplayer icon is there in the gamecard, after all.

Thanks for all the helpful replies (and the link to the GOG mix, although the link to the discussion took me to this post).

It's a tricky situation to be in. I'm such a big believer in DRM-free though, that I'm willing to take the risk with GOG (and I don't really use multiplayer).

That said, it will be a big issue to lots of gamers, and almost feels like anti-competitive practices. And it's chicken and egg. ie they may say that GOG is a smaller userbase, so give substandard support, meaning the userbase stays small, because it gets substandard support.

Someone mentions about the contant updates to games, and can't believe that gaming has come to this. I'm inclined to agree. It used to be that you bought the game, it was yours forever, and generally didn't need patching.

I'm going to continue to support GOG as it's the only true DRM solution to gaming, in all of gaming (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are now a massive form of DLC, yes you can by the disc/cartridge, but a lot of games are so broken on release, that you're reliant on the companies for updates - apart from maybe Nintendo, who have a good track record of releasing finished and working games).

Anyway, while it's really sad to see how GOG is treated by some developers, if anything, this thread has strengthened my resolve to support them and their ideals, which are good for gaming as a whole.

Rob.

So you're concerned but don't know if you should be concerned?

The perfect cure is of course only playing games once the last update has passed. My newest game is probably a couple of years old already.

Thx for the gog-mix link! I wasn't aware of its existence. ;)

That statement makes it sound like GOG multiplayer being vastly inferior to Steam is a subjective opinion. But it's not. It's an objective fact.

And to characterize it as "usually a smaller playerbase" is to downplay the colossal magnitude of the problem. That it makes it sound like GOG multiplayer is somewhat on par with Steam multiplayer, but actually it's not even remotely on par.

More accurate to say something like almost non-existent playerbase on GOG multiplayer, which makes multiplayer in GOG games become ghost towns, which therefore renders the multiplayer virtually non-functional.

So going back to the OP's question, due to the terrible multiplayer on GOG and also many other reasons, yes, GOG users are frequently treated like second-class citizens and receive sub-par versions of the same games which are also on Steam. That is common & standard practice.

On the other hand, Steam games are just rentals that are gated behind the Steam DRM, and therefore they can be stolen from the user at any point, via the Steam company choosing to ban their account. So it's not like buying from Steam is a good option either.

"Bu...Bu...Buh...But muh offline mode! I only had to phone home once every 6 months to be able to play the games I bought. You can't call that DRM, can you?? And besides everyone is online all the time anyway, people who can't be online all the time must just be poor or live in rural places and that's bad 'cause I say so" - typical Scheme fanboys.