I’m trying to say, “Why have a client in the first place?”
I keep GoG games and I am happy getting to keep the offline installers and not having to open an extra GUI thing before running my game.
I would love being able to run my Steam games without having to open Steam.
Now maybe you see some value in Steam giving the Achievements system and notifications to online-friends about your activity, but is it really required?
If your point is about using the GoG Linux client to run Windows games on Linux:
Yes, it’s a big deal. Steam can do it, but GoG is much smaller
Lutris
I don’t buy GoG games that don’t have a native Linux download and I use the Linux installer, so again, I see no merit in having yet another app.
I use heroic because I buy games that don’t have a native Linux version, and because some of the games I own are going to get updated. Also, cloud saves. Having a platform I can easily see and immediately install my purchases from is nice
Ah right, I had forgotten the cloud saves. Those are actually a real value addition to consider using an extra client.
For updates though, I am happy to just re-download the offline installer whenever it gets released.
Of course, I am not buying from GoG, the kinds of games that won’t work unless constantly updated.
Do you really keep track of it? I have like 20-30 games installed, and they update in the background. I don’t have to think about it and just play whatever strikes my fancy.
Honestly, my Linuxified brain would just setup a background service to do that instead.
And I would set it up to not keep on running once I have started the game.
I think Lutris does that too, not sure about it though. Maybe I’ll check it next time.
I haven’t used Heroic, so can’t say much about whether I’d prefer it.
But from what I remember of my experience with Epic Games Store back when I was on a Windows 7 PC, it took quite a bit out of my 4GB RAM and made it very difficult to play my game for a long time.
Honestly, I am fine with a launcher as long as it gets out of the memory when the game starts.
But also, I don’t want the restrictions that come with it, so not really a launcher, but a download/update manager at most, would be fine in this case.
The reason I don’t like the word “launcher” in this case, is because it is implying that it will be required to start the game, which might be fine for games that need to be up to date, just to function but for all the others, it’s just an unnecessary extra 30+ seconds after I click the game icon.
I mean, look how fast and light, the update checking scripts are on Linux [1]
You don’t need to start up a whole web-browser (full, with a JS engine) and connect to 10 other things before checking for updates. Just get something lightweight like RSS on the server, that tells the current version by query and let the client check that against the version no. file on the system, with 0 GUI until it actually requires a download and even then, it can simply use the system’s “Notifications” system to tell you that there is an update available.
The blocking checker is only required for games that won’t work unless updated.
except Ubuntu. Well, I only properly remember the EndeavourOS one and that the Ubuntu one was a massive slowdown. There may be others that are not as good. ↩︎
I’m trying to say, “Why have a client in the first place?”
I keep GoG games and I am happy getting to keep the offline installers and not having to open an extra GUI thing before running my game.
I would love being able to run my Steam games without having to open Steam.
Now maybe you see some value in Steam giving the Achievements system and notifications to online-friends about your activity, but is it really required?
If your point is about using the GoG Linux client to run Windows games on Linux:
I don’t buy GoG games that don’t have a native Linux download and I use the Linux installer, so again, I see no merit in having yet another app.
I use heroic because I buy games that don’t have a native Linux version, and because some of the games I own are going to get updated. Also, cloud saves. Having a platform I can easily see and immediately install my purchases from is nice
Ah right, I had forgotten the cloud saves. Those are actually a real value addition to consider using an extra client.
For updates though, I am happy to just re-download the offline installer whenever it gets released.
Of course, I am not buying from GoG, the kinds of games that won’t work unless constantly updated.
Do you really keep track of it? I have like 20-30 games installed, and they update in the background. I don’t have to think about it and just play whatever strikes my fancy.
No, I just don’t update them. The offline installers don’t come up as often either.
Also, I only have ~5-10 GoG games.
Ah, OK. I have like 200, so having a launcher to keep track of and install them is quite useful.
Honestly, my Linuxified brain would just setup a background service to do that instead.
And I would set it up to not keep on running once I have started the game.
I think Lutris does that too, not sure about it though. Maybe I’ll check it next time.
That sounds like a lot of work that a launcher just handles for you. I use Heroic, and it does exactly that for GOG, EGS, and Prime.
I haven’t used Heroic, so can’t say much about whether I’d prefer it.
But from what I remember of my experience with Epic Games Store back when I was on a Windows 7 PC, it took quite a bit out of my 4GB RAM and made it very difficult to play my game for a long time.
Honestly, I am fine with a launcher as long as it gets out of the memory when the game starts.
But also, I don’t want the restrictions that come with it, so not really a launcher, but a download/update manager at most, would be fine in this case.
The reason I don’t like the word “launcher” in this case, is because it is implying that it will be required to start the game, which might be fine for games that need to be up to date, just to function but for all the others, it’s just an unnecessary extra 30+ seconds after I click the game icon.
I mean, look how fast and light, the update checking scripts are on Linux [1]
You don’t need to start up a whole web-browser (full, with a JS engine) and connect to 10 other things before checking for updates. Just get something lightweight like RSS on the server, that tells the current version by query and let the client check that against the version no. file on the system, with 0 GUI until it actually requires a download and even then, it can simply use the system’s “Notifications” system to tell you that there is an update available.
The blocking checker is only required for games that won’t work unless updated.
except Ubuntu. Well, I only properly remember the EndeavourOS one and that the Ubuntu one was a massive slowdown. There may be others that are not as good. ↩︎