Then they’re being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to “install” a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to “download” the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn’t mean what Steam does is DRM.
I guess it’s the right place to ask even if it’s not really related to Sony and my move away from them.
I download and install my GOG games through Heroic and then move them to a hard drive after I’m finished enjoying them.
If GOG one day disappears, will I still be able to play the games that way or do I really have to separately download the offline installers which are separated in many files?
GOG games DO NOT HAVE DRM to play. That’s their store’s unique value proposition. So if you still have that machine with that OS all working you can keep on playing those games forever even if GOG no longer exists. In practice in my experience of over 3 decades as a gamer, you’ll start having problems soon enough even if you refrain from updating that machine’s OS, as the OS version stops being supported as do the apps in it (for example, somebody from my family had Windows 8 until recently and eventually Google mail stopped supporting his browser version and there was no newer version of the browser that still supported Windows 8 - btw that person now has Linux) plus eventually even the machine hardware fails. Point being that an installed game is generally locked to the machine it has been installed in and the OS in it, since during installation it has probably configured a bunch of stuff in places like the registry (it’s not as bad in modern Linux were you can probably get away with just moving the entire home directory and hope for the best, but in Windows it’s still pretty bad). So you’re better off backing up the offline installers.
I don’t used Heroic but I do use Lutris and the latter has an option to save the game installer when it downloads it from GOG during a direct “install from GOG”, so emaybe Heroic has it too. Given that the files Lutris lists as downloading when I “install from GOG” seem to be chunked just like the offline installer ones from my account page in GOG, I bet those files are the offline installer ones.
Realistically, you’ll always be able to download the offline installers from the high seas anyway.
will I still be able to play the games that way
Most of them will probably work, but there’s no real guarantee. Depends on whether the installers dumped critical files into your system / user folders.
Oh that’s not great as it would mean that I have to download the normal game through Heroic and download it a second time to get the offline installer.
For a 50gb game, it means allocating around 100gb for it.
I believe Steam games, even in offline mode, can only be run on systems where you have installed Steam and logged into it. If you copy the game files to a disc and give it to a friend, they would not be able to play it.
You’re wrong. It depends on whether drm is enabled. If it is not, then the game files on the disc would work. It is the publisher’s choice whether to enable drm.
Why is this so hard to determine? I found two items online that indicated what I said was true for all Steam games. Maybe it has changed and I was reading old posts?
Steam doesn’t advertise a game’s DRM status. DRM-free Steam game lists are maintained on wikis by users testing them. Most of the time they’re not DRM-free, but sometimes the developer is motivated to release them that way.
Then they’re being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to “install” a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to “download” the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn’t mean what Steam does is DRM.
I guess it’s the right place to ask even if it’s not really related to Sony and my move away from them.
I download and install my GOG games through Heroic and then move them to a hard drive after I’m finished enjoying them.
If GOG one day disappears, will I still be able to play the games that way or do I really have to separately download the offline installers which are separated in many files?
Two things:
Realistically, you’ll always be able to download the offline installers from the high seas anyway.
Most of them will probably work, but there’s no real guarantee. Depends on whether the installers dumped critical files into your system / user folders.
Oh that’s not great as it would mean that I have to download the normal game through Heroic and download it a second time to get the offline installer.
For a 50gb game, it means allocating around 100gb for it.
Gog should clarify that situation a bit better.
I believe Steam games, even in offline mode, can only be run on systems where you have installed Steam and logged into it. If you copy the game files to a disc and give it to a friend, they would not be able to play it.
You’re wrong. It depends on whether drm is enabled. If it is not, then the game files on the disc would work. It is the publisher’s choice whether to enable drm.
Why is this so hard to determine? I found two items online that indicated what I said was true for all Steam games. Maybe it has changed and I was reading old posts?
Whichever source you got your info from, they were mistaken.
Thanks. Now that I think about it your explanation is the only one that makes sense.
Steam doesn’t advertise a game’s DRM status. DRM-free Steam game lists are maintained on wikis by users testing them. Most of the time they’re not DRM-free, but sometimes the developer is motivated to release them that way.
At least with Denuvo, Steam shows of a given game uses it, listed on the store page. If I see it, I don’t buy it.