I thought this way in the beginning, but the way gog never even built a Linux client while valve literally made Linux a viable gaming platform from proton to steam deck, I buy all my games from steam now.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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@nieceandtows Yeah, I love GOG's DRM-free ethos and I'd love to support them, but they sure don't seem interested in supporting me.
I'd like for Steam to have good competition because monoculture is bad and competition is good for everybody. But if you're a Linux gamer, nobody else compares to Valve.
Itch.io is really the only other game store that shows anything like Valve's level of support for Linux, and it's great but it's not a Steam competitor.
True. Linux client is a must for me. Their Windows launcher is kinda crap too. It has so much focus on trying to get all your games in one launcher but it's not great as a launcher for any platform..
So, do you use Lutris instead?
I use Windows on Desktop and I use Steam Deck OS on my Steam Deck. On my Deck I usually just don't play GOG games lol
From what I've heard, the Steam version also lacks DRM. Once you've downloaded it you can close Steam and just launch the game with the exe. Obviously GOG or Steam is still handy for updates.
Updates are the main reason I stick with Steam. If GOG Galaxy worked on Linux, I'd probably buy a lot more from them.
But for something like this that's likely to get more frequent updates, I'll stick to Steam.
I link my GoG account to Heroic Launcher. It works just fine, updates included, store front included. I'm on Nobara Linux.
Yes, I have Heroic installed as well on my desktop and Steam Deck, but that's third party support, not first class support. First class support to me means they're investing in my platform, which is important to me.
So most of my purchases go to Steam, because Steam supports Linux as a first class platform. Because if this, they make an effort to get games supported on Linux (either through Proton or natively), and that's really valuable to me.
I'm not expecting Steam-level of support, but I do expect a little more than just making binaries available through the web interface. I'll occasionally buy from GOG, but until they decide to actually support Linux, I'll keep buying most of my games from Steam.
That's understandable. I think my take on Galaxy has always been that it's just a utility for managing your library, because they don't do DRM on any games they sell, they don't need to have a client like Steam does. That's a big reason why I don't have an issue with their client Linux support as their client isn't a requirement to use your library of games. I will also say that Heroic runs better than the Steam client for me. I get a lot of weird flickering and stuff with the Steam launcher. Additionally it downloads some games insanely slowly. I have tried different servers and a number of the fixes I've found online to no avail. I bought BG3 on Steam and ended up waiting overnight for it to download. Heroic doesn't have that issue at all and can take advantage of my connection speed. Obviously those are issues that don't affect everyone though.
Huh weird, I haven't had an issue with Steam for a long time, and that's on both NVIDIA and AMD. Granted, this is on a desktop, not a laptop, so if there's any kind of issues switching with the iGP, I'm not going to see it. I've also never had an issue with download speed, but my Internet connection isn't super fast anyway (just 50 down).
My issue is that Heroic doesn't seem to fix controller issues, so games are hit and miss on my Steam Deck. It works fine on desktop though.
I really wish I could figure out the download issue. My connection:
Steam:
Heroic:
I have tried a few solutions I've seen in various Steam forum posts, and asked for advice on the Discord for Nobara. I'm a Linux newbie though and I don't have much knowledge to sort stuff like this out. I have also been having the disappearing cursor issue in some Steam games. Again, can't track down a solution that works, though I've tried a few things. My overall experience with Linux has been great, and I almost never boot Windows anymore, but there are some issues for sure.
Have you tried Limiting download speed in steam settings?. I followed a tip somewhere and set it to 10000000 (10gb/s) and it worked for me (I was having similar speed issues).
Yeah, that's weird. Maybe a bad mirror?
That’s good to know, my sons were interested in it, now we can all have a good gaming session together before they decide if they want to buy it. Sadly there is no PS5 cross play (although saves can be linked) so I am going to have to buy the PS5 version to play with friends. Still I don’t mind giving Larian some more money as the game is just fantastic, relatively bug free and even performs pretty well on the steam deck.
Plays fine for me on Arch using the wine-ge-custom AUR package on a WINEPREFIX set up with winetricks dxvk. I had a little bit more success with the _dx11 version for some odd reason.
BG3ModManager is... probably don't try it just yet.
I bought BG3 on Steam and Divinity Original Sin 2 (previous Larian game) on GOG, running it through Lutris. They both have the same quirks, but work perfectly on Linux (Arch, GE-Proton, RTX 2060 Super with proprietary driver).
The one serious issue I've seen is flickering when the game window is not focused. Using Gamescope fixed it completely, it's a simple toggle in Lutris and a wrapper in Heroic.
I was able to run it with Lutris from GOG, Arch
Great experience with lutris.
So I installed Galaxy and run it through lutris...next I installed bg3 through Galaxy.
Now I open lutris, open Galaxy through it, launch the larian launcher and launch the game 😅
It seems an extra step, but running Galaxy through lutris works with the cloud saving and multiplayer flawlessly.
Playing without problems around 200hours now with Vulkan and dx11
Why do you do it this way instead of using the heroic launcher?
@Gnorv I don't have any problem with GoG really, it works fine. Even better than Steam, as I could see from my brother who bought it on steam