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Edit: Apparently they will at least look at it: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/01/gog-plan-to-look-a-bit-closer-at-linux-through-2026/
The investment should be into DOS gaming, and exclusively there.DOSBox and DOSBox-X work on Linux.
That they already do. If there's a DOS game not on GOG it's usually because they didn't get the rights.
Would be cool if they could start selling ROMs for other emulators. I bet at least Sega would be up for that. But good luck with Nintendo and Sony.
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GOG needs to fix their client first and port it on Linux. Yes, Heroic is a thing but we do need better handheld compatibility anyway and Linux users, I think, are more likely to be invested in GOG mission.
Theres a reason steam is king... noone else bother putting games on linux, so valve brought linux to the games.
Linux isn't the thing that's driving Steam's profits, tho.
Or, you could say Valve took the work of thousand of open-source dev and saw an opportunity to turn it into profit. I'm not saying they didn't contribute, but the only reason is because they saw a opportunity to make money, they don't care about Linux.
They absolutely do care about linux... sure, they are profit motivated. But they saw microsoft building their own store, and they saw a future where MS builds a gated garden, and linux was a way for them to preserve their existence.
Newell talked openly about this entire topic at LinuxCon years ago. It’s been 12 years and they’ve been true to their word.
The amount they’ve contributed upstream is insane, and the money they’ve provided to Linux-ecosystem contractors is also insane.
They’re profit motivated, 100%, but at least they’ve done so while being a good citizen in the FOSS movement (bar the Steam Client itself). SUSE, Canonical etc are all for-profit orgs that help push FOSS forward.
Profitability and Free and Open Source Software aren’t mutually exclusive.
I can't understand the amount of energy people spend defending Valve.
I get it, you like video games (so do I) and steam is a convenient platform for transactions.
But, in the end it's just another dirty capitalist business that only cares about one thing: MAKING MONEY. They literally invented gambling for kids, got watch the coffeezila video about it and they take 30% of any game sold while having sub 300 employees. It's pretty much the most profitable business per employee in the US.
They do not care about video games, about linux, about the fact that their home country is turning into a fascist state, and most of all, they don't give a fuck about all the gamers that keeps posting about how great they are. They would change they business model to sell bbq sauce tomorrow if the believe they could make more money out of it. And each time someone points that out, even here, it gets downvoted lol.
I don't think the point was supposed to be that Valve is good.
I think it was supposed to be that it is possible for a profit-motivated company to do something that legitimately benefits the rest of us even though the motivation was their profit goals.
Maybe more of the credit for that should go to the original creators of the FOSS licenses than to Gabe Newell, but it's still nice that it happened either way.
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Stating facts is not defending. The fact is, if valve didn't invest into the linux ecosystem, gamers would be force to suck MS's dick. Which is far arguable amoung the worst corporation in world. I dont think there has been any cases where valve resorted to anti-competition practices.
Yes, their fees are high. But thats the cost to be publish on their store. They know you aint going anywhere else because they dominate the market. And they didnt get there by manhandling the competition, just the first to provide a product people want, and did it so long that they became ubiquitous, and no other storefront can compete. Gog has the most promise, but they havent even bother with a linux client...
So how about you get off your ass and make a storefront to compete with them?
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I can’t understand the amount of energy people spend defending Valve.
Valve uses my money to make the Linux FOSS stack better for everyone, including me. GOG doesn't.
Buying on Steam instead of GOG serves my personal interests.
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Linux is where it is because companies that care about making money contribute money to make it better. The same goes for projects like Blender. Linux became immensely more usable for the average user because Valve wanted to ensure that they'll be able to continue making absurd amounts of money in the future regardless of what Microsoft decides to do. The licensing of open source software ensures us that we don't even have to trust them to not pivot to BBQ sauce tomorrow, because the work they've already done will continue to serve us.
I personally have no problem with a profit motive on its face, and the above is why. If you want an easy underhand toss for something to criticize Valve for, it's that their motive for profit encourages them to continue to exploit a loophole in our gambling laws to create a generation of underage addicts. They can simultaneously be the company responsible for breaking down walled gardens and creating a better personal computing tomorrow; and also the company profiting off of child gambling addiction that governments are too slow or too unwilling to do anything about.
What profit? I can guarantee that Valve has spent far more in hiring hundreds of highly skilled full time contractors for 5+ years than they've made from the 3% of Steam's users on Linux.
Obviously it's a long term strategy for them to eventually make money but we've only gained from their investment.
More likely it's a long term strategy not to lose money when Microsoft locks Windows ecosystem to their own store(they tried).
Not OP, but Steam Deck.
I'm a big fan of Steam. They help me keep on Linux, but let's not pretend there isn't a profit motive. Gabe gets yachts, we get Linux Gaming. Win win right now.
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The best thing about GOG is the ability to never use a client or launcher at all. The ability to just download the installers from the website and store them locally means that your GOG games will outlast the following: GOG as a company enshittifies, GOG as a company dies, your account gets banned from GOG, you lose access to your GOG account, your favorite game gets a game-ruining update from its developer, some song license expires and devs are forced to patch or pull the game...
"Being a healthy company means having healthy results." But he adds that money won't be the main motivating factor, and instead the focus is to "do a good job, have good products and good services, and then as a consequence and as a reward comes good money." It's a point that he thinks is obvious, "but many companies fall apart on that, putting the spreadsheets first."
Such a refreshing take.
>sees GOG mentioned in title
>Furiously rush to the comments, "gib linux client"
Classic.
I mean, that's the only issue.
I put Steam on my Gentoo. Because it works, and I get 0 hassle gaming experience.
Guess who gets my money?
Heroic? https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
Yeah, I don't really understand that either. What's wrong Heroic? It's not quite Steam, but pretty good. And no DRM is definitely a plus.
What’s wrong Heroic?
Not officially supported. Using the GUI with a controller is wonky.
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Heroic is a third-party hack. It isn't an official solution. If Heroic died then we'd need another option. It's great, but it'd be better if GOG officially released their own client that worked with Linux.
Woo! I hope GOG has a bright future! I recently started buying games on GOG and have been playing them via Heroic Launcher on Linux which has worked well! Very happy to actually own the games I'm purchasing!
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GOG should be more proactive in order to fulfill its mission.
1: Officially make a Linux client.
2: Pursue indie series. Project Moon, Touhou, and more.
3: Commission remastering projects. Thief 1 & 2, FreeSpace, King's Quest, Vampire Bloodlines, and so on. Optionally buy these properties to make sequels. The IP holders don't really do much with them, it would be relatively easy to buy them.
4: Get more serious with companies like SEGA and Kagura Games. Shin Megami Tensei V has been out on PC a long while, but Denuvo makes me unwilling to make a purchase. A DRM-free release would easily net my $40. Ditto goes for perverse games.
5: Create a joint project with Valve, the EU, and Japan, to create a payment system that doesn't require the likes of MasterVisa. They are enemies to culture, and if America descends into civil war, an outside transaction processor would be needed.
Pretty cool!
Ngl if Steam ever had a product decay I maybe start buying games on GOG instead.
And the DRM free thing on GOG sounds neat(even if I don't think Steams DRM is that bad its slightly bad ofc)
And GOG should add like:
More video games,Steam workshop equivalent,their own proton/contributions to Proton,GOG Galaxy port to Linux/better Linux support,multiplayer sdk?(like Steam?),etc
If they want it to become a good steam competitior.
Steam does allow DRM-free games, it's up to whoever is publishing the game to the platform.
GOG just currently requires it.
Most of the games on GOG are also DRM-free on Steam.
So it's really just looking at prices and other features that is the defining factor. Considering Steam's Linux support, GOG is off the table for me.
oh yeah i forgot about that,ig GOG gives the guarantee that the games are DRM-FREE.
and i assume the dev/publisher chooses what type of DRM to do like Denuvo,Steams own DRM (needing the Steam client),etc
Steam don't disclose it, there's no tag or label on the store page. Which is fucking shitty, either oversight or business decision. So you would never know unless you tried launching the executable yourself, looked it up online or the game was marketed that way.
But yeah, with GOG, you just instantly know.
But don't they do it for external drm?
Yeah for external DRM, but if a game has Steam DRM, then there's no official label or warning.
For example, Witcher 3 is DRM-free on Steam, but there's nothing (AFAIK) on the Steam page saying that.
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They've got some of those things. They recently added a workshop equivalent, and they've had a multiplayer SDK for a long time. The multiplayer SDK is actually a problem, because it means multiplayer often only works on Galaxy, which is just DRM by another name.
And Steam's DRM was pretty invisible to me until, ironically, I got a Steam Deck. Then I started running into games that needed to be authenticated while I was on a train with no internet.
oh thats pretty cool actually,but if the multiplayer SDK is just DRM with a diff name i would rather stick to Steam.
And Steam’s DRM was pretty invisible to me until, ironically, I got a Steam Deck. Then I started running into games that needed to be authenticated while I was on a train with no internet.
and what games are those,i never had that experience with my steam library(except for only requiring the Steam Client to run). maybe this comes from other drms the game has?
The one that stuck out to me was Metaphor: ReFantazio. It has Denuvo, but the message didn't identify it as such and read like Steam DRM. Dragon Ball FighterZ has no listed additional DRM on the Steam store page, but if I booted up the device offline then tried to run the game, it would refuse to boot until I went online. I ran into it a few other times other than that, but don't recall which games they were. Sometimes it's just an unlucky roll of the dice with when Steam decides it's time to authenticate the game again.
Then there are other DRM schemes, like Ubisoft's and EA's, that are even worse. At best, they require you to explicitly set your Deck to offline mode before traveling; just not having an internet connection isn't good enough.
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As long as games stop using shitty Epic Online Services, I'll take GOG's.
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Yeah gog is pretty neat. I also use humble bundle store to buy games and it helps charity
I do too, but Humble Bundle got bought by Ziff Davis/IGN.
They laid off the all Humble staff in 2024. They also limited the amount that can go to charity and allocated more of those funds go directly to them.
HB was good when you could set the entirety of your purchase to go to developers. Now they greedily force you to divert a minimum to themselves
If it were only that....
The default split is 30% to Humble, 65% to the PUBLISHERS (not devs) and a whole 5% to charity. The sliders to change the split are hidden by default, so I doubt many people tweak the percentages. They're just a game bundle/steam key reseller site with a gimmick, nothing more.
I wonder how much actually goes to charity once PayPal takes their cut.
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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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