Hey there. I am writing because I wanted to request that you consider and look into making a GOG version of LE. I currently have a copy from steam back from the EA period, but I would gladly pay again for a copy from GOG at full price.
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Why? We already have an offline mode and as long as steam is alive youâll be able to play the game at least in the offline mode. Same goes for GoG in this regard. You would be at least be able to play it offline untill GoG sunsets.
Yeah I know I like GoG as well but how LE is setup I donât see a reason tbf.
âAs long as steam is aliveâ or rather âavailableâ is key difference here. With GOGâs standards game must be playable without GOG, so itâs not the same, itâs more. GOG has its client for convenience, but also offers independent installers, so it could become really offline mode.
Now imagine going on vacation and not having access to internet/steam and bye LE.
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How is that any different to the true offline mode that you can use with steam? You set LE to offline mode in the launch options & then whether you have internet access or not is irrelevant, you can still play LE.
If GoG goes down so is your library. There are no stand alone servers for games on steam or gog if they donât have any by nature. Or did I miss something?
You did miss âindependent installersâ i mentioned. GOG allows you to download installers for a game and keep it on your drive forever. This way you can backup your entire library in case GOG goes down (if you do it before it goes down of course). It seems GOGâs versions are more doomsday friendly 
I just tested playing LE without internet and it worked, but it still requires and launches steam client and if steam client ever stops working offline because of lost password/session/whatever, then offline LE is gone with it. Now if it could launch and run without needing steam client, that would be close. If you could download installer and install without needing steam client, it would be equal.
Technicalities aside, some people just prefer GOG for one or more of thousands of reasons. I have like 9 games on steam and over 100+ on GOG. Some folks avoid steam completely and use GOG only. Maybe they could get LE on GOG as well, even if offline version only.
Sometimes gog vs steam discussions resemble PS vs XBOX fights, but why not publish on both stores? And i can already see one possible answer - they canât even get seasons on time, so they seriously lack development power.
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Itâs completely okay 
. Just wanting a GOG version because GOG is nice is understandable.
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I thought you could launch LE in true offline mode from the exe?
You can, but it needs steam running (even if you have no internet connection). You canât run it with steam closed.
Some games can be run directly without steam being opened (itâs a developer choice, mostly due to DRM), but hardly any online game allows this.
You can also use a hacked dll for steam to bypass this. Itâs not currently legal, but if steam does go tits up (not likely, GOG is more likely to crash before Steam does) then it becomes a murky ground of whether steam can be considered abandonware or not (in which case you can do whatever you want).
That there are workarounds for it is clear when you consider that there are plenty of LE versions available through illicit means and those donât require Steam. But if Steam does go under, those illicit means can suddenly become legal.
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Whatâs the legal justification/underpinning for that?
It becoming abandonware, meaning you can pretty much do anything you want with it in order to preserve the original function.
But just because nobodyâs around to enforce copyright/ownership doesnât mean that a thing has entered the public domain. Though I think (given IANAL) thereâs an element of âuse it or loose itâ to trademarks & I donât know if that also applies to copyright.
The thing is that you bought a license to play the game. If Steam goes under, the licenses donât become invalid, you just canât access the Steam server anymore.
That means that you would be within your rights to keep it going using altered versions of the software (which is what the hacked dll is) since you did pay for them.
Itâs no different from using a VM or an emulator to run older games from steam that donât run properly on Windows 10/11 anymore.
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By providing a option for downloading it even without the connection to Steam itself.
Meaning if Steam shutters it would shutter all Steam-only games immediately together with it.
If GoG shutters then itâs all still fully available since they can be started standalone without any third-person program being needed. That allows preservation of games and moving those games to other PCs decades after the service ended.
EU software preservation laws. Right to repair in the US.
A customer which has bought a product is entitled to be able to use it. This was a major reason as to why it went from physical copies to digital goods⌠because nowadays the argumentation for it is âyou only got a licenseâ.
All old-school cartridge or disc-based games are allowed to be copied for personal use as often as you want, hence unless you mess up not even physical degradation of the respective storage device is a limitation to usage.
Also youâre allowed to adjust and change the product you bought however you wish for personal usage, meaning you can port it to whatever hardware you want if you have the ability to do so.
Yep, thatâs true.
Youâre not allowed to spread it.
Youâre allowed to use it for personal use only though.
Thatâs the legal gray area for ROM-sites. ROM-sites offer all those old games and emulators en masse⌠with the declaration of usage being only allowed when you own the product personally, because then itâs preservation.
Hence:
This is the exact legal framework it works under.
Service is gone⌠product not.
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Not all of them. There are plenty of games that donât care about DRM and you can launch them directly without Steam.
You donât have a way to install them if you didnât have it installed when Steam died, though.
To be fair, that does require you to actually download the offline installers and keep them in your harddrive(s), which is often not feasible when you have dozens of games in your library.
Otherwise, if GOG goes under and you donât have the offline installers, then youâre as screwed as with Steam.
Thatâs right, buying doesnât mean owning anymore. It means the right to use so long as those services are up. Miss those gold old NES days of blowing on the cartridge haha.
Unfortunately many vendor platforms have specific requirements which we typically wanted to avoid, such as having in-game advertisements for the platform), restricting design space, or offering a poor cut on sales.
A significant part of it however is the additional work required. We had actually previously offered a stand-alone client. However, the additional work to have a stand-alone on top of Steam wasnât just a matter of creating a second distro, but noticeably increased project scopes to account for it. As a result we actually discontinued the stand-alone client to put those efforts into the game rather than making a second client work. This is something we need to account for with going to Playstation as well, but there is enough of an additional potential player base to warrant the extra work and associated costs.
Additional PC Vendors, such as GoG simply donât make sense for us at the current time with the additional restrictions, cutting into hours that could be spent improving the game instead, and how little it extends opportunity to reach new players.
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I get the other things you mentioned but this surprised me. How would a platform restrict the gameâs design space?
That would be because the platform doesnât support certain things you can implement or because they have limited upgrade potential (like GeForce Now or even a console).
This point doesnât have to apply to GoG specifically, just to vendor platforms in general.
As an example, when you develop for PS5 itâs a static environment. What the PS5 can do is what the PS5 will always be able to do. The hardware wonât change. So if you get a technology on PC (like DLSS) that wasnât supported by the console, it will forever not be supported by it.
So you either donât develop that technology at all in your game (restricted design space) or you end up working on 2 versions that become more and more distant from each other.
You also get this issue when developing for mobile, due to the differences in what you can do in Android and iPhone.
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I donât get how that is a distribution platform issue though. I can see how it would be an engine issue (Unity versus other engines that may be more effective for an arpg) or a hardware issue, but not a delivery platform issue (GoG/Steam, consoles would fall under hardware issues IMO for the reasobs you state).
Why would GoG v Steam prevent you from adding the shiniest gfx technology that AMD/Nvidia have to offer, or adding a Heist/tower defense/mechanic or having a trillion mobs on-screen all exploding into pixellated goodness at once & dropping a 5xt8 item each?