this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026

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The new owner of GOG discusses taking on Steam, the devil of DRM, and following in Nightdive's footsteps (www.gamesindustry.biz)

submitted 16 hours ago by misk@piefed.social to c/games@sh.itjust.works

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[–] maus@sh.itjust.works 30 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

>sees GOG mentioned in title

>Furiously rush to the comments, "gib linux client"

Classic.

[–] msage@programming.dev 10 points 8 hours ago

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?

[–] LunaChocken@programming.dev 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Heroic? https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 hours ago

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.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 110 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The investment should be into DOS gaming, and exclusively there.DOSBox and DOSBox-X work on Linux.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 16 points 14 hours ago

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.

[–] UncleOb@lemmy.world 75 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Theres a reason steam is king... noone else bother putting games on linux, so valve brought linux to the games.

[+] Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works -7 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] doublah@sopuli.xyz 1 points 24 minutes ago

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.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works -2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 6 points 5 hours ago

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.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

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?

[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 45 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

"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.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It always is in the beginning

~~Don't be evil~~

[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

We got enough bad shit and greed in the world. I'll celebrate good things when I see them.

[–] Bonesince1997@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Good is even in their name!

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 14 points 11 hours ago

Would be nice if a company would try to actually compete instead of "attacking" each other for market share.

[–] goodboyjojo@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah gog is pretty neat. I also use humble bundle store to buy games and it helps charity

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 6 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] OR3X@lemmy.world 24 points 14 hours ago

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!

[–] miguel@fedia.io 15 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, big surprise this morning! I'm glad the new owner is intent on maintaining the same values.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 12 points 13 hours ago

Well the new owner, was one of the original founders.