Frezzato said:
Yeah, so is there really less tinkering involved with GOG?
I've never had to tinker with anything from GOG.
I've also never had to tinker with anything from Steam, though.
But, still, in theory GOG should be the safer bet. They do actually personally ensure the games work on at least the systems they support, which is, so far, Windows XP, Vista, 7, I believe. There is a somewhat limited, but growing, support for Linux (Ubuntu and Mint, specifically). GOG also have their 30 day money back guarantee - if a game doesn't work for you, you contact support, they'll try their best to assist you with getting the game working, if it
still doesn't - you get your money back.
By comparison, Steam just offers offers the vanilla installation of a game, without changing anything - so if a game came out for Windows XP back in the day, it is not guaranteed to work for Windows 7 (unless the developer/publisher patches it)[footnote]Saying that, in practics a lot of them do work, at least to varying extent, but that's down to Microsoft trying hard to not lose the gamer demographic, thus including some support for the more popular titles in Windows 7.[/footnote]. So, in theory, in 20 years time, when we are all using Microsoft Windows Skynet, say, Fallout 4 may not work on it, if bought from Steam, but GOG would try to make it work. As they are being hunted down and killed by terminators[footnote]Yes, the GOG team is exactly THAT determined[footnote]that may have been a joke[footnote]The GOG team determination part, I mean - not the terminators[footnote]Their official name would be Xbox Singularity[footnote]OK, that's enough jokes about Microsoft[footnote]And quite enough footnotes[/footnote][/footnote][/footnote][/footnote][/footnote][/footnote].
Do note, though that GOG doesn't cover totally everything - I know of at least two games that do need some extra stuff installed. Well, not to work, but still:
- Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura works really better with the Unofficial Patch for it [http://terra-arcanum.com/drog/dest/uap.html].
- there is a fix for the opening cinematic for Soul Reaver (which I'll try to find). I don't know if it has been fixed already but basically, for some reason, the GOG version had an early version of the cinematic itself, which meant the sound was different. Namely, some effects were missing. Not a huge issue - all the lines were there, but it was just odd for some fans, since the cinematic was so iconic. The "fix" was just the actual cinematic from the CD version.
Still, all in all, GOG should have the better track record for games working. Again, I've not had issues with either, but there you go.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot - there was also Dungeon Keeper 2 - I've got it, I've got like three differnt versions of it, and the GOG one is by far the most stable on Windows 7. It does actually occasionally crash and there is some somewhat odd occasional flickering of the screen but, all in all, works great. Saving often (and there is a quick save key), works around the crashes. I'm not entirely sure what GOG did to make it work (I've seen something that looked similar in Blood 2) but, still, it's way more than what the vanilla game or various other patches managed to do.
