Gave it a whirl. Not bad for a light-weight clone, although the very much for-mobile menu interface is a bit of a pain.

That (Steam) is where games actually sell and most of the PC distribution market is, for better and/or for worse.

So, as much as I'd rather they (dev's) uses a much more agnostic solution so they can port stuff more places, and did Achievements in-game for offline with offline profiles support like in the old days - for better and for worse, they are gonna use Steamworks and proprietary suites like that b/c that's the market leader, for better and/or for worse.

I'm sure using Steamworks makes it harder to probably want to port to GOG and/or re-work a game for GOG too.

Probably why some games that do come to GOG later like say EYE Divine Cybermancy just flat-out drop their Multiplayer part that was tied to Steamworks and just make the GOG-version Single-Player Only.

I'd love to hear from some dev's how hard, easy, or whatever it is porting a game utilizing DRM-walled Steamworks over to say GOG Galaxy.

There is no Standard answer...

For example "Dragon Quest XIS" got almost no Steamworks attached and is pretty much a standalone-game. You can simply completely remove Steam from your Computer and this Steam game will run without any Steam at all. You may not get achievements this way but people not using Steam OBVIOUSLY do not care about this functionality... they just want a great single player game, thats it.

So it totally depends what you do expect from your game and it only gets hard if you do expect some sort of "deep Steamworks-functionalities" which are totally optional. After all... the main platform from Dragon Quest XIS was not even Steam, it was the Nintendo Switch... because this is the platform it has been primarily developed for. So. no... Steam is not the only option they got, but indeed "a huge option".

There is simply no Standard-answer, it simply depends on how much you gonna use from Steamworks.

Hades is another example which can be played totally standalone, as soon as you remove Steam. There will simply be no achievements but there are players not caring those achievements,,.. you may be surprised; I am one of them...

Of course you could in theory add those gimmicks to a non-Steam game but really.... who actually cares? If you enjoy achievements you obviously will use Steam... or GoG Galaxy, Although, i think the majority of GoG users do not even care for GoG-Galaxy... they just want a clean offline-game. So, you are gonna add functionalities most users may not even ask for. Nothing wrong with it but either way will work; in term to much troubles "bringing it over to GoG Galaxy".

No Achievements for me is not the "be all, end all" for me, as I think DRM-FREE is more important - though it is cool when they (Achievements) do pop-up in-game, when I'm not even trying to earn stuff.

Yeah, I normally don't Achievement Hunt - but it still is cool when I earn something.

I just wish more dev's would build their game smarter and more agnostic - built Achievements into the actual game itself so I can earn them offline with an offline in-game profile...even if nobody else sees them. I still like how Divinity 2 DKS/DC did this and also Hard Reset Redux - more should take note.

Then what can happen is for anything I earned offline - when I go online, make the Achievements upload next time I say connect to Galaxy, Epic OnLine Services, Steamworks.

This is the reason why i really hate Steamworks because everything is actually build in a way you can barely prevent the game from being bound to the account anymore, as this is a "online feature" and "launcher feature": However, it is totally possible making a "Ingame build" which is not connected to any external-launcher and is able to be run standalone. Although, this sort of approach is rather rarely used but it could be the key of making a game able to be run on almost any platform with only few adjustment.

Steamworks is a tool which is actually the "real DRM", as it will bind your game to Steam... which is "working as intended", and not so cool to have for the "other platforms" who might not even be able to pickup a game anymore because "difficult bringing it over".

Absolutely. And smart building of the game means NO STEAM WORKSHOP. That's destroyed so many games.

You mean porting a game utilizing DRM-walled Steamworks over to DRM-walled GOG Galaxy? ;)

Vast majority like clients for lots of reasons, some of them very much singleplayer related. Not just achievements but library features, the social media aspect, the one-and-done game launcher aspect, photo sharing, chat, guides, built in forums, dev blogs... I could go on and on.

We can say DRM free is more important without pretending Steam has 90% market share for no reason.

Yeah, those are my sentiments too. Steam Workshop has really diminished the value of DRM-free editions of certain types of games. It was used to facilitate 'paid mods', which I had a visceral reaction to. That was ultimately when I switched to GOG as my primary gaming platform.

The suggestions to play Old World are good. That's on my radar now. In the meantime, I think I'm going to install Civ IV and play a few games of that.

FYI, OW implements modio -- platform agnostic, non-client mod API.

Literally no one is claiming they have 90% market share "for no reason." In fact, most of us would say there are multiple reasons why that is the case. However, "people luv clients" isn't the main reason, even when accounting for all the social features and assorted other stuff.

Evidence: other stores have clients, other stores have the social media bs, other stores have forums, etc., but none come close to Scheme's dominance. This suggests that Scheme's dominance is either due to being first at these features, or, more likely, due to enough people accepting "you have to use Scheme client to play".

People were given the choice of "Take it or leave it", they should have chosen "leave it", and now here we are, begging for a game from 12+ years ago to arrive on GOG in an actually playable (i.e. DRM-free) form.

I'd say being first and being best at it, in combination. When people complain about Epic and Origin and such it usually boils down to either "that client sucks" or "I want my all my games in one place," which are the two sides of that coin. Literally none of them say "I want to avoid Steam DRM" because no one cares. They actively prefer it over a well known DRM free option (GOG) when it exists.

Yup, that too. :P

Though I do wonder if it's a lot easier doing the porting than we might me think it is. Not sure how much work had to be done on the dev's end to move the game from one suite to another and/or how much work was already done on GOG's end for Galaxy for when dev's decide to use it.

Though, I'd guess most dev's and pub's are under NDA and probably can't talk about how porting from Steamworks (or any other DRM-walled Multiplayer service-suite) to another like Galaxy works.

Of course, I'd always rather dev's use more agnostic solutions - kind of like how GameSpy was, back in the day...which can be used on any game-store But, of course...that GameSpy didn't last forever either (RIP). It's always gonna be the problem of middleware like that for MP, whether open or proprietary - when dev's and pub's and own it themselves; they rely on others.

Which all goes back to why I wish dev's and pub's would build their games 1st more agnostic and smarter - start w/ skirmish modes working ALSO offline with bots/AI; and build Achievements/Trophies into the game itself for offline profiles and offline play like a Hard Reset Redux is.

I'd love to see stuff like The Secret World/Secret World Legends and even Elder Scrolls Online when player counts are dead and dev's want to pull the plug - just decide to make them work offline. Same goes for Fallout 76 too.

That too (on Steam WorkShop).

IIRC, that has been an issue for newer games like Skyrim on their GOG version port, right? That basically...some mods don't even work here b/c of whatever proprietary stuff Steam's WorkShop got going on.

Me, I've always preferred ModDB and Nexus - just grab the files; download them; and go go go. Do it yourself.

See, that's the thing - Steam offers a lot of ways for casuals especially to just install and update games and their mods from the Steam WorkShop. It's a very easy process.

Though, My problem w/ a lot of clients is - I own so many games on them, besides the client being slow, it's even slower b/c it's gonna load the tons of games I own. Even my GOG Galaxy is so bogged-down b/c I tied a lot of my other accounts and whatnot too it. Epic's Store is probably the slowest now, even slower than Origin. Even EA App seems to go faster than Epic for me.

In many instances, for games on GOG and Epic - it's always easier if I'm using a client, just to go use Heroic. That client's way faster and I only got Epic and GOG games tied to it.

I recently debated someone in the Eurogamer comments section about Steam's dominance and they listed a whole ton of stuff Steam offers that Galaxy and Epic do not which I had never even heard of. I think he was more into multiplayer than me, which a lot of people are. So yeah at the end of the day it's not only the first client where a lot of people built their libraries, but it's still the best client. And people want clients, period.

Even me... I used to only use Galaxy for new games that updated often. Everything else I used the offline installer. Lately though I'm just defaulting to using Galaxy for everything. Why? It's easier and more convenient to use, simple as that. Thankfully I can still backup the offline installer in case GOG ever shuts down, which is the whole appeal of the store.