Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
Opinions about GOG portings.
eigensinnig May 1, 2015
Hi all:

I am believing more and more each time that DRM is not fair (even in Europe it is not valid) however as I am moving towards GOG I have a feeling about their ports. Many of them are only a wine wrap. I don't feel like I am supporting linux developers through that (I mean, I could do that in a moment: just install wine and run a win game, and nobody contributed to linux).

Before it was advertised when it was only a wine port, now I don't see this information anymore in the gog website. Is it not possible to know now?

And also: What's your position about this? I ask because I think gog is better, but I don't want to buy such portings.

Thanks in advance
Samsai May 1, 2015
I've only seen a couple of Wine ports on GOG and they all were clearly marked as such. IMO you shouldn't avoid GOG for that. You'd find more Wine ports on Steam anyway.
Liam Dawe May 1, 2015
Honestly, nothing wrong with DOSBox and Wine for old games. Why shun what can help you play games on either platform.

GOG's refund offer is enough to make me shop with them. Try getting a refund from Steam...
EKRboi May 2, 2015
Quoting: liamdaweHonestly, nothing wrong with DOSBox and Wine for old games. Why shun what can help you play games on either platform.

GOG's refund offer is enough to make me shop with them. Try getting a refund from Steam...

Exactly. The likelihood of seeing native versions of the kinds of games that GOG offers with wine or dosbox "wrappers" is probably in the negatives... not to mention you could "filter" most of those games through 100 layers of wrapper/emulator and still be able to play them on Linux with hardware made in the last 5 years.

My feelings on the matter of wrappers is that if it brings yesterdays titles to Linux and they run well on reasonable hardware by today's standards then the only response (as far as I'm concerned) is "AWESOME!!!". With many of the "next gen" engines supporting Linux "out of the box" then these types of ports would certainly be unacceptable for newer games in the coming couple of years and I will certainly view them as "lazy".
JudasIscariot May 2, 2015
Quoting: eigensinnigHi all:

Before it was advertised when it was only a wine port, now I don't see this information anymore in the gog website. Is it not possible to know now?

And also: What's your position about this? I ask because I think gog is better, but I don't want to buy such portings.

Thanks in advance

Hi,

I am a GOG employee and I wanted to tell you that we do state on the gamecards that a given game is "ported" via Wine, if that's actually the case. We also note whether a game comes as a 32-bit binary and we also note which packages are required in order to run said game with the proper package names given so that you can copy-paste them into your terminal and download them via your distro's package manager.

See FlatOut as an example: http://www.gog.com/game/flatout
eigensinnig May 2, 2015
Thanks everyone for your contribution. I found your arguments convincing and I have now moved my wishlist from steam to gog. It is also noticiable the unanimity of opinion regarding this tema. =)
Avehicle7887 May 4, 2015
Quoting: eigensinnigThanks everyone for your contribution. I found your arguments convincing and I have now moved my wishlist from steam to gog. It is also noticiable the unanimity of opinion regarding this tema. =)

GOG has very few Wine wrapped games, you can find out if they're using Wine by looking at the system requirements there's a "The game comes with a 32-bit binary only. This is a Wine game." notice written < - taken from the original Baldur's Gate page.

The majority of Linux games on GOG are native.

As an exclusive GOG user I bid you welcome :-)
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register


Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.