You don’t just pass the exe though, modern games are huge with a lot of files required. With Steam it’s a 2 step process:
I look in the tab in my library for games in my brother’s account I have access to with family sharing.
I download a game from the list.
That’s despite the fact my brother lives in the other side of the country, and it offers me all the Steam features I make use of like cloud saves as if my account had bought the game.
With GOG it’s
Find the right webpage for my brother’s games (you can’t see them from within the GOG client for some reason.
Ask my brother to download the installer
Get my brother to send me the installer file over discord
The installer is too big
Say nevermind just give me your login info
I try to login to his account with the GOG client
Ask my brother for his 2FA authenticator code
Finally login, and can download the game
Remember to turn off cloud saves so you don’t override your brother’s cloud saves.
Based on a true story btw.
There’s probably things we could’ve done that would’ve made it easier and less steps, but it still wouldn’t have been just as simple as what Steam does, and I’m missing cloud saves and I’d have to do several of those steps again if I wanted the game on say my Steam Deck as well as my PC.
then you either use a third party remapper or you simply add the shortcut in steam
If I’m just going to use Steam or extra software to compensate for Steam features, I might as well just use Steam.
For most people, that’s not the case if the alternative solution is worse or less convenient.
Every piece of free software that has ever attained some level of mainstream success and popularity has done so by offering a better product, not something worse with the excuse of “well at least we’re not proprietary”.
GOG allows you to download an unprotected installer. I don’t think they will ever go beyond that in the name of fair use and big publishers are reluctant enough to release on GOG. You were about to use a 3rd party app anyway, Discord. Just use WeTransfer or another filehoster/cloud service to send the file. And honestly, logging into another account and download the file is not as bad as you say.
See that’s kind of my point, when we’re on the 100th “oh just use this other external service/software”, most users (myself included) are just going to stick to the simple solution that just works.
Being able to just access family and friends games straight from my library without wasting all that time having to ask beforehand, manual downloads and file management/transfers and lack of cloud saves like it’s still the 90s is worth whatever moral cost you associate with using a piece of proprietary software.
No, but the workaround is to let the launcher use a different config
We don’t have plans to support multiple accounts, but you can still run Heroic pointing to a different config folder by using the XDG_CONFIG_HOME=~/.config2 env variable. You could create a shortcut to something like XDG_CONFIG_HOME=~/.config-user-1 heroic to open Heroic for one user and XDG_CONFIG_HOME=~/.config-user-2 heroic to open Heroic for another user.
My family share for GOG is an SFTP server, which I’m pretty sure you can also do just using FileZilla and forwarding one port. Or you hand them the files on a flash drive.
You don’t just pass the exe though, modern games are huge with a lot of files required. With Steam it’s a 2 step process:
That’s despite the fact my brother lives in the other side of the country, and it offers me all the Steam features I make use of like cloud saves as if my account had bought the game.
With GOG it’s
Based on a true story btw.
There’s probably things we could’ve done that would’ve made it easier and less steps, but it still wouldn’t have been just as simple as what Steam does, and I’m missing cloud saves and I’d have to do several of those steps again if I wanted the game on say my Steam Deck as well as my PC.
If I’m just going to use Steam or extra software to compensate for Steam features, I might as well just use Steam.
Every solution that doesn’t need an external proprietary app is a better solution.
For most people, that’s not the case if the alternative solution is worse or less convenient.
Every piece of free software that has ever attained some level of mainstream success and popularity has done so by offering a better product, not something worse with the excuse of “well at least we’re not proprietary”.
GOG allows you to download an unprotected installer. I don’t think they will ever go beyond that in the name of fair use and big publishers are reluctant enough to release on GOG. You were about to use a 3rd party app anyway, Discord. Just use WeTransfer or another filehoster/cloud service to send the file. And honestly, logging into another account and download the file is not as bad as you say.
See that’s kind of my point, when we’re on the 100th “oh just use this other external service/software”, most users (myself included) are just going to stick to the simple solution that just works.
Being able to just access family and friends games straight from my library without wasting all that time having to ask beforehand, manual downloads and file management/transfers and lack of cloud saves like it’s still the 90s is worth whatever moral cost you associate with using a piece of proprietary software.
I kinda miss the 90s
you can login in heroic once and then install what you need, and disable cloud saves as default option
with family sharing the DRM does not allow two people to play at the same time, don’t ignore this huge inconvenience
Can you use Heroic with multiple accounts? Because if not that’s meaningless.
No, but the workaround is to let the launcher use a different config
My family share for GOG is an SFTP server, which I’m pretty sure you can also do just using FileZilla and forwarding one port. Or you hand them the files on a flash drive.
To be fair, ‘you can do whatever you want with your games’ is totally different from ‘we should add features that actively support piracy’