This thread is inspired by the current Deus Ex drama, but not about it specifically. It more brings up an interesting aspect of going "DRM free" that I wanted to discuss.

Mankind Divided's current issue is that the DRM free GOG version basically relies on a Steam emulation tactic to function. The client functions were easier to emulate than to remove. This has happened on here before, and is also a common trick with pirated copies. The client functions of modern games are so ingrained in how the games function they can't be easily stripped out, even by professionals.

My question is: will this effect the stability of DRM free games, even with offline installers, in the future? What I mean is even though I have an offline .exe installer for a game like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, after they presumably fix the current issue, will my future Windows 15 machine in the year 2045 actually need to not just run that .exe, but also the client emulation itself, and maybe encounter a compatibility problem there? Or is this not really a concern as long as the game is compatibly, since the emulated client functions are built around the game itself?

tl;dr Is my "offline installer for a legacy machine" priority on GOG not as safe as I think it is due to client emulation tactics?

I posted about this earlier today here, pointing out that although Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the only current one that's DRM-related, there are several other AAA games released over the past 6 months (including Deus Ex Human Revolution, Dishonored, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite, etc) for which GOG appear to be using some "Steam wrapper" involving the same poorly coded "common.dll" file that's introducing significant startup delays as a separate but related side-effect of basically having two lots of client dll's, accepting Steam builds then just trying to "hack" it in a very amateurish way (at least for major AAA releases that were formerly Steam only, smaller Indie's still look like 'actual' clean builds).

Considering GOG themselves used to say "paying customers shouldn't get a worse experience than pirates", I'm finding it rather absurd that's exactly the situation we've arrived at now with "DRM-Free" GOG builds getting bogged down with double-client dlls-within-dlls slowing things down on startup whilst both DRM'd Steam builds and cracked versions start up 3-6x faster due to only calling one client / dll. Technically they can still call this "DRM-Free" but that's ringing increasingly hollow when it comes with absurd compromises and the most amateurish workaround hacks that literally look and function like badly done 'scene' releases where the side-effect of the cure end up as bad as the disease itself.

I have no issues with offering a Galaxy option all the time it doesn't affect offline installers, but we're already past the point where it does affect them, and have posted network logs from "offline" installers to prove it (there's a long 1-2s delay between each "ping" before the game even starts that looks like it's trying to talk to something, and this only seems to be visible in +2019-2020 games where GOG started using "common.dll" (fake steam_api.dll) + galaxy.dll as if there's two lots of client calls at the same time / a real client talking to an emulated one). "DRM-Free" games that take 6x longer to start than DRM'd ones they're supposed to be superior to has definitely affected my purchasing decisions though with many recent AAA games that I would have bought instead just sitting in my wishlist whilst I adopt a "wait and see" approach to see exactly where GOG is going with this. Someone posted back in Dec 2018 about how something is slowing down the Bioshock startup times when compared side-by-side with Steam and after 16 months, the issue is still unfixed, so...

To answer your question, it's unknown how it will affect the future but if at any point there's a new incompatibility with Windows (eg, if GOG ever went out of business and a few years later a security bug was found in GOG's dll's, imagine the effect if future Windows blacklisted (today's) 'abandoned' galaxy.dll's for 'security' reasons or perhaps introduced some kind of OS level .dll sandboxing protection that affects how one .dll injects / hooks into another, that can definitely break potentially hundreds of games at once. You can see this effect now by renaming common.dll, galaxy.dll or steam_api.dll files in GOG versions of the games, they simply won't start because the client dlls block it in offline installers.

The ultimate in long-term game preservation is really down to removing 3rd party intermediaries / launchers / clients, not doubling down on them. For this reason, I've also stopped blindly updating GOG games when the only change is "installer structure update" (ie, more unwanted Galaxy dll's shovelled into offline installers) and have gone back to keeping the oldest possible build that's both bug & Galaxy free.

Depends on how it is done and what is being "emulated". For crack of Denuvo games for example, unless the cracker is Bethesda themselves like Doom Eternal, you might and will probably have issues in the future. Because both Denuvo and its crack rely an pretty low level stuff that may or may not still exists/works with the next generation of CPUs; and in most of crack Denuvo is not actually removed just tricked. That's one of the main reason why I nearly never purchased a Denuvo protected games, because for those a crack is not any future friendly guarantee.

Now in Deus Ex case, or even most Steam crack, "client emulation" is just a fancy way of saying "replacing the steam DLL that communicate with Steam with another DLL that pretend to be Steam". So that when the game ask "Steam" if the current user is authorized then the DLL happily respond that yes he/she is and the game starts. Normally this kind of "emulation" should be safe as it doesn't really rely on any low level hacks, it's just a DLL made most probably in C++ and relying on the same VC runtime than the game itself uses.

Yeah. Games like Mankind Divided I already own on Steam, so getting them again on GOG is a "I'll pay $5 for a DRM free offline installer for preservation purposes" thing. If they're using weird client hacks to get them working though, which could cause their own issues, then that is a LOT less appealing.

I'm 100% fine with Galaxy as an option or even a downloader replacement, but the offline installers should be "pure," for lack of a better term, since the whole point is preservation (for me).

I totally agree. I guess one analogy is this : DOSBox & ScummVM are awesome pieces of software because they take "clean" games (that may have had disc checks but otherwise weren't locked to actual stores / online accounts) and emulate them almost 100% perfect not just for x86 but even introduce the ability to play on new architectures that weren't even conceived of back them (eg, ARM based Android / SmartTV / Nintendo Switch, etc). Imagine how much harder 90's DOS games would be to support for DOSBox / ScummVM developers if they had to workaround them being blocked from starting by their own abandoned 20 year old .dll's such as electronicboutique.dll vs gamestop.dll vs gamestation.dll, etc, that were all forced in by the 3rd party stores that sold them, with some of the smaller ones "chaining" them up, eg, hmv.dll that calls blockbustervideo.dll - all trying to link to inactive / emulated servers to avoid the game crashing. It would be a huge coding mess. Same is pretty much true of how today's store-front locked dll's will appear in 20 years time to potentially future x86 emulator developers. Anything "clean & client-less" will have a lot more natural future-proofing regardless of today's client's shiny marketing brochures trying to constantly elevate social features above everything else.

Actually it would be a million times easier, and a lot more performant. That's actually how a lot of older games works on newer OS, how we can run 3DFx games and that's actually also how Wine is working too. If you can manage to do it THAT's the best possible way, at least in the short term (i.e. as long as the original CPU architecture still exists). You can have native performances, something you will never have in a million years with an emulator.

Also DOSBox and ScummVM are not really a good analogy as they are totally different in philosophy.

DOSBox is an emulator, it tries to recreate an x86 computer and a Ms-Dos OS that's a billionth time more complex and performance intensive than simply replacing DLLs. Emulation has a lot of advantages, you are no longer tied to the original CPU architecture (i.e. you can run a x86 game on an ARM despite the CPU having nothing in common) and, if open source, that the most future proof solution; but when it comes to performances, complexity and hassle free experience, that probably the worse solution ever.

ScummVM is again something totally different, it's an engine recreation, as in, instead of trying to "run" a game, you recreate its engine from scratch and just reuse the game assets and scripts. It's less of a performance waste and not as complex as emulation as you don't have to recreate a whole CPU / Chipsets / OS / etc... but on the other side as it's a "recreation" it might not be as accurate to the original as emulation would be, especially if the engine is not well documented and has to be reverse engineered; that's why you have some ScummVM games that don't exactly behave 100% like they used to originally.

Wonder how long before galaxy.dll becomes an issue, just like steam.dll, or any of the rest of the rubbish tied into products needlessly.

Whilst I can see why it's a problem for some people, to me it's a non issue. I don't see it as being any different to any other dependency that a game may have that can also be a cause of problems later on. For example some old games require features that have been removed from modern AMD or nVidia drivers, so you have to research workarounds for them. Or modern optical drives that can no longer read certain versions of SecuRom on old discs- I had this issue with Max Payne 2, I spent a day fault finding software issues only to find it was the DVD drive- solution a No CD crack.

What I'm saying is, despite future compatibility being one of the PC's strengths, there has never been a guarantee that you won't have to work for it, and there never will be. The PC is a digital tool kit, a console is an appliance- one needs some user skill the other you just turn on. I've always been able to get things working up to now and I don't expect client emulation to cause any more problems than everything else does in the future.

So I did buy Deus Ex Mankind Divided from GOG because I didn't already have it. I did not buy Human Revolution because I bought it some time back really cheap on Steam. I never pay for a license twice for the same game on the same platform. The platform being x86 PC. Steam, GOG, Epic are shops to me- not platforms. If I want to archive Human Revolution, I'll find a way- like downloading a cracked version (I paid for a license to play it and I always will find a way).

You're not wrong, but if we're being honest the same applies to the Steam requirement itself. When Valve collapses, be it in 10 years or 100, I'm sure the PC community will rally to make sure anything of merit is still playable. Yet I'd still rather we not have to.

Exactly, that sort of what I was getting at with my last para. That's why I don't buy things twice. I know there will be a way to play Steam games no matter what. Anything digital can be emulated by someone clever enough, including clients.

Yeah.

I think principle enters into it for a lot of people. Do I really worry my Steam games will vanish on me? To be honest, no I don't. I do buy whenever possible on GOG though, and I think there's two main reasons. 1) They respect my consumer rights to ownership more, rather than treating it as a rental service. And 2) I think clean and clear .exe installers are better for game preservation, which sets a better standard.

However do either functionally matter to gamers in the end, even if Valve somehow collapse? Eh...

I think by 2045 we wil have allot more problems and will be most surprised if windows is still in business, That having been said I doubt I will still be among the living then, so good luck to the rest of you who are.

GOG has used workarounds to by pass DRM like NO-CD cracks for example for older titles. From my understanding that this tactic is used for the DLC that the game has. To me this has to be on the developer for releasing the game way too late on GOG so they didn't have a clean version so they didn't have to do this tactic.
Also whether or not GOG has to use this tactic in the future is depends on the Developer.

True, but the less there are such dependencies and strings attached, the better. With fewer dependencies that can break in the future, the less likely there will be an issue.

Then again I have no idea how likely this "galaxy.dll / steam.dll / whatever.dll" can cause problems in the future. There certainly can be lots of things that can go wrong, like how in the GOG version of Two Worlds, the game videos don't work because they were encoded in a format for which Windows 10 dropped support recently. The videos play fine on e.g. Windows 7.

The solution to that is to re-encode the videos to a more modern video format (re-encoding can be performed even by the user, with free video tools like ffmpeg), but re-encoding a video always deteriorates the video quality. Not necessarily much, but it always does (well, unless you "re-encode" them into "raw video files" in which case they will keep the original quality, but then the size of the videos will be HUGE).

Not sure if there is a Windows video format that can be considered the most future-proof, that future OSes and devices will most likely still support. Obviously the one that Two Worlds originally chose to use was not the one.

Damn, I am so glad clients were invented and we no longer have to install our games ourselves! Oh the wonders it has done for us!