What’s wrong with just downloading a patch and pointing it to the directory the game was installed in?

Nothing, but you can be sure that’s not how it’s going to work. A simple example with Steam and certain games: you have one launcher with Steam, but you have another launcher between the game and Steam, and I don’t see why that’s necessary.

But the way you want to do it requires a bit more work, but nothing too complicated, and more and more people want something simple and easy to use, which is not the case with your proposal because they have to do more steps to be able to play.

I don’t want Gog to change in order to have more games in its store. In fact, I have a lot of games on Steam because of the simplicity on Linux and I don’t want Gog to become like Steam, I want a DRM-free alternative.

Yes, but you can’t launch the game without Steam (I think some game can be start without Steam but I’m not sure). And i prefer to own my game, and the possibility to change how i launch the game (with or without the launcher).

As Blu Rays are read only, you obviously can’t apply the patch there. The patches were always downloaded and applied to the game parts you had on your hard drive. What was wrong with that?

You need a “launcher” just to download update, and it’s not the most ideal for me. I prefer to have nothing between the button play (or click on the executable), and the game launch.

At some point, steam will enshittify or shut down. That’s when we will realize that online only distribution might not have been such a great idea.

I agree with you, only online is totally stupid because the moment the service shutdown you lose everything. This is why GOG is good, because after buying a game, I can create backup on external disk. The only biggest problem for me is they don’t have a good Linux integration for GOG Galaxy 2.

This is not perfect, but it’s a better start than nothing. And it’s difficult to do this because of DRM on other store.

I see some problem with physical media :

• Storage: ~100Go (Blu-ray), ~5Go on DVD
  • For all the non opti game who take more than 100Go of space ? Multiple DVD/Blu-ray ?
• Update: actually if a game need a update how to do this ?
  • Download a zip file to apply the patch ? Possibility to directly write the patch on the DVD/Blu-ray for future install ?

If we use DVD/Blu-ray we need a player to install the game (I really prefer to have one on my computer/laptop than nothing, but it’s not how things work now 😭).

I totally prefer the physical media, but it’s not perfect. To have something easy for consumer, the game industry need to do some change like : opti the game size, find a good method to update the game, and no DRM on the physical media.

If like you say Steam is only garbage, make a list of good alternative.

• Epic Game (worst)

  • Launcher -> horrible and worst than Steam. Actually you can use heroic games launcher (less problems)
  • Store -> really bad
  • DRM
  • Need update to play game
  • Only Windows / Mac (i don’t care about mobile for the small amount of game)
  • Not version for Linux and Tim Sweeney not like Linux and say a big amount of stupidity.
  • Doesn’t have all the tools and feature for dev like Steam
  • No Workshop alternative

• Gog (need more game and feature)

  • Gog galaxy (latest test in 2022) -> good launcher but no Linux version
  • Games for Windows, Linux, Mac
  • Not all game can be found here because it’s only DRM free game
  • Doesn’t have all the tools and feature for dev like Steam
  • No Workshop alternative

From what i can see, Steam is not perfect but it’s better than Epic for sure, and have more feature and game than Gog. I don’t include itch because for me it’s not a gaming store.

If anyone have another store, or want to correct anything.

Normally I don’t change the names that the distribution gives to the hostname, but I’ve been thinking for a while about changing the names to mythological gods or Latin tree names only for server and SBC.

The only server for which I have changed the host name is now r5700server. r5700 for the processor (Ryzen 7 5700), and server because it’s a server.

They’re working for me on PC.

We’ve already tried ZeroTier a long time ago, and it works well, but if you want to add another person to the game, it’s a “lot” of steps before you can play. You’re probably right that the best solution would be to use ZeroTier, but it’s not the most practical for everyone. At least that’s my opinion.
And you need to install a new application just to play with others, which is not what I want.

That’s a good news.

I’m going to look at Tailscale Funnel and I don’t want my friends to have to install software to play.

I don’t know if this is paranoia, but I don’t read good things on Cloudflare for privacy.
And after some thinking, using OVH VPS is not the best thing to do for privacy…

You got me 😂

I’m going to try the first approach of @Limonene.
I hope the amount of lag is not that high, and thank you for reminding me.

I’m going to try your first approach, which seems to be what I want.
The second one looks tempting, but the first one seems to be more secure, I think.

This can be a solution, but only for game servers, and I’m just going to use Tailscale or Netbird for apps.

From what I can see, it’s possible to use this for playing Minecraft with this mod, modflared. Not the best solution, but a working one (I hope).

If I use the same server to host games and apps, how am I going to redirect URLs to the correct reverse proxy ? I think I need a little more research, but I agree that putting the reverse proxy in the same place as what I’m hosting is a better idea.

On the other hand, if I just use tailscale, how can people connect to the game servers without having to install anything ? Or I just don’t understand how it works.