The developers of Heroic are in regular contact with GOG employees, and they also get a cut from any GOG purchase made through the Heroic client.

The end result is still part of GOG’s revenue going toward the development of Heroic.

It doesn’t meet your high standard and that’s okay. I prefer to count my blessings in this regard.

GOG is funding the FOSS Heroic Games Launcher through an affiliate partnership: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/donate

You legally didn’t “own” your physical games either if you haven’t noticed.

It’s not legally binding, since it isn’t part of the user agreement you review when buying games on Steam.

When have they not had the full package on GOG?

There really is no difference. For almost all intents and purposes, GOG’s offline installers can be treated the same way as physical CDs of way back then, with one of the only exceptions being that you cannot resell them.

Nowadays the Heroic Games Launcher is the preferred solution for downloading and running GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.

The Heroic Games Launcher can download and run GOG games. It’s a community-run project, but officially affiliated with GOG.

By now my GOG library has far exceeded my Steam library in size. I was surprised by how many games on my Steam wishlist are also on GOG.

For context, Steam is now forced to display this due to a new law passed in California: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426

Valve is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.

Frostpunk 2 is also available DRM-free on GOG!
https://www.gog.com/en/game/frostpunk_2

What exactly did Palworld steal? Surely you have sources for your claims

Yes, you throw away the code and write it again.

https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher/releases/tag/v2.13.0

Your statement “if you’re on Windows” is still wrong.

Additionally, the Heroic project is officially affiliated with GOG, so saying that they don’t care is also wrong.

Wrong.

Well-deserved shout-out for GOG. Its standalone installers make actually owning your games much more convenient than it would be on Steam.

Have you tried the Heroic Games Launcher? It’s currently the most advanced launcher for GOG games on Linux, even implementing support for some of GOG Galaxy’s online services. Additionally it’s officially affiliated with GOG, so you can “donate” to the project by purchasing games through the client.

How did you try to get The Thaumaturge to run? I found that I could run many games on my library without issue using the Heroic Games Launcher, which is arguably the premier Linux client for GOG games.