It’s still a decentralized system, and saying that they aren’t because the default is for everyone to use the same node is either disingenuous or missing the point entirely. By your definition decentralization is impossible, because you always need to know at least one node in the network in order to enter.

That’s just pedantic, you will always need to know where the door is to enter the network, but in both cases even if that specific server that you know gets taken down you can still enter by any other server you might discover in any other way. It doesn’t cease to be centralized because you are using the same single node to get into the network, that would be like claiming email is not federated because you only use Gmail, or because you need to know the email of the person you’re writing to.

You probably don’t play mouse heavy games, but if you like strategy games they’re a must. Playing Stellaris, RimWorld, Crusader Kings or Factorio without a touch pad would get annoying really fast.

In that sense it is a bit of scripting, it’s a templating language similar to Jinja, so you put things you want to display between {{ }}, for example {{name}} will get rendered as the content of the name variable. [[ ]] is the way Silverbullet habgles links, so [[Something]] is a link to the file Something.md, so [[ {{ name }} ]] is a link to the file with the name from the variable.

Also that’s because I wanted a custom view, a very similar thing could be done with:

\```query
recipe
\```

BTW, you can have a table of contents on Silverbullet by just putting a block named toc, i.e. ```toc and closing it on the next line.

No scripting involved in the above example though.

Let me give you an example, I have a page with this:

 ```template
 | Name | Keywords |
 |-----------|-----------------|
 {{#each {recipe}}}
 | [[{{name}}]] | {{keywords}} |
 {{/each}}
\ ```

Then each recipe page has a header, so for example if I have a file named Recipes/Steak.md with the content:

---
tags: recipe
keywords: beef easy
---

# Ingredients 

Yadda yadda yadda...

So that table gets populated with all of the recipes wherever they are and I can add other columns or info there. It’s very neat and customizable.

Silverbullet is open source and has a very simple architecture with slightly extended markdown files which are easy to sync using whatever you use for syncing files. Plus it syncs files locally and allows you to edit offline and sync later (with a basic sync conflict resolution to avoid losing changes) and a very cool feature is that it allows you to write your own scripts to get whatever feature you want.

Another vote for Silverbullet, I’ve been using it for a while and it’s great. There is a tree view plugin that’s very easy to install, however I disabled it after a short while because I realized that, because of the way I take notes, that is a lot less useful than other features.

For example, I have a folder with all my cooking recipes, at first I thought having a Tree view would be good there, but actually if I use the querying mechanism I can have tables that give me more information than just the name, e.g. tags, difficulty, etc. also this works regardless of where the recipes are, so if I want to create a subfolder structure or scrap recipes from elsewhere in the whole space it would work (granted, not very useful for recipes, but I also have a table for work tools, some of which are embebed on another page, some of which are a page of their own, and I have a table that lists all of the tools to give me an overview)

If you backed up your game folder yes you can. Most games on Steam have no DRM, so just copying the folder is enough to play it on another computer. Then there are badly implemented games which you would need to replace the steam library with an open implementation (which doesn’t involve cracking the game). And finally there are games with DRM which are not available on GOG so they’re irrelevant to the discussion.

Again, the same is true for Steam, so that’s a moot point when comparing GOG to Steam which is what this thread is about.

This is a thread where someone claimed that you don’t own the games on Steam but you do on GOG, this is the comment the person was replying to:

In case of Steam.

With GOG I get an actual license key & terms that state my ownership.

So yes, that’s exactly what the person is saying. So the fact that GOG can’t remotely wipe your drive is a strawman fallacy, because neither can Steam, and the differences between GOG and Steam is what’s being discussed, so anything that is the same has no bearing on the discussion.

Again, the same is true for Steam as well, so it’s a moot point.

But the same is also true for Steam, so it’s a moot point.

It depends on the game and how they handle steam, if they see steam as a requirement then the game is choosing to use steam as a very rudimentary (and easily bypassed) DRM. But this is more about lazy development than DRM, essentially they’re not expecting the steam APIs to fail, which is ridiculous considering they have non-steam versions, so a simple if statement would solve this issue. Also this paints those games in a very bad light to me, because if they’re doing that with some API call on steam they might be doing it with another and now the game needs to be online always.

There are plenty of multiplayer games that don’t require steam, iirc all of the paradox games you can just copy the folder to a different computer without steam and run the binaries.

And while not ideal, someone else pointed in another comment that there’s an open source implementation of the steam API, so worst case scenario you just replace the library in your backup and you’re done.

Yes, there are a couple of corner cases, I know of 1. But what I stated is still true as a general rule.

On most games yes, like I said before I’ve copied games from my computer to others to play in lan to convince friends to buy a game.

Then there are badly implemented games, where you need to either delete the steam library from the game folder or replace it with an open implementation.

And the rest are the ones that have DRM (which are not available on GOG anyways so they don’t matter for this discussion).

Yup, GOG just has good marketing department and lots of people fall for the DRM-free (but not really) games you own (but not really) campaign.

How is that different from backing up the game folder on steam? In both cases it’s true that:

• You’re not doing anything illegal at the moment you do it
• You can use it to play the game on a different computer (as long as the game is DRM free which is not granted on either platform)
• The company (Valve/GOG) can’t remotely erase your copy
• If the company removes the license from you your backup is now technically illegal but it’s unlikely to be enforced

I fail to see how GOGs approach is any different, they still sell you a license and you’re backing up the installer in case the license gets removed and/or you’re forbidden from redownloading the game.

Yes, but the same is also true for Steam, so it’s a moot point.

No you don’t. You get the same license as you do on Steam, here’s the license btw https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/16034990432541-GOG-User-Agreement-effective-from-17-February-2024?product=gog :

We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.

Which is very similar to Steam. In both cases you can keep the files you’ve downloaded on your machine, and on most cases you can copy those files to a different machine and keep playing it. GOG has better marketing on this regard, but they’re both very similar, neither enforces DRM nor forbids it entirely, although GOG does tend to be a bit stricter (but they still allow it) whereas steam is a bit looser but knowingly implemented a weak DRM and let’s you know in the game page if the game has any stronger form of DRM.