GOG: Two for Two fails so far

[gorfias]

I hear good things on this forum about GOG. So far, they are 2 for 2 with me.

I have windows 10 64 bit on a 2600K HD7970 rig.

GOG gave away Saints Row 2 a bit ago. Doesn't work.

I bought the Saboteur for $5. Not bad. Just doesn't work. I did read on a forum that there are ways to shut down processor cores each time you start the game, might help. No thank you.

Have you had similar fails with GOG? This just spectacularly bad luck on my part?

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Have you had similar fails with GOG? This just spectacularly bad luck on my part?

It might have something to do with the games themselves.

Saints Row 2 and The Saboteur received really shitty PC ports. Both have a slew of bugs and problems ranging from terrible (and I do mean terrible) optimization to just plain not running on certain hardware like ATI gpus (like yours) or cpus with >4 cores. Some of these received patches, and some have gotten workarounds from the community, but even then they're still a mess.

As far as I know, GOG usually does its best to make older games run on modern systems and, most of the time, it works out ok. But when a port is as fundamentally broken as these are, question is how much they can do to fix it without spending a significant amount of their own time and manpower on it (and thus money). Or if they even can without support from the original developer. Though that doesn't excuse GOG selling such games in the state they are in.

 

[maninahat]

I hear good things on this forum about GOG. So far, they are 2 for 2 with me.

I have windows 10 64 bit on a 2600K HD7970 rig.

GOG gave away Saints Row 2 a bit ago. Doesn't work.

I bought the Saboteur for $5. Not bad. Just doesn't work. I did read on a forum that there are ways to shut down processor cores each time you start the game, might help. No thank you.

Have you had similar fails with GOG? This just spectacularly bad luck on my part?

A lot of games have these issues. Desperados doesn't work either. I think there is some kind of gradual patch process with GOG, but for the most part they don't trouble themselves too much with getting the games to work for modern PCs.

 

[Saelune]

Might not be GoG's fault though. Like, that recent Windows 10 update seems to have fucked up a bunch of games for me, including...Morrowind... ;n ;

I own Morrowind on both Steam and GoG, and have the same problem with both. I think it is a Windows 10 problem though, not Steam, GoG's or Bethesda's.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Like, that recent Windows 10 update

Fucking Windows 10 strikes again.

 

[Saelune]

Like, that recent Windows 10 update

Fucking Windows 10 strikes again.

Just to be clear, I cant confirm that it is Win10's fault, just that I had alot of problems seemingly after the update.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Like, that recent Windows 10 update

Fucking Windows 10 strikes again.

Just to be clear, I cant confirm that it is Win10's fault, just that I had alot of problems seemingly after the update.

If this started happening RIGHT AFTER the update, yeah, pretty sure Windows 10 struck again. Try looking in the event viewer though to see the error code.

 

[Saelune]

Like, that recent Windows 10 update

Fucking Windows 10 strikes again.

Just to be clear, I cant confirm that it is Win10's fault, just that I had alot of problems seemingly after the update.

If this started happening RIGHT AFTER the update, yeah, pretty sure Windows 10 struck again. Try looking in the event viewer though to see the error code.

Event viewer?

 

[09philj]

I hear good things on this forum about GOG. So far, they are 2 for 2 with me.

I have windows 10 64 bit on a 2600K HD7970 rig.

GOG gave away Saints Row 2 a bit ago. Doesn't work.

Saints Row 2 needs mods to work. Without Saints Row Power Tools, or something similar, installed, the game speed increases by up to a factor of ten or may just not work altogether. Even with Power Tools, it's not exactly stable.
http://saintsrowpowertools.com/

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Like, that recent Windows 10 update

Fucking Windows 10 strikes again.

Just to be clear, I cant confirm that it is Win10's fault, just that I had alot of problems seemingly after the update.

If this started happening RIGHT AFTER the update, yeah, pretty sure Windows 10 struck again. Try looking in the event viewer though to see the error code.

Event viewer?

Go to the Run dialog box. Type eventvwr. Then on the left pane, click on Windows Logs and then on Applications

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Not GOG's fault. Shitty ports are not their fault. There are fixes though but still, GOG can do only so much. I've found a lot of GOG games that work fine through them have been unplayable through Steam (though Steam eventually catches up on some of them). And the GOG games that don't work well almost always have support workarounds somewhere on the site.
I can't fault GOG much anyway, they're too consumer friendly. I mean I just got a shitton of games no-DRM that were on my Steam library just because GOG Connect is fucking tits.

 

[mrdude2010]

I got Swat 4 and The Witcher 3 from them, and both worked. I think in your case, it's because the port was shitty. Saints Row 2 was pretty infamous for having a shitty PC port.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I've never played The Saboteur, but Saint's Row 2 is one of the worst PC ports I've ever had the misfortune of playing. I don't think any amount of GOG's technosorcery will be able to fix that dumpster fire.

I'll still take GOG over Steam any day, simply because GOG at least puts forth the effort to ensure compatibility with modern systems when they add a new game to their library. That said, it may take a while for them to get back to their older releases when new compatiblity issues arise. I myself have had nothing but positive experiences in this regard, but some of that can probably be chalked up to using older versions of Windows.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

The following games work flawless for me:

-Divinity Original Sin 2
-Jade Empire (NEED. FUCKING. SEQUEL. NOW!!!!!)
-Torchlight 2
-Guilty Gear X2 Reload
-Vampire Redemption and Bloodlines (SEEQQUUUEEEELLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!)
I haven't installed every game I bought, but every game I loaded has worked.

I run Windows 7 on a 2013 year old laptop.

Make of that as you will.

 

[Kotaro]

Both of the games you listed had atrocious (and in SR2's case, basically unplayable) PC ports, and there's only so much GOG can do there. It's not their fault.
Personally, I will almost always choose GOG over Steam, because, as much as I love Steam, GOG really go above and beyond when it comes to being good to their customers. I actually have a personal story there. It has nothing to do with your problem, but I think it demonstrates really well the kind of storefront GOG is:
Dark Fall 2: Lights Out. Good game. Dark Fall is basically Myst if it was a horror game, and while 2 isn't as good as the first, it's still a really enjoyable game. At one point, GOG "upgraded" the version of the game they had on offer for download to the Director's Cut edition, which in my opinion was inferior to the original (to make a long story short, it removed all the nonlinear exploration, changed what was a subtle story into something in-your-face, and created some minor plot holes with the various changes). I made a forum thread asking if they could put the original version back up as an option for people like me who don't like the Director's Cut, and by the next day, they had done so, and you can now download both versions from GOG. If you're curious, here is the forum thread [https://www.gog.com/forum/dark_fall_series/please_add_the_original_dark_fall_2_back]. That was the experience that made me decide to make GOG my first choice for PC games, because it demonstrated that they actually care about customer satisfaction.

 

[gorfias]

...the fix to your Saboteur problem was literally told to you.

Atleast you took to heart describing your rig properly. 2600K means the issue was exactly what the fix described solves.

Not much to go on the SR2 issue either. SR2 is a notorious pile of shit. It's quite possibly the worst PC port of the last decade. I wish that was hyperbole and not a legitimate statement. GOG can do only so much with that one. PCGamingWiki might have something to make SR2 work for you.

Ironically, the PC port of SR2 was done by CDProjekt.

While you had some bad luck with GOG, there's also some truth in GOG games not working in quite a few instances. A lot of the older GOG titles were made to work with Win7, and are not guaranteed to work on 8&10. Plus, if a game had a fucking awful PC port to begin with, ie SR2 and Saboteur, the already existing issues are not likely to go away. All the issues you are having with those games can be traced back to the ports being weird and terrible.

Thanks, forgot I did that thread. That's where I started reading about shutting off cores to play the game. Sounds dangerous.

So far, I've had some really bad experiences with Microsoft (Games I bought for Windows just stopped working), select games for Steam and now these. I really need to protect myself from this sort of thing. Maybe read the threads before purchase? Dunno. But older games vs. new ones: maybe stick to newer games from now on.

 

[Dalisclock]

I have a fairly decent GOG library. So far I really haven't had a problem with games not working when I boot them up. I'm also using Windows 7 until I have to get a new PC or WIN10 becomes required so that might have something do with it.

 

[votemarvel]

I would also say that it seems to be a problem with Saints Row 2 stemming from Windows 10.

SR2 with the Gentlemen of the Row unofficial patch, thanks to whomever recommended it to me, works flawlessly and has proper controller support on Windows 8.1.

Perhaps the Gentlemen of the Row patch could help out on Windows 10?

 

[gorfias]

Two things to check OP:

Did you do a clean install of 10 or just the upgrade? Might be Probably is It's just plain worth it to make the bootable USB of Win10 and reinstall from scratch, even though it means a clean slate of whatever's on your OS hard drive.

If that checks out, did you try a compatibility mode? That's typically found in the properties of the game icon (right click)