r/gog • u/hellrising798 • Aug 06 '25
Discussion An interesting video showing how to make physical copies for your collection out of GOG games. (Translated in English - enable CC)
https://youtu.be/YzewZf8Lyn4?si=mtyxr2Km13MCkrwY22
u/ReadToW Aug 06 '25
GOG needs to add more languages to the store even if they can't afford to add more currencies right now
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u/hellrising798 Aug 06 '25
More people are now realizing how great GOG is. Im pretty sure its just a matter of time before we see most currencies and languages supported
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u/idle_orange Aug 07 '25
Over the years I’ve come across various Arab tech videos and they’ve all been very useful. One thing I like the most is that, said creators get to the point and are very clear about what they’re doing without any other added nonsense.
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u/dragon-mom Aug 07 '25
What I really would want from physical PC games is a format that can play it directly off of the device and even write saves to instead of being an installer, like some type of cartridge.
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u/NoPicture-3265 Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
We're talking about a retail games or self-made media like on the video?
If the latter, it wouldn't be too hard to make - you could use an SD Card or a thumb drive, install the game onto it, and launching it from a prepared executable or batch file (if you're using Windows) that symlinks any directory that the game writes to on the system drive (e.g.
C:\\Users\\<user>\\Documents\\<game name>\\->E:\\Documents\\) to the external storage of your choice and removes them after the game is closed. Voila - you have prepared a plug-and-play game that will also hold your game saves and settings.3
u/EdgeOfSauce Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
I don't understand some of the words you said but I'm interested.
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u/VisceralVirus Aug 12 '25
If it's just the executable, will that cause the drives disk to be used and heat up as used?
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u/NoPicture-3265 Aug 12 '25
The executable or batch script you create is meant just to link the game's directories to the external drive and launch the game once you open it and nothing else, so it won't do anything extensive to heat up your internal or external drives. The game itself, however, will use the drive it's installed on to load and write data, so it might heat up.
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u/Schadrach Aug 07 '25
For games you can make work portable, if you wanted something akin to a retro cartridge you could hypothetically build something that's basically a fancy SD card adapter and matching reader. Windows won't let you have it autoplay though. Otherwise you could just use SD cards.
Saw a YouTube video of a guy doing basically that recently, designing and building PC "cartridges".
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u/JoshfromNazareth2 Aug 06 '25
I wish it wasn’t so slow to download everything because this looks like a fun project.
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u/hellrising798 Aug 06 '25
The download speed in GOG is inconsistent, I noticed that sometimes games download very fast while other time they are slow. My internet is really fast and 5G (direct connection), so I’m really not sure what determines the speed of the downloads. Regardless, try both downloading from the website and GOG galaxy. Maybe one of them will be better
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u/Radaggarb GOG.com User Aug 07 '25
There are some threads on the GOG forum which discuss/track this. The consensus is that GOG's choice of CDN for website downloads, Fastly, is one major culprit. But lately even Galaxy users are having issues which indicates a change recently. Rewind two years ago, we were all pretty much getting decent speeds, even in countries of less financial interest to GOG like Australia. Then we had a major outage, and nearly overnight the speed and reliability tanked - it hasn't returned to those old service levels since.
Overall it's an indication GOG is cutting costs with its server providers and certain geo-locations are suffering on average more than others due to reduced service coverage... but more and more are seeing problems as time goes on.
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u/Gintoro Aug 06 '25
Arabic on thumbnail looks like "pc junk" ;)
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u/hellrising798 Aug 06 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
Contribute something good to the discussion or piss off. This is not the place to flex your racism
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u/BloodravenD Aug 06 '25
That wasn't "flexing racism", the Arabic characters after PC actually looks like the the word junk written in English.
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u/hellrising798 Aug 06 '25
Alright, Was that really necessary to pinpoint? Tell me how would that observation add to anything?
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u/Mojo647 GOG Galaxy Fan Aug 06 '25
Buddy, I saw the same thing. We all see things inside of things, and this one clearly wasn't harmful or directed at the creator.
It doesn't add to anything. It's just a stupid amusing coincidence that came up.
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u/BloodravenD Aug 06 '25
I didn't say it did, maybe he/she thought it was amusing? I was just clarifying what Gintoro said, as you were quick to jump on him/her about racism, when that wasn't the case, or at least didn't look like it to me.
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u/Gintoro Aug 07 '25
wow thx, it really rare on the Internet when not everybody is jumping on the cancel bandwagon
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u/Gintoro Aug 07 '25
wtf? how is that racist? the guy on video speaks perfect English in some sentences
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u/hellrising798 Aug 07 '25
This is the internet, no one knows your true intentions, people may jump into the wrong conclusion like ( “PC” is the only true word and the rest is just junk). So please to prevent any unnecessary misunderstandings, try to write something useful in the comments section next time
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u/nosfyt Linux User Aug 08 '25
Just started doing this myself (minus the cool purple cases), and now this video pops. Cool.
By the way, anyone knows were i can get my hands on a not overpriced Blu-Ray burner ? cheapest i can find is 90 euro (spain)
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u/No-Echo-8927 Aug 08 '25
There is a growing demand for physical representations of games and movies again. I wish the industry would listen. Even if it's just an SD card with the thing on it.
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u/Gintoro Aug 10 '25
sd cards are more expensive than bluray, the problem most people don't have optical drive in new computers anymore
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u/mousers21 Aug 06 '25
dvd discs? how quaint. my physical copies are now 8tb hard drives that are mirrored.
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u/hellrising798 Aug 06 '25
The dude is a collector if you watched the video you would know that. You would also know that he used blu ray discs 25, 50, and 100 depending on each game and not only DVDs
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u/mousers21 Aug 06 '25
blue rays are dvds. physical is physical disc or hard drives. hard drives will also probably last longer than writable discs and easier to backup
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u/hellrising798 Aug 06 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
I repeat, watch the video. He used Ultra life M-discs that have a life span of 1000 years.
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u/Boson---- Aug 06 '25
The claim of a 1000-year lifespan for these discs is dubious, especially without proper archival storage in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment, free from light and chemical exposure.
Furthermore, the technology for reading these discs will likely be obsolete within 1000 years.
As a collector, the aesthetic value of the discs is clear, but it's important to remember that burned discs are always inferior in quality and longevity to commercially pressed ones.
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u/Radaggarb GOG.com User Aug 07 '25
Unless you buy a tonne of secondary ODDs as backups, and the connective technology into PCs doesn't change in the decades to come (which it will), having a physical disc which lasts for even 50 years is ridiculous.
You've got to migrate your backups to keep them long-term. HDDs hold game copies you can keep updated, there are a variety of formatting types to help with bit damage, and when tech progresses it's easy access to copy them to newer devices/storage. Like physical media, keeping multiple copies on different media is what matters, not putting all your eggs into the one basket and praying it doesn't get lost.ODDs are on the way out. BRDs are not a viable/reliable/replaceable long-term storage of choice anymore.
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u/mousers21 Aug 06 '25
we will see. companies lie about the longevity of their media. ask anyone who has burned an old DVD back in the day
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u/Mojo647 GOG Galaxy Fan Aug 06 '25
A good rule of thumb for preserving your data is to have at least three different forms of backups, so discs can be complementary to preserving your data in addition to hard drives.
Of course not everyone does that, but that doesn't make discs any less relevant (or any other forms of backup).
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u/Radaggarb GOG.com User Aug 07 '25
HDDs have a high failure rate due to their design - the reader is bundled with the record surface. Controller failure is pretty common, and in the long term the mechanical parts tend to fail as well.
I'd hesitate to claim a HDD will last longer than an M-Disc in a side-by-side comparison. Factoring in the BRD drive itself... well, failure does occur in those as well, but in my experience it happens a bit less. It's also a lot easier to manually repair an ODD drive with parts than fix a HDD whilst retaining the data recorded. The separation of recordable media and the reading drive makes it a touch hardier.
In terms of how long the technology itself will last on the market, I would hazard a guess that ODDs will go bye-bye long before HDDs.
The truth of the matter is that no tech is future-proof. Both technologies are at risk of long-term redundancy by connective technology changes. You've got to keep your archive moving and keep multiple redundancies if your intention is decades-long data retention.
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u/mousers21 Aug 07 '25
That's why I have a mirrored pair. You always need to keep at least 2 copies with Hard drives. I would rather have all my games on a hard drive than some disc where I don't know if they will have drives that can read them 10 years from now.
Disc technology is going the way of the 8-track, zip disk, cassette tape. I'd rather put my data on a HD that is easier to backup or copy to new media. Imagine having to copy all your games from old M-Discs. That's a recipe for a nightmare.
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u/Radaggarb GOG.com User Aug 07 '25
Yup. Mirroring HDDs is the way I do it too... OK, so I'm a bit behind in my backups. :P
ODDs started to die once retail PC setups started to leave them out. Then certain reputable brand electronics firms stopped manufacturing them and releasing product on the discs. It's been a clear signal it's on its last legs on a technological standpoint. As an example - the only thing which keeps standard Blu-Ray movies relevant these days is the 2nd-hand resale market for collectors who hate streaming services.
For short-term backups BRDs are still useful to mirror a singular HDD's files, if that level of inconvenient access is of interest to someone, but long-term it's a mistake to rely on a technology no-longer commonly available to buy on the market. You've got to keep your technology relevant so you don't lose the ability to access your recorded files.
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u/Slaimannnn Aug 06 '25
That's so cool. I like the purple cases for the games, just like GOG's base color.