It's not that easy for Direct IP though. You're always at the mercy of your ISP when talking about DRM-Free online multiplayer. Direct hosting is only possible if you can actually configure your network to allow incoming connections. For people that are behind a CGNAT or that are otherwise prevented to do that by their ISP, that's not so easily possible.

You're then at the point where you need additional services to make it work. A VPN with port forwarding feature, a VPS used as a reverse proxy, third party solutions like GameRanger. So it can be complicated and may cost you additional money, even if you have networking knowledge and are willing to set everything up (which a lot of players don't and aren't, they just want it to work).

Just throwing this in because that aspect seems to be overlooked sometimes, and I could recently witness what happens when hosting services are unavailable for a few days in a game where DRM-Free hosting is fully supported. The lobbies are empty since only a small number of players can actually get it to work without those services, no matter how hard they try.

I'm all for having Direct IP, no question, it's just not the ultimate solution for all online gaming connectivity problems. But it is the one that will survive all others because it can't be taken away. Same with LAN, if you set up a VPN for it (again, for online play).

Well, future proof until we get the new future tech light-based networking standards stuff going :). If you remember, playing multiplayer via serial cable or modem, then IPX/SPX LAN was the standard before the more known UDP/IP LAN came along :). Tech always goes stale, but as there are serial/moden to LAN tools and IPX/SPX to UDP/IP translations (see DOSBox), I am expecting LAN to be emulated in the future under one form or another.

Any type of multiplayer that does not depend on an external service will give you that freedom, so +1.

It's not true that the only way you can currently play DoW1 online with 'random' people is through Steam. The dowonline mod that I mentioned previously (I can't post links but you can easily search it) allows for cross-play between people that have the Steam and physical disk versions. There are usually plenty of people active on there at most times of the day, plus people in the DoW community often arrange games via Discord (for various mods). So, there is no problem at all for people who don't have the Steam version to get MP games. There is no "locked out of MP, unless you use Steam".

n.b. it just "downgrades" the Steam version to use the retail v1.2 executable so it can use LAN/direct IP again.

And does this crossplay also require Steam owners to install the mod?
Ah, well there's my answer. In that case, my point still stands because most people buying it on Steam will not be downgrading their copy and will just use Steam's matchmaking, thus making them inaccessible as possible opponents. As long as this downgrade works on the GOG version too then you still have the option to play with people who have it on disc and Steam users who have downgraded.
None of that addresses my point though, which is still that many Steam users will not downgrade.

That's an extremely weak excuse to "justify" GOG gimping the GOG releases of the Dawn of War games.

No way the majority of players are ever going to use any such mod as that. Accordingly, those who do use the mod will be relegating themselves to playing only within a very small sub-pool of the actual playerbase, which will certainly amount to a second-class citizen experience, at best.


Really, there is no excuse, period, for why GOG and/or SEGA should not do the work to make Crossplay between GOG and the Steam versions of the Dawn of War games, and also the Space Marine game, be 100% compatible with each other out of the box.

This is certainly possible to do, as other games do it, (i.e. Grim Dawn, Ancestors Legacy, etc.).

The only reason for it not to be done is because GOG and/or SEGA are being lazy, cheaping-out, and cutting corners...of which there is no good reason for them to do any of those dubious things, rather than doing the right thing and giving GOG customers the full & equal experience that their money should be buying them.

Fair enough, although I think the IPX/SPX days (before my time) might have been simpler with less things in the dependant stack to replace.

I think that with the pile and a half of tools (take your pick from almost any tool on GitHub that is networked) running on UDP/TCP on the internet nowadays (practically the entire internet that I'm aware of), they'd have their work cut out for them trying to phase it out without provisioning a robust emulation layer to run all the existing tooling seamlessly otherwise I don't think they'd have much adoption for any supplanting standard for quite some time.

Why does it matter if there is a group of players playing through Steam that wouldn't be accessible, unless they install the mod? As long as there is a decent enough pool of players available that do use the mod, then MP with dowonline is completely viable (and would, in fact, be DRM-free). Again, it is not true that players are "locked out of DoW MP, unless they use Steam".

In fact, many of the active DoW1 players who use some of the more popular mods (such as Unification) recommend MP with dowonline over Steam.

Sounds like a good 'downgrade' to me. Perhaps GOG should consider offering that 'downgrade', rather than a gimped version with Galaxy-locked MP? ;-)

I own Age 1 to 3 and C&C up to Generals.
I know a bunch of people who do from all the german speaking countries.
None was ever "part of the communities" of those games.

And well, without a Lan there was no way for many of them to even play them with others.
Because something like DSL was only available after like 2010 at many places.
Some places got it just a few years ago, like 2018 or so.

Truth about the german infrastructure.

It was bought for SP and skirmish. It wasn't even played on Lans, because we did play other games there.
Only Star Craft was tested out one time - and dropped after like 30min.

I know you want to believe, that the majority is like you and wants MP so bad.

Look at the few voices here. Watch out for the amount of people who will buy.


And because you want to fight defensive battles with excluding more and more (srlsy, you claimed people use all those channels in general and now for MMOs because of ingame chat everything else doesn't matter?).

For WT I was telling you how much "ingame lobby" is there.
And that one is not an MMO. It is more comparable to a Battlefield.
Still only 2 to 3% of the currently active players decide to use ANY channel "being part of the community".

And now don't come up with "but these are very different people to the RTS players".

It wouldn't be wise for GOG to provide a "crack" for multiplayer. They will probably propose you to buy the equal to Steam copy of the game (but with the different online player base) and leave the 'downgrade' option up to players. Anyway it's still better than don't have a MP at all.

I have run several communities where I've encountered, at this point, thousands upon thousands of RTS players of varying tastes. I've covered mods for news updates, I've helped run a multiplayer server that replaced GameSpy when that went down, even modded some minor tournaments. I know what people do, and what they want. Your 2-3 friends do not even come close to the same zip code of that sample size. Now you tell me who projects their own preferences here.

lol. Just stop talking now, it's clear you have absolutely no relevant experience to talk about this topic.

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It's not up to them. Even if GOG would provide a version that can connect to Steam players, an update for the Steam versions also needs to be pushed. Relic won't bother, they're busy with developing CoH3 and supporting AoE4.

And now there is your problem.
You meet thousands upon thousands players of various RTS games.

And the copies sold of those games are in the millions upon millions - when talking about the big older ones even for single games.
So, you meet like 1% to 10% of the people who actually bought the game.


The "problem" of the internet is, you overestimate the size of a like minded group..
If there is one guy in every village, who plays online, that is a huge absolute number.
In that village there are 9 guys the same age who do not. And without the internet that guy would be very alone.

If it is like that everywhere, you got this huge number of online players, who just make up 10% of the people who own and play the game.

I mean, I helped out at bigger lan parties myself. We got hundreds of players there. It was crowded.
Those hundreds of people came from an area of estimated 5000km² with roughly 300000 people living in that area.
And there we are, we little not even 0,1%...
And it was not an only RTS Lan...Actually, RTS weren't even played there, because not enough people wanted to play them.

It seems like this is something over your head. You are in a world wide community, with people from all over the world.
You know what those people want. Sure. Not speaking against that.
But based on the copies of games sold, those people are just a small margin.

I don't even want to attack what you did or something like that. But numbers that do look big at first can be small when seen together with other numbers.

And in the old days (and Dawn of War one will soon become 20) high speed internet connections were not widely available for the people. Not outside of the areas with very dense population and often enough even there you shouldn't bet on it back then. My first "high speed" connection was 75 to 150 kbit/s (yeah, not mbit, kbit) after moving to a bigger town.
Not only talking about germany but about Europe and North America.
Might be you lived in a well suited area, but those were not normal.

It simply seems like you are overestimating your personal experience.

I cannot believe that I have to explain that Unreal Tournament, Rune Classic, Red Faction, and Unreal Tournament 2004 on Steam do not use any of Steam's Network Code or anything like that and if you purchase those video games on Steam you can play with the gog.com PC video gamers.

Continue to ignore this if you want.

As I will keep saying it is possible to have 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free multiplayer in a video game not using a E-mail account login, GOG Galaxy or Steam to play against gog.com PC video gamers if you are on Steam or against Steam PC video gamers if you are on gog.com.

What you describe as "platform-agnostic matchmaking/ranking" is 100% absolutely for sure what I'm asking for!

What's the only alternative to that? That would be that GOG gets a stripped-down, gimpy, sub-par version that is vastly inferior to the Steam version and that isn't worth playing due to it having been vastly gimped in its multiplayer aspects.

I'm all-for giving GOG versions LAN and direct IP options too as well, but that is by no means a suitable nor sufficient substitution for regular seamless Crossplay multiplayer which also needs to be there at the same time. LAN and direct IP would need to be an additional option, and not given in lieu of regular real Crossplay multiplayer.

Although realistically I expect GOG/SEGA will do none of these things, and happily give GOG the ultra-gimped version that they are currently planning to do, just like they also did with Space Marine recently.

I wonder if GOG and SEGA will realize that many people aren't going to be buying these games on GOG not because they don't want the games themselves on GOG, but rather, because they want the full real experience of the games, and not the stripped-down gimped experiences that are being offered with the GOG versions.

That’s funny, because in my opinion Galaxy/Steam-powered "crossplay" multiplayer is no suitable substitute for DRM-free multiplayer, be it in the form of direct IP or LAN. Obviously it is better to have both to please the DRM-free crowd and the people who do not care about DRM, but since the second group can already get what they want from the current Steam build I think the DRM-free methods should be the top priority for GOG.