I’m looking to buy a PC game (Football Manager) which, unfortunately, will never come to GOG or any platform in the same spirit due to their business model (I may still not buy it at all due to said business model). For context, I dislike running clients in the background, online drm, root-level anti-cheats, etc.; I also hate the Stockholm syndrome relationship between gamers and Valve. I only own three types of games: those available in GOG, ancient games in physical form, and Minecraft (from when it was independent, now migrated to the incomprehensible mess of alternative versions under MS). Therefore, whichever platform I go with to buy this game, it would be the only game using it (I don’t have GOG Galaxy for the reasons stated above, and I don’t even have the MS Store installed in my PC at the moment).
With this in mind, which alternative with add less clutter to my computer? Will the MS Store option leverage all the background garbage already running in Windows 10, or will it need additional bloatware to work? Overall, which option will have the highest net impact on resource usage?
Thanks for your reply. Good to know I can run it on-demand only.
However, if I went with MS Store, would it require any additional MS software playing the role of Steam, or would it just leverage the gargbage already running on W10?
It should not unless it is through a developer who has a launcher.
I don’t like going through Microsoft if I have other options like Steam and you could even link your gog to a Steam account and launch everything through GOG.
If anything I’d check if they have it on Game pass and get that so once you are done playing you can play other games.
yeah, which is why I’d just go with Steam if I were OP, I doubt this game has a physical copy and steam’s business is games so chances are if steam goes down we have bigger worries.
Great! I don’t think it does, so that would make it more appealing.
As I said, I don’t use GOG galaxy, so I’m not sure of what the point of linking accounts would be, or what you mean by “launch through GOG”
Thanks for the advice, but this would really be a one-off. I’m really determined to buy only under GOG-like terms , otherwise mostly not play (plus the ocasional “alternative means” which I try to minimize). I don’t have accounts on any other platform nor own games on them (except for Minecraft, which was out of my control - that makes my MS count 1 already, I guess). I’m already struggling to agree with myself to make this one exception, for the sake of security and paying back some of the fun I had when I was younger and more keen on “alternative methods”. So this is really about which store will be easier to forget I even used it after doing this one-time job
Yeah, I’m likely to play this game sporadically over several years, while unlikely to play much else outside my GOG library. So, while game pass may be the better option for other users, I think a one-time outright purchase suits me better.
That’s the main reason why I use VMs with PCIe passthrough.
I never install games on my host system, not even those from GOG.
I only buy games from GOG or Steam, Diablo was the first exception in years, then I get the DRM-free version and play offline, I don’t like being analyzed.
That would be first best in terms of privacy and isolating even from in-game trackers, if any, but it wouldn’t be the lowest clutter option - I’d have to run a whole VM just to play the game
I may get around to it eventually, though, so I can stop booting Windows (the alternative would be Proton, but Proton=Steam so no thanks, and my experience with Wine, Lutris, or whatever non-Proton compatibility layers has been atrocious).
True, but isn’t what makes the difference convenience-wise all the game-specific tuning by Valve? At least that was my impression from outside as a non-user, but I’m open to get educated
Proton explicitly supports running independently without the steam process stub (steam client integration). ive tried it for things like autodesk products, in theory it should work well, but it quickly turned into the olden days of WINE prefix dependency hell and absolute spaghetti of homemade wrapper scripts. i ended up getting angry and giving up before i ever got autodesk products working.
if you can make your game executable run, solving all the likely dependency hell issues, steam-less proton might be an option. do not attempt without rigorous emotional support on standby.
in theory, its possible. but man, we are in such a better place nowadays with steam client integrated proton. anybody else remember the nightmare of trying to play games using steam inside a wine prefix? am i just really old?
i think in this case. steam, install, play and yer done.
or download a cracked copy.
tbh though your reasoning is a bit scuffed.
unless its free to play, they wont be mining you for your porn history.
they may gather specs and stability logs. but that should be about it…
anything else and you can opt out on the larger platforms like steam.
as for filling up your system with junk…
steams pretty light weight on the cpu, doesnt take up much disk space (excluding games)…
so yeah have at steam… sure its drm… but they have proven via decades, they are user privacy advocates.
This has been suggested by others too, but so far I haven’t understood their reasoning for my case. They have mentioned what they consider to be advantages of Steam for them, but nothing that really addresses my question: how is Steam the option that adds the least stuff (other than the game itself) to my system?
You say
… but how does it compare to obtaining to the MS store on the same terms (added CPU load, added disk space, added web traffic)?
which is an absolute no! 
