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[Frumple]

Well, in order to pirate something, some type of theft has to occur, and theft generally involves taking something someone was trying to sell for more than zero pennies.

Nah. Copyright infringement, yeah, but dat's not theft, per se. Piracy can involve stuff that ain't being sold anymore, after all.

... still, as per the toad, this ain't the thread for linking to that sort of thing regardless. Or the forum, for that matter. Free games thread also ain't really the place for a more meta discussion on the issue, now that I think about it. Eh. Typing in a tablet's a pain, so sunk cost post a gogo.

[Robsoie]

Looks like if you're willing to get yet another steam/epic/store/drm launcher thingy on your system, Rockstar gives you GTA San Andreas for free if you download and install their Rockstar Launcher :
https://socialclub.rockstargames.com/rockstar-games-launcher

[milo christiansen]

And if/when you grab GTA: SA, make sure you get Silent Patch for it. Mine crashed semi randomly until I installed the patch, but after that it has worked flawlessly. You don't get as many fixes as you would if you downgraded to 1.0, but every little bit helps.

I really ought to get my disk version down and install that instead so I can install mods (the Rockstar launcher version is aggressively not modable right now), but I don't have easy access to a dvd drive nowadays...

[Robsoie]

Usually people used to launch Freespace 2 with the SCP new FSO executables either by adding commands line to the shortcuts when you knew what you were doing or using a launcher to easily configure things.

With new releases and versions of the FSO executable old launchers weren't compatible anymore, and so came Knossos

Knossos is an open source launcher and a mod/FS engine game manager all in one :
https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=94068.0

As you can see in screenshot it has a modern interface too in comparison to launchers of old.
But why i mention it on this thread is that even if you don't have Freespace 2 (and missed the GoG free offer) you can still use Knossos to download, configure and play the standalone fan games made with the FSO .
Wing Commander Saga is truly excellent, The Babylon Project has some good stuff for B5 old fans , Diaspora and Beyond the Red Line are great Galactica games, and there are more of those standalone games (but not tried myself so i can't say much about the other games)

Note : in window 10 the Knossos installer will trigger the SmartScreen thing because the installer is not signed (happens regularly with open source stuff), but you can ignore it without problem.
If you don't want to use the installer, you can just extract the installer with something like 7zip and launch the knossos executable (it will not trigger SmartScreen this way)

[IonMatrix]

Not sure if anyone else recommended it, but Unturned is a great game. You can download it for free on steam.

[Craftsdwarf boi]

Not sure if anyone else recommended it, but Unturned is a great game. You can download it for free on steam.

No micro-transactions except for a cheap DLC which allows for user customization.

[IonMatrix]

So...is that good?

[Culise]

Thought I'd post this, because the devs behind the game Dominus Galaxia decided to drum up interest in their Kickstarter by releasing their full latest alpha build which they say they'll continue updating until they hit beta.  They assert it's intended to be a MOO 1-inspired 4X that will build on its inspiration to become its own thing instead of following the treads of MOO2 and Civilization.  It already bullet-points sliders instead of structure-oriented planets, plus stuff in common: ship design, separate turn-based strategic and tactical battle maps, and so forth.  I see hyperlanes in addition to (instead of? they do promise strategic terrain that affects movement) point-to-point movement in the screenshots, and they promise diplomacy and espionage along with an "infinite" semi-random tech tree with six major fields.  They also promise some interesting things about the AI that I'm a bit cynical about.  I'll probably give it a whirl when I have time.

Dominus Galaxia

[hurleybird]

Thought I'd post this, because the devs behind the game Dominus Galaxia decided to drum up interest in their Kickstarter by releasing their full latest alpha build which they say they'll continue updating until they hit beta.  They assert it's intended to be a MOO 1-inspired 4X that will build on its inspiration to become its own thing instead of following the treads of MOO2 and Civilization.  It already bullet-points sliders instead of structure-oriented planets, plus stuff in common: ship design, separate turn-based strategic and tactical battle maps, and so forth.  I see hyperlanes in addition to (instead of? they do promise strategic terrain that affects movement) point-to-point movement in the screenshots, and they promise diplomacy and espionage along with an "infinite" semi-random tech tree with six major fields.  They also promise some interesting things about the AI that I'm a bit cynical about.  I'll probably give it a whirl when I have time.

Hey, Dominus Galaxia is my game. One quick correction: Starlanes are optional. You can play with or without them. And when they're enabled you can still travel outside of the starlane network (just slower).

Thanks for the shout out! KickStarter is going alright so far, but could be going better.

[n9103]

The Internet Archive just added a couple thousand DOS games to their online collection:
https://blog.archive.org/2019/10/13/2500-more-ms-dos-games-playable-at-the-archive/
Being that they're federally funded, I feel they fall outside the grey area that we avoid with abandonware, but if this isn't appropriate, then I'll remove it.

[Stench Guzman]

The Internet Archive just added a couple thousand DOS games to their online collection:
https://blog.archive.org/2019/10/13/2500-more-ms-dos-games-playable-at-the-archive/
Being that they're federally funded, I feel they fall outside the grey area that we avoid with abandonware, but if this isn't appropriate, then I'll remove it.

Some of that stuff isn't even abandonware.  I see they have copies of Wizardry 7 and Tunnel B1, both of which are currently sold on Steam.

[n9103]

And libraries also have copies of Game of Thrones Collections.

[Robsoie]

The archive.org online version of dosbox is always nice to toy around old stuff without downloading or setting them up.

That said, i had never heard before of that eXoDOS project that the article linked on the archive blog is mentionning, looks like a titanic effort.

[A Thing]

CK2 is free again?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/203770/Crusader_Kings_II/

Pretty sure this is click once get the game forever thing. Unless they are straight up making it free to play, in which case, sure whatever, there's enough DLCs that it'd still be profitable.

[Persus13]

Is for PDXCon, and its free forever.