Am I nuts, or has GOG stopped selling the fallout games? Not coming up in a search or when viewing all games alphabetically.

I was just curious if Fallout 3 might be available now, and I purchased F2 from GOG a couple of years ago...

Wow! Thank you. What a shame.

Yup, Zenimax/Bethesda managed to get the rights to the whole franchise and, with their lawyers, are purposely withholding the old titles from public access.

Actually they're back on Steam. Wouldn't hold my breath waiting on them coming back here as Bethesda/Zenimax is Valve's lapdog nowadays (well, been for years really) and has no interest in releasing anything for PC outside of Steam.

Gads, is Steam becoming the only place to get certain titles, 'cause frankly, I can't stand them. I was forced to use them to play Skyrim (bought the hard disk to AVOID having to go through Steam, but alas), which I just purchased recently, and the installation process was tedious, plus they pop-up ads at me, and try to trick me into downloading some other games they're shilling by putting those at the top of the 'play' list. I finally remembered that I could set to 'play offline', which helps a little, but I still have to see Steam 'update' every time I boot up. Blah. I suppose they must have made Bethesda a good offer. Trying to monopolize the download biz, I guess.

I do have F3 on disk, but understand there are many problems getting it to run on Windows 8. And most of the help articles I've found on the subject involve, of course, Steam.

They don't have to offer them anything, Steam is the biggest digital download platform for PC games and it also gives publishers great control over their products. By centralising all their games on to steam they have only one platform for the PC versions of their games to support which saves a lot of money as opposed to making separate patches and maintaining customer support for disc versions and other digital store versions (especially that pesky GOG store with their backwards and wild rules OMG heart attack over lost pennies).

If you are a stuffy no risk AAA publisher wanting to sell your crummy console ports to elitist PC snobs, Steam is the answer to all your anxieties.

Aha. Greed, the root of all gaming evil. Very interesting, thank you.

Basically, bugs come from 3 concurrent factors :



• The fact that the GameBryo Engine used in Fallout 3 and New Vegas only support dual core and DX 9.~

Mono-core and more than 2 cores WILL cause crashes and glitches. This can be alleviated with a combination of « START /AFFINITY 2 » to force the game to run on cores 0 and 1, fiddling with the settings.ini to force two threads instead of the default 4, deactivating mouse acceleration and enabling background mouse, installing direct X 9 on your vista, seven or eight, and perhaps trying ENB Anti Freeze ( but you may loose some textures because of layering ).



• The fact that UAC sucks major asses and installing under the default « program files » WILL cause rights managements nightmares and silent files reversal ( read : UAC will revert modifications behind your back without your knowledge nor consent, including creating new saves and changing configuration ).

This one can be alleviated by lowering UAC ( NEVER uninstall it ! Never ever ! That's like throwing the steering wheel out the window of a car without brakes in hopes it'll stop ) and taking the good habit of never installing anything into /program files/. Even if you lower UAC, /program files/ and other system folders are by default always at full protection, even the system admin do not have the rights to unprotect them.



• The fact that the disk's DRM is crazy ( as are all DRMs but that one was especially badly implemented ).

Can be alleviated by shutting off disk auto-play, foraging in the disk folders and directly launching setup.exe without using the game install launcher.

TL/DR : F3 can work perfectly on any windows if you install DX9, use dual core only, and install manually.
Bugs that appears AFTER install are another story entirely.



P.S. : Tinkering to go past GameBryo quirks has become a game in itself :D

Wow! Thanks for all the info. I'm not sure what my Win8 laptop is, but I think it's dual core. I've become less and less familiar with my machines ever since Windows 95 came into being (has it been almost 20 years?). As for the UAC, I haven't NOTICED it on this PC, but on my old Vista machine it certainly did wreek havoc with a couple of my games. I a little reticent to mess with this kind of setting, and I'll have to balance whether my jones for F3 outweighs my fear of messing up my PC. At this point it's doubtful.

I'm playing Skyrim right now, and have had problems with random crashes to my desktop once I get to level 20 or so.. Since it uses pretty much the same engine as F3, I wonder if some of these changes might help with that as well.

I appreciate the help. Thanks again.

That's some fallacious arguments you have:
1. the popup advertising can simply be disabled. Steam -> Settings -> Interface -> Uncheck "Notify me about additions or change... etc etc.."
2. The library (I suppose that's what you're referring by "play list" only contains the game you're owing or which are currently on a "access free" period.

To go back to the original topic, I hardly see Fallout 3 coming here in a near (or distant) future.

Sorry for my ignorance, I am not a Steam regular. Playing offline has eliminated the popups, etc.

Living here in the US, I am bombarded all day by advertisements, not only on the internet and TV, but my job has me screening calls for my business. 90% of the calls I get are from people trying to sell things to me and my company, and lying about who they are and what they are doing. So, when I buy a computer game for full price, I am extremely annoyed about having to fend off this kind of crap there as well. I am at the point where I only watch TV on demand because the commercials here are un-ending, overbearing, and obnoxious.

And yes, someone already mentioned that the Fallout series will not be coming here.

I hope they manage to bring it back to GoG!

Good god, wouldn't the settings be the first thing you check before complaining about such things?

Wish I had made it in time to grab the Fallouts, especially after hearing they were free for a little bit.

I know nobody here really can know for sure, but is there any realistic chance of them reappearing on GOG in the future, or is Steam the only hope at this point?

Nothing for or against Steam, I just don't know enough about it to warrant getting deep into it over a small handful of games.