vv221 the default installers have a custom install path too, but I wouldn't want to set it each time.
I think it's GOGs responsibility to provide install scripts and make the games work as intended, even when installed in custom locations.

ssokolow I hope you brought it up with the devs, repeatedly, wielding a large stick.

Not repeatedly. I have enough trouble just keeping track of the truly serious TODOs in my life.

(At the moment, I'm making a concerted effort to fix that. This return to the GOG forums after not touching GOG outside of sales that IsThereAnyDeal.com poked me about is part of that.)

We have no idea on how to handle these games yet, but we will need to find some work-around. Our goal is to centralize all games user data in $XDG_DATA_HOME/games, so it would be easier to synchronize saved games between multiple systems.

The avenues I've been meaning to explore for that are:

1. LD_PRELOAD hooks
2. Running the game via Flatpak or more directly via its bubblewrap component, to use sandboxing to forcibly remap the locations the game wants to write to.

That's strange, since it seems to be a commonly reported issue with game using some outdated SDL. I'm surprised it passed your QA. I'll try contacting developers.

Found this: https://hinterlandgames.atlassian.net/browse/TLDP-5146

Hi!
Sorry, it's only very recently I noticed this topic.

Like the avatar, like "On Linux, you don't beat games. But it's Linux beating you!" :D

Try running the game on current Debian testing, it will hang. Same will happen in Ubuntu eventually too (or will happen in Mint LMDE already now for instance).

I was able to launch the game by replacing bundled SDL with newer version, but still older than the system one. Namely:

libSDL2-2.0.so.0.4.0

For Debian you can get it here (URL gets messed up by the forum):
[url=http://snapshot.debian.org/package/libsdl2/2.0.4%2Bdfsg2-1/#libsdl2-2.0-0_2.0.4:2b:dfsg2-1]http://snapshot.debian.org/package/libsdl2/2.0.4%2Bdfsg2-1/#libsdl2-2.0-0_2.0.4:2b:dfsg2-1[/url]

Probably not accidentally, this version is used by Steam runtime. The game launches, but I get no sound and see such errors:

Preloaded 'ScreenSelector.so'
Preloaded 'libAkConvolutionReverb.so'
Preloaded 'libAkFlanger.so'
Preloaded 'libAkPitchShifter.so'
Preloaded 'libAkSoundEngine.so'
Preloaded 'libBink2x64.so'
Preloaded 'libBinkPluginLnx.so'
Preloaded 'libCSteamworks.so'
Preloaded 'libsteam_api.so'
Unable to preload the following plugins:
ScreenSelector.so
libAkConvolutionReverb.so
libAkFlanger.so
libAkPitchShifter.so
libAkSoundEngine.so
libBink2.so
libBinkPluginLnx.so
libCSteamworks.so
libsteam_api.so

At least it's starting up which is already progress. Overall I'd consider this game pretty broken.

Last month I had a similar issue with PoE 2, by default the game was trying to load the System provided SDL. the solution was to manually LD_PRELOAD the bundled SDL lib. Devs also mentioned something about specific codecs being used in the SDL library.

did you check the Unity log file ? (usually ~/.config/unity3d/$company/$game/Player.log )

I don't see anything related to the sound there. It even says:

WwiseUnity: Sound engine initialized.

The only suspicious error is:

Fallback handler could not load library /opt/games/the_long_dark/game/tld_Data/Mono/x86_64/libudev.so.0

There is no libudev bundled and it's probably related to controllers anyway.
Do you mean they ship some kind of custom SDL with the game?

Here, I found the source: https://support.obsidian.net/article/21-why-dont-i-have-any-audio-on-linux

And another issue related to SDL with the game: https://support.obsidian.net/article/27-linux-my-game-hangs-on-a-black-screen-at-startup

This is of course for PoE2 but since you mentioned the Ak* in your log, maybe it's related?

I see. It's possibly related then. But where can I get newer custom SDL for The Long Dark that won't hang? I'll try contacting developers.