this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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GOG
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GOG.com is a DRM-free games and movies distribution service that is part of the CD Projekt Group. GOG.com is also a "sister" company to CD Projekt Red, developers of the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.
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If the dev isn't a bastard they can make different versions available through steam. Rocksmith found the last shred of decency in their body after breaking cdlc and put the previous version up. Outside of that, yeah it can be rough.
The publishers can do it via uploading beta branches, but there's also a way to tell the Steam client to fetch old versions independently of that. I remember it coming up specifically with Skyrim, because updates broke a lot of modded environments, and it takes a long time for a lot of mods to be updated (during which time people couldn't play their modded installs).
searches
https://steamcommunity.com/app/489830/discussions/0/4032473829603430509/
The
download_depotSteam console command.The above link is about Skyrim, but also links to a non-Skyrim-specific guide that talks about how to obtain manifest IDs for versions of other games.
But, yeah. It's really not how Steam's intended to be used, and I imagine that hypothetically, one day, it could stop working.
There are also IIRC some ways to block Steam from updating individual games, but again, not intended functionality.
searches
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3205995441631274440/
If you specifically want control over game updates for some game, then GOG can be a major benefit for that.
One concern I have is that games can be purchased
Oxygen Not Included, for example, was purchased by Tencent, which added data-mining. Fortunately, in that case, Tencent was open about what they were doing, and allowed players to opt out
if they let Tencent log data about them, they could "earn" various in-game rewards. But I could imagine less-pleasant malware being attached to games after someone purchases IP rights to them and just pushes it out. Can't do that with GOG, since there's no channel intrinsically available to a game publisher to push updates out (unless the game has that built-in to itself).
Not using Kagi anymore? What have you moved on to?
DDG mostly. I'm not unhappy with Kagi on any particular technical aspect, but I'm not happy about the fact that I learned that it was operating out of Serbia (it was often listed as being based in the San Francisco Bay Area; this appears to actually be a residence of the founder, not where the employees and offices are). I'd be much more comfortable about them getting in practical legal trouble if they wound up retaining data after saying that they don't if they were operating in a US or EU or something legal jurisdiction. I posted about it to !kagi@programming.dev a while back.
If they moved operations to the US or somewhere like that, I'd have no problem using them.
Thanks, good to know. I split between DDG and Kagi, not entirely happy with either.
I miss the old google.