Hi there!
There was a guide on steam on how to launch London 2038 through steam, but it’s missing now.
I remember installing 2038 normally, from the CD, patching it, and then copying and overwriting some files over the hanbit stuff. It worked without a probem! This was in 2019 or 2020.
I have changed systems since, and I formatted my drive by mistake.
Did anyone else here do this? I’d like to have that again hehhee
Hi there, welcome back 
I’ve only heard of this process, so I can’t answer questions about it. I have my own, however, for anyone who’s gone through it; what does this process achieve?
To be more clear about it, I understand the process requires both Steam and the original game. So, never mind possible complications, what does the Steam component achieve that the original game doesn’t on its own?
The only answer I could suspect so far is the (seeming) ability to launch the game through Steam - but even there I don’t see the value in exchange for the Steam game’s price. Though I guess value is highly subjective there.
And even then, bypassing the 2038 launcher is very dodgy and ill-advised since it was made exactly for proper access to the game.
Hi Bryan, good to be back!
I already bought the steam version, before checking if it was HGGlobal, in my excitement, i thought it was the Flasghip one.
The benefit is just that i found it awesome to have it running through steam, i played 300+ hrs in 2038, by launching through there and had no crashes or other problems, graphical, audio, or of any other type. I also liked having the hrs logged in my steam account, i could monitor how much i invested in my characters.
There were no complications on doing this, just deleted some files from the steam installation, and copied some from the flagship one, i remember it took 10-15 mins. When I read the guide on steam, on how to launch 2038 like this, i just tried it for the sake of it, just because it seemed straightforward and fast. AND IT WORKED very nicely hehhe
Not to just jump in randomly, I think I know what you are talking about. Ive done similar with Dungeon Siege 1 & 2 doing file swapping so I could install the Expansions on top of the Steam installs to be able to play then in their entirety. But as for Hellgate with this method, the only benefit is Gameplay Time Tracked as Steam thinks youre actually playing its version.
What you did back then was probably deleted all the Global packed files and dropped the original London core files and then swapped the EXE with the vanilla exe. Steam doesnt know which one is which usually unless there is an embedded checksum it looks for to flag it to not launch.
That was my initial suspicion, yeah. (And of course, thank you for “jumping in randomly” - I was very interested in views on this practice.)
Now, to be very very clear about this whole thing for current and future readers.
We’re not against this practice in and of itself (or heavens, inclined to penalize those opting for it). This process still hinges on a legitimate copy of the original game, and the secondary component is also a legitimately purchased Steam product. It’s also not a process that seeks to offer unfair advantages, only Steam-based convenience features. (And if anything, we’d also be interested in unpredicted benefits like fewer crashes; if the process is somehow beneficial in such ways, that’s something for us to investigate and improve based on.)
However, the process does come with theoretical complications. That is, that it muddles the intended installation process, game file state, and launcher access for updates. As such, it might cause complications or produce bugs - and that might make things even harder on our end, ie investigating a hypothetical bug rooted outside of the game’s normal/intended parameters in vain.
So it’s the latter bit that gives me pause. We may need to account for this, then, and clearly communicate that this process should be mentioned in bug reports since it might be relevant.
(And the former bit includes a curious assertion on gameplay benefits, which also gives me pause and draws my interest.)
This would be overly complicated to do now since Hanbit messed up the file structure completely by condensing all the data into several large files.
I was just about to make a tutorial video on this process and realized that even if it were possible to do, no matter what you will have…
Simply it should work, if renaming is the only thing really majorly done. If not its just time wasted to borrow a time tracked feature from a different version.