Gog is doing much better than in 2022. They are making 1.2M dollars in profit. Which is pretty good for such a platform personally. I really like the ideals of GOG, but haven't really used the platform a whole lot.
If you want a markup of what this actaully means see here
I'd be happy to shop there again if they put out Galaxy on Linux. Community launchers are cool, but I want the same support for automatic updates that their Windows customers get.
I started buying legitimate copies of games when I was finally able to afford it a few years ago. I love how GOG lets you actually keep the games forever and that's where I was getting games from at first, but then moved to Steam because of how much good they've done to Linux gaming. meanwhile GOG Galaxy for Linux has been a most requested and most ignored request for years.
I dropped Steam because it gradually made the client less and less user-friendly. It’s bad enough that I kinda have to use the Steam client, but then they had to do things like trash the old rendering engine and replace it with the bloat of a browser, and completely discard List View (which GOG Galaxy has just fine) and replace it with a tile view that can’t even display game names in plaintext (which GOG Galaxy also has an option for in its tile view).
And that’s on top of other issues with the platform such as how the Steam client forces updates. (Sure there’s various workarounds but at that point Steam stops being a convenience anyway.)
I never actually needed a launcher client anyway. I gladly buy direct-download installers from sites like itch and Humble and DLsite. I don’t have a fear of command line interfaces, lol, much less simply using File Explorer as my launcher. I’ll use a platform’s launcher willingly if it just offers benefits, but the drawbacks of Steam’s using it as DRM eventually turned out to outweigh whatever minor benefits it presented.
My problem with GOG is that every time I buy a game on GOG, something then happens to result in me having to buy it again on steam. Once it was that the GoG version lagged too far behind, several times it's been that workshop support has been added, or in one case, workshop became the only source for moding.
I like GOG for games that are too old to be on Steam, but yeah, any game that's on Steam I'll get there because of the additional features like Steam Workshop.
Same, I recently switched back to Linux and was disappointed they still haven’t made a client. Even just starting with native Linux game support would be something.
Same, Steam on the other hand had been killing it for Linux gamers. What's funny is if you go to the gog forums it's been like the number one requested feature for years.
My biggest problem with GOG is that Galaxy doesn't rival Steam, same as every other launcher. For example, GOG hosts a lot of older games, that used to be their bread and butter and even their namesake. These games generally don't have native controller support, so if I want that, I have to launch them through Steam anyway to use Steam Input. If I want to play something on a Linux device, which is now more likely than ever since I own a Steam Deck, the fact is that it's a pain in the ass to deal with GOG even with their minimal DRM stance (because they allow DRM now seemingly so long as it doesn't prevent the player from beating the game) because of the lack of support, making it more reasonable to buy games on Steam, even when it's a game that does support controllers (like how I own The Evil Within on GOG).
The big feature of GOG Galaxy is that you can pull every other launcher into it, but that doesn't matter to me when I still have to launch everything via Steam anyway. Feels like they're missing the point a little bit.
It looks like only the multiplayer is allowed to have an online requirement. It's DRM by another name, but at least I know how to avoid them. I too wish they didn't let those games on their store. But for me, the point of the launcher is to automatically update my games and make installing them easier. I want those features, and I want to be assured by their own support, that those things will work, even if community launchers for GOG games I bought previously or got in giveaways will suffice for now.
One thing I also like more about GoG is that you own the game you buy, you don't own a license (like on steam), you actually own it like a physical disc.
The games that are their original meat-and-potatoes, out of print classic games, don't really update much. In many cases, the developer hasn't been in business for quite some years.
I do not fucking understand this. You're never going to compete with Steam. But you have this niche of DRM free marketplace and you ignore the entire Linux community? A community that THRIVES on FOSS and DRM free software.
It's such an idiotic move to not develop a linux client. I will never fucking comprehend this.
Their apple support has always been pretty mixed at best. I always assumed they're the kind of gamers who are like "windows is for gaming, gamers use windows, sure you CAN do other things, but why would you?"
I love GOG. If they release a game i play often, i rebuy it on that platform. I find game clients just annoying, especially ea app (stop popping up everytime i quit a game dammit). So if i can play without it, i go for it.
I've made more of a point to buy from them more often. I bought the DLC for Deep sky Derelicts recently (during the summer sale) because I enjoyed the base game which GoG gave me for free.
For all you Linux folks complaining about why GOG isn’t on there:
For desktop and laptop computers, Microsoft's Windows is the most used at 69%, followed by Apple's macOS at 17%, and Google's ChromeOS at 3.2% (in the US up to 8.0%), and "desktop Linux" at 2.9%. In addition, 5% is attributed to "unknown" operating systems - which are likely forms of BSD or obscure varieties of Linux.
Maybe a small company can’t devote the resources for 5% of the market share when they have 86% covered.
How small of a company do you think they are? Their parent company is publicly traded and worth at least half a billion dollars. Not only that, but after they port their launcher, they can piggyback on the investment Valve has made into the platform for pennies on the dollar, if they were interested in wrapping games with Proton or whatnot.
I mean, I think most of us understand why GOG's Linux support is miles behind Steam's, but that doesn't change the fact that it is behind. Years ago I bought several games from GOG because of the no DRM policy; but once Steam released a Linux version, and began pumping resources into Proton, the choice for me was easy, and I switched over. I understand GOG's position, but I don't think there's anything wrong with people pointing out how GOG doesn't have the same level of Linux support as Steam does. That's useful information.
After being with Steam for over a decade and disliking it more and more, I ended up trying everything to maintain myself away from that platform and GOG was a godsend.
There’s a public list that has all the GOG releases that treat the GOG customers like "third class citizens", but if the game I want is not on that list, I will 100% buy it there over any other storefront. It’s great to read they’re doing well.
I've bought so many games on GoG, but sadly I don't think I have in the last year because of Steam Deck. If they ever make the games work better on there, and I don't mean through Heroic, I'll buy again
For all the complaining Steamdeck users: Have a look at Heroic Launcher, it's pretty straightforward and takes care of everything: https://heroicgameslauncher.com
I used to really like GOG, but then I switched to Linux gaming and found that their support for Linux is terrible. The bare minimum would have just been supporting GOG Galaxy on Linux and they won’t even do that. All they do is distribute some extremely janky Linux installers if the game’s dev supports Linux (which few do). Meanwhile Steam provides proton for everything. I get wanting DRM-free, but at the end of the day, I just want a simple game management experience.
This is pretty heartening. I was wondering whether all those freebies they’ve been offering in the past year or so have served them well, though I’ve spent money there regardless of said freebies anyway.
I really like the fact that they offer things DRM-free.
I default to GOG whenever I can. I do wish Galaxy had turned out better, it just buckles under the weight and is worse than both using the web app for the store AND third party launchers like Lunchbox. I still would much rather get the games in the format they use than on Steam, though. Any day. I will keep getting games that launch on both on GOG as long as that's an option, so I'm glad they're in the black at least.
It's gimmick is supposed to be that it would scrape and integrate games from other launchers using plugins and consolidate all your PC games, friends and other tools.
Which sort of works for a while, until you try to add several thousand games, at which point the launcher takes ages to start and compile your database and generally becomes cumbersome and buggy. And once you add that stuff, removing it is surprisingly hard, so getting to your GOG games is weirdly hindered.
I love the idea, I've purchased several separate database apps over the years to try to get that exact feature. They just didn't nail it on execution and ended up with a worse version of that type of app that can accidentally become a worse launcher for your GOG library as well.
If you only use it as a GOG launcher, stick to the integrations that come pre-built and avoid plugins or if you only have a few games it's perfectly fine. Great, even. But it certainly got pretty busted in my case.
Lunchbox still does it. It doesn't chug quite as much as Galaxy, but it's still heavier than I want my launcher to be.
I've come to the conclusion that I don't necessarily want a nice-looking Steam-like list of all my games across platforms. I mostly just need a text-based list with trivial load times that tells me which platform to spin up to play a given game.
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