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Try the DRM-free online gaming platform.

<span class="bold">GOG Galaxy</span>: our truly gamer-friendly, DRM-free online gaming platform. As we shared our vision with the world, we promised auto-patching, social functionality like chat, friends lists, and achievements. We promised our own multiplayer support and cross-play with Steam. Most importantly, we promised truly optional.



Today we deliver.
The <span class="bold">GOG Galaxy</span> client enters beta, open to anyone, with the most important functionality ready to try, test, enjoy (and break) at your leisure. We're proud to have gotten this far, and we know that we couldn't have done it without you all - that's everyone who spent months in alpha testing, that's those of you who talked to us about your needs and expectations, and it's every single one of you that has supported us since ever. So thanks, GOG Galaxy is for you!

With the <span class="bold">GOG Galaxy Beta</span>, you can install your games in one click and keep them up to date automatically, the beta currently supports this feature in all but a couple of titles available here. You can also perform backups easily by downloading a standalone installer through GOG Galaxy. The beta features a friends list, game time tracking, achievements, and chat. You can now talk to each other, connect with your group of friends, and see what everyone is playing. You can also try out our online multiplayer & matchmaking solution that, in select titles, includes cross-play: platform-independent multiplayer between gamers on GOG.com and Steam. If you download a patch that breaks something or if you just change your mind, the app will soon feature a unique rollback option to restore a previous version of your game.

Best of all, GOG Galaxy is optional. If you don't want to use any additional software, your experience with us won't change at all. If you only want to take advantage of select conveniences, you can toggle them on and off. It's all totally up to you.

You can sign up for the <span class="bold">GOG Galaxy Beta</span> and find out more on <span class="bold">gog.com/galaxy</span>, where we tell you about the features and answer many of the questions you may have. We'll be watching the forums carefully, so feel free to leave a comment if there is anything else that you'd like to know!
Looking at resource usage with the Windows 7 64bit Resource Monitor, I see 4 processes involved in the Steam service which include:

Steam.exe (166,158 kB)
Steamservice.exe (9,036 kB)
steamwebhelper.exe (233,180 kB)
steamwebhelper.exe (26,028 kB)

And looking at the current background processes involved with the Galaxy client beta I have:
GalaxyClient Helper.exe (161,280 kB)
GalaxyClient.exe (116,640 kB)

The number in brackets is the working set size (memory consumption not including shared data etc.). The four Steam processes add up to 434,402 kB of memory consumption currently, and the 2 processes involved with the Galaxy client application total to 277,920 kB at the moment. These numbers for both applications will vary over time quite a bit mind you as their user interface at its very core is a web browser, in particular both clients are based on the Google Chrome engine. I'm not sure if they're using the older Webkit or the newer Blink engine, but they both use some incarnation of the chrome engine at their core, which will include full rendering capabilities for all current web technologies ultimately including javascript engine, CSS etc. and possibly video codecs and other things that might be built into any modern web browser.

Note however that most of that stuff does not actually consume much memory at all contrary to popular belief. It is the content of web pages that consumes the most data in memory inside a web browser. The graphics in particular, and while the graphics sitting on a web server are usually highly compressed JPG images, or PNG or other image formats, those get decompressed in memory inside the application before they can be displayed, and it is their decompressed image that consumes a lot more memory than the on-disk counterpart sent over from a web server. Video and potentially other data that is served from a web server can also take up a lot more memory client-side when it is processed by an application and turned into a form usable in video memory, audio buffers (such as the case for compressed audio) or other technologies.

People often will criticize web browsers for their memory and/or CPU consumption but ultimately it is the data sent from the webserver that ultimately consumes the majority of the resources on a system. The applications themselves will consume very little memory, and link to a few dozen libraries that get dynamically loaded for the most part. Most of the resource usage is simply rich web content, and not the result of some bloated application wasting gobs of memory for no useful reason.

Whether someone visits the Steam website or GOG website using a regular browser and peruses it, buys stuff, downloads things to their system (in the case of GOG), or watches video trailers etc. - either their Firefox, their Chrome, their Safari, or their Steam client or Galaxy client will have to consume the exact same amount of data coming in from the web and process it and output it in a manner that uses more or less the same amount of resources give or take a few dozen megs of noise - as long as the web browser or game client (really just a web browser) are running. When the web browser (or game client) are closed, those used resources go away.

The game client, like any web browser because again - that is exactly what it is - a rich modern web browser, will cache data in memory the same way Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer would. That is simply an optimization the app does to give performance benefits. Depending on the app however it will also give up some portion of that memory usage either over time when it isn't being used any more or when the system becomes more constrained by other tasks etc. So while they may use more memory at any given time they may very well free up that memory to a degree when it isn't needed or there is memory pressure on the system.

When it comes to gaming clients though, people who use them and appreciate the benefits they provide do have a certain set of expectations that I think pretty much involves being able to display rich web content and the only way that can happen is with a web browser core within the client. The overwhelming majority of systems out there used by gamers are more than adequate to handle this (using Steam's hardware statistics data as a data source) even if there are systems out there that are far lower powered and resource constrained. It wouldn't make sense to limit the scope of an application to the absolute oldest and most lowest common denominator system that someone might be using, say a 12-15 year old PC and purposefully avoid using modern web technologies that 80-95% or more of the target audience has computer hardware that is more than capable of handling just fine, especially if the application itself is completely optional and free of charge.

Every program, whether it is The Witcher 3, the newest version of Firefox or Chrome, GOG Galaxy, Steam Client, Microsoft Office, or any countless number of other new software coming out all of the time will be developed to run on a certain set of minimum system requirements that are gauged by the developers as being highly common and what the majority of customers/users are capable of running, and there will _always_ be people will older hardware with less RAM, slower CPU, older less capable GPU or other system components that either will struggle to run it or will be completely unable to run it. My GPU is listed under the minimum reqs for Witcher 3 for example - sucks to be me.

So there are some out there that will cry that Galaxy is unnecessarily bloated or be upset about it for any number of other reasons but in reality it isn't bloated, it is designed to do a certain set of things for a target audience who wants those things and having those things requires certain technologies to be present in the application and those technologies use certain resources that one will have to have in their system if they want to ride the wave. The optional wave at that.

This doesn't even take into consideration that it is a beta product and that developmental code often and most usually contains debug information in the executables, and extra logging functionality that both consume extra memory and CPU resources during development also, and when disabled for official release such apps tend to have their resource consumption drop also. Short version: beta apps consume more resources on purpose intentionally.

Having said that though, the beta version of Galaxy client is currently consuming far less resources on my system at the moment than Steam client is.

If I had a 10 year old PC with 2GB of RAM, I probably would struggle to be able to run Galaxy and I might be disappointed by that. One thing I would not do though is complain about it, nor curse GOG for writing the software and allowing people the option to use such a thing who desire to have it and eagerly anticipate it.

There is a certain point in time where if you want to be using current generation technology (software, games, whatever) then you need to buy new computer hardware that is up to the task. I suffered with an ancient 2.8GHz PC with 2GB of RAM in it for close to 10 years and it was irritating as hell. Lots of games would not run, the web was dog slow, etc. I chose to suffer like that for a variety of my own personal reasons though, and I never was angry about some game company making a game that needed more RAM than I had, or a faster GPU than I had - disappointed i couldn't run it perhaps but not upset with the company like they owed me something and they suck for not thinking about me and my archaic caveman system.

Eventually and finally I built a new PC after 10 years and it was well worth it in the end. Sometimes it is too and one doesn't realize it until they finally crack the dust off that wallet, or knock over a brinks truck or whatever they end up needing to do.

In the end though, Galaxy is very highly wanted and it is a drop in the ocean with regard to the resources it uses on just about any modern computer made in the last quite some number of years. Being an optional piece of software that is a new thing people never had a choice of even having before, I'd say it is a net win for people that can use it and a net indifference for those who can't as they simply can keep doing whatever it is they did before and pretend it doesn't exist. It's not something anyone is being forced at gunpoint to use, and IMHO it is completely unreasonable for people to expect GOG to make something like this work optimally on say... a 12 year old K6 running Windows XP with 1GB of RAM or similar.

On a funny side note though... people LOVE their mobile phones these days. I wonder how many people are in the midst that have mobile phones with higher resolution display, and with more available RAM and CPU capabilities that they bought for like $900 than their 10 year old ancient PC running Windows XP. :) Perhaps GOG should port Galaxy to their phones so they can download their PC games onto the phone and connect it to their PC. The phone probably has more flash memory in it than the computer has hard disk space. ;oP

Anyway, just a combination of perspective and hopefully humour for some laughs. I beg all of you original Pentium II owners running Windows 98SE to please not beat me up though. :)
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moonshineshadow: Yeah I know. It would have been way better if they had straight out said "invites can take up to a few days" or something like that.
Seriously. I keep checking my mail, but it will probably still take several days. Oh well, at least it takes my mind off some other stuff I have going on.

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coreyblueexclusive: It will be random friend,do not fret,your key to the kingdom of GoG will come soon enough.
"Soon" - there's that word again. :p
My friends don't have any invites but i got mine this morning.
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G4liant: My friends don't have any invites but i got mine this morning.
Do not whisper so loudly friend,you'll upset those who have not received a key to the kingdom of GoG,and also welcome.
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moonshineshadow: Yeah I know. It would have been way better if they had straight out said "invites can take up to a few days" or something like that.
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Fesin: Seriously. I keep checking my mail, but it will probably still take several days. Oh well, at least it takes my mind off some other stuff I have going on.

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coreyblueexclusive: It will be random friend,do not fret,your key to the kingdom of GoG will come soon enough.
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Fesin: "Soon" - there's that word again. :p
In due time friend,in due time.
Post edited May 07, 2015 by coreyblueexclusive
I got the alpha the other day, and when this thread popped up I followed the link to participate to the beta.
I received the mail not long ago with a beta key, but as my alpha updated itself automatically, I can't redeem it again obviously.

So, here's part of an url to copy/paste that should gives access for the beta for anyone still waiting for a key, just pm me if you use it and if that works for me to edit this post :

Edit : [REDEEMED]

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Fesin: snip
Just raising a 'reply' for you to see my post :-)
Post edited May 07, 2015 by Potzato
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Potzato: I got the alpha the other day, and when this thread popped up I followed the link to participate to the beta.
I received the mail not long ago with a beta key, but as my alpha updated itself automatically, I can't redeem it again obviously.

So, here's part of an url to copy/paste that should gives access for the beta for anyone still waiting for a key, just pm me if you use it and if that works for me to edit this post :

gog.com/redeem/DJC2CA24

Just raising a 'reply' for you to see my post :-)
Ha, I was just about to go to bad. :D
Thanks, it worked! Now I have to check it out of course.
+1
Post edited May 07, 2015 by Fesin
Are they not sending out beta's anymore? I've been pretty excited to get my hands on this, but I've received nothing in my email. They initially sent me an announcement of the beta in my email, but no key :(

Is there something I can be doing to get my hands on this quicker?
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Fesin: Ha, I was just about to go to bad. :D
Thanks, it worked! Now I have to check it out of course.
+1
You're welcome :-)
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mreiland: Is there something I can be doing to get my hands on this quicker?
The only way to get it quicker is to get a spare key from someone who got its alpha upgraded but followed the link to get a beta key anyway, as I did.
I know I am not the only one having made the mistake, so follow this thread and maybe there will be other drops.
Post edited May 07, 2015 by Potzato
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mreiland: Are they not sending out beta's anymore? I've been pretty excited to get my hands on this, but I've received nothing in my email. They initially sent me an announcement of the beta in my email, but no key :(

Is there something I can be doing to get my hands on this quicker?
Just wait more or less. The servers are taking a beating the last 2 days so they are probably sending out invites based on the server load. As things slow down they probably issue more invites. Wouldn't make sense to send out 500,000 invites and have that many people show up and the servers go offline and nobody can get it for a week. :)

Just be patient and wait it out is my recommendation. Worst case scenario is you wait a few days and end up with a newer version of the beta with even more features and less bugs. :)
Finally i have my key. I just started to discover Galaxy.
I have a question will galaxy ever get a "streaming" feature in the future? I'm currently saving up for a pc that can run the witcher 3 it would be nice if I could stream games from that future pc to my laptop when I feel like it.
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skinandbones13: I had installed the Alpha a few days ago and was waiting for the Beta to update. Recieved the Beta this morning but couldn't see the client update to Beta at all and I couldn't notice the difference between Alpha and Beta. So I uninstalled the Alpha client to install the Beta and now it tells me that "essential components needed to start GOG Galaxy are missing. Please reinstall the application." Now when I reinstall the application, tried both Alpha and Beta, it gives me the same message.

Can anyone help me out here or point me in the right direction? Can't find any info. Thanks.
Did you, or anyone, find a solution to solve this? I have the exact same issue and I have reinstalled the beta in the same folder than the alpha. Now none of then are working and gave me the same error message: "essential components needed to start GOG Galaxy are missing. Please reinstall the application."
Any ideas?Thanks
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KJGamer: I have a question will galaxy ever get a "streaming" feature in the future? I'm currently saving up for a pc that can run the witcher 3 it would be nice if I could stream games from that future pc to my laptop when I feel like it.
That's a feature that I have not heard GOG folk mention to date but it will be among the list of features that are desired by some number of gamers and that they'll likely add it eventually at some point is my guess. There are a lot more common base features missing from Galaxy right now that they'll likely be adding and smoothing out for quite some time to come before something like that is to happen though I imagine. Need to crawl before walking and walk before running and all that. :)
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CactusSinger: Did you, or anyone, find a solution to solve this? I have the exact same issue and I have reinstalled the beta in the same folder than the alpha. Now none of then are working and gave me the same error message: "essential components needed to start GOG Galaxy are missing. Please reinstall the application."
Any ideas?Thanks
Many people have had this problem, read back through the thread as it has been answered many times already. Hope this helps.
Post edited May 07, 2015 by skeletonbow
Are there any Galaxy compatible multiplayer games for Mac yet?
So far my thoughts on Galaxy are seems good with the client just wish they'd offer more choices on how to display your game library. It says none of my games are installed even though they are so from that standpoint it needs work also on Mac if you put it in a non App folder it has a critical error (would have put it under games where it should be logically) Still waiting to test friend functionality.
Interesting