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. :)
