Yep, that is true too. I have also encountered a handful of Windows games as well even made in the last 10 years which would allow you to install them to other drives easily enough but then have obscure bugs/problems for not installing to C:. I can't remember specific games at this point but do remember I've encountered issues and one issue I remember was trying to patch a game with an official patcher and it wouldn't work with no indication of why. Speculation led me to reinstall the game to C: and the patcher worked. I then uninstalled and reinstalled to E: and the patcher wouldn't work. Seen issues like that with a number of titles over the last decade. These were all CD/DVD based games though not GOG games, but it does highlight the fact that sometimes games, their installers, their patchers, there level editing tools or some other aspect of the game may have hard coded notions/assumptions about the system they're installed on. It's bad programming practice in many cases but it's justifiable in some cases also such as the one you mention where ultimately it is impossible to predict the future essentially. :)

Based on how you guys have responded to similar things in the past that was my assumption as well, but it is great to get direct confirmation of these sort of things also, thanks for the info!

Yes I did notice that, but that means downloading the game twice, which is quite silly and will cause problems for people with bandwidth caps.

GalaxyOS does have a nice ring to it. :) With all seriousness though and with great speculation on my part, I would not at all be surprised if GOG were to create a GalaxyOS in the future much in the same way Valve is doing with Steam, and for good reasons also. Some will be quick to see the word "Valve" and "Steam" and dream up evil paranoid delusions from that that label anything to do with them as pure evil without reading another word, but for those who can think beyond such fear based delusions let me expand upon this.

In the case of Valve, they recognize that the PC platform is in a large part dominated by the whims and direction of Microsoft and its Windows products, and so the PC platform is in a large way tied to what Microsoft decides to do with their Windows operating systems in the future. Microsoft has made changes to their operating systems each release which have caused numerous compatibility issues for a multitude of video games, some possibly justified technically and some superfluous - either way this causes headaches for video game developers, publishers and distributors alike and makes the PC/Windows platforms have ongoing maintenance costs and particular long term support issues that many other game platforms do not really have to deal with. The biggest competition out there platform-wise are of course the gaming consoles, and Microsoft themselves is a big player in that arena. If gaming declines on the PC/Windows platform, some portion if not the majority of that will likely be picked up on the console market where Microsoft has a second foot in the water, so it is of less consequence to Microsoft.

For a company like Valve or GOG or any other PC gaming distributor however, for the most part their ongoing sales success is bound largely to the success of the Windows platform. But each Windows release comes with it both the chance of being rejected in the marketplace or being considered underwhelming at best (Windows ME, Vista, Windows 8 for some examples), and at the same time mobile platforms such as Android, iOS and alternative operating systems such as Mac/OSX and Linux continue to gain traction in the market.

As a game retailer that makes the majority of their revenue selling games currently on the Windows platforms, there comes with that a lot of risk of sinking all of one's eggs into a single basket, and thus it makes a lot of sense to seek out other opportunities to diversify into multiple paths that lead to the future. So of course we see developers/publishers/distributors supporting other platforms now like MacOS, Linux, Android etc. and they're likely to continue to do so. As these platforms gain traction they become much more than a small dot on the radar but rather become an entire ecosystem of diverse OS platforms on a diverse array of hardware platforms. Every sign out there suggests our future will be a huge array of varied devices beyond PC hardware, and that the PC platform itself has other options than what Microsoft produces.

It makes a lot of business sense for companies to either rid themselves from dependencies on other companies such as Microsoft, or to at least provide themselves with a backup plan as an alternative to Microsoft so as not to be devastated in the market should Microsoft do something truly stupid and/or hostile to PC gaming or just right out fail in the market. But rather than just finding a new Microsoft to be dependent on, with a powerful full featured OS like Linux kicking around which itself is making major leaps and bounds in the gaming market itself, it makes a lot of sense to invest some money on exploring the Linux option very seriously as a platform because it eliminates any dependency on a 3rd party OS vendor and virtually guarantees the OS is never going to suddenly go away because Linux isn't owned by any company (or any single individual or group at all for that matter).

Embracing Linux in this manner is both a great idea for a company like Valve or GOG ultimately, but it is no magic guarantee of profitability in the future either. It is a great backup plan though to not be permanently reliant on the whims of a single dominating OS vendor, and something for every distributor to seriously ponder and consider - whether it is to create their own branded distribution or to pick one of the existing ones and focus on supporting that. I've seen the writing on the wall for 15+ years and figured it was just a matter of time in the end, but we're now seeing things move strongly in this direction in the marketplace and I think the companies out there that embrace the idea are truly ahead of the pack and will end up ultimately reaping the rewards down the line, whether or not the existing status quo platforms end up failing miserably or vanishing. It's just pure future-proofing plain and simple.

I see GOG as a smart company making mostly good decisions, but also human and subject to mistakes over time too. I think they're smart enough to envision potential futures that could come to be and to plot themselves various contingency plans for different problems that could arise such as what I mention above. So I for one would not at all be surprised if we end up seeing a GalaxyOS in the future as it makes pure business sense to me for long term future-proofing of where the money flows in from.

If and when that happens, there's no doubt in my mind that people who can never think a single positive thought about anything will pop up and compare GOG to Valve in an "evil take over the world" context, but while such people are possibly GOG customers at the moment IMHO they're only here for themselves without much concern about the success or future of the company and it's people and such people will generally either hop ship or threaten to hop ship if they don't get every single bullet point on their demand list met 200% of the time ongoing.

It makes a lot more sense both for future-proofing business plans and future revenue streams as well as having a multitude of happy customers to pursue such opportunities rather than to get tied up in fear over endless negative opinions/expressions of a close minded self-centered highly vocal minority of customers endlessly sprouting comparisons to one evil empire or another. It's like a hateful girlfriend who threatens to break up with you every single day if you don't cater to her every whim even to your own demise.

I for one look forward to GalaxyOS when it gets announced and eventually comes out - even if GOG themselves read this and laugh at the idea right now. ;) There was a day not too long ago where they had no intention of supporting the Linux OS at all but eventually it made business sense to do so. The future evolves, and I'm sure they'll eventually come to similar conclusions internally as well if they haven't already. I don't expect them to talk about such a thing for quite some time to come though but I'll be surprised if they don't do something like this in the next 2-3 years. :)

I'm sure this idea will sound crazy to some, but I've suggested a lot more outlandish things in my years that people felt were crazy that have come to pass also so I'm comfy with being considered crazy by some. ;oP

Anyhow, an interesting diversion but now back to your regularly scheduled program! ;)

no, you don't have to download the game twice..just click on the game in your library(where all your owned games are) and click on the game you want like you would if you were going to install it via Galaxy and click MORE to access the extras and there is the installer, just click on GAME under Game installer and there you go. No need to install the game first..that would just be silly and pointless.

Well obviously, but then it won't appear in Galaxy without importing the folder after installation and verifying its integrity, and you would still have to do the same thing manually with patches as well. Kind of defeats the whole point of using the Galaxy client to manage your game installs and updates.

Unfortunately the game still needs to be installable for that to work. It won't give me access to the extras and installers if there is no Mac version available.

Beautiful and responsive interface! However I notcied that after downloading The Witcher 2 (the entire 25GB) it is stuck at configuring.

I've run into another bizarre issue with Galaxy that I can't really figure out.

When I try to install a game, Fallout in particular, the install stops and tells me that there is not enough disk place. This isn't true, as I clearly have hundreds of gigs free on my hard drive. Going to try downloading thru the site and then connecting it to Galaxy.

http://puu.sh/hzBMB/d29357e74d.png

You are right in pointing this out, especially since it is well known that older games do not mesh well with the newer Window's security precautions when installed in Programme Files. I install all my games in a separate folder just for that reason. However, it is a non-root folder and the games work there just fine, even with a non-standard character in the folder's name. This is why I wanted to point out to the bluetexts in this thread that asking users where they want their downloads and installs take place is something they should consider.

For me, the whole thing was more a shock to the fact that a folder just popped up on C: without the client/Galaxy installer asking for permission, which is just bad manners.

sure but it doesn't defeat the purpose of Galaxy being optional(in that if you so choose you can mearly use it as a downloader and nothing else and that every feature and such is also optional) . Which it's meant to be.

Finally had time to test it, here's me feedback so far. I think after more than 10 years of Steam it's not possible to point out issues without referencing what others do better.

- finally, it was long overdue :-)
- brightness / theme: the shelve view should be able to be dark too in the launcher. Not just the left part with the installed game
- pagination is annoying (I've almost 200 games). Just load all of them and be done with it
- Don't hide "Community" under "Store", make it a separate menu and ...
- ... allow a setting to open community directly in my browser
- the shelve view in Galaxy, like on the page, is a nice eye catcher, but really, I just want to have listed all my games in the left page whether installed or not (steam-like)
- why is no game ever linking directly to it's forum, neither on GOG (shelve view, game card view) nor in Galaxy? This has annoying people since ever and continues. In the case of Galaxy there's no link "per game" to community at all; only "support". Please add it and make it a separate button and not hide it in "more"
- this could be even taken further to directly view the last threads of a forum on a game page when being online WOHOO!

Like Steam, all "in application browser" are always the worst experience:
- no "smooth scrolling" (I'm using FF primarily, scrolling page with wheel seems to jump in "steps" or so")
- not my preferred font zoom ; annoying tiny fonts where as in my browser I've default full pagezoom of 150%

Oh, and about mantis: it's really the worst bug reporting every :-( I hate it with a passion. Bohemia Studios uses it for Arma too, it's a usability nightmare on soo many ends I don't even know where to start. Unfortunate you couldn't find anything better :-( Nevertheless I already reported a bug but it's still mediocre.

I currently don't have the time to scan all of the thread but: will there be an Galaxy Alpha Linux Client?
I just got my invitation and installed it in windows, which only is my side-OS and was pretty impressed with what's already there. Now having that on the best OS would be overwhelming.

I'm going to chime in and say that GalaxyBSD has an even nicer ring to it. :-)

Mostly because BSD in various forms has served me well for the past 33 years (even though Linux has the momentum behind it these days), but specifically because of more business-friendly licensing, binary backwards-compatibility, and (arguably) quality of implementation.

I'm not trying to diss Linux, since all free software is welcome in my world.