Right, we agree on that. Those interested in the Linux market growing should put their resources into it. Those who are interested in Linux market growing include; Linux enthusiasts and open source enthusiasts. They should put their resources into growing the market that they care deeply about.

GOG isn't a Linux company, they're a game company. They're not interested specifically in the Linux market growing, they're interested selling more video games, whether it is on WIndows, Mac, Linux or a potato. Their focus is on maximizing selling video games, and so their focus is going to be concentrating their resources where they get the biggest return on investment for their investment dollar, and that does not appear to be on the Linux platform right now sadly, because Windows is where the majority of the PC gaming experience happens.

The question isn't "Would gaming on Linux grow if GOG put their resources into Linux?" Of course it would. The questions are: "Would GOG's revenue earned for the quarter/year/etc. get a maximized return on investment for resources expended for the month/quarter/year if they put those resources into project L?" and "How does that projected return stack up and compare against if they put those resources into project X, Y, Z, Q, M, or P?"

Lets be clear here, GOG is not a Linux company and is not trying to "grow the Linux market". If they were, then their core if not their entire focus would be gaming on Linux, but it isn't. A few years ago they added Linux game support to their offerings due to popular request and likely compared that effort at the time and found that for the effort required to test games, make Linux installers, train support staff etc. it was a worthwhile experiment to try out just to see how big of a market there really was, as there wasn't a huge amount of data out there at the time other than what Valve provides, and at the time there was new momentum regarding Linux in the gaming marketplace due to Valve's efforts at porting stuff to Linux and contributing to Linux, as well as the news around SteamOS and Steam Machines etc.

Fast forward a couple of years and aside from the initial increase in interest in Linux on Steam that that gathered at the time, Linux growth in the gaming marketplace has stagnated. It isn't because "GOG doesn't have Galaxy for Linux" either, it's because there aren't a huge line up of gamers out there flocking by the billions to the Linux platform, regardless of the "why" each gamer may have. Steam Machines never really went anywhere. They still exist, but they never really caught on and took root like Valve seems to have been hoping for. If they had, then the gaming market on Linux might have grown to 2-5% or more, but it just never happened. There was a lot of speculation in the industry at the time, and many including myself believed strongly that it was a great chance for Linux to finally crack through to the mainstream on something big and consumer oriented (aside from Android et al.). Sadly, that just never happened.

And so now, much like GOG's experimental venture with movies that never really came to be, the Linux experiment never took consumer momentum either, and that is before they ever even announced Galaxy as a thought. They were smart to take on the experiment, because it did look like there could be a big play opportunity at the time and many were convinced of that. I'm sure GOG saw the potential opportunity and decided to take the risk. I wouldn't say it was a failure however, but I wouldn't say it was a major success so far either. The potential is still there for the Linux platform in the gaming landscape, and I truly believe that at some point in time in the coming years another big momentum sweep will happen and Linux gaming will eventually become much more mainstream. But it has failed to happen yet.

On the enthusiast side, people think that in order for Linux usage to increase that companies have to produce their products first, then the people will come. Companies might experimentally stick their toe in the water taking the first move sometimes to get a feel if there even is a market in something, but mostly companies react to existing and emerging markets by making products and services for markets that are already established. That's especially true if they have lots of room to grow in already existing markets. They've done that already now. Valve did it on Steam with SteamOS and Steam Machines, and GOG by adding Linux platform support. They've clearly been able now to see in financial numbers how big the market actually is on the platform, and despite the perceived momentum Linux gaming had a couple of years ago, and despite the actual successes that have happened in the Linux space - the momentum never materialized large enough to have any major impact on the grand scheme of things IMHO. At one point in time I think the stats on Steam showed Linux+SteamOS usage at 2%, which was probably indicative at the time of people hearing the noise and coming to check it out, trying out SteamOS or Steam on Ubuntu or Mint etc. and that inflated the Linux stats for some amount of time.

Fast forward a couple of years and the numbers have dropped from whatever the peak was down to the current usage rate of 0.74%, which is pretty small. I'm not sure how often the Steam hardware survey occurs, but it shows Linux as being 0.02% greater since the last survey. That is an abysmal growth rate, not something that shows great promise as a business investment of dedicating a large amount of one's development resources to and betting the farm on it.

I said it before and I'll say it again, it's not GOG's job to grow the popularity of Linux out there, it's their job to sell games on platforms that people are using already. It is the job of people who want a given platform itself specifically to succeed - to do things to increase the number of people using that platform. It's the Linux and open source community's job to improve our platform to be more attractive to consumers, and to advocate to people to use Linux or at least to try it. The people who want something the most and have the most to gain from it are the ones who need to promote that thing.

GOG is just a game distributor selling games on whatever seems the most popular and practical use of their limited resources at a given time, that's just smart business for any business.

It sucks that Linux isn't a top priority in the ideal world, but that is the reality of the real world and business economics. The discussion can endlessly go in circles for months and years to come, but nothing will change until the economics are there to support it. That's how capitalism works. :)

Don't for a second however think that I like this at all. I don't. I simply believe that I understand it quite well, and am trying to do my best to explain it how I see the ugly unpleasant reality of things. I don't think anything at all will change until the economics change, which means the number of Linux gamers out there needs to increase on its own if gamers want to see companies devote more money and resources to Linux gaming. There's only so much money any company is willing to throw into the experiment pot and keep doing it without seeing enough of a return on that investment.

What would be genuinely nice, is if a representative of GOG would publicly share some form of statistics concerning exactly how big their Linux user base is either in terms of percentage of customers and/or a head count. Not sure how they could best measure that, but one way could be the number of people actually downloading the Linux versions of the games they buy, as well as statistics about how many people own mostly or only games that do run on the Linux platform. Sadly we don't have that info, just some vague references hidden somewhere in the forums here of it being quite small.


I wasn't suggesting you personally said that, but rather that there are a number of Linux enthusiasts in the GOG, Reddit and wider community who have the attitude that GOG either sinks 200% of their money into Linux, or else they are the evil enemy to be boycotted and destroyed, probably also deluding themselves into thinking that their power of influence is large enough to make even the slightest ant on the sidewalk amount of difference.

If GOG is being passive with Linux, it's only because the platform has ended up not producing the amount of revenue that they speculated it might when they decided to invest in it in the first place. It's not unlike their "Movies" section which has not had any releases in about 2 years if memory serves correct, except for that Witcher 3 symphony orchestra concert.

So it's really in "wait and see if it grows to become worth spending more money on" category now. Not unlike the majority of video game related experiments companies have done in the last 2 decades. I remember Loki games and various other Linux efforts in the past that really put a lot of oomph behind the idea of Linux gaming. Most of them are in the graveyard nowadays sadly. Things have grown for the better a lot in recent years which is great, but there's still a long way to go yet until Linux gaming is truly ubiquitous. Sadly, we're still quite niche at best, and that's reflected in the marketplace by what is available to us.

From the consumer side of things, I agree with you that games should be as-advertised, and if the advertising is misleading people into thinking they're getting a 100% equal product on Linux compared to Windows and they're not, then the advertising needs to be clarified.

I also think it is the responsibility of both the publisher, developer and distributor to ensure patches are available everywhere the product is being sold, and on a reasonable timeline. Sadly, what we have right now is eagerness to sell games and make money knowing people will buy them, but not get timely patches or any at all at the whims of the developer, and not do anything about it, resulting in customers that are increasingly dissatisfied due to the sub-standard product they bought compared to if they bought it for the Windows platform in the case where the Windows builds are superior to Linux (if it exists), or in other cases where the non-GOG (Steam for example) version of a game gets patches and the GOG one never does, or gets them days/weeks/months or more later if at all. That is something that genuinely pisses me off and I think GOG can and should do better by enforcing it via their contracts with developers.

The sad thing is that GOG isn't a big enough company yet to have enough rope to play hardball with most publishers. If they were to make it a contractual requirement that games on their platform must be patched on par with Steam, a lot of game companies would probably just not sell their games on GOG at all. We would probably think "good, I don't want that crap here", but GOG is out the revenue and finding it harder to add games to the catalogue if publishers wouldn't agree to those terms. It's a hard enough sell they have already than to add a huge list of detailed terms and conditions to sell games here that publishers must agree to. Publishers ultimately would tend to just walk the other way and sell on other platforms that have less strict conditions, especially if the other platforms are where they sell 99% of their product anyway.

GOG is in a tough situation. They are the little guy and need to attract publishers and games to their platform, but GOG themselves already have a number of specific mandatory conditions other platforms do not require, and the GOG userbase if left to decide things would add 50 more hardline conditions to that list almost guaranteeing no publishers would ever want to sell any games here because it would be just too much hassle. :)

On the Linux client, yes GOG did falsely advertise a Linux client was coming soon. Probably with the best intentions to do so also, but they've failed to step up to the plate on that and so they do deserve some amount of tarnish to their reputation. I'd like to see GOG stop making any claims that they're going to do anything regardless of their best intentions, than to tell us they're going to do something and either never do it, or take 5 years to do it. Stop making promises you can't or wont keep.

A documented public API so that people can make their own clients? I downloaded a copy of the video in which that claim was made when Galaxy was announced, in case the video gets deleted later to hide the fact they said that to begin with. As a developer, I understand why they would want to wait to publish an API and the documentation, in order to stabilize it enough to be comfortable with not making incompatible changes to it after that, and some other reasons. But now that Galaxy has officially came out of beta, well... where's the documented API? Good intentions, poor execution. It isn't clear if they still plan to even do this, and I'm not sure if they've communicated any more on it since then.

Let me be clear though. I do not purport to be defending GOG. I think GOG has made some huge miscommunications, and that they have failed to deliver on promises they have made to their customers over time. I give them the benefit of doubt that they had every good intention to do the many things they've promised, but they've failed to execute and/or changed their minds about some of the things they've promised over time. I'm as disappointed as anyone about that, and I call them out on it as much as anyone does really. My stake in this conversation however is not really one of defending GOG, but of expressing how I see GOG's business rationale for doing the things that they are doing.

Don't mistake my understanding and explanations of things to be condoning or justifying their decisions or miscommunications however as that is not the case.

GOG has failed to execute what they said they would, and we can all agree with that at this point. My explanations are simply my way of saying why I don't think that they will actually execute what they said they would, from a neutral business perspective. Hopefully at some point in time they will grow large enough that they can get this shit together and start to deliver on all of the promises made over time. Another thing they probably should do - is to stop making promises that they can't or don't know 100% for sure if they can and will keep. Better to remain silent than to get highly emotional people all charged up and excited about something, and then 1/2/3 years later not produce/provide it and just go radio silent.

The growth so far appears to be constant and correspond to general gradual Linux market share growth. Why do you expect it to accelerate exactly? Growth itself is already good. We don't need "huge line up of gamers out there flocking by the billions to the Linux platform", when developers are quite slow to address this. We need gradual growth which can accommodate developers who enter the market, so it won't become unbalanced. At the same time, those who invest in it, do help accelerating the growth, but they also provide more potential for developers at the same time (that's what Valve are doing by investing in Mesa, Vulkan and etc. for instance). So momentum is here all the same and it is positive.

Here is a good article which explores this topic: http://boilingsteam.com/linux-gaming-in-2016-the-good-the-bad-and-the-meh/

It's not their job if they don't see beyond their nose. But more farsighted see that MS and Apple who dominate PC market don't want to share any profits, and they want to monopolize distribution channels by excluding competition. So it's in direct interest of independent distributors to grow alternatives that are not under MS and Apple control. And that so far means investing in the Linux market. Valve got that point some years ago, and they are consistent in sticking to it. GOG didn't get it. Sure, you can say GOG are smaller and all. But their ambitions run high, as Galaxy itself demonstrates. So if they play big, they should pay attention to the big picture.

Thanks, I'll check it out tomorrow.

Yes, and I agree with that. Valve is a massive company that has virtually infinite resources that they can take long shot experimental "screw you Microsoft, we'll go it our own then!" gambles that cost a lot of money. GOG is not anywhere near as loaded nor influential. GOG can afford to monitor trends and follow them when the time is right for them and they have the resources to do so. GOG does not need to be the first to the party, nor are they in a position to really do so IMHO. I'm sure GOG is paying attention to the big picture, but that doesn't mean that they have to take immediate action on everything or be the first out the start gate on it. It also doesn't mean that we are going to be informed of everything they plan on doing publicly either, they could have any number of things being planned behind the scenes, and IMHO they are much less likely to publicize what they're going to do next or after that, because every time they do announce something publicly before it is ready, they tend to fail to deliver on the timelines people expect them to (whether or not they stated any release dates for anything at all). GOG is moving towards id Software/Valve/Blizzard time slowly, by learning the hard way that announcing things in advance if you're not 10000% certain what you're going to be able to deliver and in a timeframe people come to expect, it is better to not say anything and remain radio silent, then surprise people near a pending release. That upsets some people out there as we all savour information, but it is a sign of a company getting bigger and growing up also.

But, they're not that big yet to bet the farm on bold speculative gambles and pour tonnes of money and resources in one direction like some sort of video game company version of Elon Musk either. When a company is a leader in a space and has lots of resources to put into experimental technologies, projects etc. they can afford to take the risks on larger resource consuming projects and often do. Companies such as Google for example have dozens of experimental projects/products in development all the time and some of them see the light of day while others are shit-canned and never get seen, and others are put out there and just don't make it and get lopped off. (Wave, Buzz, Newsreader for a few examples). But those are things that a company of that magnitude can afford to experiment with and suffer the loss because the loss is small compared to their big picture, and they also know that one or two of their experiments hitting paydirt will more than pay for the 20-30 projects that failed.

When your company is only big enough to have 20-30 developers or so mostly working on one single project, you don't really have the luxury of having 3/5/10 experimental things going on that might be "the next big thing" because you don't have the money and other resources to gamble with. GOG is a rather small company, they're not Valve or Google, so it just isn't feasible that they try to act like those companies and "be the leader pushing forward in highly experimental untested ground". When a company is first starting out, they may be doing that by building themselves a new market that didn't really exist before, and GOG more or less started out that way with DRM-free being that experimental thing and it has paid off so far, but it very well could have failed miserably and that would have probably put an end to them instantly if it had. It would not only be foolish, but downright irresponsible of them as a publicly traded company at the level they are at right now to sink all their eggs into a highly experimental market basket of trying to become some big Linux centric gaming company.

If GOG wants to succeed, they need to firmly plant their feet in the ground on what it is they already do very well, and keep trying to improve it incrementally. Occasionally they can experiment in new areas where they have the manpower to do so and other resources, and they believe the risks are worth the effort and perceive the reward to be high enough to justify it. While some out there might think Linux falls into that category (generally via cognitive bias more than any other merit), it's easy to have such opinions when one doesn't have any of their own money on the line, nor an already successful business to maintain. Now if someone puts $200000 investment into CDP SA's publicly traded shares and then puts up a strong opinion that they want GOG to put Linux as their main focus and screw Windows because Microsoft is going down - then my ears have their voice and I want to hear more.

When it's "no, I have no investment in this nor anything to lose really, but I want YOU to put your entire company on the line chasing magic pixie dust!", it's just reads as armchair fantasies to me, or bikeshedding running a game company.

I honestly and very strongly believe that if GOG's CEO were to make an executive decision that from now on they were going to make every major company decision up to their customers to decide via the forums, wishlist, etc. via people submitting ideas and voting on them, then they would commit to doing what people have voted on - the company would go out of business in less than a year. Largely because the active community only actually represents a very small number of their customerbase, and participation in such things tends to be by highly vocal people often with strong ideologies, and because vocal popularity of something is rarely the best deciding factor on whether or not something is a good idea, whether it is viable or even rational, and that is especially true in business.

I love Linux, and I do in fact own shares in Linux centric companies presently (as a full disclosure disclaimier), however if I was a CDP SA shareholder however (and I'm not), and GOG was to announce tomorrow they're coming out with their own GOG OS, and making Galaxy for Linux their top priority going forward, and making Windows a secondary concern because they want to ensure Linux support is on par because they don't have strong faith in the future of their business running on top of Windows, I would dump my shares in their company so fast I'd need to have surgery on my hand because I think that would be a tremendously bad business decision at the present moment for their shareholders, and I wouldn't want to ride that roulette wheel for anything.

GOG may make some mistakes from time to time about things, but they know a lot more about how to run their business profitably than any of us do, and they do take our input into consideration in making those decisions. While none of us agree with everything they do, the fact we keep buying games from them and hanging out here shows that we have a certain amount of faith in them that they know what they're doing more so than not. If we didn't, there wouldn't be much good reason to even hang around here anymore nor patron their store front.

As much as I'd love to see Galaxy for Linux, I hate to even admit it here but I'd rather see GOG add video broadcasting and recording capabilities into Galaxy, improve cloud save support for more games, and add a dozen or so other missing features to Galaxy that I'd like to have as higher priorities than Linux. Of course I'd love it if they could do all of those AND Linux at once too, but if I had to stack my wishlist items for Galaxy in order, I think I'd have at least 5-10 higher than Linux and I'm a Linux nutjob myself.

What both sucks and is fully understandable at the same time, is that we have no visible public roadmap concerning future features nor ETAs for Galaxy now, and we probably wont likely be privy to such information in the future as sharing such info hasn't worked out well for them in the past.

I'm mostly with skeletonbow, but some users have said valid things. And while I can understand GOG's reasons, I can't feel but dissapointed and I feel they could have done better.

On my case I'm still with GOG as my main gaming store because they still are DRM-free and most of the games I'd like to purchase work on Linux. But I'd like a lot to have Galaxy for a better experience. I don't dual-boot anymore and therefore I don't purchase non-Linux games (I can do very few exceptions, mostly with older games that may never be ported and I know they run via WINE or DOSBox). I always prefer to buy on GOG but sometimes I buy at other stores (primarily Steam and Humble) because either the game has better support on Steam or the Linux version of the game isn't sold here (which for me is almost equal to "the game isn't sold here at all"). Most of the time is the developer to blame, but sometimes it's GOG or both. Not having Galaxy affects somehow both of the main reasons I buy games elsewhere.

As I said I can understand that Linux can't be the top priority but I think they can do better without compromising themselves too much. Hope things change on this issue faster than later and we can see Galaxy for Linux as soon as possible.

PS: All said they should have never put "soon on Linux" if it wasn't planned that way. Sure, they didn't get any ETA but tagging it "soon" makes people think that it will come, indeed, soon. And some years later is nowhere near to soon.

PPS: Some time ago I made a thread asking for the numbers of Linux users on GOG and it won't be accurate for a lot of reasons but mrkgnao mentioned here that "8% of MaGog's searches come from Linux machines".

Why have a mac version but not a linux version? Mac has a ton less gamers using it than linux.

I have just returned to purchase a game that I had purchased before and can't find it. How can I purchasE the MASTER OF THE ORION II?

Master of Orion I and II come as a package. Look here.

I haven't seen enough for much of a bug report, but a couple of times lately, when downloading installers I've had the displayed amount downloaded so far freeze at some low number and fail to update, even though a positive download speed was still displayed. Has anyone else encountered this?

I've fallen back to the GOG Downloader for the moment.

Does the "Scan and import folders" work for anyone else? It has never worked for me.

I used it like a week ago, imported 30 games and it worked fine. Just selected my games folder that had all my GOG games.