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General discussionGOG’s Year in Review: what we managed to achieve in 2022(136 posts)(136 posts)
(136 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 30, 2022
The end of the year and the beginning of the new one, is a very special time that allows us to take a moment to look back, and sum up everything that has happened. Those reflections are crucial in gaining more knowledge, celebrating our successes, and growing in pursuit of providing you with the very best experience while using both GOG and GOG GALAXY.

Having said that, 2022 was a year full of excitement, great new ideas, overcoming challenges, as well as finding and implementing new improvements and initiatives. And today, when we are looking back at this year, we are happy, proud and grateful. Happy, because we’ve managed to achieve goals that we’ve set for ourselves and for our community. Proud, because when facing challenges, we ended up better than we were before. And grateful, for you – our community and fellow gaming enthusiasts, because, simply, you’re the best.

Now, allow us to take you on a walk through 2022’s highlights, and see what we’ve managed to achieve together this year. But don’t worry, we’ll try to keep it short and sweet!

At the beginning of 2022, we focused on providing better platform experience for our community. We wanted to make sure that buying the game of your choosing, browsing the catalog, checking the best deals and new releases, finding hidden gems, or discovering what next to play would be as smooth and pleasant as possible. That desire manifested in releasing the new and improved catalog with more customized searches, and ability to sort and filter games by price, release date range, genres, and tags. We also made the main view in GOG GALAXY more dynamic and alive by highlighting all the events, giveaways, deals, and all the gaming goodness that took place.



Moreover, we increased our activities around classic games as a tribute to our roots. That means more classic releases, interviews with their creators, celebrating their anniversaries, adding the “Good Old Game” catalog, and more! Or, and that’s all thanks to you, gathering more than $4,000 USD for The Video Game History Foundation, which supports, preserves, celebrates, and teaches the history of video games.

Later in 2022, we raised a very important, both to you and us, topic of DRM-free gaming, our commitment to it and what it means to us. Everything we said back then still holds true and will continue to do so: the single-player mode has to be accessible offline, games you bought and downloaded can never be taken from you or altered against your will, the GOG GALAXY client is and will remain optional for accessing single-player offline mode.

Somewhere in the middle of the year, we also launched our blog! Creation of such a hub allowed us to post our editorials in a place, where its various engaging contents, filled with highlights of classic and new games, interviews, guest articles, gaming reflections and gaming’s universes deep dives, will be easy to find and always accessible through a few clicks. New editorial pieces will still appear there with even higher quality and interesting topics.



And when Halloween was just around the corner, we tackled another important topic of online-only games on GOG. We understand that some titles are meant to be played with others, and their multiplayer-only modes is also one of many beautiful gaming characteristics. Because we love games as much as you do, we wanted you to be able to scratch that multiplayer itch on GOG as well. And while we assure you that this will not influence our DRM-free approach discussed earlier, we opened our platform for online-only multiplayer games, which are marked as such on the gamecard, and we leave the decision up to you whether you want to play them.

Finally, to end the year on a high note, we’ve added new awesome feature to further improve GOG and GOG GALAXY experiences – OpenCritic implementation to our gamecards. By partnering up with one of the most renowned and respected review aggregation websites for video games, we want you to not only grasp a better understanding of games that you are interested in, but also help you make better decisions when making purchases and expand your library with titles that suit your gaming needs best.



We wholeheartedly believe that all that we’ve managed to achieve in 2022 are great steps towards becoming the favorite platform for everyone that loves, and still keeps falling in love with games. We absolutely can’t wait for all the incredibly exciting things that 2023 will bring, and we believe that for you, and with you, we are able to achieve every goal we’ll set for ourselves. Hope you all had a wonderful year, and the next one will be even better – see you in 2023!
Posted January 16, 2023
In making a thread to curate spam reports in July, users were finally able to collate the spam into one convenient location.
For the matter of statistics, there were more spam reports than there were days in a year, even if one were to discard unrelated posts.

❧ Spam is preventable. GOG even has mechanisms to prevent the nonsapient from posting on the forums; hypothetically.

❧ I'd, in addition to being able to edit reviews, would not only like to be able to locate my reviews, but have a place where I can oversee them. The same applies for wishlist entries.

❧ The amount of scripts I'm having to run on GOG to make it less ancient feeling is more than one. If simple scripting can fix these issues, why hasn't GOG thought to do so? I recall making this point in the thread of the year previous.

❧ I've found myself not purchasing anything for a variety of reasons, including an (perhaps unspoken) apathy towards Linux while Proton/Wine soars ahead.

❧ In spite of mild improvements to the catalogue, I feel it's still lacking for that certain discoverability.

❧ There's a definable gap of games that happens to span a series and class of games GOG has yet to have ever touched. We had one release via BoxedWine, open the floodgates!

❧ GOG's unicode support is still lacking. And lacking for emoticons of GOG's make, at least Emoji would get us started.

❧ I don't give a single solitary fuck about Galaxy, nor it's multi-client capabilities. I'm tired of clients. It's too late to make good on that front.

❧ The state of DLC/Demos in the store is a hot mess, and I'm not sure who approved the implementation as it was in the first place, especially the separate review sections between multiple editions of the same game.

❧ You know, I've never once seen the notifications area used for anything useful. Thinking Spear of Destiny had vanished from my library (instead of merged with Wolf3D) sure was a smooth move.
Post edited January 16, 2023 by Darvond
Posted January 22, 2023
quote "We wholeheartedly believe that all that we’ve managed to achieve in 2022 are great steps towards becoming the favorite platform for everyone that loves, and still keeps falling in love with games. We absolutely can’t wait for all the incredibly exciting things that 2023 will bring, and we believe that for you, and with you, we are able to achieve every goal we’ll set for ourselves. Hope you all had a wonderful year, and the next one will be even better – see you in 2023!"

without mentioning doubling down on galaxy; 'nough said.

awareness isn't a key value here and there are a lot of us who must remain silent due forums new rules post 2021 & hitman debacles.
Posted January 24, 2023
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WolfEisberg: No, a huge no. this would give another reason for dev/pub to not put their games on GOG, they may feel it is not worth the money to go through the work to add achievements. And if I miss out on games through GOG over something as dumb as achievements, I would not be happy. Not everyone cares about achievements.
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Animaitor: Easy, ignore them. Let the rest of us enjoy them.

If devs are so damn lazy to incorporate achievements on a game that already has them on Steam, GOG provides tools to do it automatically. As easy as using a "Steam SDK Wrapper". Few clicks and done. Incorporating achievements will not require more work at all.
1- I didn't say to remove achievement system with GOG. I stated that it would be bad for GOG to require achievements because it would cause many games to not show up on GOG that normally would. So your " Easy, ignore them. Let the rest of us enjoy them." is invalid as a rebuttal to what I said.

2- You have no clue the kind of work the developers have to do get to achievements working for GOG.
Posted February 09, 2023
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Darvond: ❧ You know, I've never once seen the notifications area used for anything useful. Thinking Spear of Destiny had vanished from my library (instead of merged with Wolf3D) sure was a smooth move.
???

What, i have both in my libary
Post edited February 09, 2023 by Lodium
Posted February 09, 2023
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Lodium: What, i have both in my libary
It was a mistake on Gog part, it has been fixed since.
Posted April 16, 2023
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Animaitor: Easy, ignore them. Let the rest of us enjoy them.

If devs are so damn lazy to incorporate achievements on a game that already has them on Steam, GOG provides tools to do it automatically. As easy as using a "Steam SDK Wrapper". Few clicks and done. Incorporating achievements will not require more work at all.
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WolfEisberg: 1- I didn't say to remove achievement system with GOG. I stated that it would be bad for GOG to require achievements because it would cause many games to not show up on GOG that normally would. So your " Easy, ignore them. Let the rest of us enjoy them." is invalid as a rebuttal to what I said.

2- You have no clue the kind of work the developers have to do get to achievements working for GOG.
1- I never said you said "to remove achievement system with GOG". All I ask is for games that already have achievements on Steam, to add them here as well. It is damn simple if you know what you are doing and research just a little on what kind of tools GOG provides if you are too lazy to add a few lines of code.

2- You know nothing about me so stop assuming shit.
Posted April 16, 2023
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Animaitor: All I ask is for games that already have achievements on Steam, to add them here as well. It is damn simple if you know what you are doing and research just a little on what kind of tools GOG provides if you ... add a few lines of code.
That isn't true.

There's the server-side, the client-side for Windows games that use Galaxy and connect to the server after installation to download the localisation list, the client-side for when the user uses a Windows offline installer and wants a DRM-free game that never connects to the server, and if the game has Linux or MacOS versions then there's the client-side for platforms that don't even have a GOG-provided wrapper library. Then there's the GUI for the pop-ups if Galaxy doesn't show them, and then there's the testing for all of those combinations.

For any developer who has to justify the time spent, it isn't good to have people saying "it's just a few lines of code".
Posted April 17, 2023
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WolfEisberg: 1- I didn't say to remove achievement system with GOG. I stated that it would be bad for GOG to require achievements because it would cause many games to not show up on GOG that normally would. So your " Easy, ignore them. Let the rest of us enjoy them." is invalid as a rebuttal to what I said.

2- You have no clue the kind of work the developers have to do get to achievements working for GOG.
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Animaitor: 1- I never said you said "to remove achievement system with GOG". All I ask is for games that already have achievements on Steam, to add them here as well. It is damn simple if you know what you are doing and research just a little on what kind of tools GOG provides if you are too lazy to add a few lines of code.

2- You know nothing about me so stop assuming shit.
1- That isn't what I said. Again, it would be bad for GOG to require achievements for games that have achievements on Steam. That would only lead to less games being available on GOG, which is bad for consumers. If it is a choice of less games on GOG or more games on GOG but games may not have achievements, the latter will always be the better choice. You want achievements, then buy the game on Steam instead.

2- Says the guy that wrongly believes it is a just a few clicks to get achievements working.
Posted April 17, 2023
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WolfEisberg: 1- That isn't what I said. Again, it would be bad for GOG to require achievements for games that have achievements on Steam. That would only lead to less games being available on GOG, which is bad for consumers. If it is a choice of less games on GOG or more games on GOG but games may not have achievements, the latter will always be the better choice. You want achievements, then buy the game on Steam instead.
I care nothing for achievements. I am not the only one. If they get in the way of gettung games in GOG, ditch them.
Posted April 17, 2023
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WolfEisberg: 1- That isn't what I said. Again, it would be bad for GOG to require achievements for games that have achievements on Steam.
No, it would not be bad at all.

On the contrary: GOG should indeed ban games that don't have feature parity, including Achievements, unless there is a legitimate technical reason as to why a feature has to be removed from the GOG version, which in the case of Achievements, there never (or at least almost never) is any such legit reason, therefore there is no excuse for devs and/or publishers to leave them out, and there is also no excuse on GOG's part to allow devs to leave them out but yet still sell their games on GOG anyways.

If the devs insist on not giving feature parity simply because they are lazy, then GOG's customers are better off without their second-class citizen treatment games being here.

EGS recently announced that they won't allow any multiplayer games on their store unless the multiplayer games have Crossplay with all other PC game stores on which the game is also sold. That was a very pro-customer move on the part of EGS.

Similarly, GOG would be making a very pro-customer move by forbidding games that lack Galaxy Achievements for no good reason even though those same games do have Achievements on other platforms.

And in contrast, GOG is not treating its customers well currently with the present status quo, whereby GOG turns a blind eye to the problem of second-class citizen treatment, and enables & facilities & allows it to occur without intervening to put a stop to it, as they should do.
Post edited April 17, 2023 by Ancient-Red-Dragon
Posted April 17, 2023
Two misconceptions here:

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Ancient-Red-Dragon: If the devs insist on not giving feature parity simply because they are lazy
It is not simple and it is not because they are lazy. It is a matter of allocating limited resources. What use is going to be given to the programming time: bugs, improving mechanics, creating new content, getting the game onto more platforms, or... achievements.

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Ancient-Red-Dragon: GOG's customers are better off without their second-class citizen treatment games being here.
What a sorry entitled expression, "second-class citizen". NO, customers are not citizens, which are entitled to rights. Customers are customers and the relation is one of freedom to buy or not within the bounds of a contract and commercial law. Now, if we talk about product homogeneity and selling the same thing under the same name, that is way different.

With those two misconceptions clear, debate may continue.
Post edited April 17, 2023 by Carradice
Posted April 17, 2023
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Ancient-Red-Dragon: On the contrary: GOG should indeed ban games that don't have feature parity, including Achievements, unless there is a legitimate technical reason as to why a feature has to be removed from the GOG version. If the devs insist on not giving feature parity simply because they are lazy, then GOG's customers are better off without their second-class citizen treatment games being here.

Similarly, GOG would be making a very pro-customer move by forbidding games that lack Galaxy Achievements for no good reason even though those same games do have Achievements on other platforms.
Forcibly removing 1300 games from a store that only has about 5,700 games plus probably several hundred more on top indirectly (even those with achievements) via alienating major publishers enough to pull all their games would literally be the death of GOG. And forcibly removing Remasters / EE of classics like Baldur's Gate 1-2, Grim Fandango, Myst, Planescape Torment, Quake, System Shock, etc, due to "lack of achievements" despite the fact they never even originally had achievements in the first place is absurd...

I'm not opposed to adding features which 1. Don't interfere with offline installers and 2. Don't interfere with bringing future games to GOG or degrade GOG's financial situation ("achievements or nothing" threats from a very small store will just result in nothing). People seriously need to get a grip though on what's realistic and practical with "feature parity" demands for a store that has 100x less money than Steam to throw at social features (that were originally designed as a hostile 'branding' feature to lock gamers into the Steam ecosystem in the first place under the guise of "convenience").

If anything happened to GOG and they closed shop everyone would have 0 achievements unlocked, 0hrs played and no Galaxy or Galaxy profile at all. Yet the whole point of GOG is you can still continue to play your games without achievements. You can't however, play a game without the game - and DRM-Free releases is what GOG has always been about far more than just doing a bad job of CTRL-C, CTRL-V Steam online features 1:1 with money they simply don't have.
Post edited April 17, 2023 by AB2012
Posted April 26, 2023
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WolfEisberg: You want achievements, then buy the game on Steam instead.
I'm sure GOG would agree with you on this one, you have brains for sure.

DRM free and offline play are my priorities, but achievements (many games feature in game achievements, no need to use Galaxy) extend the life of a game if you want to take the challenge.

Ancient-Red-Dragon is right on many of his points. Customers, no matter the platform, need to be treated equally, We need feature parity and that includes adding achievements if the Steam version have them. Obviously if a game originally, didn't have achievements, there's no point on adding them. Is true that the way some games implement achievements is linked to how Steam works and becomes a challenge for the devs to make them work on other platforms but that's the minority.

If GOG wants to stay relevant and keep its customers, this could be a good start.

On a side note, regional pricing would be nice too Many games are way cheaper over at Steam. When I convert US dollars to yen, I get fucked 99% of the time.
Posted April 26, 2023
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Animaitor: All I ask is for games that already have achievements on Steam, to add them here as well. It is damn simple if you know what you are doing and research just a little on what kind of tools GOG provides if you ... add a few lines of code.
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octalot: That isn't true.

There's the server-side, the client-side for Windows games that use Galaxy and connect to the server after installation to download the localisation list, the client-side for when the user uses a Windows offline installer and wants a DRM-free game that never connects to the server, and if the game has Linux or MacOS versions then there's the client-side for platforms that don't even have a GOG-provided wrapper library. Then there's the GUI for the pop-ups if Galaxy doesn't show them, and then there's the testing for all of those combinations.

For any developer who has to justify the time spent, it isn't good to have people saying "it's just a few lines of code".
I call that lazy devs.
Posted April 26, 2023
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AB2012: People seriously need to get a grip though on what's realistic and practical with "feature parity" demands for a store that has 100x less money than Steam to throw at social features
+1
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Community
General discussionGOG’s Year in Review: what we managed to achieve in 2022(136 posts)(136 posts)
(136 posts)