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General discussionIntroducing: GOG Galaxy, the DRM-Free online gaming platform(917 posts)(917 posts)
(917 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 06, 2014
Freedom of choice. Optional client. Cross-play. Coming soon to all gamers!

Earlier today (or was it yesterday for you?), during the [url=http://www.gog.com/news/cd_projekt_red_gogcom_summer_conference]CD Projekt RED and GOG.com’s Summer Conference we dropped the news about our next big step forward! GOG.com has always been home to more and more of the the best games in history (for Windows and Mac), both classic and new. Differing in shapes, flavors, and sizes they had one thing in common: they were mostly single-player, and our focus was mainly on the experience of a singular gamer. If that's your thing, nothing really will change. You can always enjoy your favorite games 100% DRM-free on GOG.com, with no need to activate your game online or remain connected to play your single-player title. Just like GOG.com has always been about.. But what if you want to play with your friends?

Today we are excited to announce GOG Galaxy, a truly gamer-friendly, 100% DRM-free online gaming platform that will finally provide the GOG.com community with the easy option to play together online. GOG Galaxy will allow you to share your achievements, stay in touch with your pals and get the updates for your games automatically. We've developed this technology to improve your GOG.com experience. We think GOG Galaxy really deserves your attention and we hope many of you will give it a try! But, here's the great thing: it is totally optional, so it's all up to you! If you do not want to play online, or use our optional client to access these features, then no worries, you will always be able to play the single-player mode 100% DRM-free, and download manually the latest updated version of your favorite title from our website. Now, for one more feature we call cross-play. We always believed in an open world for gamers, with no obligation to be tied to a specific platform or client; and this is why GOG Galaxy will allow gamers to play with their buddies who use Steam, without any need to use any 3rd party client or account, nothing, nada. We’re taking care of connecting GOG.com and Steam players, so just sit back, relax and give it a try.

See the outtake from the CD Projekt RED & GOG.com Summer Conference

Talking of which, we are proud to announce the soon-to-come launch of the beta phase for The Witcher Adventure Game, a faithful adaptation of the board game of the same title. It allows up to 4 players to play together, whether they use Steam or GOG.com. Cross-play at its finest! If you wanna get the chance to try it out, please visit and sign up to get in the queue for your beta access key. You can also simply take advantage of our amazing [url=http://www.gog.com/tw3]pre-order offer for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which includes 2 beta access keys for he Witcher Aventure Game, delivered to you as soon as we start handing them out to public.

We believe GOG Galaxy has the power to provide the best of both worlds. Playing the single player mode of your favorite game, 100% DRM-free, while still having the OPTION to use our soon-to-come client for an enhanced experience (auto-patching, achievements, and much more) or play online with other GOG.com (and Steam) players if you so wish.

There will be more GOG Galaxy titles coming up this year, so stay tuned for more news and get the word around!
Post edited June 06, 2014 by G-Doc
Posted June 07, 2014
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Destro: - while we aim for the Client to support all the GOG games, cross-play feature will be for now available only with some multiplayer games that are Galaxy powered, not with every game that exists on GOG. In case of The Witcher Adventure Game, we have a GOG + Steam cross-play. At this point I cannot say when we’ll support more platforms, but I can promise that there are other games in our pipeline that we’re working on.
So it is really not that different from for example GameSpy and other services. A bit disappointing, maybe, but not surprising. You need to tell Judas this, he promised connection with for example Steamworks.

This means that for existing games, the developers would need to go back and redo the MP code in the games to enable this - not sure how many would do so.
Posted June 07, 2014
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Destro: - while we aim for the Client to support all the GOG games, cross-play feature will be for now available only with some multiplayer games that are Galaxy powered, not with every game that exists on GOG. In case of The Witcher Adventure Game, we have a GOG + Steam cross-play. At this point I cannot say when we’ll support more platforms, but I can promise that there are other games in our pipeline that we’re working on.
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amok: So it is really not that different from for example GameSpy and other services. A bit disappointing, maybe, but not surprising. You need to tell Judas this, he promised connection with for example Steamworks.

This means that for existing games, the developers would need to go back and redo the MP code in the games to enable this - not sure how many would do so.
It depends. Software like Hamachi already took old games to another level. Who says the same can't be done for more recent games ?
Posted June 07, 2014
I would very much like a more open alternative to the Steamworks solution, which Galaxy seems to aim for, but one issue makes me feel somewhat ill at ease. One of Judas' posts suggests that Gog seems to be conflating multiplayer, online requirement, and central authentication/ownership check, which are all separate things really.

I would find it an unacceptable detour from Gog's mission statement of less DRM if your position is, "you need to be online to play in multiplayer games anyway, so a central ownership check doesn't add restrictions". My concern with this is that if the authentication provider ceases service for whatever reasons, you're once again denied access to (at least parts of) your game.

How will this be addressed? How can I be sure that if I purchase a game, I'll be able to use it indefinitely? How can I be sure that I'll be able to play my multiplayer games in a LAN that is otherwise detached from the Internet? Will there be provisions to set up a decentralized Galaxy server? Will there be an override feature to directly connect to IPs?
Posted June 07, 2014
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Destro: Hey guys,

I’ve spent last few hours reading through your comments here and I’d like to thank you for all of them :). Some talented folks here in GOG worked really hard and in secrecy on this project, and they are thrilled to read all the positive and constructive feedback - it reminds me a lot of the time when we announced GOG itself :). I know that some of you have a lot of questions right now and I’m sorry if we cannot answer them all (yet) - even though many of our partners have received access to our SDK and we’re working on some great stuff, we’d still prefer to under-promise and then over-deliver that the other way around :).

[...]
Is it possible to give us a (clear) answer as to whether the GOG Galaxy client will come with the functionality of the current GOG Downloader in terms of just downloading traditional standalone installers and patches either for manual install or backup purposes?

Going with Judas post here, I suspect that it won't. Given that the current GOG Downloader will be pulled (there's not a single blue text post stating that it'll be replaced), that would mean that those that make use of the current GOG Downloader and are possibly not interested in other features of the GOG Galaxy client will be left without any other option than browser downloads and thus lose all the advantages that come with using the GOG Downloader.

I understand that you may be unable to answer all questions, but I assume that this particular one can be answered - you either included this functionality or not.


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LiquidOxygen80: I'm kinda hoping that GOG will have options for developers in regards to open APIs in a similar fashion to Steamworks. I've lurked many a dev forum now where their big complaint was GOG has no Steamworks, which makes it harder to maintain their products if they DO release for GOG. (Whether that argument has any real merit is obviously a niggle for another thread.)

I understand the reasons, and I'm kinda hoping that GOG has taken notice of them as well, and Galaxy becomes their big answer TO that complaint.

To be frank, though, we're probably all going to be holding our breath until the final product is ready and those of us chosen for beta testing can actually download it and start messing around with it. I'm very optimistic though!
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skeletonbow: Indeed, and I believe that is one of the major motivations behind GOG creating Galaxy. [...]
How would that address the case of the standalone installers and patches that GOG promises to keep providing? If I understood both of you correctly, I suspect that it won't, which would either mean that the requirement to support two types of installers & patches won't be that attractive to devs (i.e. not much will change in regard to bringing more devs/ pubs on board), or that the standalone installers & patches will start falling behind over time, until everyone on GOG will have no other choice than to go the GOG Galaxy route if they want to have the most current version of their games.

I'm not tech savvy enough in this field, so what am I missing?
Posted June 07, 2014
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skirtish: How can I be sure that if I purchase a game, I'll be able to use it indefinitely? How can I be sure that I'll be able to play my multiplayer games in a LAN that is otherwise detached from the Internet? Will there be provisions to set up a decentralized Galaxy server? Will there be an override feature to directly connect to IPs?
When you wake up, do you see aliens or Mickey, Donalds and co ? When did you read that you could play a game, any game, indefinitley ?! What kind of stupid argument is that ?!
Post edited June 07, 2014 by Kamikave
Posted June 07, 2014
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ThorChild: Ok so i seem to have seen about 3 threads (atleast) on this new Galaxy info. Sorry if this has been asked or suggested.

Q: Is this Impulse? As in did GoG buy Impulse from whatever that terrible american game store is called?

If so i have no problem with that as Impulse was pretty good, i preferred it to Steam 100% (as i can't use Steam). I used 'Impulse Anywhere' which was the Impulse version that allowed you to download and run games on non-internet connected PC's (via a key it generated that you could transfer over via keydrive etc).

Will Galaxy have this kind of option to install on non-internet connected PC's like the current GoG downloader let's you?
Seems rather unlikely since the software will have to be rather specific to the GOG platform. They probably aren't at liberty to divulge gory underlying technical details at this point in time I'm guessing, but if I were designing a new game client/service that was going to be providing features of the nature found in other clients such as Steam/Origin/Desura/Uplay it would need web technologies built into it so I'd start with a base of one of the open source web browsers such as Firefox or Chrome (I would choose Firefox as I'm somewhat familiar with it's source code personally, although Steam is based on Chrome IIRC), and build out the application from there. The server side of it would be extremely specific to the company's own platform however but include a web component. That would be used for store and customer library management, social networking etc. features. The other components which are things that would link into game code would be the multiplayer functionality, achievements, and other similar things and that stuff would pretty much need to be written from scratch for various reasons, one being relying on 3rd party licensed code as little as possible. What approach GOG has taken is only known to them though and probably will remain so until it is released I imagine.

With Galaxy replacing the downloader I think it's safe to assume that it will also provide similar functionality for downloading backup copies of games to the local system which acts like a cache. When one goes to install a game, it checks the cache and if the game is present, it also contacts the server if online connectivity is present in order to check for updates, then it installs the local content and any updates if available and the user has chosen to enable auto updates for that game. Again that's just speculation on my part but I'd have a hard time understanding why it /wouldn't/ work that way. ;o) Perhaps they'll share a bit about this with us in a future update post though, but this is what I assume from how the current downloader works and what makes logical sense from what they've already disclosed.
Posted June 07, 2014
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skirtish: How can I be sure that if I purchase a game, I'll be able to use it indefinitely? How can I be sure that I'll be able to play my multiplayer games in a LAN that is otherwise detached from the Internet? Will there be provisions to set up a decentralized Galaxy server? Will there be an override feature to directly connect to IPs?
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Kamikave: When you wake up, do you see aliens or Mickey, Donalds and co ? When did you read that you could play a game, any game, indefinitley ?! What kind of stupid argument is that ?!
That's a rather uncivil answer. I believe I understand what's he's asking and it's valid. I'm wondering the same thing.

He means this, from the GOG.com FAQ:

What does it mean that games on GOG.com are DRM-free?
It basically means that you actually own the games bought at GOG.com. Once you download a game, you can install it on any computer and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need.
For many of us the appeal of DRM-free distribution is the idea that one day even if GOG closes its doors, and any day if their servers are down or were not connected beyond a local network, we can still play. Right now most other software platforms don't work like that, but GOG does, and that is why we give them lots of our money.

For multi-player games the question is: once they are working on this new platform, can they be UNadapted if the platform goes away, by the end users? It's completely possible, in terms of technology, to make this an option, and it would be within the spirit and brand of GOG to make sure it is.

He's asking if that's the case, and if so how it will work.
Post edited June 07, 2014 by silalus
Posted June 07, 2014
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Kamikave: When you wake up, do you see aliens or Mickey, Donalds and co ? When did you read that you could play a game, any game, indefinitley ?! What kind of stupid argument is that ?!
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silalus: That's a rather uncivil answer. I believe I understand what's he's asking and it's valid. I'm wondering the same thing.

He means this, from the GOG.com FAQ:

What does it mean that games on GOG.com are DRM-free?
It basically means that you actually own the games bought at GOG.com. Once you download a game, you can install it on any computer and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need.
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silalus: For many of us the appeal of DRM-free distribution is the idea that one day even if GOG closes its doors, and any day if their servers are down or were not connected beyond a local network, we can still play. Right now most other software platforms don't work like that, but GOG does, and that is why we give them lots of our money.

For multi-player games the question is: once they are working on this new platform, can they be UNadapted if the platform goes away, by the end users? It's completely possible, in terms of technology, to make this an option, and it would be within the spirit and brand of GOG to make sure it is.

He's asking if that's the case, and if so how it will work.
Wouldn't the developers themselves be able to answer that? Take the case of GFWL for example. It's up to each developer to decide if and how he'll support the MP functionality of his game. Some have dropped the ball, many have created patches to adapt the games to Steamworks. IF GOG goes under for whatever reason, exclusive GOG-Galaxy enabled games may be moved to Steam. I'm pretty sure none of you expects DOS games to do that? Publishers will just reach a new agreement with Steam and you'll have to rebuy all your games, but this whole issue is an issue you'd have to ask for EVERY service out there. In the case of GOG though, you logically expect to at least be able to retain the game copies you have backed up.

Not sure there's much to talk about here. Why aren't we asking the same about Steam, for example? Cause Steam isn't going away? Larger companies have fallen, Valve can, too.
Posted June 07, 2014
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Kamikave: When you wake up, do you see aliens or Mickey, Donalds and co ? When did you read that you could play a game, any game, indefinitley ?! What kind of stupid argument is that ?!
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silalus: That's a rather uncivil answer. I believe I understand what's he's asking and it's valid. I'm wondering the same thing.

For many of us the appeal of DRM-free distribution is the idea that one day even if GOG closes its doors, and any day if their servers are down or were not connected beyond a local network, we can still play. Right now most other software platforms don't work like that, but GOG does, and that is why we give them lots of our money.

For multi-player games the question is: once they are working on this new platform, can they be UNadapted if the platform goes away, by the end users? It's completely possible, in terms of technology, to make this an option, and it would be within the spirit and brand of GOG to make sure it is.
I wouldn't have replied because it's all personal attack and no actual substance. Thanks for engaging in my place.

I'm not usually emotionally involved in businesses. Gog changed that because I believed them when they talked about a vision and I stuck around because I believed in this spirit of letting you keep control over the stuff you buy. I'm afraid that their position could be shifting because DRM is suddenly considered A-OK for multiplayer, which I don't agree with at all. I can still play Quake with people even though all official servers went down. I can still play countless others, not on the official servers, but we can make do with replacements.

I would hate to see Galaxy replace these replaceable multiplayer solutions with an unreplaceable one.
Post edited June 07, 2014 by skirtish
Posted June 07, 2014
i'm not seeing the DRM in Galaxy.

i have the view that far as the Online Profile goes, Galaxy is just like these forums. And all other forums and services which require sign-up with email address, name, location etc. Each thing on the net with sign-ups like that, even the pay-for services, are just like signing up for Galaxy.

Galaxy is not terminator programed to delete game access. steamworks is. Or rather it has that functionality. Terminator functionality goes beyond simple internet sign-ups. DRM is something which has teeth. Something which can enforce compliance. i doubt Galaxy will have these teeth. Sure, Galaxy admin may delete/ban/modify your account. Same as anywhere else on the net. GOG has stated that Galaxy is optional. i think it clear that Galaxy is not an enforcer service, but rather an enabling service. Whereas other DDS's use the enabling service as draw to accept the enforcer. fsck enforcer.
Posted June 07, 2014
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WhiteElk: i'm not seeing the DRM in Galaxy.

i have the view that far as the Online Profile goes, Galaxy is just like these forums. And all other forums and services which require sign-up with email address, name, location etc. Each thing on the net with sign-ups like that, even the pay-for services, are just like signing up for Galaxy.

Galaxy is not terminator programed to delete game access. steamworks is. Or rather it has that functionality. Terminator functionality goes beyond simple internet sign-ups. DRM is something which has teeth. Something which can enforce compliance. i doubt Galaxy will have these teeth. Sure, Galaxy admin may delete/ban/modify your account. Same as anywhere else on the net. GOG has stated that Galaxy is optional. i think it clear that Galaxy is not an enforcer service, but rather an enabling service. Whereas other DDS's use the enabling service as draw to accept the enforcer. fsck enforcer.
It still does exactly what you're condemning there, for the multiplayer part of the game.
Posted June 07, 2014
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WhiteElk: i'm not seeing the DRM in Galaxy.

i have the view that far as the Online Profile goes, Galaxy is just like these forums. And all other forums and services which require sign-up with email address, name, location etc. Each thing on the net with sign-ups like that, even the pay-for services, are just like signing up for Galaxy.

Galaxy is not terminator programed to delete game access. steamworks is. Or rather it has that functionality. Terminator functionality goes beyond simple internet sign-ups. DRM is something which has teeth. Something which can enforce compliance. i doubt Galaxy will have these teeth. Sure, Galaxy admin may delete/ban/modify your account. Same as anywhere else on the net. GOG has stated that Galaxy is optional. i think it clear that Galaxy is not an enforcer service, but rather an enabling service. Whereas other DDS's use the enabling service as draw to accept the enforcer. fsck enforcer.
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Pheace: It still does exactly what you're condemning there, for the multiplayer part of the game.
We cannot post on these forums unless we signed up for GOG.com. We can be banned from the forums, but don't lose our games. Why should Galaxy be any different?

Now i do think that LAN play and private network play should be freely allowed. That is- gamers ought be able to set up their own servers and host their own MP sessions, tournaments, mods, house-rules, etc etc. But this is an industry issue which GOG can not change. Though GOG Galaxy and its community has potential to influence how the future of MP Gaming will play out.
Posted June 07, 2014
Edit: Nevermind, I don't think that suggestion will work.
Post edited June 07, 2014 by JohnnyDollar
Posted June 07, 2014
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Destro: *snip*
I just wanted to mention again that I like the suggestions from others about the client being modular, where you can do a custom install, and have choices from a bare bones downloader to the full client.

Extensibility sounds nice too. I can imagine GOG hosting a database of user created content extension and plug-ins.
Don't know how feasible that is at this point, but just tossing it out there. :)
Post edited June 07, 2014 by JohnnyDollar
Posted June 07, 2014
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WhiteElk: But this is an industry issue which GOG can not change. Though GOG Galaxy and its community has potential to influence how the future of MP Gaming will play out.
With the gaming industry the way it is, there is no perfect way that GOG can implement this. There's going to be some that reject it no matter what.

Heck, I might even reject it. :P It's all a bit vague right now.
Post edited June 07, 2014 by JohnnyDollar
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionIntroducing: GOG Galaxy, the DRM-Free online gaming platform(917 posts)(917 posts)
(917 posts)