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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 July 02, 2014
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lefantome89: really? still two months away :(
source?
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Paul31286: That's what the devs for Divinity: Original Sin said. The game is already released on Steam, but was supposed to be delayed till August 31st on GOG, to coincide with the release of GOG Galaxy, because the multiplayer features in GOG Galaxy are necessary for matchmaking in that game. After criticism from fans, the game will now be released this week without matchmaking features.
thanks.

Then I hope in a beta test in few days/weeks
Posted July 03, 2014
For GOG: I have a GOG Galaxy request which might seem obvious to ask for but I'd rather ask it pre-emptively just to be safe. ;)

It appears from observations of the GOG forums and elsewhere out there that GOG Galaxy is extremely highly anticipated and that when the new client and services do get launched either in beta form or official release, there is going to be a massive shitstorm of people all running to get it all at once. It will be like the Fallout game freebie giveaway, where 10 billion people all show up to the party at once and melt the GOG webservers.

So my request... my seemingly obvious request... is to please guess how many servers you are going to need to handle the load of people that will show up for any major release (beta or otherwise), and then double that number, then triple it again, and please do it at 9:00am on a Monday with no holiday the following day, and support employees who have the power to provision extra servers around the clock with a single mouse click to keep us all from ever having to see our friend the GOGbear. ;) Likewise, any servers involved in the signup process and backend management of Galaxy services hopefully will be scaled up massively at launch so that there is ample resources to handle the load.

Not that I wouldn't be patient if the servers were to become bogged down for such a big event, but we all know that there are a zillion forum members who will end up grabbing their pitch forks and jabbing GOG with them rapidly if the website or servers don't respond in less than 5 microseconds so... When in doubt, throw 10 times as many servers on the wire just to be safe. ;oP

One more thing... the request isn't so much for myself as I'm rather patient personally, but it's rather both for other GOG customers that aren't necessarily patient, and more importantly for GOG to avoid getting a black eye if they're unable to handle the load. Don't want to see that happen! :)
Post edited July 03, 2014 by skeletonbow
Posted July 03, 2014
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skeletonbow: For GOG: I have a GOG Galaxy request which might seem obvious to ask for but I'd rather ask it pre-emptively just to be safe. ;)

It appears from observations of the GOG forums and elsewhere out there that GOG Galaxy is extremely highly anticipated and that when the new client and services do get launched either in beta form or official release, there is going to be a massive shitstorm of people all running to get it all at once. It will be like the Fallout game freebie giveaway, where 10 billion people all show up to the party at once and melt the GOG webservers.

So my request... my seemingly obvious request... is to please guess how many servers you are going to need to handle the load of people that will show up for any major release (beta or otherwise), and then double that number, then triple it again, and please do it at 9:00am on a Monday with no holiday the following day, and support employees who have the power to provision extra servers around the clock with a single mouse click to keep us all from ever having to see our friend the GOGbear. ;) Likewise, any servers involved in the signup process and backend management of Galaxy services hopefully will be scaled up massively at launch so that there is ample resources to handle the load.

Not that I wouldn't be patient if the servers were to become bogged down for such a big event, but we all know that there are a zillion forum members who will end up grabbing their pitch forks and jabbing GOG with them rapidly if the website or servers don't respond in less than 5 microseconds so... When in doubt, throw 10 times as many servers on the wire just to be safe. ;oP

One more thing... the request isn't so much for myself as I'm rather patient personally, but it's rather both for other GOG customers that aren't necessarily patient, and more importantly for GOG to avoid getting a black eye if they're unable to handle the load. Don't want to see that happen! :)
This is very important , having proper server setup. We have seen on steam how despite upgraded their server capability ,during the peak events such as summer sales they have bogged down to a crawl.
Posted July 04, 2014
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liquidsnakehpks: This is very important , having proper server setup. We have seen on steam how despite upgraded their server capability ,during the peak events such as summer sales they have bogged down to a crawl.
Indeed, almost all of the stores online seem to suffer from this from time to time. You'd think they would all have things set up where either their software management software can detect load spikes and automatically provision additional machines and scale up and down to meet demand, or that they would have admins on hand 24/7 for any major events to do provisioning manually but at least have the details automated. It seems like many are caught off guard though and the time it seems to take for the load to be mitigated would suggest that some back breaking labour is being done in the background to throw some more logs on the fire so to speak. ;o)

Steam seems to get nailed every big sale they do probably worse than any other site. GOG has gotten pounded at times too but seems to have gotten a handle on things since the Fallout giveaway for the most part. EA and Ubisoft seem to have server outages just about every single new game they release from what I read online (you'd think they'd have figured it out and have it down to a science by now though).

But after thinking about all of these things, I personally hope to see Galaxy launch with no major technical glitches or outages due to underestimating server load demands because both users and critics out there can be incredibly brutal in the press and blogs and turn an exciting positive new thing into a witch burning party. :) I hope GOG rents the entire Amazon EC2 cloud for the weekend just to be safe. ;oP
Posted July 08, 2014
Divinty: OS is looking like a winner judging by the gamers' reaction that I've seen. It looks like a great title to launch Galaxy with. Unfortunately they're losing sales every day because it's already released. :/
Posted July 15, 2014
I was just ranting about the Bitraider invisible, no details launcher client and how much I disliked it.
I pointed to GOG as the way to do it.
This just got better.

I personally can't wait.
Posted July 15, 2014
Any news as to when this will be coming out? I have heard that it may be ought as early as next month.
Posted July 16, 2014
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AccurateArt: Any news as to when this will be coming out? I have heard that it may be ought as early as next month.
August 31st has been mentioned in the Divinity discussions, since the game will use Galaxy for some of the online features. But that date is a Sunday so it could get delayed to September.
Posted July 16, 2014
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AccurateArt: Any news as to when this will be coming out? I have heard that it may be ought as early as next month.
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rodrolliv: August 31st has been mentioned in the Divinity discussions, since the game will use Galaxy for some of the online features. But that date is a Sunday so it could get delayed to September.
Thanks for the clarification!
Posted July 23, 2014
Last night, I began thinking how awesome it would be if they introduced a trade-in feature with the client; in other words forfeiting games from the shelf in exchange for a small amount of store credit (if they're really bringing us GOG wallet too). Not only would this be a great way to get rid of some of those games I know I'll probably never play (including a couple of the free ones) but to earn a little bit of credit in the process too. Sometimes a certain game wasn't what you thought it would be: well now you wouldn't ever have to worry about it contaminating your collection anymore, plus it would help that "buyers remorse" if only a little. Then again, I can see why they wouldn't want to do this: what's stopping someone to back up the installers before trading the game in? Maybe the client could check if/when the game in question has been downloaded? It could work like this, for example (just my suggestions):

- The free games: No financial reimbursement (duh, since you paid 0.00€ for it in the first place), simply a way to get crap like Teen Agent off your shelf :)
- Game has been downloaded within a week: It wouldn't let you do the action yet, instead it would tell you it's too early to try that action and you need to wait a little longer (aka The Reconsideration Period)
- Game has been downloaded within the month but over a week ago: 5% reimbursement
- Game has been last downloaded over a month ago: 10% reimbursement
- Game purchased over a month ago, hasn't ever been downloaded: 25% reimbursement
- Game purchased less than a month ago, hasn't ever been downloaded: 100% reimbursement (aka the 30 Day Money Back Guarantee)
- (Optional) A previously purchased game that has been traded in, could be re-bought at a discounted price (but not at the same price you traded it in for; they gotta make a profit after all)

What does everyone think?
Posted July 23, 2014
I hate to be a buzzkill McKillington but when Steam first launched it had TONS of issues and problems with it

I of course hope that the launch of GOGgalaxy will be different but experience has shown me that something always goes wrong at least at the start with these applications
Posted July 24, 2014
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DProject: Last night, I began thinking how awesome it would be if they introduced a trade-in feature with the client; in other words forfeiting games from the shelf in exchange for a small amount of store credit (if they're really bringing us GOG wallet too).

[...]

What does everyone think?
I like the idea, but since there isn't DRM to enforce the licenses, the only feasible way I could see it happening is if you've never downloaded the games. Otherwise they have no way of knowing if you're being honest and don't have a backup of the installer so that you can keep playing even after getting a refund for the game. And also I think they should only reimburse the current market value (not sale price, unless you bought it on a sale price), so even if you spent $40 when the game first came out and never downloaded it and waited 6 months to get a refund but the game is only $20 now, well you're only getting $20. Call it a procrastination tax.
Posted July 24, 2014
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Roman5: I hate to be a buzzkill McKillington but when Steam first launched it had TONS of issues and problems with it

I of course hope that the launch of GOGgalaxy will be different but experience has shown me that something always goes wrong at least at the start with these applications
I imagine they will start with a closed beta during August, similar to the Witcher Card game thing. Then open beta for as long as it takes, then 'final' version, as in one with all the features implemented and a large portion of main problems solved.
Posted July 24, 2014
I still want to believe GOG stands for Galaxy of Games.

Thirty-nine pages sounds a bit too much to read carefully so instead of finding agreaable posts to quote I'm just gonna sit back and hope Galaxy will be as open as possible (client itself, protocols and whatnot).
Posted July 28, 2014
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EPurpl3: What is the point? we already have Gameranger.
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skeletonbow: That's like saying "What's the point of GOG Galaxy? We already have Steam Client." or even "What's the point of GOG.com, we already have store.steampowered.com" :) The point, would be for GOG to have features available which they create, provide, enhance and have control over as a customer service enhancement benefit of using the GOG platform and its services, and as a competitive advantage against other platforms that don't have such features, and as a "us too" to compete with other services that have similar offerings, and not have customers have to use a whole bunch of different 3rd party services scattered across the Internet to have their needs met by providing many of them all in one space with one login.

Also, competition is a good thing as is having your own service offerings and not being reliant on 3rd parties to provide services to your customers. 3rd parties have a funny way of being here one day and vanishing the next, possibly causing companies that rely on their services to have to scurry to find another solution (that may not exist). Gamespy anyone?

A GOG provided service or feature of comparable offering, blows away a 3rd party service and need for yet another login hands down anyday IMHO.
Sorry for the long delay. The fact is that the players are here for the games, not for the platform. Most games already have 3rd party multiplayer services that are here to stay. For example, SWAT 4 (a amazing game, not sold on GOG :( unfortunately) was using Gamespy, after GS was closed some users have created a small program who finds S4 servers made by players. Works better than GS.

Indeed, as a company, they have to compete, from a marketing point of view, with other companies but for me, as a player, the advantage of having a platform with achievements and stuff will be minimal. I care about the games, not about their new marketing struggle.

A fun fact: I play Guild Wars 2, many players have asked Arena Net (the company who developed GW2) to add a in-game voice system and they have replied "what is the point, you already have Team Speak" :))
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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)