This is a bit long but you raise some good points that IMHO rarely get expanded upon in our forums here and so I'd like to do so to share my perspective on the convenience factor that gaming clients provide. Might split it into 2 messages.

Yeah, I think you pretty much nailed it. When people hear the words "gaming client" the first thought in their mind is Steam/Uplay/Origin and if they have any bad opinions or experiences with any of those they automatically assume that anything at all made by anyone at all that is called a "gaming client" is automatically some kind of bloatware intended on stripping them of their rights and freedoms and trying to restrict/limit/control them and manipulate them, kill their dog, punch their baby and pour hot tea on their crotch.

The thought never enters their mind that the concept of a gaming client is a completely sensible thing that it is technically possible for someone to design one with the user's interests in mind and to provide an enjoyable experience with useful features and avoid all of the negative anti-consumer things that people often view and associate with the existing proprietary gaming clients previously mentioned. It becomes a Salem witch trial essentially.

To me a gaming client is something that can be used to download/install/update/launch/manage your games and possibly other media content, and to enhance the gaming experience by providing additional optional convenience features and functionality for gamers to choose to use or not use those features they find useful personally.

Some people think that gaming clients are completely unnecessary and well, they are absolutely completely 100% correct. Gaming clients are not necessary at all, much in the same way that video games are not necessary, web browsers are not necessary, the Internet is not necessary, a computer is not necessary, a car is not necessary, and many other things are not necessary. In our lives we have all kinds of things both physical and virtual that are not necessary, but we have them because they might provide us with some kind of convenience(s) or other form of value. Different people value different things and so what one person finds to be a convenience someone else might not find useful at all.

I've got a friend who had a hate on for Steam for like 10 years, wouldn't have anything to do with it, hated on it every opportunity. But he never actually used it since like 2004 either so he was making all kinds of judgments about it and what it could and couldn't do without even having up to date information and facts or even caring about facts. I never bothered to share any actual facts with him though because I don't care whether he uses or likes it or not, I use it and it improves my gaming experience despite any cons it has. After being at my house and observing me gaming though and actually seeing the Steam UI and various features and functionality over many weeks of time he started internally thinking some of the features were kind of cool - but he never said anything.

Eventually he ended up getting some free games from a video card that were Steam games, as well as having boxed copies of old Valve games etc. and decided to install Steam to register the games and try them. We had a long talk about the pros and cons of online digital distribution versus installing and managing games from CD/DVD/floppy, updating games and obtaining patches, mods, and all sorts of other stuff. He started to see that digital distribution had some really useful benefits to it, and that some of them couldn't exist without an online service backend to host the data.

Fast forward to today and he now embraces Steam to a degree - he's not in love with it but he's got a more balanced view because he is armed with factual information and actually seeing it and using it, and was able to decide for himself that some of the features it has are truly beneficial to the whole video gaming experience. Of course GOG shares many of these features as well. He recently told me some of the things he likes about Steam - knowing that his games are always there and he can download them whenever he wants them without worrying about where the CD/DVD is and from anywhere - home, my house, someone else's house, wherever.

He discovered cloud storage functionality of Steam on his own and loved the fact that when he comes to my house he can log into his Steam account on one of my computers and play his own games and all of his save games and crap are available to him without having to cart around a USB stick and manually copy stuff around etc. He likes the ability to be able to easily click on one of his games, go to the game page or store page and find out useful info about the game, trailers, ratings, reviews, other meta info etc. There are things he still doesn't like about it too, but he has gotten over some of the fear, uncertainty and doubt aspects of it.

<continued below>

An OS is a client, in that in order to run anything at all, you must run it inside an OS. I thought it was clear we were talking about gaming retailer clients, since this thread was about one of those (GoG's Galaxy). So, for those who want to nitpick everything, I'll rephrase it by saying I'm not interested in any gaming software's client in order to make games run. It's an absolutely unnecessary ADDITIONAL client that I'm not interested in. Is that better?

Considering the bullshit comments over the last page or so about the subject, it probably isn't any better though.

<continued from>
What I like about Steam in particular is:

- the flexible library views for seeing your game collection and organizing it into categories, recently played, and other filter options. I usually use the detail view as that fits the most games down the left side of the screen.

- Easiest possible way to get game updates ever. Not perfect or flawless by any means, doesn't have a way to downgrade or to choose what version etc. but what it does do it does excellent.

- Screenshot any video game using F12. Booyah!

- Video broadcasting - The ability to tune in and watch other people gaming to get a feel for what a game is like to decide if you want it or for some other reason. Live gameplay video essentially. Or the ability to let friends or the entire Internet tune in to watch your game such as wanting to show someone something while talking to them on the phone or with...

- Voice chat - built in voice chat capability. Not as good as various 3rd party utilities but it is built in and can suffice at times depending on the need.

- Workshop - easily obtain mods/addons for workshop supported games with a click or two. Some games can do this in-game (ie: Portal 2)

- Social networking features: Personal profile and instant messaging are useful in particular with multiplayer interaction and other well... social aspects of gaming. Not useful for anti-social people that live in a cave and play nothing but Zork.

- Integrated Steam store - although I almost never buy anything on Steam ever, I usually use bundle sites or other Steam key resellers as they're usually cheaper and I usually find the best prices with isthereanydeal.com and they usually aren't on Steam directly. :) But the Steam store is mega useful for game trailers, screenshots, reviews/ratings/system requirements and a shit load of other useful info.

- The integrated Steam overlay that works with most modern and many older games. SHIFT-TAB while gaming and the game is paused while the overlay pops up to chat with a friend, search for and read a game guide/walkthrough, surf google in the integrated web browser for how to fix one of the 10000 bugs in Skyrim, various other features.

That's most of the things I use Steam for although I'm sure I'm missing something too. None of them are "necessary", but they are super mega damned convenient which is what the whole point of it is IMHO. :) Now certainly there are people out there that aren't interested in any of those things for whatever their reasons and that's ok too if they're happy doing things their own way. The fact is though that we are all creatures seeking pleasure and convenience and Steam client like any gaming client is a program that intends to ultimately provide both and it does so to varying degrees of success which are in the eye of the beholder. This is just speaking about the conveniences too and not ideological issues/DRM and that sort of stuff which is a completely different discussion than what I'm speaking of which is the convenience factors that such a software hopes to provide in a general sense.

So while some people don't understand why people want a client or what use they are, they're kind of ignoring the fact that the world is huge and people have widely different views about what they want/need and what they find to be a convenience that improves their gaming experience if they even care about improving their experience. The overwhelmingly vast audience of PC gamers out there do find this kind of software highly convenient and that's essentially one of the main reasons that Steam is the dominant distribution platform - convenience.

Anyone here remember shit like: LOAD "PROGRAM", 8, 1 ?
Yeah, me too. I'm capable of doing that or the various things that were needed to get a game to work in the decades following that, editing config.sys, autoexec.bat, running QEMM OPTIMIZE to cram that extra driver in HIMEM etc. What a load of crap that was. I _can_ do that, I just don't want to. Anything that the operating system or some software running on the operating system can do to make my experience downloading/installing/updating/launching/playing my games easier and more convenient is something I'm interested in checking out. Not because I'm incapable of doing it all manually but because I simply don't want to do it all manually unless I'm getting paid to do it. The computer cost me tonnes of cash and I want it to do as much shit for me so I don't _have_ to do the shit manually LOL.

The key ultimately is convenience. If GOG can make Galaxy something truly convenient and optional and provide value to customers that they end up choosing to use rather than being forced to use (such as the case with Steam), then they can measure their own success of it with how many people decide to use it. Steam has what, a 12 year head start? So it'll take some time to come out of beta and grow some features, better UI, more user friendly, etc. but it's well on the way now and the goal is ultimately convenience.

I know what you meant, I just find that view interesting... since basically isn't the downloader essentially a gaming client too? It's technically a client and technically for gaming purposes. I will say though that that Galaxy doesn't really fit the view of a client needed for games to run. But not going to reshash the same points over and over.

Again nothing meant by it, just found that view interesting. Won't further extend this discussion out though. I do apologize for getting us off-track somewhat.

I installed it and gave it a shot, but only use it as downloader, as it seems that the perfect downloader we had has its days counted.
I don't like it, at all. It doesn't offer anything interesting really. Just a boring UI to features I don't desire for my DRM free games. The only thing I would be interested in is online playing for games like Outlaws and Blood, but I still see Galaxy pointless and would love GOG Downloader to keep updated.

I'm using galaxy to basically get rid off desktop icons.

You defiantly bring up some good points here. A lot of this comes down to fear and in some cases paranoia about Galaxy (or clients in general) and what effect it can have on the future of GOG. There are of course valid reasons for not wanting to use Galaxy (its a beta, it not finished, I don't like the UI, ect) all valid reasons... the "I want the downloader, not a client" however stopped being a valid excuse the moment Galaxy included the downloader and made everything else optional.

I like how Randalator stated it:
This is about the best statement one could make here...

i will give it a try, looks promising

Why do you need Galaxy for that? Don't you have a start menu?

I know.. It isn't actually a must to make icons in the first place.. But I don't use much use Start menu and programs in the first place. It is a bit insane. =D

Yeah, there are valid reasons for not using Galaxy, much in the same way I have a valid reason for not watching or subscribing to cable TV for example, or not owning a vehicle. It's just a personal choice, there isn't anything bad or wrong with choosing the other option though and that's what some people seem to have difficulty understanding it seems. :)

I find the view that all forms of software are basically clients so therefore we shouldn't object to any of them interesting, since that appears to be what you're saying. When I download a game, I have to use a client, either the browser or the gog downloader. I can't download the game without it. Not so for playing the game itself. I don't need, and therefore don't want, and therefore am not interested in a client to make the game run.

If I bought a car from Koon's Chevrolet, and it required me to push a button every morning to start it up, then I'd be okay with that. If however, Koon's added a button that required me to push it to "check in" with Koon's every time I started the car, I'm not interested. Obviously that's an interesting view too since I mean why object to pushing another button when we already have to push one to get the car started.

You can say you're not being disrespectful till you're blue in the face, but you're coming off as trolling. And I didn't mean that disrespectfully. Just saying what it looks like. Because you just admitted you knew I was talking specifically about gaming retailer clients, yet still insist on throwing in unrelated clients as a comparison to make it look like... what? I'm being inconsistent? Because I realize that some 'clients" are necessary and therefore don't object to using them but do object to using ones that aren't?

i don´t use it much since i am most of the day at work, and to check the forums and stuff i prefer the web.

when i am home i do use it for the sake of using it, but the fact that is optional is one of the best features

I'm not - which is really annoying because it seems I can't friend and / or chat with people (though that could be a support issue).

I'm not because I'm happy with donwloading my stuff as is now. When it's out of Beta, has multiplayer support for the games I'm interested in and if there are good, large communities for those games I'll probably give it a shot!