It's like trying to manipulate people into just "giving up" and using Galaxy. After all it is supposedly "hardly anyone" that cares about offline installers to begin with, let alone who keep backups, and backups of backups, and backups of previous versions. So when a user gets the advice to "just use Galaxy", they are likely either stuck with an un-updated and/or buggy game, or have to give in and "just use Galaxy".

Well shit, lesson learned for me too now, I haven't actually played Amnesia for some time but as a habitual backup-er, I guess am stuck with the buggy version...

I will believe it when I see Galaxy have its own separate website, development team, budget, P&L account, etc., and when versions for the offline installers match those for Galaxy downloads.

If the two are so separate, please tell me how much money Galaxy is bringing in, compared to the GOG.com store? If they are separate entities, those numbers should be clearly discernible. The profit predictions for Galaxy over the next few years must be tremendous, to justify such a huge portion of GOG.com's resources being funneled into its development?

Wanted to type a few sentences, expressing my opinion, but I got way too cynical while writing those, so instead of putting my tinfoil hat on I'll just say that I'm disappointed in gog. :/

Wait, wait, there was a GOG announcement? Did I miss it? I read it elsewhere (outside GOG) and a 'small blurb' in the forum, but I haven't read an official GOG announcement.

Your team had to know something like this would start a wild fire amongst your user base. If not, something else is terribly wrong. Either way, I figure you would want to get ahead of it and spell out what this really means and where GOG wants to go with this. Instead, this happens...way too often.

What? I've not run into a single game that requires Galaxy to run, and I have over 440 games. I think I'd have run into ONE. As for downloading, you can use download managers like FreeDownloadManager to get the files from the store page. There are also other downloaders that have been bopped around on the forums here.

It depends, for example, on whether you care that the game you play is up to date or not:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/news_gog_galaxy_to_start_selling_epic_games/post281
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/news_gog_galaxy_to_start_selling_epic_games/post291

Or actually works as intended:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/news_gog_galaxy_to_start_selling_epic_games/post297

This was inevtiable and if you have been digging a bit through the web pages and the public available information concerning GoG Galaxy, a steam-like system has always been the goal. This step, though, they had always been wary of, and for good reason.

If they are really pulling this through, this may spell a mass exodus of disgruntled customers (and a good opportunity for an enterprising company to catch most of 'em by the virtue of playing by the old rules GOG played a long time ago).

Thank you for the reply, but even after reading this statement I still have a bad feeling about this direction for the following reasons:

1. You did not address why GOG is now indirectly supporting DRM by facilitating purchases from DRM stores. Why are you promoting stores that use DRM?

2. You did not address the concern that this will lead to fewer DRM-free releases on GOG because of the "it's already on GOG because GOG sells Epic games" argument. (Take Control for example. Would the exclusive Epic Games Store release of Control on the "new Epic store" on GOG been replaced with a DRM-free release directly on GOG had this "new store" already in place when Control's exclusivity agreement expired?) What safeguards do you have in place to prevent this from happening? If a 3rd party store was pressure you into removing a current DRM-free release on GOG so they could sell more of their DRM'd release on their store within GOG, would you do it?

3. You did not explain why anyone should care about buying games from other stores when they can buy from those stores directly. Also, there are already lots of authorized key resellers out there which offer very cheap prices, and they don't require a separate launcher to purchase another store's games. So why should I not just buy directly from Epic or an existing key reseller instead of through GOG? (And If you simply point to the GOG refund policy or tech support, that will not be enough to convince me.) More importantly, why does GOG think it's a good idea to push people towards a competing store?

4. If this poorly-conceived feature does not start making tons of money, Epic has shown that they will demand a larger cut if they don't think that they are making enough money from a store, and if you do not simply give it to them they will sue you. If you have doubts about this, I would recommend having some GOG staff reach out to Apple or Google and ask about their experience with providing a storefront for Epic's products. Do you have legal measures in place to handle disputes about commission percentages?

5. It feels like GOG is going to be spending a lot of time/money on providing Galaxy integration, Galaxy features, and technical support for whatever problems Epic decides to offload on GOG. How will GOG mitigate this development cost? Are you basically going to be developing a replacement for Epic's featureless launcher and doing their tech support for a measly cut of a small segment of their overall sales?

6. You did not explain why this is a "highly requested feature" when this is clearly not the case on the GOG wishlists. Where is this data coming from?

7. While the Galaxy 2.0 integration features are neat and all, why are you putting so much effort into an optional launcher when there are alternative all-in-one launchers available for little or no cost? Why not just polish the features that Galaxy currently has and call it a day? Has the goal all along been to make deals with 3rd party companies so they can pay for the bizarre "benefit" of being advertised in Galaxy even though they have their own stores and launchers?

8. How will our personal data be managed and protected with respect to these 3rd party stores?

All in all, it feels like you all are about to make a very huge mistake by abandoning the original DRM-free goal of GOG and becoming distracted with providing discount advertising/support for your competition. Aside from a few older games that are not available on Steam, the DRM-free releases and consumer-focused policies are the only reasons I buy from GOG instead of Steam. GOG has gained quite a bit of my trust over the years, but I am beginning to feel that trust erode away with this abrupt change in direction. I would recommend sticking with what you do best: Directly providing DRM-free releases of new and classic PC games.

Shhh... also don't mention that GOG was firmly on the "One World, One Price" marketing campaign train ... until the point they got so much pressure von publishers who would remove their catalogue from GOG that they silently wimpered and pretended that they never said that.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/regional_priced_games_on_gog/post2324
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/three_questions_one_world_one_pricegerman_website_with_censored_gamesgogwallet
and the most damning
"Getting back to our roots" (stepped back from regional pricing)
https://www.gog.com/news/getting_back_to_our_roots?pp=d965a463ac183af4828302b14522bb3371cec49f (Mar 11, 2014)

to quote Seems like another company at this time.





Seems my impression too..and when it's "ready",GOG will flatly be bought out by Epic, harvesting the client for little effort.

Well, I wasn't going to go that far, but I will admit that this has crossed my mind more than once. The "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" approach has been used before to facilitate corporate takeovers. Not completely sure that this is going to be the case here, but it's not an impossibility either.

This shit has to fucking end, we shouldn't be paying for inferior products because GOG cannot manage to update the offline installers properly. I don't care if it is due to laziness or other undetermined issues, enough is enough.

Let me do some role-play and impersonate a GOGBear. Eh-em *assumes role in italics*.

First off, let me say that I am deeply sorry for your misunderstanding of the issue. Please note that offline installers take time, sometimes on a cosmological scale. If you can't wait to get the very latest updates please use our totally optional Galaxy client which is the best way to make sure you're not playing some ancient game version by mistake. Also, here's our FAQ (to be read as f**k you) in case you have any questions.

I can only hope someone at GOG reads this, laughs a bit, and then takes some serious action about it. It's honestly hitting levels of ridiculousness which no one wants to see.

Take a pick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7O1z-Vw9Vc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awCCObxmcpo