Gersen: You were here for long enough to remember that before Galaxy one of the main complaint seen on this forum and even in the "
gaming press" was how Gog (and by extension DRM-free gaming) was so much more of an hassle, less convenient, etc... than Steam. It's not like Galaxy was a random thought that they suddenly took them one morning, it was for a very long time one of the most requested feature. So yes they are heavily promoting them and it's the "default" but it's not because of some evil scheme...
Yes, I remember. But there's a big difference between merely promoting it and going as far as to hide the alternatives, trying to deceive users into installing it, neglecting the traditional installers & providing inferior support for them/telling users to just use Galaxy if they have problems.
Gersen: ... simply that it's the solution that the huge majority of users will uses to download, keep their games updated and play online and that even among those who actually backup their installers.
Many people don't even realise the standalone installers are an option! And with people being so used to the likes of Steam the possibility likely doesn't even cross the mind of many users now so it's doubtful they'll go looking for them...
Gersen: The big button is not some sort of "deceptive tactics" as you said but simply to try to make it as easy and straightforward as possible for the majority of users who, for better and for worse, have been conditioned by Steam and think that downloading installers and double clicking on setup.exe a too much of an hassle nowadays.
A big button combined with hiding the actual game installer files away behind a menu. They backtracked eventually after mass complaints, but that's how it was for quite a while.
In addition to that for a while they were also bundling an installer for the Galaxy client with every game and installing it by default - so if the user wasn't carefully scrutinising the advanced install options they'd end up with an unwanted Galaxy install. Fortunately they eventually backtracked on that too, but even then they made things confusing for unsuspecting users for a while by providing two versions of each installer - one with Galaxy, one without - and offering the Galaxy version by default (and not storing the user's previous choice like they do for other options, so you *always* had to explicitly select the non-Galaxy version).
Anyway, this adds to my point: GOG Galaxy *is* GOG, there is no such clear distinction between GOG vs GOG Galaxy as GOG are trying to make as an excuse for their newfound support of DRM. Many people don't even realise the standalone installers exist, and I've often seen people simply refer to the Galaxy client itself as "GOG".
Gersen: Rollbacks never existed before Galaxy, the only reason why it was less of an issue back then was because there was barely any updates given that most of the games where X+ years old.
Previously you could request older versions of the installers from support if there was a problem, or they'd take the new version down and put the old versions back up if there was a widespread issue. However according to other posts I've read here, support now refuses to do that and just tells people to use Galaxy's rollback feature.
Gersen: Linus users were never part of the "traditional" user base of Gog, Linux support was added pretty late and never was the primary focus and sadly for Linux users it didn't generate enough sales for Gog to really keep investing in this direction and that's probably the main reason for their lack in interest into making a Linux version of Galaxy.
At the time I started using GOG I was a Windows-only user. I didn't start using Linux until 2013, and many of the same things that brought me to GOG are the same reasons why I started using Linux. There are a lot of similarities in the philosophies behind old GOG and the Linux community, and GOG could have done a lot better if they had really tried.
Gersen: Can you really blame them ? I am the first to recognize that Gog communication skills are severely lacking, but every time they tried to communicate and be open about something it backfired, add to that the dumb Twitter controversies and you can understand why they switched to radio silence mode. I don't think it's a good idea in the long run but I can definitely understand why they decided to do it.
Yes. They overreacted.
Gersen: I don't really think that are really going to "profit" from it in any real way, they are going to get a cut from Epic cut, which is already much smaller than the usual 30% they are taking, I suspect that was they will get is probably just here to cover the costs of the extra support and the extended refund rather than making any real money.
If that is the case then they're even more stupid to be promoting a competing platform essentially for free, but I think it's more likely that things will work like it does for other key resellers & they'll be getting the typical cut key sellers do. And even then it won't be as good a deal for them since they'll be providing support themselves so their costs will be higher.
sanscript: Now GOG "With Epic we'll moving forward with our same values".
When companies are spewing out their core fans (money from these, us, actually built the empires these companies are floating on) over some cheap gimmick then something is seriously wrong....
I have to laugh at this - this is getting perverse and surreal. :D
It's clear that GOG are focusing on the "Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products" audience now.
