GOG, oh GOG, what are you doing?

"We are listening to your feeedback!"
"We respect the customer and don't see him as a walking wallet!"
"We really think DRM in any form is wrong!
"We want to let the user have freedom and not feeling forced!"

Do you remember those phrases? These were some of your core principles. Hard to see these in your latest decisions.

Where is the respect? Where is the sense to do what your community (you know, the ones who are paying your job one way or another) really wants?

Just read the postings in this thread and realize how many people here are thinking the same. Just realize how many of your announcements were low rated. And you still don't get it? This is not what your community wants. Not at all! Please, open your eyes!

You are trying to make life better for your new users? Well, good look with that because walking on this road will most likely lead to losing the old ones. And here I was thinking you actually care for me. Registered since 2009 (nearly 10 years) and I don't know how much money I spent here... but now I am just not important enough for GOG. There once was a time when you tried to compete with Steam and now you are so close to actually becoming it. All those people who sensed this a long time ago and I was always defending you and saying those are just conspiracy theories ... not anymore. If you really want us to believe you again you should change the actual course back to respecting the wishes of the community. This is really hard to see at the moment. A very sad day!

I highly disagree, I don't particularly like that Galaxy is required for online multiplayer either.
Do not add GOG Galaxy to installers, there already are ads.

Isn't it easier to just include a link to Galaxy than to bundle it with the installers? Otherwise you'll have to face the not insignificant task of keeping all those installers updated whenever Galaxy is updated.

I have never installed Galaxy nor will I ever, and the explanation for having it opt-out is insulting.

Can you tell more? What game are you talking about?

I really hope you will reconsider this and won't include Galaxy in the installers.

So GOG is suggesting Steam customers are have more wits than us. If they want Steam they MUST download and install the client.

This new politiks by GOG is absolutely against customers rights!!!!!

Owning more than 700 titles here, I can only say that " I'll vote with my wallet ".

Firstly, please use a web installer and don't include the actual Galaxy installer in the offline installers. Otherwise this just becomes bloatware that eats up disk space for those who store all the offline installers for safekeeping.

Secondly, please make installing Galaxy opt-in, as everything that's optional should always be opt-in and not opt-out.

Hah! Holy shit!

Glad I already migrated back over to Steam. It's funny how things turn out, back in 2010 I had made a Steam purchase that I was so displeased with I decided to finally make an account here. I bought Blood and fell in love with the way GOG operated. And the fact I could fucking play Blood again, one of my all time favorite FPS games. What a warm fuzzy feeling that was, that you supplied for a measly $6 bucks.

For a few years, it was good. GOG scored some big publishers, lots of cool and funny events happened in this community, hell even the trolls seemed better... :-]

But as time went on, GOG kept making strange business moves. Something was off about them. Key people started leaving, and the moves they were making were very clearly (to me) things that showed GOG's new true intentions. To attract those who use Steam and have an attachment to it.

Movies, Steam Link, Galaxy and Early Access games were the big four red flags that things have changed at GOG. They didn't have the same goal anymore, to build around a niche audience and do things differently. Sales from classic games alone were not enough and eventually the well of old games they could sell dried up. So they introduced an overabundance of indies, with strange over-curation we don't always understand. But hey I understand that. Those other 4 things? Not really. At least not from the GOG I signed up to.

So, around the time they introduced movies (and what a failure that was) I started getting reacquainted with Steam. I bought some games I missed out on, and overall the experience was smooth for the most part. I upgraded my rig and I bought more games I missed out on. Started seeing someone long-distance and they had a Steam, so we could play Counter-Strike and other Steam games together. Steam started to add features to it that made sense, and overall it (at a snails pace) improved. When I moved in with the person I was seeing, it really dawned on me how if I had to choose one form on DRM to live with, Steam would easily be it. I mean lets be real, at least Valve is up-front with their customer base. Even with the recent unpopular gifting changes, they pretty much hold a "deal with it, we don't like losing money" attitude. There is no tip-toeing around it or trying to sugar coat it. And there's no denying Steam is DRM, but they built a lot of features and tools around it for the people that use it, which is the key difference between it and other forms of DRM.

I also don't like missing out on games I'm interested in anymore, so as long as no other DRM is pilled on top of a game on Steam, I get it on sale. Not to mention buying indies here is a gamble too, with outdated versions and abandonment a common sight with some indie devs on GOG.

Classics are great, but Steam has a lot of those too, and most are DRM-free already. Some indies are great, but it's better to buy and play those on Steam, and only buy them here if I really like them and want a backup copy. Not all AAA games are soulless bullshit either, I've enjoyed more than a handful throughout the years and is something GOG really lacks (understandably).

But here's the thing GOG, what purpose do I have in purchasing anything here if all you want to be is Steam Jr.? I already use Steam, and I already don't mind the service they provide (for the most part). I'm probably in a minority here but for the last few years I like your DRM-free copies to have as backups should anything terrible happen. Be it Steam shuts down one day, or WW3 starts and all I have is my laptop in my bunker and a GOG copy of Fallout ready to install from my backup drive.

Face it, you can't be a better Steam then Steam. Not unless you start developing tools for developers to use in Galaxy and start offering titles like DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike and GTA: Online. Not to mention adding community features like profiles and things like Mod Workshop. That's not happening. I always defended you, saying there is no way you'd ever ditch your DRM-free rule. Nowadays I'm starting to doubt myself.

Well, just know this, the day Galaxy becomes mandatory, or gets pushed so aggressively it's obnoxious, that will be the day I abandon ship completely. I have no use for another inferior Steam, and I have no reason to believe you could out shine Steam.

Actually this is not fully true. It's up to the publisher alone to decide whenever Steam client is mandatory to run a game and when not. There actually is a list available listing several hundred games which don't need any client after having the game downloaded. Also I would be interested what "GOG's position" is you are referring to. They do make money and they are growing so where is the problem that Valve was trying to prevent?

Whooo!!! The wish to reverse this decision now has more than twice as many votes as the wish to add Windows 98 support! Now they'll HAVE to listen to us! Right?!

I obviously can't tell you what game he meant, but I can tell you that there's a ton of games here that include dummy Steam files, dummy SecuROM files, etc. It's just a way to get the games running without having to completely reverse-engineer the game (or build an entirely separate DRM-free/non-client-tied version).

I am proud to be one of those votes, but sadly I don't think it'll help much. I truly hope it does though. :/

It was meant as a humourous poke at the snowflake generation. I tried to use all the trigger / signalling phrases I could to see how many I could squeeze in. Perhaps such a serious thread isn't the place for humour.

Seriously, (as I have said earlier) I think have made a bad move, and have have thought of several more reasons why since then.

In reality I think the real reason is business related, trying to get more / bigger titles here.

Oh, and for anyone who was actually offended? by the earlier post....
....feel free to tweet your outrage on a smart phone made by a 5 year old in the Far East. (irony).

What the fuck Part 2: The reckoning.

You are going to include Galaxy in every single game installer? What a shit idea! Sorry for saying it that drastically. And making it the default option is even more bold.

Please reconsider or at least provide alternative installers without Galaxy! You hardly can overlook Galaxy when you join GOG, even as a new user. ;) If you want it, it's easy to install it... Everyone? Then please register that for me the "most convenient experience" is to not have Galaxy integrated in my game installers and not having to deselect it every time I install a game! You do not even dare to post that list on your own web site and instead place it on a 3rd party site?

Well, Good News™, another black day on GOG...