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General discussionWhy the hate for gog galaxy?(86 posts)(86 posts)
(86 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 14, 2022
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Wheezyyyy: The dll does exactly nothing.If you have the offline installer and install it without galaxy it works the client is not needed which is a fact and sure we are all the same person.Like i said the paranoia from some people here is pretty funny making things up without facts.These guys said this and this guy said that lol but no evidence at all.Games are drm free like they always were and no the cyberpunk thing is bs i would never defend things like this
If the Galaxy-related dlls do nothing, then why do these people report issues? Surely it's not their imagination.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/so_why_does_the_witcher_3_only_work_when_galaxydll_is_deleted_from_its_subfolders

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/galaxydll_on_offline_installers_possible_huge_issue_down_the_road/page1

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_galaxy_required_in_certain_games/page1

AB2012's post is particularly interesting. I will quote it here in its entirety:

Many GOG games that come with galaxy.dll / galaxy64.dll (as well as related filenames GogGalaxyHooks.dll, GalaxyCSharp.dll, GalaxyCSharpGlue.dll, GalaxyPeer64.dll, Galaxy64.lib, Galaxy64.pdb, etc) will crash / refuse to start with a "can't start because Galaxy is missing from your computer" message if those files are deleted / renamed. This includes : A Hat in Time, Blood Fresh Supply, Crookz The Big Heist, Divinity Original Sin: EE, Kathy Rain, QUBE2, Shadwen, Stardew Valley, etc, and a ton of others.

Some games also come with steam_api.dll / steam_api64.dll included. For some it's completely inactive, harmless and those files can be deleted without issue (eg, Amnesia Dark Descent, Divinity Original Sin EE, etc). For others (eg, QUBE, The Witness, etc), if you delete them the games refuse to start no differently than if you bought them on Steam and tried to run them without the Steam client, suggesting that for some games, the DRM check call to steam_api.dll is hard-coded into the game and the "DRM-Free" version supplied by the devs to GOG basically involves some cheap "auto-Steam-authenticate" loopback code in a replacement dll (little different to how cracks work) instead of actually being removed / supplied from a fresh pre DRM'd build. It doesn't stop you from playing if you don't delete the files, but it does look quite amateurish. In fact if you delete steam_api.dll and Steamworks.NET.dll from the GOG version of Hammerwatch, it crashes and the log file actually states "Failed to initialize Steam"...

Personally I don't mind local dll's that exist to avoid the need to install the client IF it doesn't go online, IF it doesn't interfere with offline gameplay, IF it doesn't affect long-term compatibility (eg, the DLL itself having issues with future Windows), and IF it doesn't cause performance issues. As mentioned in the other thread though, GOG's versions of Bioshocks start up 5x slower than Steam's DRM'd ones and Humble DRM-Free versions and the only difference is Galaxy integration, so I'd definitely like to see whatever is causing that (some network check/ timeout?) removed from those games precisely because it obviously does negatively affect some games.
Now, on what do you base your statements? Or are you just guessing?
And what's most important in this discussion, how can you even tell what's going on if you do not own any games on GOG?
Posted February 14, 2022
low rated
It's less hate and more...emotionally invested apathy.
Seeing as I'm using an operating system where Galaxy doesn't exist, any effort spent on it feels like a massive waste of time vs modernizing this website to about...2009?

Even Forums based on ancient software (like Something Awful) have more features than the likes of the GOG Forum.
Post edited February 14, 2022 by Darvond
Posted February 14, 2022
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rjbuffchix: Feel free to PM me your "guess" of why I'm here. Though honestly with your numerous outbursts around here, and other users being modded apparently while you are not, I doubt you would get banned.
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Krogan32: <whispers> They're coming for you Steve... <whispers> <eyeroll>
Krogan, if you would like to continue this conversation or have me address the rest of this comment of yours, please PM me so that this topic stays on topic about GOG Galaxy and criticism of it (the latter of which is to be expected in a thread title "Why the hate").
Posted February 14, 2022
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pds41: We used to have a lightweight downloader that was better. Suggesting people use Galaxy to download offline installers is a step backwards.
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Wheezyyyy: Not that much of a difference.The whole purpose is that you get the offline installers and that they work without a launcher and they do
Tell us how wonderful and awesome the customer support is. You know you want to.
Posted February 14, 2022
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Krogan32: <whispers> They're coming for you Steve... <whispers> <eyeroll>
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rjbuffchix: Krogan, if you would like to continue this conversation or have me address the rest of this comment of yours, please PM me so that this topic stays on topic about GOG Galaxy and criticism of it (the latter of which is to be expected in a thread title "Why the hate").
Only when you stop engaging in conspiracy theories.
Posted February 14, 2022
This forum has become a joke. Moderators openly supporting blatant attacks on and harassment of users by fake profiles. It's pretty sad they have stooped this low. But in the end, they are only hurting themselves.
Posted February 14, 2022
high rated
I don't know if I hate Galaxy or not - GOG's never given me the opportunity to try it. There used to be some vague promises of Galaxy coming to Linux, but those were removed a long time ago.
Posted August 28, 2022
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ChristophWr: So obviously a few don’t like the galaxy client.In my opinion a launcher should always be optional and that’s what galaxy is.You can also merch all launchers together with it which is a cool feature.I backed up over 400 games with all the offline installers and it was very easy and simplistic.You only get some cosmetics for cyberpunk if you use the launcher which is bs but i don’t know if they fixed that by know.In general i like the client and if it stays optional forever i don’t see an issue with it
I they decide to fix their fucking launcher (galaxy) I will love them again. This app is an insult to a lot of users.
I used only gog for years. I wanted all my games here. I restrained myself from buying license I adore from other platforms just because I was just being patient and knew it would come to GOG eventually. If not, I was not caring.

But Galaxy changed that. The cosntent errors of doanloading, installing, moving a game to another drive is a NIGHTMARE. I can spend more time trying to move a game than re-downloading it. This is ridiculous.

ERROR / INSTALLATION FAILED / UNINSTALLATION FAILED / YOUR LOCAL DATA ARE CORRUPTED (but not possible to veriffy and repair).

Somedays, there is just NOTHING that work with galaxy. Sometimes it works like a charm.

But you know what ? Steam, Origins, are absolutely seemless, EPIC is rough but don' t have any issue. GOG Galaxy is the only launcher that have these problems. So now I buy from others. I don' t care, and it happened already that I buyed a game available on gog but on steam, because I don' t want to have to deal with galaxy absolute garbage anymore.
Posted August 28, 2022
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Zihabou: But you know what ? Steam, Origins, are absolutely seemless, EPIC is rough but don' t have any issue. GOG Galaxy is the only launcher that have these problems. So now I buy from others. I don' t care, and it happened already that I buyed a game available on gog but on steam, because I don' t want to have to deal with galaxy absolute garbage anymore.
You don't need the galaxy client to access your games.
Just download the normal game installers from your account.
Posted August 28, 2022
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Zihabou: But you know what ? Steam, Origins, are absolutely seemless, EPIC is rough but don' t have any issue. GOG Galaxy is the only launcher that have these problems. So now I buy from others. I don' t care, and it happened already that I buyed a game available on gog but on steam, because I don' t want to have to deal with galaxy absolute garbage anymore.
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FrodoBaggins: You don't need the galaxy client to access your games.
Just download the normal game installers from your account.
I believe you can still run game files outside of Galaxy even if they were downloaded using Galaxy (or with minor tweaking).
Posted August 28, 2022
When a game is installed under Galaxy it creates by default a shortcut that will run the game with galaxy and will make use of its features.

Into the game folder other shortut will be created. It is a regular shortcut like the one an offline installed creates. If you run the game with that shortcut/direct executable you should be able to run the game without Galaxy even if it is running in background. Under some instances and or depending the game maybe Galaxy is detected and does make use of it. But anyway it should run fine offline if Galaxy is not running. I had never any problem in that regard.
Posted August 29, 2022
As some others have pointed out, GOG spends less time maintaining its offline installers (as evidenced by a recent support request where I was told very politely that if I wanted access to the latest version of Police Stories, I would have to play it through the Galaxy launcher).

Beyond that, it's drm creep.

Before, it was a non-brainer that practically all features in games here were drm-free. Now, thanks to Galaxy support, drm-functionality is normalized and not always reported clearly on game pages (ex: Galaxy-only multiplayer), although that has improved a lot of late.

Equally important, it reduces the confidence that the drm-free version works offline, because now you have two builds: One that is at least partial drm and one that is 100% drm-free. There is a significant margin for error where the drm from the drmed version is not 100% cleaned up properly in the drm-free version (in a badly coded game, removing the drm might be a non-trivial modification to the code), causing it to fail and given that a lot of users are now running everything in Galaxy (trusting the offline version to just work without running it), there are a lot fewer eyes catching errors in the offline installers. This might be less of a problem for wildly popular games in GOG's catalog where there are still a significant number of eyes on the offline installer, but for less popular games, the risk is significant that the offline version gets broken and nobody catches it for quite some time.

Basically, Galaxy invites complacency. You buy a game at GOG because you want an offline version, but then you never validate that the offline version works. In my experience as a software developer, this tends not to work out so well. Things that are not well validated tend to fall prey to entropy and fail over time.
Post edited August 29, 2022 by Magnitus
Posted August 29, 2022
I really miss the 'Hide' post button...
Posted August 29, 2022
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Trooper1270: I really miss the 'Hide' post button...
I just realised something. the reason for the silent downvotes was not that people was actually downvoting a psoter, it was necause they thought it was a "hide post" button. this explains a lot.
Posted August 29, 2022
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amok: it was necause they thought it was a "hide post" button. this explains a lot.
And for quite a number of people, it was. And needs to be replaced/re-implemented as soon as possible. You'd be surprised how quickly one can scroll through pages that have been 'tweaked' with the above option, and can save so much time and energy and unnecessary re-reading...
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWhy the hate for gog galaxy?(86 posts)(86 posts)
(86 posts)