Gamestop has the CE up for 150 dollars.

with exclusive gamestop stuff -_-

NOT ALL VERSIONS ARE EQUAL APPARENTLY!!!! jk :P

I am not sure how I got my wish, but thanks for replying?

GOG Galaxy is Optional

GOG/Galaxy ought bring more games to DRM-Free sites like gog.com. Publishers will appreciate the incentive to prove purchase on DRM-Free downloads (MP and Social Features require a profile, which requires a validated purchase account. The proof-of-purchase apparently being nothing more than logging in to oens gog profile.

And developers may get some useful tools (MP matchmaking, achievements and unlocks, version updating, DLC libraries, etc etc)?. If so, a boon for small and large game studios.

Galaxy is non-exclusive, it is free as in freedom. Freedom to choose retailer. Freedom to play at will with no watch-dog interference. A reversal to the monopolistic rise of steam. No gatekeeper forcing rule on us. More.
.

* i just hope LAN play may be done exclusive of Galaxy. That no Galaxy profile will be required for LAN muti-player.

I've been meaning for years to start up a independent PC gaming project to cater for cross-game multiplayer since Steamworks denied me several titles I really wanted to play, and I think GOG have saved me a lot of work by building Galaxy!

One thing I would like to suggest to you as a feature I was planning would be to borrow the "web of trust" concept from PGP, and to apply it to multiplayer as a way to have expansive non-friends available, yet still avoid having to deal with cheaters, which are certain unless you use DRM to prevent modifying the client software.

On opposite ends of the extremes you have Nintendo's friend lists and PC free-for-alls, and whilst it's nice to be able to trust your friends not to cheat (and you can unfriend them if they do), it's also nice to participate in a global community wider than your circle of friends, and to make new ones using it.

The concept is that you add your friend, who you trust, to your list. You then see scoreboards and matchmake with them, etc. The trick is that all the people they have added (and thus, trust not to cheat) are also available to you as if they were your friends, and all their friends, and so on. 6 degrees of separation and all that jazz.

If someone is found to be secretly cheating, you would expect their friends to unfriend them, and they would drop off the web of matchmaking and leaderboards, etc. If a group of gamers all cheat (or just mod, perhaps) and want to play multiplayer together, then fair enough, they're not hurting anybody, so they can all trust each other but no-one else will trust them, and everybody wins. Kinda like netsplits in IRC, in the sense that there can be multiple logically-separate networks running alongside each other.

There are obvious kinks to iron out (i.e. what if your friend refuses to unfriend the cheater for some reason? Do you block the cheater somehow yourself (and thus anyone from their web of trust) or do you have to unfriend your friend as you can't trust their choice of friends anymore?) I think the former would work well, personally - and it would only take a few people to do (i.e. the people that added them directly) and the cheater would drop of the web naturally, so it's self-policing.

...but yeah...worth a go, I reckon. Discuss! :)

Thanks, GoG Galaxy does seem interesting and what I read in other posts it will have achievements as well. That was one of my favorite addition from last gen. Just hope it stays optional and not to buggy. I just wonder why the went with the name galaxy? I always figured it would be called GoGworks ( like a steamworks) . That's just strange.

me 2

Because they want to connect up not just the whole world but the whole galaxy for gaming?
(They would have gone "GOG Universe" but the ping time to other galaxies is killer.)

Quick question for the blues.

Went to the Witcher 3 preorder page and saw this in the FAQ:

"Will the content of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt differ between regions based on the age ratings?
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt doesn't have its official age ratings yet, as the game is still in production. The official age ratings will be annouced closer to the launch in February 2015"

Does that mean I could end up with a cut, german only version of the Witcher3 if I preorder it from you?

OK, so far good news only.

IF the client remains optional 100%, then it is a great addition. Many people want a client and love steam for the client (I don't get them but whatever), so this new OPTIONAL client can definitely help attracting more customers and have less whining.

If GOG manages to continue adding old games and new games, this can definitely help in the long run, a lot.

You can exercise your generous spirit here if you wish. :)

Me three.

By the way, did any of you who signed up for the beta get any sort of confirmation mail?

Well

- i think TW3 will not run on my PC ( not going to upgrade the hardware ) so i pass the game
- i don't need a GOG client since i'm using IDM to download my games ( also not interested in MP or cross platform gaming )
- i was expecting an announcement about more old game releases and new publishers

This conference was a letdown for me .

On the auto-update client, there needs to be one or more of the following (or it's an automatic don't use app):

1. A way to tell it not to auto-update particular games, and/or
2. It automatically doesn't apply updates that break save games until the user explicitly allows the given update, and/or
3. A way to back out to previous versions (and prevent the auto-updater from re-updating that game, so #3 is kind of a "superfeature" of #1).

The last thing I want to have is to be in the middle of an 80 hour RPG, the auto-updater applies the latest update, and my save games are now broken, and I have no way to recover from this other than replaying the first 40 hours of the game.

This is just speculation as I don't think there has been any official story, but ArmA used Gamespy for online multiplayer and Gamespy got shut down completely so there is no more online multiplayer. They updated the game apparently to add Steam support to it to continue to have online multiplayer via Steam, but GOG games can't rely on Steam for online multiplayer so their options are to have a multiplayer game on Steam and a single player only version of the same game on GOG. That is not viable because even though some players only want single player, many want multiplayer and people can easily buy a game expecting it to be multiplayer without reading the fine details and end up pissed off when they find out it is single player only, but available somewhere else multiplayer and wonder why no multiplayer here.

So that leaves a game company few options really. One is to just port the multiplayer matchmaking to Steamworks which is relatively trivial and that's what almost all game companies are going to do because of the low cost and ease of doing it, and the fact that Steam is the largest gaming platform out there with the largest reach. To keep the game on GOG.com with multiplayer would require them to either convince GOG to allow a game to use Steamworks for multiplayer matchmaking which probably is a no-go for GOG and for GOG gamers, or they would have to go and reengineer their own multiplayer matchmaking service /just/ for GOG.com which is a huge expense for an old game just for a fraction of their game players in all business reality.

So it actually makes sense from a business perspective for them to remove the game for sale from GOG.com for the time being at least. With the announcement of GOG Galaxy however today, once that service is actually launched, perhaps we will see the ArmA series get updated to support GOG Galaxy for multiplayer as well, and that would also allow gamers on GOG to play with gamers on Steam without having to have Steam accounts.