Fall 2014. It's not summer yet, and I think most of the Linux diehards would disagree with you. Though no doubt many are slightly disappointed that there have been no further updates.

This could be one of its best features, indeed. If you did not need to circumvent it, in order to delete your saved game data at will. You have to follow quite the large and complicated procedure, should you wish to purge yourself manually your local content from one game, and then upload the null saved data to the cloud. And if you open a ticket? Steam representative does not even understand, let alone help you do it, what it is you wanna do.

Large complicated procedure? you mean untick a box? And yes, I know this is all that is needed, as i two days ago had to purge a corrupted save from Creeper World 3.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2470784

Not a simple, quick click... Right?

that depends on a game to game basis, depending on how the saves works. Unfortunately, the issue I had with CW 3 was that the corrupted file messed up the star system maps, so I had to delete all save files and options before running the game. But anyway, all I did was untick the box, delete the save files, start a new game and save again. Then next time I turned cloud saves on again, Steam asked me which version I wanted to overwrite - the local file or the cloudfile.
Yes it was.... It is only one click.
.....

or 2 if you want to turn it on again.

I'm actually really curious about this client. I like to keep my games organized in one place, which is why I'm a bit fond of the steam client.

Will Galaxy keep track of play time and take screenshots as well?

Unannounced, but if it doesn't support that at the outset, I wont be surprised to see such features added in future releases down the road. I'm guessing that they're going to focus first on the most important features to have a minimally functioning and useful service and client to get the ball rolling and get it into our hands sooner rather than later, and then add features to the client over time based on community feedback. I know I'd rather get something sooner that has basic functionality up and running and enhancements over time than to wait many extra months or more to have a kitchen sink Steam client clone personally. ;o) Since they're all gamers themselves though I'm sure they all have Steam/Origin/Desura/Uplay accounts like many of us and will be adding feature ideas to the TODO list even without our prompting though. We can weigh in on prioritization I suppose though. Count me in as a vote for these two features you mention. ;o)

Galaxy can't come soon enough for me. I haven't even installed most of my GOG's because the update check simply wants me to redownload and reinstall the entire package. With my fail Internet connection, I hate doing that and prefer updates to simply act as patches via a client.

I don't understand why people don't like this idea. It's optional, and if it works as well as Steam it will be amazing for those who want the added functionality, while nothing will change for those who don't.

As far as online-only PC games go, one would hope that as their owners decide to shut down their servers that they would sell the rights to GOG and allow GOG to create an open server client so people can run private servers if they so desire. That's really the only sensible solution... aside from never seeing those games ever again on any DD service.

It's the slippery slope concern at work. It's entirely reasonable too, for the most part, as long as those opposed to the client avoid convincing themselves that their suspicions are the reality of where it will go. People are worried that GOG may go the way of more restrictive digital distro clients, by drawing us in with it being opt-in only, selectable conveniences, and so on, then once they've as many as they like, clamping down making things opt-out and turning what were conveniences into inconveniences instead.

It's a tightrope for some, from what I can tell, and they're concerned GOG won't be able to keep their balance and avoid falling off. Then again, I find their concerns almost misplaced, since GOG's biggest selling point is its DRM free nature, not just its deals or additional content included with games. I'm reasonably certain they're as aware as any of us that if they start to move away from that, many of us would simply be inclined to go to their competitors.

After all, remove the DRM free aspect of GOG, and where's the value in their games? Potential for older titles to actually function properly is there, I guess, but much of the additional content I could just as well get through Steam. Or, if I'm patient, I may be able to pick it up as part of a Humble Bundle, if it's the soundtrack. I think that's the biggest part we ought to consider, if GOG's catalogue would hold any more value if it were sold with DRM, and I think it's safe to say, it really wouldn't. It would place it on equal terms with Steam's catalogue, in which case its size actually serves to make it less valuable and thus encourage users to remain with Steam.

Look at Origin and UPlay, they try to compete on even ground with Steam and they have hardly made any headway, having the same problem (magnified probably) as GOG would were it to adopt DRM. Their catalogues are too small, with little to incentivize migration to their services.

Sorry, I got a little carried away there. I find this all pretty interesting to keep an eye on. =)

Edit: Looking back over this thread, I completely agree with Hypersomniac and Vulchor's concerns. More flexibility with software is imperative to Galaxy being a distinctive competitor to Steam, and for appealing to our individual interests. Removing the installer files is a major downside if it occurs, and I would like to see them remain available at all costs. That is one of the elements of GOG's service that distinguishes and provides value to its catalogue of games over the competition, as is the ability to pick which patches and additional content to download.

If any of the GOG staff have any new information to provide pertaining to this, it would be greatly appreciated, by the way.

The problem I see is that many people are assuming the absolute worst possible things without knowing what is actually going to happen and actively seeking a situation that is terrible to confirm what they already believe like religion to be true that the end is near, when in reality from the very beginning of GOG.com's existence they have always been a gaming retailer for gamers by gamers and as gamers they want the same awesome gaming experiences from their own platform than everyone else hopes to see happen. They have tried to bring more games to more gamers, more genres, more publishes and developers and make a consistent stream of ever evolving features that are in demand by gamers in general for the better good and to have more options available to everyone to let individual people choose what options they prefer and others to choose different options that they prefer.

GOG is not perfect either, nobody is. We can all make mistakes and/or bad decisions along the way to achieving our goals that we did not forsee in advance was a bad idea, and this is how we learn. We sometimes make mistakes and after the fact when we have realized that and learned from it, we correct those mistakes and work hard to do better all the time. GOG has made some mistakes like this before, such as the promotional prank of shutting down the website for a day or so a few years ago and the apologetic monks video. Behind the scenes it was very clear to me that they were trying to inject some good natured humour and have some fun but inadvertently crossed a line that they did not forsee in advance was a "bad idea" - an innocent mistake. They were not happy with this and did their very best to try to fix the situation by communicating about it openly and apologizing. There is no question in my mind that they learned from the experience some lessons about what to do and not do with marketing, and communication with your customers, and certain things that are likely to be inappropriate humour that can potentially go the very wrong way against your best intentions.

They learned from that and they fixed it.

The regional pricing issue that was announced earlier this year had some short-sightedness as well, and they seem to have made some error in judgment with how to go about doing this type of thing in a way that lets them achieve the goals for us that they were trying to achieve and find the balance between their goals, and the desires of the game publishers/developers and us gamers. It is a tough position to be in to have to make decisions about things for several groups of people of which can have conflicting interests or desires, but they tried to do this and made some mistakes in judgment along the way. They got bit in the ass, learned some things, and they went ahead and tried to fix the problem. By and large it appears to me reading in the forums that a large amount of the people who were greatly upset by the initial changes were happy or at least content with the resulting way in which they tried to fix this by giving away free game codes with purchases and whatnot. They did their best to try to find a balance between a number of things with conflicting goals/desires and I think they found a reasonable balance in the end, or at least as reasonable of a middle ground as can be had between all parties. They learned from their initial mistake, apologized, communicated and tried to fix the problems that were brought to their attention as best they could, and what appears to have been successful.

Everything else they do in the future which is some kind of change is something that will have risks associated with it and the potential to make mistakes or bad decisions too. We're all human and despite our best intentions with people, sometimes we inadvertently make decisions that cause real problems for people, and other times people perceive or fear problems that aren't there on their own, or due to inadequate communication. The important thing is to realize humans make mistakes, learn from it, correct them and continue to try to make steady progress forward towards long term goals. That is a good thing.

GOG is trying to grow their business, and the options available to them in the marketplace, to widen their potential userbase, to bring more products into their reach under terms the business was founded around, etc. and along the way some things need to change, grow, evolve or become obsolete and fall into insignificance and be torn apart by the dominating competition out there. There are limits to what you can do in any business if you just continuously do the same thing day in day out and never change things, while your competitors evolve their offerings, and the customer expectations ever evolve with the offerings available to them at large.

Many people fear GOG Galaxy or any client because they have hard coded in their mind what the Steam client is, and DRM and all these things they dislike about that. But GOG is free to write their software however they want to do so, and they absolutely do not need to nor are they likely to replicate the features of Steam which restrict people's freedom of choice, or force people to lose rights and freedoms because they are gamers also and built the company trying to produce something better with freedom from artificial restrictions as a motivating factor.

People constantly doubt them and fear everything they do, and yet the overwhelming majority of things they do benefit the majority if not all people, and when they make a mistake with something or an oversight, they fix it, if not right away, then as soon as they're able to do so.

I for one trust GOG and that they have my interests as a gamer in heart. I trust that their optional client will provide me and a multitude of other gamers with OPTIONAL features that many of us want to have in 2014 available to us, while still providing people with ways to download/backup games, install games etc. that we do now. There may be some slight changes to the way things are done, but they need to be given the benefit of doubt here, they deserve it for the tremendous things they have done for all of us in building this amazing business built on DRM-free relatively-hassle-free gaming. They're trying to make /OPTIONAL/ new choices available to give people who want it other options for even more hassle free gaming potentially, and to enhance the overall experiences that are available for people who wish to even have a chance to OPT into having those experiences without taking anything material away from anyone else.

[continued below]

[continued from above]
WIll there be problems along the way? Of course! No programmer is perfect, no designer is perfect, no manager is perfect, no program is perfect. That is totally irrelevant however. What is relevant is that as flaws in the software, service, website, whatever are found and reported to them, they will see where they went wrong, fix bugs, update the service, add things that are missing, and listen to their customers that are their financial life line BECAUSE we are their life line. They NEED us. They're not turning on us, they are giving us new options to experience something nicer if we both perceive it to be that and opt into trying it out, and hopefully have the courtesy and patience to give them constructive feedback about what we like/don't like, what things are missing that we'd like to have, etc.

The right way to go about this is to politely indicate individually and collectively what our needs are, our desires for what we want/need, and let others do the same even if their wants and needs differ from ours, and especially so if it is possible for everyone to have it their way. A lot if not most of this is not A or B or C, but rather A and B and C - everyone wins.

Instead, many people hear something, jump to wild conclusions way ahead of time, then cry wolf and crack out the torches and start organizing a witch hunt to chase down the /good guys/ and burn them at the stake, when what should be happening is polite friendly dialogue and people expressing their needs/desires in a professional manner, and having a constructive dialogue about it both between the community and GOG, and the community with itself. If people have legitimate concerns with needs they'd like to see met, let those needs be heard. People instead voice a lot of negative things based on fear and unconfirmed assumptions and start up the flamethrowers to go to war without knowing what is actually happening in detail. It's very uncivilized and not becoming of the otherwise fantastic community here!

If there are things that people dislike about GOG Galaxy they can communicate that with GOG professionally and let them know what they'd like to see. What features/functions it is missing, etc. that they'd like it to have, or they can simply not use it. If people fear that its mere existence will take away something they have now, then they simply need to communicate what that need is and try to convince GOG en-masse to consider providing the functionality somehow.

For example, people use the downloader now and GOG has indicated Galaxy client will replace the downloader. If those people do not want to use Galaxy, they feel they are losing something. Maybe they are maybe they aren't, we don't know enough details even _remotely_ yet, and GOG may not have that level of information available to share with us at this point yet. People just simply need to communicate the options they'd like to see, which might be as simple as "Please keep the old downloader client and backend service running with minimal maintenance at least for some time." or "please provide the old downloader's source code so it can be maintained by the community on github", or any of a number of constructive and productive options rather than "burn the witch"!

Why does everything always have to be solved with verbal or physical violence in this world? Use your words people! The good words, the ones that bring people together with like minded goals to work together, not the ones that tear people apart.

GOG is going to make an amazing new piece of technology for us and we're going to benefit from it either directly or indirectly in a number of ways that may or may not be obvious to everyone yet. There are likely to be some problems along the way too, and GOG is most likely going to fix problems and hone things to try and make all customers as happy as possible. It'd be nice if they could do this without having to take anti-depressants after reading the forums every time they try to do something new and exciting.

I applaud what our fellow gamers in Poland are doing for gamers worldwide, the gaming industry, their vision, and their honest business model and practices that put the customer first unlike the majority of their immediate and even distant competition. I give them the complete benefit of doubt that they'll do the right thing to the best of their ability and that they're my ally, and that they'll do their best to fix things for me if they screw something up. Everyone else should too. We don't have very many corporate friends in the video game world, lets not kick sand in the faces of the few we do have.

This message may be long, but its probably 1/100th the size of the plethora of negative thoughts and energy expressed concerning things nobody really knows much about yet, and my purpose of posting it is at a bare minimum to try to open people's minds to be more trusting and work together instead of assuming bad things and getting stuck in a perpetual and unwarranted victim mentality.

I hope people find my thoughts about this useful, or that I have some kind of positive effect on people thinking about Galaxy and other changes to come in the future, but people are free to "tl;dr" it also if they wish, or poop on my cornflakes if they wish. :) Either way, the ever changing future is coming whether any of us like it or not, and it is going to be a bright future if we choose to see it that way and help it to become that way, or a bleek one if we perceive it that way and choose to be victims. I choose to enjoy it, life is short and there's enough darkness out there already.

Peace my fellow gamers.

2014 is not even halfway done yet.

Great post +1

All other digital distribution that tries to overtake steam by offering more of the same like steam (or worst) failed, so out, convert to a steam key distributor.

Impulse (Gamestop), Uplay, Origin, GamersGate, gamersfly, greenman gaming.....

That is because they are pro publisher than gamers, so no point going to other pro publisher platform while you are on the largest platform. Digital Distribution that are more pro gamers like desura and humble survive because it is the gamers who fork out money, not publisher.

GOG take it up one notch and even support games that the developers abandon so gamers need not worry their games will be obsolete one day, and are more receptive to gamers feedback, that's why they are second to steam and growing.

If they ever abandon the pro customer value, it's greatest strength is compromised.

Not to mention that when they announced the future availability of these things they clearly stated that they would be coming in late fall 2014 and that's several months away. It's not even close to time to start delivering yet. If we enter into December or January and haven't heard or seen anything yet or gotten any updates, then it's time to start cracking Duke Nukem Forever jokes. ;)
Yep, and being pro-gamer is one of their biggest strengths in the long haul IMHO. It has a natural organic attractive force to it that is likely to expand over time as slowly or quickly as gamers decide to go with it. The more attractive they make it via consumer-friendliness, it can sell itself really, and they gain a bigger chunk of the overall pie and likely cause the competition to start becoming more consumer friendly as well as the publishers/developers. Time will tell though, still a bit early to be able to speculate strongly. I've got faith they're going in the right direction though. We'll all help to steer them in that right direction if they get off course, so they have got our backs and hopefully we've collectively got theirs too.