Where did you get this from?


That would depend on Samsung having trademarked the term/ common word "galaxy", and if the use of the term by GOG could be regarded as infringement - are the products/ services of GOG identical or similar to those of Samsung?

Plus, I'd expect GOG to have researched this before going public.

From my understanding, if you look at all the games they sell, they are modified to run on modern systems and are modified to GOG's standard by GOG. That's what makes them different from Valve who just puts the game on steam without modifying them and expects you to figure out how to make them work on modern systems. I'm not going to say with a 100% certainty but GOG has modified the games they sell to you from there original condition so I can't see why they can't change them to work with there client or multiplayer servers... ect. GOG has said before in interviews that do a lot of the work in getting the games to work on modern systems, all the publishers does is give them the okay to sell it.

Take SimCity 4 for example, they made a lot fixes to it from it's original release... one being a blinking issue... and I own the CD version which is known to crash a lot on newer systems... not a problem though with the GOG version.

http://www.gog.com/forum/simcity_series/sim_city_4_blinking/post15

Ah okay. Too bad.

From the press release:
"During the CD PROJEKT RED and GOG.com Summer Conference, GOG.com ushered in a new era of DRM-free gaming with the announcement of GOG Galaxy, its brand new technology that places unparalleled freedom over online play and connectivity back in the hands of gamers. With this an entirely optional platform, players can dive into online multiplayer portions of their favorite games, while enjoying single-player anytime they please without needing an internet connection. GOG Galaxy is designed to be a platform-agnostic online solution, allowing GOG.com and Steam players – with more platforms to be added in the future – to game together. An optional client will be introduced later this year to allow for easy game updating, and GOG.com has already begun working with developers to implement the technology in their games."
http://operationrainfall.com/2014/06/05/gog-com-unveils-gog-galaxy-client/2/

There's also Fallen Zen's blog:
http://www.fallenzen.com/

And Frederik Schreiber and Interceptor, who made Rise of the Triad 2013 with cross-platform multi-player, helped advise GOG with Galaxy:
https://twitter.com/Freschism/status/474621757895507968

Well thankfully Samsung is not like King, infact no one is that ridiculous of a patent troll. :)

Well I'd quite like that actually. But I appreciate that GOG is better off focusing on the client, which is why I suggested an open API...

are they expecting the devs of each game to add support to gog galaxy cross play ?

This is one of the reasons I want it open-source. Because, if I'm going to use it, I insist on the following functionality which I suspect will require at least one patch GOG isn't interested in writing:

1. I must be able to easily keep DVD+R backups of the install bundles for everything I play. (If I hadn't, the newest Unepic update would have rendered the game unplayable.)

2. Those DVD+R backups must be usable on a machine that was just freshly wiped and installed and will never touch the Internet. (3rd-party servers won't be around forever. I insist on making it technically impossible for me to find myself with neither my money nor my purchase.)

3. It must be clear what things depend on Steamworks... err... Galaxy services so I can run the game on a PC without a network card and try to complete it before the 30 day "if we can't make it work for you" refund period runs out. (Same principle. I'll only use functionality that can operate in an isolated LAN so that I can't be deprived of what I've grown used to.)
I haven'r been able to watch the stream but I get the impression that, by "cross-play" you mean PC-to-PC cross-platform play.

If so, I'm not sure it is a valid comparison. Every case I've heard of PC-Console crossplay failing was because of inherent hardware advantages on one side or the other (eg. mouse-using players had a huge accuracy advantage over stick-using players).

There's already a history of PC-to-PC cross-platform play. Just look at old real-time strategy games like Warcraft 2 which allowed Windows and Mac users to compete.

EDIT: Tracked down the summary of the cross-play announcement. My point remains valid for cross-service. It's still people on PC hardware vs. people on PC hardware.

Actually, for DOS games it should be easy, since it just means adding GOG Galaxy functionality to DOSBox. And should this be added to the main DOSBox trunk, any DOSBox using game could take advantage of GOG Galaxy. Similar thoughts for ScummVM.

All I want is something like the current GOG downloader, but which lets me access my games + other content from it. Just something easy and simple, ya know?

Well, no, because when you make claims that sound impossible, I'm not going to believe them until you explain how you intend to accomplish them.
Ah, so there isn't actually any radical new solution involved. You've just made your own matchmaking service, so any game not specifically built for your matchmaking service will not work in Galaxy (for matchmaking). That makes the news from the conference considerably less exciting, and quite misleading too. Since the only game so far to support Galaxy is your own (and it isn't even out yet), who is to say there will ever be any more? Have you made any deals with other developers about Galaxy support?

Forget Samsung. Ford has been using the name since 1959 (I used to own one), and Ford's use of the name (including the "galaxy" variation) was much more celebrated with bands named after it and [url=http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Galaxy-500-lyrics-Reverend-Horton-Heat/39110BF340B1CD9C48256ECD0004E147]songs recognizing its greatness:

"You take the dishes
While you're at it take my soul
But things ain't so bad
Cause i got a galaxy 500"

No need for a soul when you're driving around with a 7 liter V8! (Some might argue a soul is a liability when driving around in a vehicle that only gets about 13 MPG.)

Okay, so far here's how I understand it:
- As long as a game is built with GOG Galaxy in mind it will allow GOG players to play with other GOG players AND Steam players.
- Haven't heard anything about other "clients" such as UPlay and Origin but honestly I don't care
- All other games will be able to use Galaxy for other aspects (downloading extras, autopatching etc.)

That sounds great so far, but I'd like to detail the above question a bit further:
If I want to cross-play a game with a friend that has the same game on e.g. Steam, on his side Steam will verify that he is a legit owner of that game, that's standard for online gaming on Steam.

Now what about on the Galaxy side? I of course understand the need to be online for online play (duh :-)) but will the Galaxy client look into my GOG account to verify I own the game I'm trying to play?

Hypothetical scenario as an example: 4 friends want to play together, one of them has the game on Steam, two other on GOG, the fourth one doesn't have it and they're all broke (yeah, crisis and all that). So the GOG friend sends the install file from his GOG version (which is baaad, but again crisis y'know). Will the fourth friend be able to install and cross-play it?

I mean it would be an act of trust from GOG, and a big one at that, but it would mean that any torrented GOG version would allow players to join multiplayer games, which is bad. On the other hand if Galaxy verifies I'm a legit buyer of the game I'm trying to play online isn't that by definition a DRM?

Just my (lenghty) two cents.

That might work for raw ethernet based games if GOG adds such "Galaxy Ethernet" support to DOSBox, but that won't make IPX games work unless GOG adds that too, and won't make serial port games work unless GOG adds that too. There may be other possibilities as well such as IP based games, or modem based games that expect to be talking to a modem (so straight pass-through serial that would work with something like War Craft 2 won't work with those), or games that expect to be talking to a server of sorts. Getting all of GOG's DOS multplayer games to work (I don't know how many of those there are -- I guess it's a small fraction of the total DOS games here as most are single player only) might be a bit of work and involve some reverse engineering. Not that I'd want to discourage GOG from doing it, but I'm not sure "easy" is an accurate assessment. (Maybe DOSBox already has some IPX/IP stuff built-in -- I haven't looked. That might at least make it "easier".)