if poeple have no interest in gathering information that is already there, in order to form an opinion are unsreasonable to, your milage may varyx

Might be not a bad idea after all (altough I would habe prefered this to remain a "technical" topic.
As its clear that I have a more negative view on users that are plagued by these concerns, would you be interested in writing the entry ?

I disagree, cutting quotes is a functional thing, to keep the whole thing readable - proper meaning emerges from the context, the reader has to aquire for himself.
And in this particular case, I don't see the problem either, as my answer adressed the point you were trying to make > we have a reference point (the part I qouted), so its clear what my reply adresses, and we have a counter argument, the makes clear what specific part I adress.

MOST of the G2 users have no problem at all using it, looking at the post count in this board that madd no critical jump in numbers since it was rolled out on all users. So it is already a minorty stating their problems/concerns/whatsoever (just to be sure: this does not mean they should be ignored). From a business point of view its just makes no sense to roll back, this binds resources and may push the schedule back as you now have to worry again whether a change on the server side may brake the old client - or you know it will, which would mean updating the odl client or running different server versions > binds money and resources.
And there is also the possibility that the people reponsible for this have a rather "traditional" work relationship: Failure is no option for a superior, so by definition superiors can't make mistakes. So rolling back to G1 would imply a failure, thus if you would do so the universe would implode.


First of: Why are users in your response always nice, friendly and polite ? The negative side is never mentioned - we can disagree on how this distributes on the total post count, but I don't see a reason to just glance over that.

Back to topic: Why should I be responsible for your arguments ? You basically made a counter point to my assessament of the situation:

"Sure there are some negative statements, but overall people are polite and friendly, and are just trying to make their point in an effort to convince gog, to roll back till G2 is more ready for a mass rollout. And you do not understand why this isn't done as most points people bring up are valid."

And, to me, its pretty clear that this won't happen, as the basic idea is wrong: the people that decide how to proceed aren't the ones that have to shovel their way through theses boards (and reddit/discord/i simply don't know what else).

Mind explaining how I pushed you into that corner ?

(cutting off here and continuing in a new post because GOG seems not to be letting me post the whole response in one message)

EDIT: Nvm it won't let me post the entire thing so screw it. Have a pastebin link:

https://pastebin.com/hed6m3PE

I remembered there being an option in Galaxy's settings for whether or not to participate in beta testing. Sure enough there was, and though opting out of betas was no doubt the default setting, I know I went through all the settings carefully and made sure everything was exactly as I wanted it, and NOT participating in beta testing was definitely a top priority for me. So, in spite of very explicit settings opting us out of betas, we ended up with 2.0 anyway. The program did something that it was clearly barred from doing in its settings (like some rogue AI breaking the second law of robotics, except clearly there was some human interference.)

It actually takes a good deal of time and effort to contact support and a great deal of emotional labor to allow ourselves to get upset about these things. For those who don't have that time and effort or have better things to invest it in (certainly there is much more dire stuff going on everywhere,) I'm going to suggest making use of a simple screenshot I made of my settings showing clearly that I opted out of betas with the unchecked box circled in red. If many of us who are displeased with the forced update that gave us the 2.0 beta were to add the larger image to our posts and make the smaller crop of it our avatars, it could serve as supplemental feedback for the GOG team on the forums with minimal effort on our part, as anytime we posted or they encountered one of our older posts, we'd be reminding them of our dissatisfaction. I'd say that initially adding the larger picture to your posts will help contextualize the avatar, as the avatar format doesn't really allow for the full text of the setting, but over time if enough of us use these, the explanation that the larger image provides would become unnecessary.

So, here are the full image and then, the crop.

? Huh, their may be reason after all to cut quotes in order to not rely on a third party to keep the conversation going (but in all honesty i totally forgot about the character limit for posts) ?

If people are deciding to use a service and don't inform themselves about it and what terms they are agreeing to, thats just unreasonable to me. Especially with gog beeing quite talkie about their usp: you don't have to dig through forum posts to find that out.
Well I brought them up, you just ignored them, or tried to tone them down.

a) If you widen the audience for a piece of software you will widen the number of possible soft/hardware combinations that cause problems - so this is expected ?
b) there is still the whole Corona-Virus issue probably pushing down worker efficiency ?
c) people who are unhappy with a situation are the ones that respond the most / are most outspokej about it - you yourselv answered to a post that prompted other users to "tell them what you think ab G2", so this may not all be request to solve a technical problem ?

I wanted to reply to rest of your external post, but quite frankly I have better things do: as you are clearly meandering around not really adressing any of the points I bring up, just dancing around them with terms like "strawman", "logical fallcies" and in the end even telling me that you had to give a certain answer because I left you no choice. While not even reading my posts correctly as I am now a "fanboy" in your opionion, so by nature all the points I bring up are wrong.

Which is kind of strange, as I never denied that G2 has problems (or that it should have remaind in beta stage) and if you look at my post history I am pretty confiden't that I never denied the existence of these problems or the importance of them getting fixed.
I just tried to give an explanation why a rollback won't happen andwhy just using the old version is detrimtal to the progress of G2.
Which is were (at least I think) the problem in our discussion lies (leaving aside me maybe not beeing able to keep up with you on an intellectual level):
Having 15+ years of experience in (end user) software development and first/second level support in several rather small ompanies (50-500 employees) has formed my view on how development processes and software rollouts usually works and how people that are affected by these react.

a) People are relativly flexibel if a new software version gets rolled out, and need a certain level of "bothering" till they give negative feedback. So the majority of the people just won't give any official feedback at all, while the minority that is beyond that threshold is very active in giving negative feedback but doing it in 98% of the cases in a polite manner. But impolite/rude responses are those that stick the most (at least in my case and those people I worked with) as they provoke a more emotional reaction.
And this is an experience that transcends developing software, in my case

b) If people have a chance to use the version they are familiar with they tend to use that one providing no feedback whatsoever for the new version

c) end users and, not rarely, devs views on release cycles and their content often differ very much from the views of those that are defining those. As the views of these people are usually more driven by budget and long term release planning and less by user feedback.

d) Depending on the background of the people in charge there is a wild difference in motivations for a decision. While there are people that base their decision on facts and reason, I also experienced superiors in my life that mix up respect with fear thus their inital decision making is guided by facts and reason, but if a decision turns out to be wrong their way of handling the situation is more grounded in how to keep that facade of beeing the one that does everything rigtht mostly intact. And lots of people in between. Of course I have no clue how things are at gogs hq, this sermon is simply there to show that not all decisions are based on facts and reason.

Of course I can't tell were your opionions on this are coming from, but from what I gathered we are pretty much on the opposite sides of the spectrum.

So how we want to proceed ?
Agree to disagree ?

Not going to address all of your post, because a significant portion of it is you repeating things which have already been debunked... but one part which has already been countered warrants a response anyway, and there's a little more I think is worth saying.

You BROUGHT up claims. You didn't BACK those claims up. And when pressed, you stopped even bothering to defend them in the first place in spite of me pointing out they were false AND backing that statement up with reasons why.

a) SOME increase in demand for support makes sense. But knowing that, increasing availability of support staff to compensate makes sense. So either they failed to properly account for the increase in tickets, OR they accounted for it but not enough because there was more than expected response. Which indicates PROBLEMS not just business as usual.
b) Galaxy 2.0 was pushed live during the lockdown period. That this is a time where there's reason for support to be more limited only makes it look like an even worse decision. Bringing that up only shows how terrible an idea it was to force the launch of software which THE COMPANY OPENLY ADMITS IS STILL IN BETA onto their entire community while they aren't able to provide adequate support.
c) They have a feedback channel which is part of support. The problems people have are almost unanimously design issues (valid to take to support) or bugs (valid to take to support), so no, they're NOT just "I don't like it" responses clogging up support.

If you think that, you clearly don't actually understand basic English. My pointing out of the logical fallacies in what you're saying is not "dancing around" your points, but directly addressing them as the flawed arguments they are.

You are actively denying the SEVERITY of the problems, and talking up the severity of the negative feedback far beyond reason. I'm not saying you're pretending nothing is wrong. I'm saying you're reacting to the negative feedback as a fanboy, not as a clear-headed adult mind. And it's disappointing to me because from our interactions, as confrontational as they are, I can tell you're capable of better.

Cool. Quick question: In those 15+ years, how many times have you seen a new version of a piece of software pushed live and forced on end users while openly still in beta? Not an early access release where there is no finished product, but a forced UPDATE from a polished release-ready version to a beta version of the next generation of the product. If it's more than 1, or if that 1 is something other than GOG, you're going to need to cite a source.

And next question: How many times have you seen a service which allows users to opt OUT of beta testing, then forces it on them anyway when they do? If you have any example here that isn't GOG, you'll need to provide a source to back that up again.

This would have been a more reasonable answer to some of my points than a lot of what you've said prior. The fact remains that a developer ignoring well-reasoned and polite feedback because a couple of slightly rude comments chased them away reflects poorly on them and their mental health and they should probably see someone about that and consider not working in an environment where people are going to have any kind of expectations for them.

Which is why allowing users to opt into a beta results in exactly 0 beta testers every time, I guess?
...oh, right, that doesn't happen.
But it makes it ok to launch your beta as a forced update even though you have users who have explicitly opted out of your beta testing, right?
.wait no it doesn't.

So... what exactly is your point here? Because well, first off it's objectively false and second, it wouldn't make this right even if it was true.

And this ALSO doesn't have any bearing on whether or not the STILL IN BETA version of the app should be rolled back to being TREATED LIKE THE BETA IT IS. Which it should. Because it's still in beta.

See my answer to c)

I've made no secret of the fact that I expect Galaxy 2.0 to EVENTUALLY be a good launcher, and that I am still using it in spite of concerns with its current state. I don't believe it should be forced on all users and I do believe that doing so was an incredibly stupid decision and I do believe (based on more experience in the industry than you have) that companies are in fact capable of rolling their software back to the last known stable version. Especially when there are users who are demonstrating that the capability to do so exists within the company's own provided platform.

There are aspects of this discussion where I think we already can agree to disagree. There are some points where you're talking past me without acknowledging the points I'm making though, and I know you're capable of understanding them. I hope you can give my comments a more clear-headed look and actually think critically about your own position instead of just trying to poke holes in mine. I've not only done my best to see your argument, but directly provided a scenario where the argument in favour of your position is stronger than your real argument, and STILL believe that in such a situation, rolling back to the last known stable version (1.2 in this case) would be the correct response.

I don't think it'll happen overnight. I'm not sure it WILL happen at all. But I DO think it's the most sensible and reasonable option for GOG to take right now, and I DON'T think it's entirely impossible to roll back just because it's been rolled out.

Just wanted to say thank you to the topic starter DerBesserwisser, this is a calm, concise, informative and even-handed post that answers all the most important questions one may have re: Galaxy 2.0, and acknowledges existing problems (also giving actual info on them!).

The sheer verbosity and mind-numbing, suffocating nitpicking by u/obliviondoll is maddening — I can't imagine how you keep on answering them point by point. It's pure arguing for the sake of arguing, pontificating on a super simple and clear situation that you both plainly see in endless circles. One would think a guy would notice he became a bit long-winded, when his response has to be offloaded to Pastebin.

Worst of all, it's not even an argument, you two just keep describing the situation in exactly the same terms, only with u/obliviondoll adding a little bit of indignation into it and demanding that you do, too. In ALL CAPS preferably.

Exactly this. I try to bookmark the forums, but the bookmark doesn't appear in the sidebar

Since the FAQ warns I could have data loss if I revert to 1.2 then I need to uninstall Galaxy I guess. I wanted to keep 1.2 but it installed 2.0 despite me denying permission to do so. A drastic UI change is not just unwelcome, it is unusable for me because of disability issues.

There's a lot of people reporting loss of access to games in 2.0 so it's not really a "better" solution to stick with 2.0 currently. And the risk of data loss is negligible with a total of 0 reported cases so far, as compared with the significant number of reported instances of lost access to owned content through 2.0 dating back to the time before it was forced on users.

I've installed V2.0.17.68a (or at least that's what the filename says) on a Mac and every time I start the app, I get a message saying "Connection to Communication Service was lost and could not be restored! GOG Galaxy will now shutdown", then, obviously, the app shuts down.

EDIT: Just intalled V2.0.28.48 and the issue is still pressent. I followed support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013574413--MAC-Connection-to-Communication-Service-was-lost-?product=gog <= this page to no avail.

Are there plans with GOG Galaxy to team up with other companies so that you don't need two launchers to play a game? If not I don't really see the point of using the service. I am using beta and while it's nice to see everything in one place launching a game still means running the other launcher and just hogs even more of my precious RAM. I was under the impression that games would launch through galaxy, however, when I click launch a game it just opens steam and I have two applications running to do one task.

Galaxy is meant to work this way, the other clients are needed, it works only as a wrapper.

Anyway, for those games that doesn't strictly need the client to run, like some Steam or Epic games, after having downloaded them with their respective client, you can add or modify manually the launch command on Galaxy, to make them run directly as standalone applications.
(This anyway, depending on the game, can disable additional functionalities like online multiplayer, cloud saves, and most probably online achievements)

Is steam client needed? ASF has no problem acting as a steam client trading items and telling steam that games are running. Is the steam client technically needed or can the APIs that Valve released authenticate games / deal with the DRM bit?

All I would want is A) the ability to launch the games and B) the ability to take screenshots and upload them to steam C) ensure achievements work.
I'd like GOG Galaxy to lauch steam with username and password as I normally do, the Steam client itself is a useless 4star that never remembers these so I have to use the command line -login option....

Is there a place to put command line options for launching steam? There should be.

Yes.

Galaxy has only wrappers, it uses the other store clients to obtain and manage their respective functionalities.
When you install a Steam game from Galaxy, it uses the Steam client to obtain the game.
When you launch a Steam game from Galaxy, it is launched using the Steam client.
When you exit a Steam game launched from Galaxy, achievements and maybe cloud data are updated using the Steam client.

Galaxy is just an interface for the other stores, it doesn't substitute the other clients, it only uses them.

Anyway, some of the Steam games, after being installed from their official client (the only way possible), don't need it to be launched, or maybe they just require some libraries put in the right folder to run without the need of the client.

Those games, can be added manually to Galaxy, so you can run then without Steam installed... but not all the Steam games can run without Steam.

(This explanation is valid for every other store client around.)