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General discussionGOG Galaxy - Official Discussion Thread(2661 posts)(2661 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 25, 2017
high rated
Hi,

welcome to the official GOG Galaxy forum thread. Please read the below info first:

== GOG GALAXY FEATURES IN GAMES ==

List of games supporting various GOG Galaxy features:
Achievements: https://www.gog.com/games?feature=achievements&sort=bestselling&page=1
Cloud Saves: https://www.gog.com/games?feature=cloud_saves&sort=bestselling&page=1
Overlay: https://www.gog.com/games?feature=overlay&sort=bestselling&page=1

== BUG REPORTING ==

Please use: http://mantis.gog.com and include
1. steps to reproduce the bug (if possible)
2. screenshot or movie showing the bug (if possible)
3. Galaxy Client logs (location described on mantis report page)

== FEATURE SUGGESTIONS ==

Please use: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy. For feature suggestions and votes on them please try do explain how Galaxy and its users will really benefit from it.

== IMPORT ALREADY INSTALLED GAMES TO GALAXY ==

1. For GOG games installed using installers from the last few months (so called Galaxy-compatible installers)
Click the Galaxy logo button on top of the sidebar and select "scan and import folders" - it will find all compatible games within that folder and add them to the Client.

2. For remaining GOG game INSTALLATIONS
Find the game in the Library (click on the image of the game), then click the More button and select "Manage Installation" -> "Import folder" and point the folder selector into the folder where that game is installed.

== KNOWN ISSUES ==
- Galaxy cannot be launched by other users on the same computer

== CHANGELOG ==

1.2.49 (November 29, 2018)
- [Windows] Updater now requires administrator privileges to perform update of GOG Galaxy
- [Windows] Security of directories containing GOG Galaxy files has been improved
- [Windows] Updated Code Signing Certificate
- [Windows] Crash reporter has been added to Galaxy Communication Service
Bugfixes:
- Prevented several potential causes of "broken" games, where only way out was reinstalling
- [MacOS] Fixed a crash on shutdown when fatal error was shown

1.2.50 (December 13, 2018)
Changes & Improvements:
- Speed up startup time
- [MacOS] Strengthen up connection security with ClientService
Bugfixes:
- Fixed "disk access problem" when installing games, occuring mostly on fresh installation of GOG Galaxy
- Fixed a rare occurrence of a game update resulting in displaying "unknown game version"

1.2.51 (December 20, 2018)
- Improved Korean translations
- Fixed connection to notifications pusher in GOG Galaxy SDK

1.2.54 (March 14, 2019)
Changes and Improvements:
- Updated Chromium version to 71:
- Better performance
- Fixes playing Twitch videos on profiles
- Fixes playing Wistia videos
- Security fixes in the game installation process
- Security fixes in GOG Galaxy update process
- GOG Galaxy Updater should perform better under poor network conditions
Bugfixes:
- [macOS] Fixed passing multiple commandline arguments to games
- [macOS] Multiple "friend online" notifications will no longer appear when system wakes up
- Dates are now properly displayed in cloud saves conflict window

1.2.55 (April 17, 2019)
- Hotfix for unintentional opening of Facebook link after entering Forum

1.2.56 (May 06, 2019)
Bugfixes:
- [Windows] GOG Galaxy will fix the path to its internal services, if it finds it is wrong
- Updating of games' local dependencies (e.g. Dosbox) will be handled correctly
- Unexpected files in games' directories will no longer cause failure of games’ update

1.2.57 (June 12, 2019)
Changes and Improvements:
- Minor download speed optimizations
- Changes in PayPal payment flow
Bugfixes:
- Fixed rare crash occurence when reordering games' updates and installations
- GOG Galaxy will correctly reconnect to GOG services after long time of no internet connection

1.2.58 (September 13, 2019)
macOS:
- Enabled hardened runtime, making our application more secure
- Implemented Apple's notarization

1.2.59 (September 23, 2019)
Overlay:
- [Windows] Fixed crash in Overlay affecting some games (including Fallout 3 (Radeon only) and Dragon Age: Origins)
Achievements:
- [Windows] Fixed issue with achievements sometimes not being saved while playing offline

1.2.60 Beta (07 October, 2019)
General:
- Updated CEF version to 3729 (Chromium to 74)
- Security fixes
Updater:
- Will no longer download updates at startup, they will be downloaded in the background, while the application is running
- [Windows] No additional UAC prompt during update

1.2.61 Beta (October 23, 2019)
Updater:
- Fixed an issue where non-admin users would not be able to update to newer versions of GOG Galaxy

1.2.62 Beta (October 30, 2019)
Overlay:
- Fixed crashes for various games

1.2.63 (December 02, 2019)
General:
- Updated CEF version to 3729 (Chromium to 74)
- Security fixes
Updater:
- Will no longer download updates at startup, they will be downloaded in the background, while the application is running
- [Windows] No additional UAC prompt during update
Overlay [Windows]:
- Now supports games which use Vulkan API (e.g. Jupiter Hell, X4: Foundations)
- Fixes crashes for various games

1.2.64 (December 04, 2019)
- Hotfix for launching games

1.2.66 (January 23, 2020)
- Added information about GOG Galaxy 2.0 Open Beta
- Optimization related to showing download progress
- Fixed an issue where Overlay did not launch for some games that use Vulkan
- [Windows] Updated code signing certificate
- [MacOS] Crash fixes

1.2.67 (February 24, 2020)
General:
- [Windows] GOG Galaxy will now show a warning when trying to run on non-NTFS file systems
- Improved security of the application
- Updated POCO library
GOG GALAXY Update:
- Fixes for bugs in the GOG Galaxy update process
Post edited February 24, 2020 by TheTomasz
Posted December 12, 2017
So... Bitdefender completely killed GOG galaxy - Even restoring quarantined files killed it.

Re-downloaded the latest install and cannot even install that. GOG website claims to have fixed the problem (with Avast & AVG) however when trying to install, I get an error pop-up (for Windows 10) for any files (from the installer) attempting to write to %ProgramData%.

Error states:

An Error has occurred while trying to rename a file in the destination directory:
MovdeFile failed; code 5.
Access is denied

Then options to abort, retry or ignore.

Abort, kills the entire install.
Retry - loop of the error described
Ignore - moves on to the next file that it doesn't like - until a broken "successful" install has completed - leading to a non-working galaxy.

Disabling antivirus when installing to re-able, just repeats the issue that occurred in the first place.
Adding everything as an exception is just another way of sweeping the issue under the rug - I do not want locations (unless agreed by me) to excluded from my antivirus - I'm sure anyone would agree.

So... Anyone know of a solution that doesn't involve disabling AV, excluding from AV, etc.?
Posted December 12, 2017
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MarkoH01: What you are suggesting sounds nice in theory but probably won't work. Galaxy as well as every GOG offline installer that comes bundled with redistributables will always try to install THOSE redists that are required to run the game you are installing at the moment.
What you're describing is the problem I need fixed. If Galaxy and the installers were better-written, they would detect the presence of a newer version and not attempt to install an outdated one—with known security holes, by the way. As a technical challenge, this is absolutely trivial, and it's been done before, elsewhere.

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MarkoH01: Unfortunately it is not possinle to just have the newest MSVC redistributables on your system.
Let me stop you there. I have nothing but the newest redists installed. My software works perfectly well. Games, office software, development tools; everything. I've been a systems administrator for 20 years, thanks. Please consider reading some of Microsoft's documentation on the system dynamic loader; or any other OS' system dynamic loader, really.

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MarkoH01: I am a bit confused about the mentioning of redistributables having been included in the offline installers recently. Afaik that was always the case if a game would require those.
No, this is a very recent change. That, or the installers used to do a better job of keeping the installers from scattering dialog boxes all over the screen and grabbing UI focus; I don't know which.

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MarkoH01: Otherwise the game prpbably would not run.
Half-right. By the time you start installing games, you've probably got a lot of other software installed, some of which has probably already installed various redists in bits and pieces. Whether or not your game needs a redist will depend on whether you've preloaded the major redists or hand-installed them—I preload in my install source; I'm an admin—and whether some other software has installed them first.

Quite a lot of software also slops some or all of their required DLL dependencies right into their install directories, which is why your computers have several hundred to several thousand copies of identical DLLs all over their filesystems. Some of these same apps also bundle the corresponding redists because... well, I have no idea why.

I have a hand-crufted Task Scheduler job running on shutdown / reboot to delete duplicate DLLs out of install directories for this reason. It saves around 4GiB on average and drastically improves security.
Posted December 12, 2017
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aloishammer: Let me stop you there. I have nothing but the newest redists installed. My software works perfectly well. Games, office software, development tools; everything. I've been a systems administrator for 20 years, thanks. Please consider reading some of Microsoft's documentation on the system dynamic loader; or any other OS' system dynamic loader, really.
Then maybe I am wrong here but I remember myself trying to figure out which redist exactly I needed for certain games or applications because they just would not run by simply using the newest one. I also am pretty certain that I read somewhere on a microsoft support page that the redistributables are building up on each other .. hwatever that means.

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MarkoH01: I am a bit confused about the mentioning of redistributables having been included in the offline installers recently. Afaik that was always the case if a game would require those.
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aloishammer: No, this is a very recent change. That, or the installers used to do a better job of keeping the installers from scattering dialog boxes all over the screen and grabbing UI focus; I don't know which.
The latter could in fact be it but I am 100% sure that the redistributables were always included in installer packages requiring redistributables.

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MarkoH01: Otherwise the game prpbably would not run.
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aloishammer: Half-right. By the time you start installing games, you've probably got a lot of other software installed, some of which has probably already installed various redists in bits and pieces. Whether or not your game needs a redist will depend on whether you've preloaded the major redists or hand-installed them—I preload in my install source; I'm an admin—and whether some other software has installed them first.
Of course but I thought it would be obvious that I was always talking about a system in which these redistributables are missing because that is the point where the GOG installer also have to start.

But no matter if latest redist would be enough or not GOG installers could at least first check if this version is already installed preventing a window popping up telling me that it is already installed and if I'd like to uninstall or repair it. Those messages could confuse some unexperienced user and annoy others.
Post edited December 12, 2017 by MarkoH01
Posted December 12, 2017
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MarkoH01: Then maybe I am wrong here but I remember myself trying to figure out which redist exactly I needed for certain games or applications because they just would not run by simply using the newest one. I also am pretty certain that I read somewhere on a microsoft support page that the redistributables are building up on each other .. hwatever that means.
That is correct when talking about for example the MS Visual C++ Redist. You HAVE to have the specific redist that was used when the game was coded. Having just the newest one will not work which is why Galaxy installs them.

https://www.howtogeek.com/256245/why-are-there-so-many-microsoft-visual-c-redistributables-installed-on-my-pc/

I believe Galaxy will try to detect if the needed redist is installed and if so skip installing it again, but that may or may be a little buggy.
Post edited December 12, 2017 by BKGaming
Posted December 12, 2017
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MarkoH01: Then maybe I am wrong here but I remember myself trying to figure out which redist exactly I needed for certain games or applications because they just would not run by simply using the newest one. I also am pretty certain that I read somewhere on a microsoft support page that the redistributables are building up on each other .. hwatever that means.
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BKGaming: That is correct when talking about for example the MS Visual C++ Redist. You HAVE to have the specific redist that was used when the game was coded. Having just the newest one will not work which is why Galaxy installs them.

https://www.howtogeek.com/256245/why-are-there-so-many-microsoft-visual-c-redistributables-installed-on-my-pc/
So then I was not confusing this after all. Thank you.

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BKGaming: I believe Galaxy will try to detect if the needed redist is installed and if so skip installing it again, but that may or may be a little buggy.
Or even a little more buggy because I got those messages I mentioned before quite a lot.
Post edited December 12, 2017 by MarkoH01
Posted December 12, 2017
No problem Marko...

Anyway while we are talking about redist, I have question @Galaxy Devs. I seen more recently that when using "Scan & Import" Galaxy can now detect the version of some newly released or updated games meaning the game won't try to auto-update now. My question is how does that work in relation to the needed redist? Will Galaxy automatically detect the redist is missing and force a verify / repair or will the user have to manually do this if the game doesn't work after import due to the missing redist? Let say I'm importing my games on a freshly installed copy of Windows.

I have also noticed a issue with this. For example, I imported Tempest and since it was recently updated Galaxy was automatically able to tell it was on it's latest version so it did not try to verify / repair it after import. The issue, however, was that the DLC for the game did not register in Galaxy as installed (ie no checkbox for it under settings) until I did a verify / repair manually.

As far as the redist I wish GOG would handle these like Steam, instead of installing them during installation... create a script that installs them when the user first goes to play the game. This will prevent redist from interrupting the download queue, which still happens sometimes.
Post edited December 12, 2017 by BKGaming
Posted December 13, 2017
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MarkoH01: Then maybe I am wrong here but I remember myself trying to figure out which redist exactly I needed for certain games or applications because they just would not run by simply using the newest one.
I've encountered many deeply broken "installers" on UNIX systems that would refuse to run unless, say, exactly Oracle Java 6.0u12 was installed. Fortunately, they're usually very easy to trick into installing against OpenJDK 8.latest or whatever you do have. ... That, and I've simply edited installers to remove the broken code when it was faster than trying to defeat it.

It's entirely possible you found a similarly broken installer on Windows. They're rare outside of really appalling installers for "enterprise" software like Crystal Reports, but I don't doubt that you could have found one. There's also no law of computer science that says a game developer can't hardcode a similarly stupid requirement directly into their game.

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MarkoH01: I also am pretty certain that I read somewhere on a microsoft support page that the redistributables are building up on each other .. hwatever that means.
I can only offer guesses.

The runtimes or their installers are not cumulative updates. Perhaps you saw a reference to a prerequisite of a runtime?

Out of all of the common or semi-common runtimes I keep track of: SlimDX requires .NET 2.0 or 4.0+ (depending on build) and XNA requires .NET 3.5+. I believe Silverlight requires .NET 4.0+, but I've never used or supported any non-Microsoft software that uses it.

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MarkoH01: Of course but I thought it would be obvious that I am always talking about a system in which these redistributables are missing because that is the point where the GOG installer also have to start.
As I've already explained to the developers, it's both unfair and irresponsible to penalize everyone who knows how to administrate and maintain a Windows system correctly. In fact, it's penalizing all of GOG's customers; Galaxy (and the stand-alone game installers) are putting your security at risk and wasting your disk space. I've sent them links to the critical security flaws in several outdated redist installers they're using, and I've been ignored.

Since GOG don't have or won't use the staff to ensure they're only distributing third-party code without publicly-known and -exploited vulnerabilities, the responsible thing to do is to note the extra dependencies and link to the places where the updated installers are available.
Posted December 13, 2017
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BKGaming: That is correct when talking about for example the MS Visual C++ Redist. You HAVE to have the specific redist that was used when the game was coded. Having just the newest one will not work which is why Galaxy installs them.

https://www.howtogeek.com/256245/why-are-there-so-many-microsoft-visual-c-redistributables-installed-on-my-pc/

I believe Galaxy will try to detect if the needed redist is installed and if so skip installing it again, but that may or may be a little buggy.
You two are talking about entirely different things. First: no, nothing "builds on" anything.

Yes, an app linked against the MSVC 2005 runtime won't work if you only have the MSVC 2008 redist installed, just like you have to install the x64 2008 runtimes for an x64 game.

HOWEVER, there are multiple releases of the 2005 redists; the 2008 redists; and so on.

Besides the x86 and x64 builds of each, Microsoft keep releasing code with security flaws (stop me if you've heard this story), so they periodically release newer builds of each runtime. There are about eight public releases of the 2005 runtime, and only one—the latest one—isn't afflicted by publicly-known flaws.

I have the latest releases of the MSVC 7, 8 (2005), 9 (2008), 10 (2010...), 11, 12, 13, and 14 runtimes installed; two each to cover x86 and x64 builds.

What GOG are doing is installing multiple copies of a single runtime. Example:

I start with the latest x86 and x64 MSVC 2005 and 2008 runtimes installed. That's four runtimes total. I install Galaxy, wait a few minutes, and look at installed software again. Now I have EIGHT runtimes installed, because Galaxy downloaded and installed old, known-insecure releases of the MSVC 2005 and MSVC 2008 runtimes.
Posted December 13, 2017
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aloishammer: snip
I'm pretty sure we aren't talking about different things but I'm only kind of following the discussion. Anyway, yes I know what you are talking about... and as noted in the linked article:

We have seen some advice floating around the internet suggesting that you can remove older versions of redistributables, leaving just the most recent from each major release (noted by year) in place. In other words, they suggest you could leave the latest 2012 redistributable in place and uninstall older 2012 versions. We’ve tested this and found it to be unreliable. It seems to work sometimes, but there’s no guarantee it will work for you. In my own limited test of three systems, it caused problems on one system where a couple of programs would no longer run.
This can still break games and cause them not to run depending on the redist in question and based on what I read. So yes there may be some security concerns and you may not think the risk is worth it but GOG has to cater to the common user which is non technical users so they will always default to doing what is best for them in order to play their games without issue as they are the majority of GOG users. So it's possible they may feel these outdated redist are needed for compatibility purposes or it could be a simple oversight.

I could be wrong but I think Steam does the same thing depending on which redist is bundled with the game... they don't give the user a choice for sure because they run a script when you first go to play a game which installs whatever redist are bundled with the game. There are ways around this of course, but it's not a built in option.
Post edited December 13, 2017 by BKGaming
Posted December 14, 2017
Not sure it's the newer version of the client (Version 1.2.31) or if it's something that occurred elsewhere that's just affecting the client. But I currently the Galaxy client is too big for my screen, and it won't let me re-size it when it's not maximized, and then when it is maximized a lot of items are off-screen and cannot be accessed. It also defaulted to full-screen rather than maximized, which is kind of another problem. I'm on a laptop with max resolution 1366 x 768, and the client is obviously quite a bit bigger than that, and even when I manage to get to the settings there's no option to adjust window size. Any suggestions would be appreciated

Edit:Well, never mind I guess. Changing the resolution down, pulled it out of full screen mode, and then maximizing it doesn't go full screen anymore. So I'm not sure what the issue was. I'll still appreciate any tips if anyone knows what happens in case it happens again, but its not really a big deal anymore
Post edited December 14, 2017 by Vyk
Posted December 14, 2017

We have seen some advice floating around the internet suggesting that you can remove older versions of redistributables, leaving just the most recent from each major release (noted by year) in place. In other words, they suggest you could leave the latest 2012 redistributable in place and uninstall older 2012 versions. We’ve tested this and found it to be unreliable. It seems to work sometimes, but there’s no guarantee it will work for you. In my own limited test of three systems, it caused problems on one system where a couple of programs would no longer run.
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BKGaming: This can still break games and cause them not to run depending on the redist in question and based on what I read.
Okay, again, systems administrator for 20 years.

What you're describing is not an issue I've ever personally experienced, or had to address for any user. There are very limited circumstances in which ABI compatibility breaks, and I know exactly when they happen: leaving out unrelated problems like file corruption or installer failures, it's possible to run into problems with runtime libraries that are not tightly controlled.

For example: OpenSSL on Windows. There's still some terrifying software out there which is compiled against the 0.9.8 branch for absolutely no good reason. (It reached EoL a long time ago. There's no support. Every release of OpenSSL prior to 1.0.0 has many known exploitable flaws. Using vulnerable crypto libraries for anything important is like sticking your hands into a Muffin Monster and trusting your life to the machine's inherent goodwill.)

1.0.0 and subsequent releases introduced hard API and thusly ABI breaks in order to fix portions of OpenSSL's security model. Mixing and matching 0.9.x and 1.0.0+ DLLs will break things instantly.

Also, some people apply custom patches to OpenSSL before compilation which might add or remove functions, and I've seen people strip function exports or play other games with the final executable images. In this case, it's impossible or nearly so to replace an outdated DLL without access to the source code the developer / publisher were working with.

... None of this applies to items like the MSVC runtimes. Microsoft do not ever allow custom builds into the wild.

I've been removing outdated runtimes—and DLLs from install directories—for years, on hundreds of system images and tens of thousands of systems because games developers are far from the only people to be sloppy with their installers. I've had a problem exactly never.

Library ABI flexibility on Windows is so weirdly permissive that I've extracted the ESE DLLs from an Exchange Server 2007 install source and used them to replace the corresponding preinstalled ESE DLLs on a Windows 7 system, just as a proof of concept. ... Among other things, the ESE runtime has been a critical part of the Windows cryptography subsystem since at least Windows XP. It services critical items like device driver (and other OS component) code signing. If you simply deleted the files, your system would stop booting.

I'm not relying on something someone said on a website once. I'm drawing on 20+ years' experience breaking and fixing Windows for the fun of it. If you know someone who's done something analogous to replacing critical Windows components with Exchange components and lived to tell the tale, I'd be interested in what they had to say about MSVC ABI breakage.
Posted December 15, 2017
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IIHectorII: So, a reply would be nice dear GOG team. The client is starting after like 15 to 30 minutes after launching it. I have this problem since the client updated the last time.

This doesn't seem like a minor problem, does it?
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Johny.: We can only help you if you send us your logs on http://mantis.gog.com/bug_report_page.php

Out of curiosity: How many games do you have installed?
I have ... ähem ... currently nearly three hundred GOG games installed. Galaxy also takes ages to start, around 15-30 minutes, like he reported. And also since the last update. Do you need more logs or do you already have enough information?
Posted December 15, 2017
Game time counter doesn't count anything. I have in 2 games with unlocked achievments with 0m time
Post edited December 15, 2017 by RetroMadman
Posted December 15, 2017
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Harzzach: I have ... ähem ... currently nearly three hundred GOG games installed. Galaxy also takes ages to start, around 15-30 minutes, like he reported. And also since the last update. Do you need more logs or do you already have enough information?
I have the same issue. Since the last update, the client takes up to half an hour to start and I only have a single game installed. Yesterday, it took just as long to apply a 3 MB patch to said game. Something is really, really wrong.
Post edited December 15, 2017 by cyruz1
Posted December 15, 2017
Sorry if this has already been discussed but by my searches I couldn't find yet a definitive answer or solution.

My issue is that GOG galaxy constantly wants to update at startup and ends up with an error stating there was an update problem. This is happening from a long time, on multiple computers with different galaxy versions and different antivirus software installed. I manually updated to the latest galaxy version but the issue persists. I can't find a pattern to point to the cause of this behavior. I was hoping this will fix by itself with time, but It doesn't seem to be the case.

Can't be that I'm the only person on this planet fighting this issue... on all my computers.
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General discussionGOG Galaxy - Official Discussion Thread(2661 posts)(2661 posts)
(2661 posts)