I am sure plenty of people here like the convenience of having Galaxy around (I am one of them, even though I didn't start buying here because of clients) - and frankly, Galaxy 1.2 was a simple thing that worked well for the most part... Galaxy 2.0, on the other hand, was a ridiculous idea from the beginning, especially the way it was managed - the client to rule them all... lol. Guess they missed out on the part where that eventually didn't end that well for Sauron.

I do, however, strongly agree on the GOG Downloader revival - it should have never been killed in the first place. For as long as they keep the non-galaxy users with a less convenient experience regarding game downloads and whatnot, their "galaxy is entirely optional" stance is not very credible. It's optional, alright if you want to have a harder time downloading your games.

I say keep Galaxy around for those who want it...but keep it simple, no fuss, like the previous Galaxy was. Give others the option of using GOG Downloader. Fix the glaring issues with the store and user experience that have been piling up for years now.

Then everybody (or almost everybody) wins - and perhaps GOG benefits even more from it, seeing as then it's possible for users to actually talk about the platform without having to say "oh, yes, it's DRM-Free, which is great... but the rest is broken and neglected"

As said before... this market is a very tough nut to crack and while it's not realistic to expect GOG to suddenly claim major market share (if ever), the current situation does them no favours at all. Not to mention that, more importantly, it might actually even drive some people away.

In many cases, it is just stuff that was never done from the beginning of GOG's existence. So not exactly something that has become corrupted and rotted. You can claim GOG neglected to eventually do these things, but I guess they have just had more pressing priorities, and not enough staff and money and probably expertise, certainly in some cases. You could also argue, that they have gotten away with things so far.

Like most members here, I wish it wasn't so, but their survival for as long as possible, as a DRM-Free store is the most important thing, followed by good games and pricing.

I suspect, that many things weren't done in the beginning, which would have made it easier to do them and then keep up, because even GOG saw themselves as an experiment to not put too much effort and expense into ... and then later it became too much work and cost, due to good growth and new expectations and increasing demands.

GOG have always seemed to be chasing their tail, and even at times seeming close to failing only propped up by profits from other CDPR sectors.

Chasing their tail like a dingo?

I agree with the text. I'm especially worried about support.
I have not received a response to any of the tickets

I do have to say this does feel quite true. Perhaps sometimes due to some of their own misguided decisions and other times simply because this market and consumer awareness are what they are... but true nonetheless.

A small update of sorts:
• Another "NSFW" game release and this time they accidentally included nudity in their news image.
• Clownski_ stopped by 2 days ago to moderate a post here. Meanwhile, the GOG Galaxy forum is still littered with spam from March 10th, and even the spam report thread itself has a spam post from 5 days ago. There are 4 staff members tasked with forum moderation, in addition to 2 volunteer moderators. I think that speaks volumes for priorities here.
• ponczo_ posted the usual "working on it, no ETA, sorry" form response 3 days ago regarding the broken Discounted wishlist filter.

When things do get fixed around here,
• It took over a month to replace the corrupt offline installers for Metro Exodus - Sam's Story DLC. There's also a thread that tracks outdated offline installers versus their GOG Galaxy counterparts, but I don't know if there's really that much of a delay until those get updated.
• The 0 games on profile issue was fixed after nearly 2 months. Except the only way to fix it is to add something to your library, and at least one support agent wasn't aware.

Yes, I don't think this sort of thread or any other form of feedback reaches the people in charge. That's why you get completely out of touch efforts to bring new people to a fundamentally broken store. I don't remember how many times I've seen new users who immediately lost access to their accounts. That's because the site doesn't send you a verification message at signup and they'd mistyped the e-mail address.
Does anyone remember that lengthy survey from a while back? They were probing for interest in subscription schemes and such. They very clearly see their bottom line being impacted, but they have no interest in fixing what's broken.
The general impression I got is that they're critically understaffed. Then again, see the top of this post.
Bingo. I don't expect GOG to go toe to toe with titans like Steam or Epic anytime soon, if ever. It's an uphill battle for many reasons not worth getting into.
What worries me is the vicious cycle at play here. Broken store/launcher -> potential new customers repulsed; existing customers less likely to buy -> decreasing sales -> games less likely to be released and updated -> even fewer sales -> staff cutbacks -> store breaks even more -> and so on. For some time now, I've seen forum veterans repeatedly say they feel like GOG is circling the drain.

Edit: forgot to attach the images.

This is, I believe, the major reason (beyond also apparent management issues) why things stay broken for so long.
It was known they scaled things down after the financial fiasco a couple of years ago (and perhaps the fiasco that was Galaxy 2.0 in relation to the investment made), but it's now very apparent just how large that scaling down was.

At this point I don't know whether feedback in the forums gets to the people in charge... or if they simply choose to ignore it because they know exactly how things are and why... and both options are not exactly great.

On the bright side, they fixed the Blade of Darkness issue in a few days. From my experience, I have seen some improvement from GOG regarding updating games and correcting some problems. I was surprised when GOG took the time to update Dark Reign for windows 10/11.

But it's like they have one guy in a dark room that works on the website unsupervised. Even with the lack of communications from GOG, they read are post. So thank you for making this thread Ice_mage.

We can hope for the best but prepare for the worse. I am not talking just about GOG.

Maybe GOG needs to bring in consultant? lol

As long as the work conditions are as bad as the Glassdoor reviews make them out to be (low pay, bigotry among colleagues, communication issues), I don't expect the understaffing problem to improve anytime soon.

Yet it is, because using a website for large game downloads and libraries is archaic and dumb, and using Galaxy as a library tool and offline installer downloader is not DRM whatsoever.

Literally the only reason not to abandon the website method at all is computers which for various reasons cannot use Galaxy. Steam would tell those users to go jump off a cliff, but I'm glad GOG caters to them. Still... want a modern method, use the freaking app and stop being a Luddite.

Removing abandoned games instead of adding new ones. Outerverse, still containing bugs its developers was aware of, problems he blamed on customers' hardware, moved on to develop a new game:

Tbjbu2: Hey, I did my best to make the game as good as possible, but now I'v moved to other projects, so it will not be receiving any farther updates as it is in a stable state. Personally I am happy with the state of the game. Feel free to give it a try and refund if you do not like it. There are no critical bugs that I am aware of. The game was in development for over a year, but sold very little so it does not make sense for me to continue updating.

His new project is called Grand Emprise: Time Travel Survival which I hope GOG will not sell whenever it is going to be released.

Plane Mechanic Simulator and ban of publisher PlayWay S.A., MovieGames S.A. and a few other S.A. companies still allowed to sell their games here.
Soul Saga
Snowtopia
and many others I don't even know of.

Forcing publishers and developers to release updates, patches and DLC in a timely manner. Thanks to new EU directives we got an absolute right and GOG a duty to make sure we receive support, games are maintained and information, news and updates are provided.

This might help to attract new customers.

Let's not forget about scripts like gogrepo.py that automate much of the game archival that GOG allows for.

Besides, does Galaxy offer backup installer downloads for past versions and beta channels of games?

I am fed up with your persistent nonsense.

The galaxy client has been consistently advertised as optional.

Agree, I never use it to play my games. It's great for downloading multiple and big sized games.

And it is optional, and my post said it should remain optional, so not sure what this response is even to.

If you want a better and more full featured experience, use the app built to manage and download GOG games. Can't install it for some reason? GOG has a website backup for you. Won't install it because you're a weirdo who thinks an app is inherently evil? Go touch grass.