Galaxy isn't optional, if you want all of the items you're entitled to for every game.

At least many "luddites" who dislike clients "put their money where their mouth is". You're the worst kind of hypocrite who continue to financially support the same thing you then spend pages whining about. " I'm angry that I'm being negatively affected by 3x layers of DRM that I continue to throw money at!" followed up by " The best thing GOG customers can do to support GOG is carry on buying from Steam!"- StingingVelvet, GOG Forum 2023. Take a chill pill dude and accept that just because you've lowered your personal expectations into the gutter doesn't mean everyone else here has too.

I don't get the Luddite argument.

Were the people who held off on buying Alexa/smart home devices Luddites too?

How about people who buy dumb watches instead of smart watches, are they Luddites?

How about people who prefer Windows 7 to Windows 11?

Or people who prefer Linux to Windows?

People who want to buy games outright instead of rent them as part of a subscription service?

People who buy their food at a supermarket instead of online?

People who research and buy only the games they want/have time to play instead of buying every single game?

The Luddites were a fringe movement, but I think you'll find a lot of well-informed customers here prefer offline installers - who knows why? Weird.

That reminds me you've posted what appears to be a solution to the broken user menu on January 5th. The post hasn't been acknowledged either on the forum or in private.

I don't think preferring to use the browser to download the offline installers is being a luddite. In fact, the browser has proven to me more reliable than Galaxy has with its broken update releases, connection issues, extra system resource used, concerns over security vulnerabilities and the like. The browser allows me to download offline installers, just as Galaxy would... only I'm limited to doing it one file at a time which imo is manageable (because I'm a patient man) and a fair compromise to using a rather poorly-developed OPTIONAL client.

Try not to be elitist, yeah?

I'd add not to annoy or disparage paying customers to becoming disgruntled non-paying customers to that list.

I agree that it should be continued if people use it but I also think they should allocate attention to it carefully because only they know how big of a section of their userbase uses it. I think not releasing TW3 or Cyberpunk on Linux was a big mistake because that community is more educated about DRM and gives more value to DRM-free games. But currently they're spreading themselves thin by trying to be too many things at once and I'd even say there isn't a unified idea about what they're trying to be.

GOG doesn't need to be a market leader, it has a place because DRM-free games have place. All it needs to do is just rise to the challenge of serving that niche role in a better way than how they're doing now. Hopefully they do so soon because I don't want to buy games and have to deal with 2 or more DRM hoops to play them.

True enough - GOG has tried to be too many things for its own good when it didn't really need to (I'd say things were just perfect when Galaxy 1.2 was around... client just needed some more polishing and they should have revived GOG Downloader, among a couple more adjustments here and there). Mistakes were made, which happens... but they were rarely compensated for.

One thing I'll never fully understand is why their Linux approach was so half-baked, considering the added value of that side of gaming in terms of DRM-Free mentality/reach. Yes, Linux was and remains a gaming niche, despite recent gains, but it's a small percentage that could have made an interesting difference for niche store such as GOG.

I would like to see an approach to make GOG games easily playable on Linux without having to resort to third party clients (like Heroic) or utilities (like Lutris), but at this point I am not too hopeful about it... especially since getting their own and only client to work properly under Windows seems too much of a challenge already - at least with their current resources (or lack thereof).

On a final note, I also agree GOG doesn't need to be a market leader, it's not what it exists for (even though it is a business). But it cannot also neglect customer experience too much, under the penalty of suffering the consequences later down the road... but CDPR seems okay with that - judging by the joke Cyberpunk was at launch, the reported u-turns during development and the way they handled it all, they seem okay with a lot of things.

Speaking about myself, I rarely buy new games on GOG or even care that much nowadays. And there's many reasons for that:

- No communication: I don't know what to expect of GOG's future and I don't feel confortable buying games on a platform where its future is uncertain;

- No Linux client: There were plans for GOG Galaxy for Linux. As we can see from awesome projects such as Minigalaxy, Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher, building a Linux client for GOG is not rocket science. And despite many people wanting to install the games by their installers, I find that there's added value in having access to cloud saving, social features and achievements. As a Linux user, GOG doesn't provide me those added features, while there's other platform that does provide them.

- GOG Galaxy is a mess: There were many ways where Galaxy could have been made really awesome and it looks like they chose the poorest decision by making it a client where you could launch all your games - it doesn't work well for many platforms and I still cannot see how GOG could benefit from it. There were many different and better features that could have been added such as:

1) Mod Workshop: if instead of building a client where you could merge all your gaming platforms, it would be way better a client where you could merge mod workshops (such as Nexus and Moddb) and download and manage the mods from there. Also, the Skyrim release on GOG was big missed opportunity for launching a feature like this. Also, having a list of "suggested mods for compatibility and quality of life" for older games would be a big feature for people who want to get into Good Old Gaming.

2) Custom cloud saves: for games where GOG has not implemented cloud saves, It would be awesome if the client would allow us to connect to any cloud provider (such as OneDrive, GDrive or pCloud) and select the folders to be synced after the gaming session ends. It could even suggest the folders to be synced based on PCGamingWiki.

3) Linux support: if GOG does not know how to deal with a Linux client, at least make some deal with Heroic or Minigalaxy, in order to let them use the achievements and cloud saves API and have a full unnofficial GOG client on Linux.


- The store gets worse by the time.

- Lots of games with crippled features (such as Shadow of War) or outdated.

- GOG's game database is not modular. Example: if I buy Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight Soundtrack Edition, they are viewed by GOG as 2 completely different games. Why not behave as Steam and buying Hollow Knight Soundtrack Edition would be getting Hollow Knight + Hollow Knight soundtrack. This is one of the same examples, there's more such as in Dying Light (Definite edition vs Normal edition) and Kingdom Come (with the Royal edition vs Normal version).


As someone who likes to have its games DRM-free, I really appreciate GOG's work. But it is becoming really hard to justify buying games on GOG when DRM-free is the only distinguishing feature. It could be an astonishing platform if it returned to its roots and upped its game on dealing with old games with quality of life features that you cannot find anywhere else.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if GOG ends up closing down within the next couple of years, I hope it's not the case, but the fact that these days they don't seem to interact in the forums much & ignore threads with questions that could use a response, while at the same time posting threads about new sales & releases isn't a good sign.

The emails they send with constant codes for discounts pretty much just come off as spam.

The customers don't feel listened to & GOG doesn't seem to be trying to fix it.

I understand that they tried things like Galaxy to try & modernize GOG & bring it in line with how Steam works, but the thing is, most of the userbase isn't interested, devs aren't bringing their early access games or multiplayer games here to make use of it, yet GOG doesn't seem to want to hear it. They've moved the offline installers more out of view to promote Galaxy, but most users don't care for Galaxy & just want Offline installers front & centre.

There's constant stories of devs trying to make their games available on here, but GOG tells them that they're not suitable for what GOG customers want, the problem being that the same customers are the one's complaining because these games won't be made available on GOG.

The last year or so release wise just doesn't seem as strong, where as for a while there, plenty of newer favourites were being released (EA, Square Enix, Konami etc)

I honestly feel that if they just had've focused on building a large catalog of DRM free games, both old + newer, then they'd probably be in a stronger position with an awesome catalogue. but instead they're a jack of all trades with poor communication.

The one plus is at least they haven't let the store become riddled with shovelware.

Really? I felt last year was one of there better years releasing games. I guess some people will never be happy.
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Are you telling people who buy from GOG to F themselves?

It sound like you want steam but without the DRM. I can understand that for sure.
I remember reading article about them pulling GOG staff away to work on game development for CD Red.

At no point in his post did Warupt mention anything that has remotely to do with "steam but without DRM".
If they really were "quality of life features that you cannot find anywhere else", they wouldn't be features you could find on Steam now, would they?

All the things he mentioned is just what GOG used to offer before they changed into ... this.

I think it's just difficult to balance out the existence of a store like this, resources are certainly limited and CDPR is having to make choices about where to dedicate those resources. I don't know how their balance sheet looks, but I imagine it's tight and they just aren't able to do everything they would like. I doubt they are not aware or don't care about a number of the issues referenced on this thread, they just aren't able to address it, either themselves or to get games publishers to address it.

Any examples of this? I only recall staff members being polite and apologetic.

I remember a suggestion to have 24-hour forum coverage to combat the spam issue ruffled some feathers. But I think that may have been misunderstood as a request to have employees working around the clock, rather than recruiting volunteer moderators from different time zones.