Like you said, it's noticable for some smaller game makers. For all the rest the only real impact those without a following have is to boost their own feelings of doing what one feels to be right.
A number of companies are doing just this. They point to the lesser sales and saying 'it's not because of DRM but because of pirates!'. I getting that many are liking the warm fuzzy feelings of doing what they feel is being right, but those acting like they can change anything easily without massive riches or influence are just fooling themselves.

Exactly this. It is being similar with those who buying SSD drives and other things to speed up OS and game loading times. Time saved can be better used elsewhere. Good luck trying to convince more die hard gog users, though.

Really depends on what game you're buying because not all are effective by it. But I doubt anything has changed with their ghost wrapper.

For example, Regiments starts up a little faster than its steam counterpart based on my testing. I posted the results in a thread about this some time ago. Additionally, The Thing: Remastered starts up without delay, while Super Woden GP does have a delay. By the way, both are great games, and they are some of the newest titles I have on GOG right now.

Not everyone lives there time based on ever second.

And too many wasting too much of it.

Thank you for the YouTube video. Seriously

No problem. Regardless of our stances gog could be garnering decent and easy PR if they asking the goldberg dev if they could put it in some gog games. Yet gog isn't doing such. Is it being more laziness or apathy I wonder?

Hasn't the developer stopped working on Goldberg? From what I read on forums, he will not be updating it anymore. I can also see several reasons why GOG might not ask to use it.

You are missing my point. They could likely getting permissions and implementing it plus other fixes with not much difficulty, and it would be bigger boon than the preservation program PR stunt they chose instead. Yet they do not. Comparing this to sites like zoom where I suggested fixes for a particular title and staff implemented them rapidly in updates.

Goldberg cannot make everything on Steam DRM-free, so how can it be better than just resolving some minor startup delays? The Steam Goldberg versions and GOG versions are no different besides the small delays.

It won't provide any more benefits to the GOG preservation program. Not like more games will magically start showing up on GOG because of Goldberg.


The best option would be for GOG to lay it's foot down and force developers to give them version with no Steam API. Any game without that starts up without delay.

You don't seem to think they can getting goldberg and other fixes but would bother to do this?

Which is why I mentioning goldberg and any other possible fixes gog could be getting. Enough of them put into gog game versions would be helping gog's image quite a bit. Also again you missing my point. Why doesn't gog bother doing any of this? And why can other stores including zoom do it and faster even with smaller resources? Putting down the pom poms and think about it awhile.

I doubt they want to be associated with someone who frequently mingles with well-known pirate site and is part of that scene.

I understand your point, but why would I have insights that only GOG knows? Perhaps they feel it's not an issue. GOG seems to have a good reputation outside of this forum, and it often appears to be the same few individuals who can’t stop complaining about GOG. Those who complain are usually the loudest. Doesn't mean there majority.

What is Zoom doing that is faster? They've been around for 10 years and currently have over 700 games, but none of them are high-quality or newer titles. Now, I see the bigger picture, haha.

I also doubt they will use Goldberg.

Although, i do not enjoy to see "Steam leftovers" on GOG games... because it is a GOG game not a Steam game... it is sometimes hard to avoid. Because for the publisher it is often simply to much troubles adapting the game to a true GOG interface for around 10-20% of the "market income" (worst case less than 10%; best case a bit above 20% i would say). Mainwhile Steam is responsible for probably 60-80% of the market income, dependable on game and on how many platforms they was releasing it.

Nonetheless, the main issue is not the wrappers causing a slower start up on many system... but the weak and slow systems itself. Instead of trying to blame the issue on the as well incapable system usually it is almost always "some external issue with the software... as almost any software is simply not optimized sufficiently for the own weak system".

Sure, i do totally stand in for a great optimization and for removing unnecessary bloat everywhere. This is the main reason a system like Nintendo Switch, which got barely more performance than a PS3 or Xbox360, can sometimes achieve amazing results no one would have guessed on such a weak system. Reasonable why so many gamers are totally in for one of the most successful systems ever... as it is providing some "counter force in favor of optimization instead of asking for near unlimited performance". No matter this true background... i still got the impression that many systems are simply way to weak and instead of trying to get ride of this issue by either improving the system or trying to get software with truly low demand... many gamers are still getting very demanding software and are blaming any performance issue on the software... almost never on the system... this was my observation at least.

Those people who got serious issues with GOG startup, perhaps exceeding 10 additional seconds of startup time... they may tell me their system specs (and the game affected) and perhaps we get even more insight here.

If people truly value their time and are willing to go to great lengths because of it... a performant system is always a great investment. Money is not a limited resource in theory... just in a practical way it is usually limited for most of us... time is limited for everyone, no matter the size of the moneybag. Yes i got me a T700 SSD and a up to date processor... not because i do not value my coins but i do value my time and my good time... even more. I do not care if anyone chose to be cheap or perhaps simply unable to be "fluid" on such terms... but in such a case either know the own lack of capabilities or at least not trying to blame other people who make... in their mind... valid investments with the accusation of "they are wasting their coins" or "you got to much coins to waste"... which is a very one sided view. I mean, i would be very proud if someone is telling me "i (you) got to much time"... if i could fully agree on this accusation... i would be very very very happy as a human... as i would be the most wealthy person on the planet, i feel.

And... most humans... they are such fools... they are WILLING to waste their time on a very low paid or simply crap job or perhaps tagging along with a crap person who is not very supportive and not with a high respect toward them... just because for the sake of "at least it works somehow". I guess a lot of us should raise their standards... on mutual terms, not on a one sided term. Sorry to be that offensive... usually i try to be way more gentle... i just had in mind to be extremely honest as a rather rare outbreak.

Ah yes, i do not support the common spelling "if the rich would share any coins with the poor, they may in a few years get rich again"... which is not entirely the case because it will create even more wealthy peoples if done so: Perhaps 80% is losing their money in a few years, yes as they do not understand the nature of wealth so it is leaving them very soon, but not 100% of them. So it is indeed helpful sharing any coins with the poor... so those who got their "natural power" will get it back very soon (according to their own expression) and those who was able to invest those coins, perhaps 20%, may evade the poverty... which is possible for many of us if they got some "basic capital" at some point. Indeed, i consider it true that around 80% of those not already wealthy... will never be able to become wealthy because they just lack any skill and any sense toward it... but just as i said... there are many of the poor ones who are different and can make something "out of it" if they ever get a realistic chance; the world is not black and white.

However... there is one thing that is not valid: Approaching this matter with a sense of hate or disrespect, and the worst case is ignorance... anything which is approached this way is almost doomed to fail, including wealth. I may have some "natural insight" because i live in one of the... per head... wealthiest countries of the world.

I recall a thread not so long ago that was discussing something along the lines that even if you're gaming offline, some GOG games still try to phone home and the delay is because one needs to wait for that connection attempt to timeout. If you're online, you won't notice this delay. Ideally, software should be written to check whether or not Galaxy is installed, and if not, there's no need to try to phone home.

Perhaps someone wants to try to test this with Cats Hidden in Italy. This is a game that has very low hardware requirements, but when I start it and nothing seems to happen, I often double-click the shortcut again thinking I've mis-clicked on it, only to discover that it's just slow starting. If someone else has a copy of this game and their gaming PC is online, I'd be interested to see whether they also experience this start-up delay.

I'm sure you do, and the reason I'm repeating some of what Brian said is to give a hint that many of us other than yourself do actually want to see the GOG store improve and see problems fixed in some ways. The extreme apathy addiction / 'shoot the messenger' knee-jerk responses here in response to almost any issue is not normal or healthy at all. And it certainly doesn't look very professional of GOG to add bugs to other developers games then walk away leaving them in unfixed for 6 years. If I had a game listed here I'd definitely think twice about adding it to the "GOG Preservation Program" giving them free reign to tweak at will if this is a reflection of the 'quality' of their 'fixes' and I had to take the flack for all the abandoned bugs unnecessarily added by a middleman reseller purely for the sake of their own 'branding'...

GOG added a fix that lets the wrapper read a config file (GalaxyConfig.json) and you can manually add an override to that "auth_timeout": 1 that can reduce the delay to just 1s. It only works on newer games through (that are 'aware' of the file to be able to read it), with 5-6 years worth of 2018-2023 releases with hard-coded Denuvo-like network hang startup delays remaining abandoned in a buggy state. But even then, some of those games affected have since received updates and the problem still persists in those, ie, GOG isn't even bothering to update their broken Galaxy toolkits they give to developers to integrate in existing games.

It does not seem like a common issue and not even sure there are at least 5 games i own (out of 400) affected by it. Yet if people are spreading their "issues" it sounds like almost every game is totally busted and they feel they need to use Steam or Goldberg all the time because of it... to say it blunt.

I actually only know 1 game out of my mind that is attempting to log into an account without any account available nor requested in the startup process, which is Stalker 2. However... this "failed to log" does not actually take long. The much bigger issue is the compilation of the shaders and sometimes even a failure "with warmup" as they say. There are much bigger issues there, but if the startup is not plagued by a shader-failure or a lengthy compilation... it will start up pretty quick, for me.

This game is still Beta at best... and it surely will need more than a year of bug fixing, no secret. However... ingame it runs pretty well so far.