Hi. Got some questions regarding GOG 2.0. When you start a steam/uplay/origin game thru gog does it open the before mentioned launchers in the background as well?

Yes, it has to.:) I think I read they are working on a way to have it automatically close those launchers once you quit a game, but I'm not sure if they are or if it was a request.
Origin and Epic have a tenancy to take a while to load for me, so I'm not sure I'd like it to go over that every time.

GOG Galaxy would be awesome if it could be a local replacement for other launchers. Now i see no point in using it when it just opens other launchers. There is literally 0 advantage in using it. It just adds one more launcher instead of reducing all launchers to one.

Except that you have all other games on a single launcher, GOG needs to legally open the games via the other ones, but it saves you the trouble of looking through your multiple libraries.

I don’t know about any of the others, but I’m fairly certain that that would be impossible with Steam given how its APIs work. There’s probably some wiggle room with older titles that use Steam mostly for distribution or games that use things like DOSBox or ScummVM behind the scenes, but most stuff requires Steam be running (even if it’s in offline mode) to work. Steam plays a lot nicer here than Galaxy (seriously, why the HELL does Galaxy have to keep coming in to focus when you launch games through it?) so I’m OK with that.

Assuming Galaxy 2.0 can reliably manage games in 3rd party launchers without manual intervention, then being able to have all your games in the one place is still a pretty big advantage, but if you have to dick around manually then you may as well just run the game through it’s normal launcher.

It still isn't useful. It's just adding another launcher. If I want to play a game on steam then I open steam or open GOG Galaxy.. if I want to then play a game on Uplay I can either open uplay or click play on the game in GOG and it just does the same thing and opens said launcher lol

it's useless.

Well "useless" is clearly untrue. It shows your entire collection, regardless of launcher or store. You can organize them, categorize them, and (most importantly) launch any of them with ONE click. Yes, it has to open that launcher in the background in order for that game to run (in most cases at least), but you don't need to actually interact with the other launcher at all.

AND, it can optionally close the launcher after you've quit the game.

Those all sound like use cases to me.

What exactly do you actually WANT it to do?

I agree with gegezerg even tho I comprehend why they have to still open the other stores, but is not ideal! Is not radically different from having a shortcut for a non GOG game, like steam has for non steam games, they still show up on your library and you can tag them and all, is not different.
So we can't say, is fine let it stay like that, that is not how things improve for us the consumers.
Perhaps some day by entering in agreements with the other stores we will not need to have so many stores installed, lets hope they are able to pass above their differences.

You're right that the effect is not too different from adding non-Steam games to the launcher. However, this is done in an automated fashion, with metadata and images and grouping matching games. Plus, you see your whole library of uninstalled games, as well. Something you can't do on Steam.

Of course there is always room for improvement, but in the current scenario I think if I'm going to be supporting on store/launcher over another, it's the one that proudly fights for DRM-free games and open-API's.

(I can tell you no other store's launcher has a plugin API!)

And I applaud you for that.

It's terrific for organizing game libraries for launchers that don't offer that. I have an incredible amount of garbage on Twitch I've gotten for free. It was basically unusable because I had like 50 games with no way to organize them or even remind myself which ones I had most recently activated and hadn't tried yet. With Galaxy I can now mark 95% of my Twitch library as hidden and categorize ones I want to try out in a library category. Same thing for Epic; I have many free games (and some bought ones), and no ability at all in the Epic client to organize the library or hide the garbage. I do that in Galaxy now.

code = yes it can be done
legal = no it can't i.e, Gog is not allowed

It gave me free The Witcher 3 on my PC after integrating my PSN just now. So no, not entire useless now. lol