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GOG Announces Open Beta For New Game Distribution Platform
New submitter Donaithnen writes: Like many geeks, I'm against the idea of DRM in general and have championed GOG.com's DRM-free approach to selling games online. Yet like many geeks, I've also often succumbed to the temptation of Steam because of the convenience of tracking, installing, and playing my PC game purchases through the launcher (not to mention the compulsion of collecting achievements, and watching the total playtime for my favorite games (to my occasional dismay). Now, GOG has announced the open beta for GOG Galaxy, an entirely optional launcher to allow those who want (and only those who want) to have all the same features when playing GOG games.
'Cause Steam integration for multiplayer is a pretty serious upgrade from the days of the good old Gamespy server search program.
I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but multiplayer is one of the features listed in the FAQ. They also have "Game inviting & joining" listed as coming soon, but i'm not sure what exactly the difference is between that and regular multiplayer is.
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The Steam Overlay is its biggest selling point in my book, and the only reason i keep using steam chat.
I know its a big pile of shit underneath though, as ive tried reversing it before.
Oh how i wish Valve open sourced it, or at least added some form of plugin support, so i could put whatever i wanted there.
Crossplay-enabled games offer online play between GOG and Steam. Because where you buy your games shouldn't prevent you from playing with friends.
Cross-play doesn't require any setup or configuration. Steam users won't need to create GOG.com accounts or install GOG Galaxy, while GOG.com users won't need to create Steam accounts. Just log in, launch your game, and start playing online!
That is the killer feature, IMHO. I was scrolling through expecting to just ignore this like I did the downloader, but that actually provides something of value above what you can do with the website.
Troll cleanup requested in aisle 5, please.
The main page of the GOG website doesn't explain what GOG stands for. Is it an acronym? For what?
Yep. With the release of this unneeded and unwanted crap launcher bullshit, gog.com has now lost me as a customer.
Time to find another ethical place to buy my games.
It was an acronym at first. However after they started releasing newer games (first among those being their own "Witcher" games) they stopped using the old name and just go by "GOG" or "GOG.com" now.
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Did you somehow miss this part of the summary? "an entirely optional launcher"
What's "unethical" about it?
Really? You're upset that they're releasing an _optional_ tool? If they were dropping the ability to download DRM-free installers for the games and forcing you to use the the launcher instead then i would be upset too. But that's not what's happening at all, so i'm confused as to why you're in such a bother.
While I don't have many games from GOG (I have no qualms with Steam and a huge backlog already), this could be worthwhile, especially if they beat out Origin and UPlay in the quality department. Doubly so if they can match Steam Sales. I put my name in for a beta invite and hope it goes well.
I can't find it in the announcement, but I read somewhere else that part of GOG Galaxy will be downloading the installers for games to your computer, so you can install them outside Galaxy or if the service ever terminates.
There are plenty of games even without steam. Many titles aren't possible, but there are a shitload of them, so there are plenty of good ones that aren't online, online activation or other bollocks DRM.
They can drop the 'optional' part at any time without warning.
If you care, then make sure to save the installers for posterity. If they ever do institute DRM, which I doubt will happen but hey whatever, you'll still have the DRM-free installers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And any other company could stop providing whatever it is you want at any time without warning as well. I'm not sure how switching from one company that could potentially screw you over (but isn't doing so right now and promises they won't in the future) to another company that could potentially screw you over (but isn't doing so right now and promises they won't in the future) is going to accomplish anything.
Well, by all means let's base our decisions on what someone is technically capable of doing and not what past behavior suggests they're likely to do.
Other than the lack of DRM, is that pretty much everything on there is good.
I've said before, GoG is like walking through a well curated museum, steam is like walking past an open sewer. As long as they don't succumb to the tide of community greenlight, paid early access, open beta indie crap that clogs up steam, they can do what they like.
You don't have to use the launcher. Even with Steam you don't need their crappy launcher (you can't use the launcher for things like Skyrim if you want to use the script extender).
True, GOG can't retroactively add DRM to games you already have purchased and downloaded.
But they could issue an update through their new updater launcher which adds DRM. The launcher will become an artificial requirement because they won't want to provide support for people not using it.
The release of this software makes me question GOG for the first time.
Yeah, you only got stabbed. Be thankful that you didn't get shot.
"The DRM passed to Gabe, who had this one chance to destroy evil forever, but the hearts of men are easily corrupted. And the power of DRM has a will of its own. It betrayed Gabe, to the death of consumer rights. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And from the year two thousand and three, consumer freedoms passed on only to GoG. Until, when chance came, DRM ensnared a new bearer. DRM came to the creators of GoG, who took it and swore it would be optional, and but as with all others it will inevitably consume them. DRM will give to GoG unnatural power over consumers. For as long as they hold such power it will poison their minds; and in the gloom of an admin's cave, it waits. Darkness creeps back into the filefolders of the world. Rumor grows of a shadow in the C:\, whispers of a nameless fear, and one day DRM will perceive: Its time has now come. "
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The Game Boy Color version of Daikatana actually didn't suck. So perhaps what they needed to do was repackage the GBC game and wrap it up in one of those newfangled hi-res emulators that replaces each of the game's 8x8 pixel tiles with a redrawn high-res 32x32 pixel tile. (See "HiSMS".) This would blow the game up to a 640x576 window.
And that analogy makes sense how?
Except no one got stabbed, not even metaphorically.
And you can always keep the original installers on an external hard drive that only gets plugged in when you want to install the game. They "flick the switch", you say "fuck off", uninstall their shite, and go back to playing the game how it was meant to played.
I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight, it's giving you comprehension problems.
Ehh.. you know most of the games on G.O.G. will never get an update anymore do you?
On top of that - all updates go in your game library, that can be downloaded straight without any "updater" in sight..
And - to be honest - I do not expect they would make that 90 degrees U-turn. DRM-free is one of the fundamentals that people buy on G.O.G. for. If they introduce DRM for all their games they are not only facing an complete outrage from their consumers (the Steam payed-mods debacle would be an minor hickup in comparisation), but it could finish them completely. Why should people buy anything from G.O.G. anymore? They would not have any advantage any more over other platforms like Steam.
But they could issue an update through their new updater launcher which adds DRM.
One of their core ideologies is to be DRM-free. Breaking that promise would upset a lot of customers, so it's unlikely that they are going to do it.
I've been avoiding GOG for purchases simply because their downloader was/is horrible. I had a Witcher update that required me to download the entire game install all over again in multiple installer files. No proper launcher, no proper game library, just a mess.
Maybe it's time to look into GOG again.
*crackle* Dispatching cleanup module. *crackle*
But they could issue an update through their new updater launcher which adds DRM.
Thus eliminating the main reason why people would want to use their service over Steam in the first place ?
Not true - it's simple enough to add an entry to Steam to launch Skyrim with SKSE.
And - to be honest - I do not expect they would make that 90 degrees U-turn.
That's pretty hard to do, unless you're driving on a hypercube.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
DRM-free is one of the fundamentals that people buy on G.O.G. for.
To play devil's advocate, so was the absence of regional pricing, and yeah, when they went back on that, there was a hell of a shitstorm.
To play devil's advocate, so was the absence of regional pricing, and yeah, when they went back on that, there was a hell of a shitstorm.
More accurately, it was the absence of regional prices higher than the US ones (such as the 1 Dollar = 1 Euro conversion commonly found on Steam and other sites). Cheaper regional prices make sense in countries where not enough people could afford regularly spending $60 on a video game, and most of them would just pirate it instead.
They *still* haven't implemented compressed downloads. During the Alpha, that was understandable, but come on now.
Like many humans, I like air. Like many pizzas, I go in your oven.