No. Please don't. Contribute to something like Heroic Launcher instead. Don't create something new just for GOG. Help make the existing tools better. It'll mean GOG has to do less work, and the programs people are already using will get better. Or even just sponsor Heroic so they can send more time we can working on it themselves.
They're not creating something new. They're taking their existing tool (which - for all its flaws - is still far ahead of Heroic in many ways), improving it further, and changing it to also work on Linux.
If they then go add additional features like wine integration to that tool to make it overlap more with Heroic is something we're all assuming, but not actually a given.
Linux userspace is defined by fragmentation. Linux users can't even unify on a distro, such that significant swathes of software are incompatible for some users despite everyone using the same kernel. In that environment, and also just in general, why is anybody obligated to contribute to a specific existing project rather than building their own?
If you see it form the point of view of a Linux user it's more fragmentation, but if you look at it from the point of view of a gamer it's less fragmentation. Guess who their target audience is?
Everyone in the linux world insists on fragmentation, though? It's a part of what makes it great and a mess at the same time.
And what of it? Every time a for profit company uses open source they'll either create a closed fork, and if they can't they'll create closed source modules for it.
I'm not saying it's bad to wish for companies to support FOSS, I'm just saying it's an unrealistic expectation to have.
Alternatively, work on developing protocols for game launchers instead. Get the Heroic Launcher devs and devs from other launchers to work on a common interface.
I'm very hopeful that Linux gaming will save the open PC desktop despite big tech is coming to destroy it. Or at least keep PCs alive for another decade. Gamers are still a huge factor as hardware customers.
GOG creating a Linux launcher and Steam Box with SteamOS coming out soon should benefit PC users in general not just gamers since Microslop sees Windows like a social experiment where they can test AI on unsuspecting lusers, as an ad platform and a store front now.
Hopefully they'll somehow support Proton and Valve devices. Trying to run older windows-only games bought on GOG with launchers like Heroic is a bit of a hit or miss, despite the Steam releases of the same games having somehow a bigger chance of working out of the box. I guess there are some weird differences between the default Proton Runtime and the proton-ge/wine-ge builds.
A lot of hate in the comments, I think it's great that companies are in a position where they think it makes sense financially to support Linux as a target platform.
They're just trying to ride the wave of Valve's deck (and they will fail). The fact is that, since I bought the Steam Deck, I bought less from GOG and more from Valve.
And this won't change a thing: it doesn't matter if they make a Linux-native frontend to the horrible GOG Galaxy. I just want my games to launch as seamlessly as they do from Valve's UI, not yet another launcher that I have to launch on top of Valve's system UI. I am already doing that with Heroic Games Launcher, which is far better than whatever they will concoct in-house and supports many other stores.
That's very nice to hear.
But diffuclt to beat valve here, they are actively contributing to drivers and wine. When you buy even just windows software from steam you are helping funding that.
"GOG GALAXY is a long-lived product with a large and complex C++ codebase." Also known as a shitshow. Hopefully the new engineer(s) will be encouraged to at least add some tests and refactor things to stay sane.
No mention of a license, though. I guess it'll stay closed source.
Not quite. You can use Galaxy to download the offline installers (or just do that through the website), but when you install a game through Galaxy, it downloads a special build which it just copies to the right location, without running a separate installer.
The running game can also call out to Galaxy and unlock, or not unlock, ingame content based on what it hears back. It's pretty difficult to imagine a definition of "digital rights management" that doesn't include this.
Many games with multiplayer features require Galaxy for those multiplayer features. You can consider this DRM-equivalent if you want. However, every singleplayer game on GOG will work without Galaxy installed, and that singleplayer gameplay will be completely DRM-free in every possible way. (That's at least 99.6% of the games on GOG, but eyeballing the 22 games which don't specify that they're singleplayer games, most of them simply have incomplete metadata, so it's really 99.9% of them.)
Off the top of my head Crime Cities on launch forced me to use Galaxy to play it. I vividly remember this because the game also ran like complete crap.
Galaxy can be required for multiplayer aspects in games, but if what you say is true for the singleplayer part of the game, GOG will consider it a bug, and will get it fixed.
There's nothing in the Crime Cities GOG forum about this, nor in the various tracking threads in the main forum, and generally GOG users are extremely sensitive about anything which even reeks of forcing Galaxy, so I'd strongly expect any issue to be known.
I've seen cases where the developer implemented a bad online check, so that if you blocked the program from accessing the internet while the OS reported being online, the game would hang or crash, but being fully offline would work. Could it be that something like that was at play here? Oh, or that you simply picked the wrong installer for the game, and thus ran the Galaxy-installer rather than the offline installer?
I think too it can be misleading since on Windows the default LNK shortcut that is created after the game installation launches Galaxy with arguments instead of being a path to the direct game EXE (which works entirely without Galaxy and how I run games).
They do this to push Galaxy for convenience I suppose as most are used to clients that handle updates but it can be confusing if some wonder why for instance their offline installer shortcut opened Galaxy instead.
To be clear: if you buy Disco Elysium on GOG, download the "offline game installer" without using Galaxy, install it, and run the game on a desert island, it will work (the network requests fail open). But if you try to run the game after removing the bundled dylib/DLL, it will not.
Why do Galaxy-free games ship with a mandatory dependency on Galaxy?
If we have DRM with some private key, then I guess your idea is I download the game files and some private key and that allows me to run the game.
If I can send you the private key and the game and it allows you to run the game with no further inputs, then the DRM is trivially broken (even without open source).
If it does some online check, then if the source is open we can easily make a version that bypasses the online check.
If there is some check on the local PC (e.g. the key only works if some hardware ID is set correctly), we can easily find out what it checks, capture that information, package it, and make a new version of the launcher that uses this packaged data instead of the real machine data.
If you use a private key to go online and retrieve more data, having it be open source makes it trivial to capture that data, package it, and write a new version of the launcher that uses that packaged data.
Basically, DRM requires that there is something that is not easy to copy, and it being open source makes it a lot easier to copy.
In my experience, Galaxy works no better than a web app, unfortunately. Similarly laggy and lacks the snappiness you'd normally associate with a native app.
No. Please don't. Contribute to something like Heroic Launcher instead. Don't create something new just for GOG. Help make the existing tools better. It'll mean GOG has to do less work, and the programs people are already using will get better. Or even just sponsor Heroic so they can send more time we can working on it themselves.
They're not creating something new. They're taking their existing tool (which - for all its flaws - is still far ahead of Heroic in many ways), improving it further, and changing it to also work on Linux.
If they then go add additional features like wine integration to that tool to make it overlap more with Heroic is something we're all assuming, but not actually a given.
A lot of words for "yes they will insist on fragmentation"
Linux userspace is defined by fragmentation. Linux users can't even unify on a distro, such that significant swathes of software are incompatible for some users despite everyone using the same kernel. In that environment, and also just in general, why is anybody obligated to contribute to a specific existing project rather than building their own?
Why does everyone think I want to rehash an argument that can be summarized in a word?
If you see it form the point of view of a Linux user it's more fragmentation, but if you look at it from the point of view of a gamer it's less fragmentation. Guess who their target audience is?
Guess what has been serving those gamers, actually I'll be kind: Heroic.
Everyone in the linux world insists on fragmentation, though? It's a part of what makes it great and a mess at the same time.
And what of it? Every time a for profit company uses open source they'll either create a closed fork, and if they can't they'll create closed source modules for it.
I'm not saying it's bad to wish for companies to support FOSS, I'm just saying it's an unrealistic expectation to have.
... and I'm concurring with the threadstarter. They could do nothing, donate to Heroic, or this.
We both know the arguments. The word serves us well.
Alternatively, work on developing protocols for game launchers instead. Get the Heroic Launcher devs and devs from other launchers to work on a common interface.
I'm very hopeful that Linux gaming will save the open PC desktop despite big tech is coming to destroy it. Or at least keep PCs alive for another decade. Gamers are still a huge factor as hardware customers.
GOG creating a Linux launcher and Steam Box with SteamOS coming out soon should benefit PC users in general not just gamers since Microslop sees Windows like a social experiment where they can test AI on unsuspecting lusers, as an ad platform and a store front now.
Hopefully they'll somehow support Proton and Valve devices. Trying to run older windows-only games bought on GOG with launchers like Heroic is a bit of a hit or miss, despite the Steam releases of the same games having somehow a bigger chance of working out of the box. I guess there are some weird differences between the default Proton Runtime and the proton-ge/wine-ge builds.
If you have steam installed on the same machine, you can use proton runtimes from steam already.
On the upside, this might mean I'll buy more stuff from GOG again. Steam+Proton is just so darn convenient.
I always make sure to not use the GoG downloader just download the game.
I don't need a client with your branding all over it, that has socials and my library and all engagement bait like that.
I figure it's one step away from putting the DRM back on so you have to use the launcher to get a game from GOG.
Just let me buy games and then shut up.
A lot of hate in the comments, I think it's great that companies are in a position where they think it makes sense financially to support Linux as a target platform.
They're just trying to ride the wave of Valve's deck (and they will fail). The fact is that, since I bought the Steam Deck, I bought less from GOG and more from Valve.
And this won't change a thing: it doesn't matter if they make a Linux-native frontend to the horrible GOG Galaxy. I just want my games to launch as seamlessly as they do from Valve's UI, not yet another launcher that I have to launch on top of Valve's system UI. I am already doing that with Heroic Games Launcher, which is far better than whatever they will concoct in-house and supports many other stores.
Why is the launcher not at least public source? GOG's value add is the service it provides, not the specialness of its launcher.
Hopefully they will pursue a container/Flatpak native system but probably not!
That's very nice to hear. But diffuclt to beat valve here, they are actively contributing to drivers and wine. When you buy even just windows software from steam you are helping funding that.
"GOG GALAXY is a long-lived product with a large and complex C++ codebase." Also known as a shitshow. Hopefully the new engineer(s) will be encouraged to at least add some tests and refactor things to stay sane.
No mention of a license, though. I guess it'll stay closed source.
> I guess it'll stay closed source.
It's a DRM implementation. It has to stay closed source.
There is no DRM on GOG.
https://www.gog.com/blog/what-exactly-is-drm-in-video-games-...
I guess depends what you consider DRM, some games appear to have problems
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/label_the_games_that_have_...
Famously so. The main method of deployment was an offline installer before they made Galaxy, and AFAIK Galaxy just downloads and runs the installer.
No, it doesn't use offline installers. Source: worked on that in the past.
https://content-system.gog.com/
Not quite. You can use Galaxy to download the offline installers (or just do that through the website), but when you install a game through Galaxy, it downloads a special build which it just copies to the right location, without running a separate installer.
The running game can also call out to Galaxy and unlock, or not unlock, ingame content based on what it hears back. It's pretty difficult to imagine a definition of "digital rights management" that doesn't include this.
Last I checked, there is loads of DRM on GOG and most of the games that have it, force you to use Galaxy.
Many games with multiplayer features require Galaxy for those multiplayer features. You can consider this DRM-equivalent if you want. However, every singleplayer game on GOG will work without Galaxy installed, and that singleplayer gameplay will be completely DRM-free in every possible way. (That's at least 99.6% of the games on GOG, but eyeballing the 22 games which don't specify that they're singleplayer games, most of them simply have incomplete metadata, so it's really 99.9% of them.)
Really? What games are those? I've not encountered a single one :/
Off the top of my head Crime Cities on launch forced me to use Galaxy to play it. I vividly remember this because the game also ran like complete crap.
Galaxy can be required for multiplayer aspects in games, but if what you say is true for the singleplayer part of the game, GOG will consider it a bug, and will get it fixed.
There's nothing in the Crime Cities GOG forum about this, nor in the various tracking threads in the main forum, and generally GOG users are extremely sensitive about anything which even reeks of forcing Galaxy, so I'd strongly expect any issue to be known.
I've seen cases where the developer implemented a bad online check, so that if you blocked the program from accessing the internet while the OS reported being online, the game would hang or crash, but being fully offline would work. Could it be that something like that was at play here? Oh, or that you simply picked the wrong installer for the game, and thus ran the Galaxy-installer rather than the offline installer?
I think too it can be misleading since on Windows the default LNK shortcut that is created after the game installation launches Galaxy with arguments instead of being a path to the direct game EXE (which works entirely without Galaxy and how I run games).
They do this to push Galaxy for convenience I suppose as most are used to clients that handle updates but it can be confusing if some wonder why for instance their offline installer shortcut opened Galaxy instead.
Yet the standalone offline installed games won't run without libgalaxy.dylib (Mac) or Galaxy64.dll (Windows) which is responsible for outbound connections to https://galaxy-log.gog.com and https://insights-collector.gog.com?
To be clear: if you buy Disco Elysium on GOG, download the "offline game installer" without using Galaxy, install it, and run the game on a desert island, it will work (the network requests fail open). But if you try to run the game after removing the bundled dylib/DLL, it will not.
Why do Galaxy-free games ship with a mandatory dependency on Galaxy?
Why? Can't DRM be implemented in open source, and only have private keys kept secret?
If we have DRM with some private key, then I guess your idea is I download the game files and some private key and that allows me to run the game.
If I can send you the private key and the game and it allows you to run the game with no further inputs, then the DRM is trivially broken (even without open source).
If it does some online check, then if the source is open we can easily make a version that bypasses the online check.
If there is some check on the local PC (e.g. the key only works if some hardware ID is set correctly), we can easily find out what it checks, capture that information, package it, and make a new version of the launcher that uses this packaged data instead of the real machine data.
If you use a private key to go online and retrieve more data, having it be open source makes it trivial to capture that data, package it, and write a new version of the launcher that uses that packaged data.
Basically, DRM requires that there is something that is not easy to copy, and it being open source makes it a lot easier to copy.
This is factually incorrect. GOG famously has no DRM.
Try checking on the facts first. GOG famously has a slogan that says they have no DRM. They are lying in their slogan.
New owner means their disgust of Linux is fading.
Thankfully it seems to be not yet another Electron crap shell.
In my experience, Galaxy works no better than a web app, unfortunately. Similarly laggy and lacks the snappiness you'd normally associate with a native app.
Oh well.
It's not Electron, however it uses Chromium Embedded Framework underneath.
Oh, another desilusion then.