they’ve been working on a Linux client for, what, 10 years? I’ll believe it if it happens.
Heck yeah!
Amazing, it only took them about a decade from it being the most voted for feature of all time until they started working on it. That gives me great confidence that they’ll treat us Linux users like first class citizens /s
This new effort started when the new CEO bought back a majority of shares. He was one of the original owners. Back then their Linux efforts were also better.
That’s interesting, I might give it more credibility then, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Yeah I’ve seen much more active development in GOG since he took over. I mean GOG left the beta phase after years.
Oh, come on. They are right about the DRM, I can give them the benefit of the doubt.
I’m glad they’re doing it, but I’ll believe it when I see it. This seems like a marketing thing more than anything else, like most things GoG does. Which brings me to:
They are right about the DRM
Except they don’t believe that themselves: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1
Plus, if you disconsider the whole “having to use Steam to download binaries is a form of DRM”, AFAIK the same games that are DRM free on GoG are DRM free on Steam.
I’m all in favor of no DRM in games, but being able to play the games on my OS of choice is miles more important than them being DRM-free, because I honestly don’t care about the DRM status of a binary I can’t use. So I’d rather keep giving money to the company that’s investing in making me able to play games. I used to buy games from GoG back before Proton and DXVK, but those projects made Steam so much more attractive for Linux users that it is not even a contest.
That poster’s opinion of what is DRM is… interesting.
Which poster? There are 124 pages of posters talking about different DRM issues on GoG
The original post. Sorry, I thought that would have been more implicit than it maybe was.
To be fair, they got burned with the response to their Wine “port” of one of their Witcher games. It’s not a port, but a preconfigured and tested Wine setup is still better. That made it very clear that they either have to make it completely right or not at all, so they picked the latter.
Year of the Linux desktop year
You know why we say it every year? Because every year is the year of the Linux desktop
It’s already year of linux on everything else from mobile devices, VR (meta quest) to servers.
I don’t think its year of the linux desktop, but, as people try to become more independent, there will certainly be a push. Countries like China in the government already apparently use Linux
And, there is hopefully a bigger push for SteamOS based gaming handheld consoles. GOG integration with SteamOS would be awesome too
Games are one thing that keeps people stuck on Windows so more games on Linux, either native or through API emulation, does potentially allow more people to consider the switch.
It’s often also professional software such as Photoshop or AutoCAD that keep them on Windows. Programs they use a lot all day for work.
I would say that it’s often not the same computer.
Sometimes you want to do small things. Also people are frequently just use to what they are used to.
If they use one OS at work, then they’re likely to use the same OS at home.
That’s why all these companies invest so heavily into pushing their software at schools. Because people will stick to what they’re used to.
GOG Galaxy is like Steam but for GOG games, in case anyone else was wondering.
I think it also has integrations for some other things too, so you can use it to launch all your games from various launchers instead of remembering which games are on which launchers and opening each one to search for the game you want to play. It centralized your games into one spot which can be nice.
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Its a bit better than that, its a bit closer to an all in one launcher
/downloaderclient for all your games from (steam)/gog/epic/etcI think Heroic basically already does that though
It does. More options aren’t bad.
It’s a launcher for other game launchers, but it doesn’t provide downloads for other launchers.
Oh it doesn’t? Been a long time since I used galaxy/windows, so that’s my bad
Like the other comment says, it’s closer to Heroic Launcher. It is owned by GoG, but it also interfaces with other stores. Valve will/would never do this.
I don’t know what they could put on the table except for something like Big Picture, which is not nearly as fleshed out on Heroic.
And even then, Big Picture is already available for most gamers, because Steam is already installed.
I think it would’ve been a better use of resources to just officially support Heroic. GOG support exists because of their open distribution system. So why make use of that software?
Heroic is ultimately outside of GOG’s sphere of influence. If you decide to officially lean on them and they decide to drop GOG or Herioc development entirely they’d have to scramble for a replacement.
And honestly I only use Herioc to interface with GOG, i’d probably prefer use the official application if there was any.
Yeah I get from a user’s perspective why they would like an official client. But I personally don’t believe it would attract enough new users to make maintaining a Linux version worthwhile from the firms perspective.
Especially managing game compatibility on Linux seems like a nightmare.(I take this back, I was thinking about it and I haven’t had any issues with Proton for a while now.) But hey, their board probably already weighted this out before making the decision so I might just be underestimating the crowd it would attractLinux gaming has been in the lift for a good while now and is getting increasingly difficult write off as insignificant, I’m not sure the intent here is to attract users as much as to just service those the made the switch.
Could also be long game. Ideally this keeps growing and everyone (including the anti-cheat developers that are the sole reason some games still don’t work) are giong to have to take this seriously.
And we don’t know how much actual additional work there is here, it could be relatively trivial to get the client working on Linux.
Idk, some user here who otherwise is supremely anti-corporation, anti-DRM and anti-closed source said they absolutely can NOT use GOG over Steam because there’s no native Linux client. Apparently that’s a complete showstopper for some people, despite the existence of Heroic and many other tools you could use. “The games just don’t work”
Yeah this must be it. I have a hard time wrapping my head around it, but there seem to be a lot of people who find downloading a file with the installer and running it to be a problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I can think of a couple of valid reasons someone would like to use an officially supported client, like inherent trust, ease of use, and a soft guarantee for support. But for people you’re calling supremely anti-corporation and anti-closed source it doesn’t make sense to use either. Both are owned by firms and are closed source. And if you count Steam games requiring the Steam client to run, then Steam also has DRM on all games
Using GOG Galaxy also won’t fix the game related issues people have with Heroic. Heroic pulls the same files Galaxy on Linux would. Hence if game doesn’t work, it would likely be a Wine or Proton specific issue. Heroic also automatically applies known fixes to games using Proton. So I don’t know what Galaxy could do to provide a more stable experience.
Edit: missing word (use)
Heroic exists independently of GOG, which limits them to the decision of an independent developer. Essentially, they are at the mercy of Heroic dev to support GOG.
Porting their own application ensures they maintain control over software stack and also get improved security.
Activities. My “friends” can’t see what and how much I play. My only entry there is from testing Amazon Luna.
That’s fair
will it have ss symbols too?
Only occasionally and they will say ‘sorry’.
That is how people tend to apologize
It was an honest mistake. Anybody who read the statement should be able to see that. 👍
Honest mistake: “Yeah maybe in Germany that shit could give us trouble lets remove that, everyone else just send this shit”
According to GOG, the German QA team recognized the problem before distribution and pointed it out. However, the feedback did not reach the colleagues responsible for the international versions of the newsletter in time.
They were very open about their mistake and simply owned up to it. No bullshit. That’s to be commended. And they promised to do better.
Take that or leave it.
TIL Poland education system is so fucked that Poland QA team is dumb as fuck and know nothing about their own fucking history. This only make sense if the international team handling this is in USA which I expect the worse thing possible so it’s make total sense that they could do this level of mistake of using no only one Nazi symbol but TWO together.
They probably posted it from a PC. This only manifested on mobile devices for them, and they didn’t check them before sending, is my understanding.
Sometimes people make mistakes, dude, Jesus. Chill. They owned up to their mistake.
Nah, they use the SS and two symbols that together look like the black sun. Even in their excuse that is not actually the SS but some pagan symbol why put two of them? + the sun ones. All their explanations sound like excuses. They messed up big time with either AI or someone who shouldn’t be working with them and every QA was not paying attention. A simple “we fucked up big sorry” was better.
oh i missed something here… they posted ss symbols on the app?
They send an email marketing about some slavic game and put some nazi symbols in the header of the e-mail. The SS and the black sun one.
Can someone give me context to this reply? I have no clue, but based on the up-downvotes involved, it sounds important.
As someone from Germany, this would freak the hell out of me. Looks like a mistake, not something intentionally crafted. Whatever the real reason is (companies rarely say the truth), I understand the issue now. Thanks for the link.
The real issue is that they saw the problem and fixed it for Germany only and not for anywhere else.
The real issue is that they never stated that they are not nazi sympathizers after the whole thing. They issued a non-apology, said it caused “unfortunate associations”, “this is our history”, but never said they don’t associate with nazis, that nazism is bad, or that whoever is responsible for the fuckup will be held accountable
You’d think Poles of all people would be aware of how it looks.
To be fair, when I saw those symbols I thought about lightning, not SS, especially given the spacing that would have never hinted at the SS symbol.
Then, knowing the game, I thought it must have been some Slavic mythology reference.
But I understand Germans, Zios and Americans are obsessed about such things. After all they keep learning from each other about cultural appropriation and erasure.
My first thought wasn’t the SS, but the fact that they saw it and thought it might be a problem in Germany is another story.
But it is. In Germany. Then do you think the same of the Wolfenstein games being about the Cult if the Wolf or whatever it was?
Germany always had special treatment, self-inflicted or not.
Maybe some Celtic crosses and totenkopfs too
What do Celtic crosses have to do with anything?
Great news. I hope they add linux native achievements , or cloud saves to linux native versions too.
I believe thatbis the point of GOG Galaxy, otherwise you can just use the native installers.
Hopefully they add Wine/Proton integration like Steam and Heroic have.
I believe thatbis the point of GOG Galaxy, otherwise you can just use the native installers.
Well not only that. The client is there to auto update your games, and provide a friends list for social messaging in example. I also hope they integrate Wine, Proton and maybe other variants. Otherwise a Linux client would be pointless to me.
There’s already Minigalaxy, which is libre and handles updates.
I agree.
I’ve never used GoG Galaxy, does it have cloud saves? If so that’s really nice and I might start using it.
Yes, some games have cloud saves, and gog also adds cloud saves to some old games like s.t.a.l.k.e.r or Thief gold.
Oh neato! Thanks for the information, was not aware of that.
Now if they would stop being so selective about what they allow on their platform. There is a wide array of popular games available on Steam and DRM-free on Itch but for some reason they aren’t available on GOG.
I get that some people have been loudly calling for curation on Steam, but curation is a terrible thing. The customer should be the one to decide what they buy (provided the developer isn’t mass-producing asset flips). If they want a middle-ground they can just not promote any unendorsed games.
But letting anyone in is also a security risk. Steam has the capacity to check everything, and still some virus and other pass on.
(provided the developer isn’t mass-producing asset flips).
This reminds me: Still wondering why the heck Whalerock games are still on GoG…
A really dumb question from a non-gamer. If I were to buy a game from GOG. Say Doom, can I simply run the Windows installer with bottles? I have no interest in “modern” games and I seldom play, but I have a taste for the occasional trip down memory lane.
I do use a couple of windows programs in bottles without issue, (Bambubuddy and Meshmixer), but I don’t know jack all about buying games.
@Bluewing @alfredon996 Look into Heroic Launcher for GoG on Linux: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
Thank you! I just installed it and it’s more convenient than using Bottles for this stuff.
What’s a bottle in this context?
Bottles is a container that is like WINE for windows applications. It was easy to install as a flatpak in kinonite and easy to use.
I’m a poor Linux user so might not be best person to answer, but bottles on Linux provides a framework for programs to emulate a windows environment so you can run non Windows apps within Linux. This is a bad explanation, if anyone knows better please chime in.
You should be able to, GoG has no DRM and you just get the installer or .exe or however the game comes.
That is exactly what I do. Except that I use Lutris for the better logging and debugging options. Just create an empty proton prefix (“bottle”) and run the installer.exe. Sometimes you might need to install the visual c++ redistributables first (download and run the exe, then run installer.exe).
Of course you can
It’s about damn time.
Inb4 some damn electron app
Oh no a multiplatform app that just works, I would 200 percent prefer to have a native all that will instill the Lord’s fear into the heart of several un(der)paid interns. Blood and bones I say , blood and bones
You, you get the sarcasm :) Yeah, I’d love a platform specific version so I don’t have to rely on terrible JS, but alas, here we are.
Fine by me. As long as it does the job.
probably proprietary too 💔
heroic is a good foss launcher for gog games. epic too.
it also supports amazon and zoom platform games.
Will it too be 100x heavier than needed?
And completely redundant because there are already FOSS game managers that support GoG they could contribute to?
If the official macOS client is anything to go by, I wouldn’t get too excited. Just use Heroic instead.
I’m actually going to try it out. Assuming there will be wine/Proton included
I doubt it tbh. Valve had their difficulties with Proton. They have a server infrastructure to convert videos for which they can’t ship codecs without getting in a patent grey area. GOG would need to do that too or have a completely different approach to Proton, since Valve wants it to work without any external dependencies a user would need to install.
