I do love GOG Galaxy but its nothing more than a facade. It helps to tell you what games you own but launching them is every bit a pain in the ass since you still need to own and launch them of the platform you bought them on.
GoG should refund you for that if you run into it in the future. I don't buy games that require accounts with 3rd parties or need some weird client installed. I eventually installed Steam, but that's it for me.
I'm not installing Galaxy either, and GoG has developed some dark patterns to try to push it on you (links to the actual installers keep getting buried deeper and deeper) but as long as they continue to let you download games without it I'm happy enough.
Thanks for the info and yeah, this adds another brick to the GOG pile of shame unfortunately.
GOG has been very lethargic to the point of straight-up dishonesty regarding their plan for Linux support for games, galaxy and their downloader. Their rollout of Galaxy has been panned and definition of what qualifies as DRM-free has been eroded over time.
I understand the disparity of resources, but steam has done much more lately to embrace Linux and their community than GOG and gaping security holes is just unacceptable.
I love GOG but GOG galaxy is a clusterfuck and their library is made up of mostly (very) old games (go figure) ;)
I bought The Witcher 3 on steam just because it's better with updates (GOG had so many TW3 updates issues, I got a GOG key from NVIDIA as a Titan X owner and it was just fubar).
Steam is also a social platform, most of my friends are on steam which is their biggest competitive advantage which makes most other platforms kinda pointless as a platform DRM free or not.
I bought a game on GOG recently. It funnelled me hard into getting their terrible launcher and now requires me to start the launcher to play the game, exactly like steam. I'm sure there is some way of avoiding this but it wasn't obvious at all.
Edit: according to this post on the forum the feature is not maintained or supported (as of 2016).
I've bought many many games on GOG for years because of this. Lately, GOG games come in installers made out of 20 or so parts which take ages to download manually. The only real way to download their games is by using their GOG Galaxy Client. Not that much better than Steam, which on the other hand has fantastic Linux support, while GOG can't be bothered to port their GOG Galaxy client to Linux.
Luckily Lutris allows me to somehow compensate for GOG's lack of interest in Linux, but still, I feel they really do not care about the DRM thing.
Not all of the games on GOG are DRM-free at this point. Some require GOGGalaxy, their version of the steam client.
I went through a frustrating refund process after learning about this after making a purchase.
I love gog, and have gone through a similar shift for any games that I can.
However, I hate to point out that, GoG does in fact have some games with DRM, even though they make a big deal of the fact that they are an anti-DRM shop, and they get away with it buy pretending the definition of DRM is different to what most people think.
E.g. I recently bought Worms WMD. You need a Galaxy account to play. I'm not even sure you can cross-play with Steam, I think you can't. Without it, the game is crippled. I would not have bought it if I had known.
EDIT: even googled it, found out Darkest Dungeon by default install a version that does need GoG Galaxy, but the DRM-free version is available on GoG site too, just need to choose that downloader instead. But that was it. Didn't found any other obvious complaints of GoG Galaxy being required.
But GOG has weird standards for what it will and will not allow on its store. Yatzee had some game he made denied, and Zachtronic's Opus Magnum was also denied.
+1 for GOG. I don't play games much anymore, but I still collect some of the older ones I enjoy on GOG knowing that there is no DRM. I tried steam and purchased a few games, but honestly I prefer to just have the game flat out without needing a "client" to get them, so while many people praise Steam... I'll pass.
> GOG which I have no experience with but hear its good
You heard right. They have quite a good setup: the Steam-style GOG Galaxy client is entirely optional, you can also download, install and run your games manually without hindrance.
Well done web site with lots of user reviews. They also have very cheap older games and regular freebies - they're such a nice seller that you feel like buying something more expensive (Witcher 3 at half-price was a good deal ;-)
Edit: they also have a 'connect your Steam account' feature that allows you to have some of your Steam library games added to you GOG library.
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