In an interview with PC Gamer, Kiciński and managing director Maciej Gołębiewski were asked whether GOG had plans to focus more on Linux going forward, given a growth in pro-Linux and anti-Windows sentiment among some PC players.
“Yes, we are,” Gołębiewski replied, stating that Linux was “one of the things that we’ve put in our strategy for this year to look closer at”.
“I don’t want to commit to any specifics, but certainly you will see this trend, and we also see that Linux is close to the hearts of our users, so we probably could do better on that front, and that’s something that we’ll be looking at,” he added.
Kiciński then addressed the current state of Windows, saying he was “really surprised” that it continues to hold such a large market share despite its issues.
“It’s such poor-quality software and product, and I’m so surprised that it’s [spent] so many years on the market,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
“It’s such poor-quality software and product, and I’m so surprised that it’s [spent] so many years on the market,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
Based.
This fills me with optimism for the future of GOG. While I do love GOG it does seem like they’ve been running on autopilot for quite a while, but hopefully with new management they’ll get to improve things for us Linux gamers. A native version of GOG Galaxy would be nice, or they could improve the API and development of projects like Comet that makes GOG achievements detectable ingame.
Damn, I was recently thinking about buying some games on GOG instead of steam, but I don’t know if its that convenient. Like on steam we got achievements, easy “play” button, easy updates and social features. And I don’t own anything on GOG and don’t know what to expect, could someone summarize experience on GOG?
I can only speak for the Heroic launcher but this has been my experience:
- One click play button like Steam, but it’s easier to configure Linux-specific settings in the menu.
- Updates are done automatically or can be forced like Steam.
- Cloud saves are available, but need to be done manually from the game settings menu with the risk of user error.
- There is a friends list and chat, but the games I played had their own in-game friends list.
- Unfortunately, no achievements from what I’ve seen.
- No DRM, so you truly own the game. (as far as it’s possible to own something digital.)
- Linux game support seems to not be any worse than Steam
- Built-in Wine/Proton version installer.
There are a few launchers that makes it easy to play GOG and Epic Games Store games like “Heroic Games Launcher”. It has experimental “Comet” support which means it records achievements and leaderboard statistics for certain games.
Updates are easy to apply through the launcher, and it's optional whether to update or not, you're not forced to like in Steam.
You can also select between 5 versions, although that's just a GOG thing, there's no such feature for Epic (which HGL also supports).
And it supports cloud game saves.
GOG falls short on the social features though, but it also doesn’t have “Steam Workshop”. So I definitely think of those aspects when selecting games to buy on each platform. But it’s not like all multiplayer games are unplayable if you’re not on Steam, although games that are built around Steamworks and rely on it most likely aren’t compatible with other platforms - one could call it anti-competitive behaviour by Steam to “trick” developers to only support multiplayer via their platform, but oh well.
And as for a lot of “friendslop” games, a lot of them have been made in Unity and are quite easy to mod with R2Modman or Gale which rely on the Thunderstore.Sorry for the ramble.
Damn thats a huge answer, thank you. Comet is a very intriguing project tbh, Imma take a look at it. Thats kinda surprising for me that Heroic supports GOG, i use it for Epic curently in fact :p I guess steam workshop is not a problem for me, but the social features are very convenient when playin with friends, or just anything multiplayer. Yet it seems GOG is a very good platform for offline games, so I will consider buying some offline games on GOG to test its experience. But having convenient achievements with native Linux client from GOG would be actually very cool, hopefully it becomes the reality. Thank you again so much for such detailed answer :)
The sad thing is, they had support for Linux in the past. And I mean not only making the launcher run on Linux, but with Linux builds of games:
OS X and Linux support
In October 2012, GOG.com announced support for OS X. They included the previously Steam exclusive (OS X version) The Witcher and The Witcher 2, both made by CD Projekt Red. GOG.com gathered user feedback in a community wishlist, and one of the most demanded feature requests was support for native Linux games, which gathered close to 15,000 votes before it was marked as “in progress”.[20] Originally GOG.com representatives said, that there are technical and operational issues which make it harder than it seems,[21] however it’s something they would love to do, and they have been considering.[22] On 18 March 2014, GOG.com officially announced that they would be adding support for Linux, initially targeting Ubuntu and Linux Mint in the fall of 2014.[23] On 25 July 2014, Linux support was released early, and 50 games were released compatible with the operating system.[24]
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#OS_X_and_Linux_support
they still do have linux builds of some games
My point is, they should not act like Linux is the new thing they just discovered.
Surely they’ll make a native Linux client then, right, right?!
(Meanwhile; shoutout to Heroic)
GOG has an affiliate partnership with Heroic Games Launcher already.
From developers point of view, maintaining one codebase that works across OSs is better than maintaining OS specific multiple codebases.
Nah.
Just do what Valve did with Wine.
Officially fork and contribute to Heroic.
Nah just officially support Heroic, its already great.
They’ve only been working on it for 11 years now…
Client for what?
You only need galaxy for cyberpunk
You don’t need their client for anything other than downloading and purchasing. I’ve played CP2077 with out GOG installed. They use no DRM
From what I’ve read Galaxy allows for downloading specific version of the games.
Might be misremembering, so take it with a pinch of salt
You can select versions using Heroic Games Launcher as well. It's a little bit hidden as you need to select 'Modify installation', but it's there. As far as I know it's not a limitation by HGL that it can only select 5 versions, that's just how many versions GOG have made available.
Is there something wrong with Heroics cloud saves? I havent tried using my saves on a windows system using Galaxy, but they’ve worked across devices running Heroic.
I did not need galaxy to play cyberpunk in my linux machine
Fuck winblows!
Winslop!
