I default to GOG whenever I can. I do wish Galaxy had turned out better, it just buckles under the weight and is worse than both using the web app for the store AND third party launchers like Lunchbox. I still would much rather get the games in the format they use than on Steam, though. Any day. I will keep getting games that launch on both on GOG as long as that's an option, so I'm glad they're in the black at least.
It's gimmick is supposed to be that it would scrape and integrate games from other launchers using plugins and consolidate all your PC games, friends and other tools.
Which sort of works for a while, until you try to add several thousand games, at which point the launcher takes ages to start and compile your database and generally becomes cumbersome and buggy. And once you add that stuff, removing it is surprisingly hard, so getting to your GOG games is weirdly hindered.
I love the idea, I've purchased several separate database apps over the years to try to get that exact feature. They just didn't nail it on execution and ended up with a worse version of that type of app that can accidentally become a worse launcher for your GOG library as well.
If you only use it as a GOG launcher, stick to the integrations that come pre-built and avoid plugins or if you only have a few games it's perfectly fine. Great, even. But it certainly got pretty busted in my case.
Lunchbox still does it. It doesn't chug quite as much as Galaxy, but it's still heavier than I want my launcher to be.
I've come to the conclusion that I don't necessarily want a nice-looking Steam-like list of all my games across platforms. I mostly just need a text-based list with trivial load times that tells me which platform to spin up to play a given game.
GOG is the biggest name in this regard, but Humble offers some DRM-free games, and GamersGate has a few, and those will tell you explicitly if they offer a DRM-free release. itch.io is mostly DRM-free. I think GameJolt and Zoom Platform are also DRM-free but I’ve never used them. For visual novels and such, there’s also JAST and MangaGamer, both entirely DRM-free. For various Japanese indie games, more generally, there’s DLsite, which is DRM-agnostic but at indicates whether the product uses its DRM.
And there’s also publishers’ own sites, in some cases, which may offer games as direct downloads, which are generally DRM-free.
If it’s on Steam, I’ll wait. Sometimes I’ll ask the devs to put the game on GOG and/or itch. I haven’t bought a game from the Steam store in years.
This, I've always loved GOG but ever since I've switched to primarily gaming on my steam deck, it's been more of a pain than it's really worth to use GOG
I love GOG. If they release a game i play often, i rebuy it on that platform. I find game clients just annoying, especially ea app (stop popping up everytime i quit a game dammit). So if i can play without it, i go for it.
After being with Steam for over a decade and disliking it more and more, I ended up trying everything to maintain myself away from that platform and GOG was a godsend.
There’s a public list that has all the GOG releases that treat the GOG customers like "third class citizens", but if the game I want is not on that list, I will 100% buy it there over any other storefront. It’s great to read they’re doing well.
I've made more of a point to buy from them more often. I bought the DLC for Deep sky Derelicts recently (during the summer sale) because I enjoyed the base game which GoG gave me for free.
If GOG had native Linux support I'd be more interested, but their refusal to support it (despite it being their most requested feature, I may add) means I exclusively use Steam for buying my games.
You can actually get GOG games working Via Heroic Launcher on Linux/Steam Deck, and Proton works pretty well. I haven't tested in on Cyberpunk but I saw some other people say it has a 10% frame rate loss compared to playing it from Steam.
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