Today GOG is launching their own client to play games.
From the site:
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There big selling point is you can be online. But you don’t need to be. You can download your a copy of your game and you won’t need internet to launch it. They’re definitely taking on the DRM-free cry. Soon you’ll be able to rollback a patch if it does stuff you won’t like.
Will this be able to take on Steam?
The only reason I use Steam at all is because is many cases I don’t have a choice (besides not playing games requiring Steam, of course).
I’m not going to use any game client if I don’t have to.
Steam doesn’t require you to be online either. The individual games, may.
So, there’s a BS benefit right there. The online-required singleplayer games aren’t going to be on GOG anyway, and if they are, the offline mode becomes a blatant lie.
So it’s a copy of the Steam overlay, with all the same benefits and limitations, but a somewhat smaller choice of games, due to developer/publisher DRM choices.
What’s the point?
It reminds me of the Origin “we’re not competing with Steam” (pulls a number of EA games off Steam to be Origin “exclusives.”
I do find that I kind of prefer having a lot of my games on one menu in Steam. In principle I also like the DRM-free distribution on GOG, and in theory I like that I’m in charge in deciding how they are organized on my hard drive. But… when I download a game from GOG, I have to download the installation files, then I have to install them, and then generally delete the now-useless installation files because it is likely to remain easier to redownload them then to find where I archived them.
Looks like the new GOG app will handle all that. The old download app left much to be desired. I’d be willing to try it, with the possible objection being that I really don’t feel like bothering.
Will it alert you when one of their gimmicky sales events has started, or a new bunch of items have appeared for flash sale? Possibly on my phone when I’m taking the boy to the park?
I’m cautiously happy about it.
I really like CD Projekt Red and think their business follows their heart and they want to be cool to gamers.
Of course they have a long road to be in serious competition with Steam but in general competition is good for the consumer.
If GOG can pull off decent customer service they’ll get my business every time over Steam when I have a choice.
As an aside I have heard rumors that you will be able to play online with Steam players. I cannot imagine why Steam would allow that. Will have to wait and see.
I hope it’s successful for GOG, they’ve always been very customer friendly as far as I can tell. They’re definitely my favorite for older games, since when I buy from them I’m confident the software will run on modern machines. Steam’s a crapshoot when it comes to that sort of thing.
Steam, Origin, UPlay, Desura, and now Galaxy? It’s getting more and more cumbersome to keep track of what I own. Maybe someone out there can make a metaclient to join them all together?
I got in on the Beta because I was going to install The Witcher so that I can try to blow through it and its sequel in time for The Witcher III to come out. It’s installing now. So far, it’s better than picking your downloads on the web page and then downloading with the downloader app. It doesn’t prompt me each time I download so I can specify which drive I want the game installed on, as Steam does.
It’s just a way to have a system so you can play online games while still being DRM free. I don’t see why there would be any problem with it. It just gives DRM-free people more options. It’s not competing with Steam any more than it already was.
And how the heck is GOG supposed to pull games off Steam? They don’t own the games. And why would the studios pull their games off of Steam onto another third-party client? The point is just to keep more of the money.
GOG (CD Projekt Red) owns the Witcher franchise. So they could pull those off Steam if they wanted. Of course, two of them are regularly bargain bin priced so I don’t think GOG is going to clean up on Witcher 2 sales.
On GOG, if you own both the Witcher games, you could pre-order the third for 20% off. But, Steam seems to have responded by making the game 20% off at all times.
Doesn’t Steam require you to have a connection to launch a game the first time it’s run? Everything I’ve ever read about it said this to be the case. Has that changed?
GoG is pretty tiny compared to Steam; even if Galaxy is somehow tons better (and most likely it won’t be), it’s unlikely to take any significant share from Steam.
Unfortunately, this Rollback feature they’re supposed to have is not ready. It’s unfortunate for me because I seem to be one of the people for whom Patch 2.1 makes The Witcher 2 un-startable.
Yep, I got the new beta, and I can say that from now on I will definitely be getting any game that’s available on GOG there instead of Steam (unless Steam is considerably cheaper, or there’s some other factor that seems to make the Steam one a much better choice).
It’s not that I dislike Steam, I’ve used them for a long time and they’re convenient and haven’t given me a lot of trouble; I’ve preferred Steam out of pure convenience. But GOG does one better by guaranteeing that every game they sell me is DRM-free; until now, that’s come with the inconvenience of having to handle the whole download/install/delete download (if I want to) process, but the client will now handle that for me, so I don’t even have that minor inconvenience to discourage me from buying from them instead of Steam.