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I like GOG a lot but it's wild to me that their GOG Galaxy client doesn't work on Linux! A lot of gamers who care about preservation and availability are spendi

• mathieudombrock 1y ago
  It really does seem like the idea of DRM free games and Linux goes hand in hand. I would be really interested to hear about why they don't currently offer Linux support for their launcher. I'm in the same boat here. I would be more than willing to rebuy some games on GOG if they supported Linux.
  • lawlessone 1y ago
    Does it work with wine/proton? anecdotal but even in apps/games where they make a linux port the wine/proton version sometimes works better.
    • 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
      I have Linux GOG games which refuse to run for one reason or another. Some outdated library, compiler, whatever that is not on a modern distribution. If you want easiest future proofing, you have to use the windows release.
  • tsimionescu 1y ago
    The idea of running old Windows games definitely doesn't go hand in hand with Linux. And I think GoG simply has way more Windows experience, lots of work to do, and little realistic chance of tapping some huge market if they spent all the time you need to support 2-3 major Linux distros - especially when you need to offer things like Multi-player support as well on those, plus maybe game recording and whatever else the overlay offers (GoG Galaxy is not just a storefront).
    • Ferret7446 1y ago
      Why not? My experience has been that old games run easier and better on Linux than Windows thanks to Wine and Microsoft's stupidity
• shmerl 1y ago
  A bigger problem for me is not lack of Linux Galaxy client, but that a bunch of developers only release Linux versions on Steam (Larian with BG3 is a recent example). But I agree in general. The issue is probably that GOG is a smaller store than Steam and Linux segment for them in result is also way smaller than for Steam, so they don't see it as a priority. Meanwhile you can use lgogdownloader. It's sort of interesting that they support Linux as platform for games sales to begin with. Besides them, Steam and itch.io who even does?
  • haunter 1y ago
    >Linux versions on Steam (Larian with BG3 is a recent example) Not just on Steam but only for Steam Deck But I think that's an understandable position. One single distro with one single hardware (okay two because the LCD and OLED versions has some differences). Once you go down the "full Linux support" way it's a hellhole of different distros, compositors, proprietary and open source hardware drivers etc. This is where Flatpak, AppImage, snap etc. could actually play a good part imo if done well but I'm not sure I've seen any games released on Steam for Linux in those formats (maybe Steam not even allow it) Edit: you can download BG3 for any Linux distro not just the Steam Deck
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • shmerl 1y ago
      Good chance that this version will run on most up to date distros without much issue. So I don't see it as a reason not to release it. > proprietary and open source hardware drivers etc Somewhat of a problem, but not so much anymore, most Linux gamers know to use AMD and Mesa. So I'd say their focus on SteamOS is a good base of support.
  • ThatPlayer 1y ago
    Those are sometimes related. I know Tooth and Tail never released on Linux on GoG because they use the stores networking for multiplayer. So you can't do that on Linux without Galaxy but can on Steam.
• m463 1y ago
  > Valve is eating GOG's lunch in this segment I think you are comparing apples and organges valve will give you a game license, gog will sell you a game. you can download, install and play all gog games forever with no drm. (I use lgogdownloader and download all games to linux)
  • branon 1y ago
    Apples and oranges yes, but to most users (even Linux users) there's only a very blurry line between these concepts. I admit this is not ideal. I believe choice of storefront is more a service and support problem, and less about the product itself. Game licensure and game ownership are equivalent products at the end of the day in most instances. Rugs could be pulled, yes, but thus far haven't been very often or to any significant extent (that I know of). Most paying customers are fine to run proprietary code, accept DRM, or buy a license instead of owning a game. Even Linux users will do this if the company (Valve) has a decent track record at practicing "don't be evil" (they do). As a Linux user, when you purchase a game from GOG (and I concede that this is ideologically superior to a license from Valve) you are on your own afterwards. Windows users can get a bit of help from Galaxy and I think GOG even does tech support now but this doesn't apply to our segment. You must now divine a scheme whereby your game is made runnable. Cue fighting with distro repositories and Wine versions/prefixes/winetricks, or depending on a third party launcher (Bottles/Lutris/Heroic/pick one), or adding the game to the Steam client (that you probably have installed already anyway) because Steam knows how to run things with Proton... and then you must maintain this going forward. This might not bother you or you may even find it therapeutic (and I do, for certain games). But the majority of the segment doesn't like it, and it won't scale as well as a first-party solution, not even for an individual user. My assertion is that exchanging game ownership for game licensure currently looks like a pretty fair deal if I receive first-party support for running the game on my OS. But GOG could change that!
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    There is also minigalaxy
  • Retric 1y ago
    You have an executable with gog, but playing it forever requires long term support. I don’t expect whatever windows may or may not be available in 2060 to be able to support such a download from 2025 in a playable fashion.
• apayan 1y ago
  I agree that GOG needs to port their client to Linux for all the reasons you stated, but as a workaround you can use Lutris which lets you log into your GOG account and download+install games (Windows games too). It's not as pain free as Steam, because you sometimes still have to apply wine fixes, but it works well with the most popular games.
  • haunter 1y ago
    Heroic is way easier to use imo, but both are good options https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
    • cholantesh 1y ago
      My primary gripes with Lutris are: 1. it doesn't (at least recently?) always do a great job of handling multiple displays, either launching games on my second monitor, which I orient vertically or getting confused about which monitor to use and switching back and forth until eventually the instance (but not the Lutris client) crashes 2. I find myself getting into launcher hell where I'll use a different wine version for one game and when I switch to a different game, it's using this new wine version and stops working Not sure if Heroic solves these issues but I would try it again (didn't have any luck setting it up initially) if it does
      • haunter 1y ago
        I can answer the first on at least: If you are using KDE then there is a global Window rules setting and Heroic actually obey those rules, so you can force to launch a game always on X display, always minimized etc. https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kwin/kcontrol/windowspecific/index.html https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kwin/kcontrol/windowspecific... (not sure that's the most up to date manual)
      • epakai 1y ago
        I've been using Lutris on i3 with multiple monitors. Enabling gamescope has been extremely helpful. I just get a window that tells the game to render at some fixed resolution, and it is happy to scale fullscreen or any size. I've been using i3's fullscreen toggle, it goes to the current monitor, or I can move it to another with my regular i3 binds. It looks like gamescope has it's own fullscreen shortcut (super + f), but people complain about it about it going to the wrong display. Maybe your window manager offers a more consistent full screen option like i3 does.
• JohnFen 1y ago
  I don't know about the overall market analysis so I'm not commenting on that. But I do know that personally, GOG meets my needs in spades and Valve doesn't, so I've spent a lot of money at GOG and will for the foreseeable future. I am a Linux guy and don't own any Windows machines. I couldn't care less about the Galaxy client. To be honest, I'm not even sure what it does -- I just know that I get along just fine without it. For me, GOG is as close to perfect as I've found.
  • weaksauce 1y ago
    it's like the steam client but for gog + all the other markets like epic/xbox apparently including messaging.
    • JohnFen 1y ago
      Yeah, I just looked it up. It doesn't look like it does anything that I need, so I'm not troubled by the absence of a Linux version.
    • unsnap_biceps 1y ago
      the unification of other game stores is just largely broken. They haven't maintained their plugins for many years and as the stores change, functionality breaks in weird ways.
• dandersch 1y ago
  Bad QA for actual Linux games was the main reason I stopped buying on gog. Even when a game had a (gog exclusive) Linux port using their weird "game inside a shell script" approach[0], often times I would run into more problems than just using wine/proton on the Windows build. [0] apparently using this https://icculus.org/mojosetup/ https://icculus.org/mojosetup/
  • throwaway48476 1y ago
    Linux doesn't not prioritize backwards compatibility. It's time to stop trying to make linux native gaming work without a stable ABI.
    • dandersch 1y ago
      I agree. Game devs are better off targeting proton as a platform, but Linux purists complain if there is no native port and you don't get the brownie points for putting in the effort.
      • tracker1 1y ago
        I think there's plenty of brownie points to be had for making sure a game runs well under Proton... There's very little reason that GoG cannot do what Steam does with Proton for Windows games.
        • izacus 1y ago
          GoG did extractly that - Galaxy client runs well under Proton.
          • tracker1 1y ago
            That's not the same as a native client that launches games under Proton... GoG would be better served with something native/adaptive (even web/electrion/tauri based) that also installs/manages a Proton install along with the games.
• ntoskrnl_exe 1y ago
  I'm a Linux user who buys a lot of games on GOG and I've never had a problem running them using Wine stable, with the only exception being games that supposedly don't even work on Proton yet. Majority of the games there don't even come in a native Linux form, and those that do can be a hit or miss when it comes to compatibility - at least one game I tried needed a dependency from a no longer available package. Alternatively a few titles come shipped with some kind of wrapper that's really just an outdated version of Wine surrounding a win32 EXE. Also, isn't the point of buying something DRM free that you don't have to use a client or any other online feature? The offline installer has always been GOG's killer feature in my book, that's how you make sure the game gets truly preserved.
  • klingon6786 1y ago
    > Also, isn't the point of buying something DRM free that you don't have to use a client or any other online feature? Agreed. I thought this was the whole point of GOG. The problem with buying movies from streaming providers, games from Epic and Steam, etc. is that you don’t own them. They say you do, but even something like Movies Anywhere isn’t guaranteed for life. Downloading digital content is the surest way to ensure that in-theory you could against use it someday. Anything else is a false promise of forever.
  • ensignavenger 1y ago
    How do you download the games? I tried logging in to download cyberpunk which I purchased on gog, and they wanted me to download tons of files individually! I couldn't even just click a "download all" button.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • hexnuts 1y ago
      You could always use something like Heroic Launcher. https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ It can connect to GOG and other services.
• m-p-3 1y ago
  For now I rely on Heroic Launcher and it does a decent job for my GOG games on Bazzite.
• Avamander 1y ago
  How long has it been? Like a decade? That's when I bought my last GOG game and decided to wait for a proper Linux client. Having a nice way to view and manage a game library is essential at this point. I don't want to do it manually.
  • throwaway106382 1y ago
    Just use Heroic launcher. Works great.
  • noAnswer 1y ago
    I use https://lutris.net https://lutris.net for this. One starter for all.
  • BaardFigur 1y ago
    I believe the problem is that most of the games they host are Windows games, so in that regard, Linux doesn't make sense. And maintaining something like Proton is pretty complex, there's so many different distros. Actually ensuring the game works probably was too big of a task for them. You can always add your gog games to Lutris though.
    • __aru 1y ago
      > I believe the problem is that most of the games they host are Windows games, so in that regard, Linux doesn't make sense. The vast majority of games on Steam are Windows games, yet the Linux Steam client runs them fine via Proton. I don't think people are asking for GOG to make Linux-native games. People are asking for an official GOG client that can handle installing games via Proton/Wine, handles cloud saves, account management, etc. If a bunch of open source hobbyists can create a viable multi-platform client (see Heroic Games Launcher), then so can GOG.
      • izacus 1y ago
        Proton runs GOG Galaxy well too, so what exactly do you want?
• A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  I give GOG a lot of leeway, because in my heart of hearts, I know I will eventually curse steam lockin ( that day may be far away, but it is in our collective future ) so I throw them some money every now and then. Still, you do have a point, by comparison Steam is a lot more polished on that front. I would complain more, but my personal hangup is very niche to begin with so it does not seem fair ( remote view in vm ). It is small things, but small things add up.
• thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > I like GOG a lot but it's wild to me that their GOG Galaxy client doesn't work on Linux! The client is a bad thing. What you want is for it to stop working on Windows. Why would you want it to work on Linux?
  • Anamon 1y ago
    I've tried using it, and CDPR already have that covered -- it almost doesn't work on Windows.
• throwaway106382 1y ago
  Heroic launcher works great and also doubles up as an Epic client and you can just run your own installers with it too (this is how I install Battle Net and Diablo 4).
• mathnode 1y ago
  Honestly thanks to Lutris, I have no want of a native linux GOG client and would rather GOG and others contributed to an already excellent solution and for there to be less distributor owned clients.
• jszymborski 1y ago
  Honestly Heroic Launcher is way better than Galaxy, integrates with Proton, and includes other shitty launchers like Epic
• izacus 1y ago
  The client works very well on Linux via Proton. I don't think a niche store like GoG has to put a massive investment into marginal platform like Linux when Proton makes it work very well by itself.
• glimshe 1y ago
  It would be great if everyone could release Linux binaries, but smaller studios are extremely stretched and with no shortage of work as it is. Considering the quality of Windows emulation today, it's quite possible that the windows API simply becomes the new "Java for games", where studios test their games on Linux and never release a native binary.
  • blooalien 1y ago
    > ... "but smaller studios are extremely stretched and with no shortage of work as it is." My experience is that it's never been the "smaller studios" that give Linux the middle-finger the way the so-called "AAA" publishers do. I see a shocking number of small studios and indie developers consistently releasing for Linux, Mac, and Windows and managing to do a surprisingly reliable job of it, where "AAA" companies sometimes can't seem to manage to keep a game running reliably even on the one platform they support.
• xinayder 1y ago
  Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris both authenticate with GOG and allow you to install their games.
• thiht 1y ago
  But IIRC you don’t even need to use the launcher, that’s the whole point of DRM free games You can just download them from GOG and play, so no Linux launcher is not a big deal, just a convenience (some would argue launchers are an inconvenience)
• rpdillon 1y ago
  I recommend downloading Heroic Launcher. https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/