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GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it works on a native client

738 points by franczesko 8mo ago

mft_ 8mo ago
I’m loving the huge uptick in coverage that Linux is getting recently, from the stories about switching from Windows, to the huge leaps made to support gaming. I’m now hoping that this will gradually push the big publishers to go the extra mile and figure out their anti-cheat stuff on Linux too, so the remaining big games can make the transition.
l0b0 8mo ago
"GOG GALAXY is a long-lived product with a large and complex C++ codebase." Also known as a shitshow. Hopefully the new engineer(s) will be encouraged to at least add some tests and refactor things to stay sane. No mention of a license, though. I guess it'll stay closed source.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  > I guess it'll stay closed source. It's a DRM implementation. It has to stay closed source.
  - bpye 8mo ago
    There is no DRM on GOG. https://www.gog.com/blog/what-exactly-is-drm-in-video-games-and-why-should-you-care/#9-drm-free-how-do-i-get-it- https://www.gog.com/blog/what-exactly-is-drm-in-video-games-...
    - stavros 8mo ago
      Famously so. The main method of deployment was an offline installer before they made Galaxy, and AFAIK Galaxy just downloads and runs the installer.
      - gamesieve 8mo ago
        Not quite. You can use Galaxy to download the offline installers (or just do that through the website), but when you install a game through Galaxy, it downloads a special build which it just copies to the right location, without running a separate installer.
      - KptMarchewa 8mo ago
        No, it doesn't use offline installers. Source: worked on that in the past. https://content-system.gog.com/ https://content-system.gog.com/
      - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
        The running game can also call out to Galaxy and unlock, or not unlock, ingame content based on what it hears back. It's pretty difficult to imagine a definition of "digital rights management" that doesn't include this.
        CopperWing 8mo ago
        As far as I remember, the only games which optionally need Galaxy running are those will online multiplayer, and only if you want to play online. This is because the original developers shutdown their own servers for matchmaking or originally used Steam servers for that. GOG servers are only replacing those.
        gamesieve 8mo ago
        There are also a handful of games which put some additional purely cosmetic content behind an online check. That could be the start of a slippery slope, which people are justly upset about, but they then do an injustice to their cause by generalizing from those cases.
        account42 8mo ago
        It's not a slippery slope but already full blown DRM plain and simple. Both online functionality limited to GOG-run servers and checks for cosmetic content.
    - da_grift_shift 8mo ago
      Yet the standalone offline installed games won't run without libgalaxy.dylib (Mac) or Galaxy64.dll (Windows) which is responsible for outbound connections to https://galaxy-log.gog.com https://galaxy-log.gog.com and https://insights-collector.gog.com https://insights-collector.gog.com? To be clear: if you buy Disco Elysium on GOG, download the "offline game installer" without using Galaxy, install it, and run the game on a desert island, it will work (the network requests fail open). But if you try to run the game after removing the bundled dylib/DLL, it will not. Why do Galaxy-free games ship with a mandatory dependency on Galaxy?
      - nottorp 8mo ago
        > Why do Galaxy-free games ship with a mandatory dependency on Galaxy? Because the developer linked the dynamic library in at compile time instead of writing additional code to load it at runtime and disabling/enabling features based on its presence. You can call it budget limitations, incompetence or lack of respect for the customer. Doubt it's intentional DRM though.
      - immibis 8mo ago
        [dead]
    - krige 8mo ago
      Last I checked, there is loads of DRM on GOG and most of the games that have it, force you to use Galaxy.
      - tommica 8mo ago
        Really? What games are those? I've not encountered a single one :/
        krige 8mo ago
        Off the top of my head Crime Cities on launch forced me to use Galaxy to play it. I vividly remember this because the game also ran like complete crap.
        gamesieve 8mo ago
        Galaxy can be required for multiplayer aspects in games, but if what you say is true for the singleplayer part of the game, GOG will consider it a bug, and will get it fixed. There's nothing in the Crime Cities GOG forum about this, nor in the various tracking threads in the main forum, and generally GOG users are extremely sensitive about anything which even reeks of forcing Galaxy, so I'd strongly expect any issue to be known. I've seen cases where the developer implemented a bad online check, so that if you blocked the program from accessing the internet while the OS reported being online, the game would hang or crash, but being fully offline would work. Could it be that something like that was at play here? Oh, or that you simply picked the wrong installer for the game, and thus ran the Galaxy-installer rather than the offline installer?
        Springtime 8mo ago
        I think too it can be misleading since on Windows the default LNK shortcut that is created after the game installation launches Galaxy with arguments instead of being a path to the direct game EXE (which works entirely without Galaxy and how I run games). They do this to push Galaxy for convenience I suppose as most are used to clients that handle updates but it can be confusing if some wonder why for instance their offline installer shortcut opened Galaxy instead.
    - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
      I guess depends what you consider DRM, some games appear to have problems https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/label_the_games_that_have_drm https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/label_the_games_that_have_...
      - WorldMaker 8mo ago
        GOG's original and somewhat current line in the sand is "must have an offline-capable installer". For a lot of Good Old Games that is enough to guarantee DRM-free. Unfortunately in the Live Service world it is a concession that allows too many loopholes such as Sony single player games that still need a PlayStation Account and a half-dozen telemetry services active before they get to actual gameplay. Sony, as a particular example worth flogging, also makes use of the loophole that an anti-cheat rootkit can be installed offline, easy. I think GOG is saying a lot of the right things in terms of Game Preservation being a long term goal for them. I think they are between a rock and a hard place that the store would be a lot less active if they couldn't offer the latest games from companies like Sony, and they want to be on good terms with such companies to get access to their giant back catalogs for Preservation efforts which also presumably includes sales numbers of recent titles for justification. But yes, I'd also love to see them push back a bit harder on some of these publishers a bit further than "needs an offline-capable installer" and mabye include more steps towards some definition of "should run offline-capable", because yeah things like "Live Services" and account systems and mandatory telemetry systems and rootkit anti-cheat systems are often de facto DRM just wearing another hat of "user convenience" or "achievement tracking" or "game safety" tools. I don't think GOG can make that push alone, though. There are too many industry trends to try to buck to get further in those directions. (Thinking about the recent Anthem shutdown as a recent for instance of a mostly single player game that is entirely unplayable because EA shutdown live services this month.)
        gamesieve 8mo ago
        There are no games on GOG which require a PlayStation account for their single player gameplay. (AFAIK, but I think I'm pretty tuned in and would know.)
    - account42 8mo ago
      And we have always been at war with Eurasia.
  - KwanEsq 8mo ago
    This is factually incorrect. GOG famously has no DRM.
    - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
      Try checking on the facts first. GOG famously has a slogan that says they have no DRM. They are lying in their slogan.
  - falcor84 8mo ago
    Why? Can't DRM be implemented in open source, and only have private keys kept secret?
    - elsjaako 8mo ago
      If we have DRM with some private key, then I guess your idea is I download the game files and some private key and that allows me to run the game. If I can send you the private key and the game and it allows you to run the game with no further inputs, then the DRM is trivially broken (even without open source). If it does some online check, then if the source is open we can easily make a version that bypasses the online check. If there is some check on the local PC (e.g. the key only works if some hardware ID is set correctly), we can easily find out what it checks, capture that information, package it, and make a new version of the launcher that uses this packaged data instead of the real machine data. If you use a private key to go online and retrieve more data, having it be open source makes it trivial to capture that data, package it, and write a new version of the launcher that uses that packaged data. Basically, DRM requires that there is something that is not easy to copy, and it being open source makes it a lot easier to copy.
      - Borealid 8mo ago
        How would you define it if: - the DRM/delivery software is open source - the game payload is sent to you encrypted using the public key of a secure enclave on your computer - while the game runs all its memory is symmetrically encrypted (by your own CPU) using a key private to that secure enclave. It is only decrypted in the CPU's cache lines, which are flushed when the core runs anything other than the game (even OS code) - the secure enclave refuses to switch to the context in which the CPU is allowed to use the decryption key unless a convolution-only (not overwriteable with arbitrary values) register inside itself had the correct value - the convolution-only register is written with the "wrong" value, by your own computer's firmware, if you use a bootloader that is not trusted by the DRM system to disallow faking the register (ie, you need secure boot and a trusted OS) That doesn't seem to fit in any of your models. There's no online check, you can't send someone else the key because it's held in hostile-to-you hardware, you can't bypass the local-PC check because it's entirely opaque to you (even the contents of RAM are encrypted). You can crack into a CPU itself I guess? I don't think the mechanism of the DRM being open source helps with the copying AT ALL in this design. This design is, by the way, quite realistic: most modern CPUs support MK-TME (encrypted RAM mediated by a TPM) and all Windows 11 PCs have a TPM. Companies just haven't gotten there yet.
pjmlp 8mo ago
Thankfully it seems to be not yet another Electron crap shell.
- Anonyneko 8mo ago
  In my experience, Galaxy works no better than a web app, unfortunately. Similarly laggy and lacks the snappiness you'd normally associate with a native app.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    Oh well.
- KptMarchewa 8mo ago
  It's not Electron, however it uses Chromium Embedded Framework underneath.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    Oh, another desilusion then.
- high_na_euv 8mo ago
  Electron is best crossplatform tech available
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    For everyone that doesn't know anything else.
    - hedora 8mo ago
      Name a better alternative that works on iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, MacOS and web.
EspadaV9 8mo ago
No. Please don't. Contribute to something like Heroic Launcher instead. Don't create something new just for GOG. Help make the existing tools better. It'll mean GOG has to do less work, and the programs people are already using will get better. Or even just sponsor Heroic so they can send more time we can working on it themselves.
- gamesieve 8mo ago
  They're not creating something new. They're taking their existing tool (which - for all its flaws - is still far ahead of Heroic in many ways), improving it further, and changing it to also work on Linux. If they then go add additional features like wine integration to that tool to make it overlap more with Heroic is something we're all assuming, but not actually a given.
  - bravetraveler 8mo ago
    A lot of words for "yes they will insist on fragmentation"
    - dandellion 8mo ago
      If you see it form the point of view of a Linux user it's more fragmentation, but if you look at it from the point of view of a gamer it's less fragmentation. Guess who their target audience is?
      - bravetraveler 8mo ago
        Guess what has been serving those gamers, actually I'll be kind: Heroic.
    - OrangeRange 8mo ago
      Everyone in the linux world insists on fragmentation, though? It's a part of what makes it great and a mess at the same time. And what of it? Every time a for profit company uses open source they'll either create a closed fork, and if they can't they'll create closed source modules for it. I'm not saying it's bad to wish for companies to support FOSS, I'm just saying it's an unrealistic expectation to have.
anthonj 8mo ago
That's very nice to hear. But diffuclt to beat valve here, they are actively contributing to drivers and wine. When you buy even just windows software from steam you are helping funding that.
- xtracto 8mo ago
  I don't think they are trying to beat valve. GoG has been like those airlines that fly where no major airlines want to fly. Filling a underserved but large market.
  - Tade0 8mo ago
    I have a hunch that the currently sole owner just wants to do this until retirement. GoG is financially stable so there's no pressure to increase revenue. I see no simpler explanation why someone would buy out a subsidiary like that. All in all, GoG thrives on people being sentimental and it's totally in character for the owner to be sentimental as well.
    - generic92034 8mo ago
      Not wanting to buy DRMed games now is counting as sentimental? I beg to differ. There are a lot of reasons for buying games free of DRM.
      - Tade0 8mo ago
        Younger generations grew up with DRM already present. Same with anti-cheat really. The most common reason I hear people don't make the switch to Linux is that certain games work only on Windows due to the type of anti-cheat they use.
- nialv7 8mo ago
  They don't need to beat valve. The contribution made by valve is going to benefit GOG too. That's the power of open source.
nottorp 8mo ago
New owner means their disgust of Linux is fading.
emsign 8mo ago
I'm very hopeful that Linux gaming will save the open PC desktop despite big tech is coming to destroy it. Or at least keep PCs alive for another decade. Gamers are still a huge factor as hardware customers. GOG creating a Linux launcher and Steam Box with SteamOS coming out soon should benefit PC users in general not just gamers since Microslop sees Windows like a social experiment where they can test AI on unsuspecting lusers, as an ad platform and a store front now.
- canpan 8mo ago
  Steam developing proton was what made it possible for me to change fully. No dual boot or anything needed. It's great. Funnily I also run GoG games through steam proton.. But looking forward to the GoG client working!
  - theshrike79 8mo ago
    I'm still wondering why Apple hasn't taken a few billion of their trillions and just built/bought a Proton style layer for macOS. The computing power is there, we just need the ability to run Windows-only games on Macs with a single click.
  - the_af 8mo ago
    Steam with Proton is simply incredible. And now it doesn't even split games in "Linux" vs "Windows"; it simply assumes all games run on Linux. And they mostly do! Though to be fair I had to tweak a couple to make them run, and Space Marine II absolutely refuses to play past the cutscene, but most other games "just work".
    - tombert 8mo ago
      I was amazed that the PC port of Spider-man Myles Morales worked perfectly with no tweaking at all. That’s the newest AAA game I own (I think), and it runs silky smooth and hasn’t had any issues. It wasn’t that long ago that Wine was only really useful for games that were at least 5-10 years old. Proton is amazing.
    - 8mo ago
easyThrowaway 8mo ago
Hopefully they'll somehow support Proton and Valve devices. Trying to run older windows-only games bought on GOG with launchers like Heroic is a bit of a hit or miss, despite the Steam releases of the same games having somehow a bigger chance of working out of the box. I guess there are some weird differences between the default Proton Runtime and the proton-ge/wine-ge builds.
- prmoustache 8mo ago
  If you have steam installed on the same machine, you can use proton runtimes from steam already.
  - consp 8mo ago
    I use proton experimental to run most windows tools with no linux support. Small script in the script nautilus folder and there you go "run-win.sh" for all (util a native tool emerges).
    - paladum 8mo ago
      Hi, can you share that script ? I strugle to find simple doc on running win apps or games with proton outside of steam.
      - easyThrowaway 8mo ago
        I'd love to see it, too. There are a few Gists floating around supposedly letting you run a third-party game using proton, But everything I've tested fails with little to no usable debug indications on what's going wrong.
- Kuraj 8mo ago
  It wouldn't make sense not to.
alex_duf 8mo ago
A lot of hate in the comments, I think it's great that companies are in a position where they think it makes sense financially to support Linux as a target platform.
- kaoD 8mo ago
  They're just trying to ride the wave of Valve's deck (and they will fail). The fact is that, since I bought the Steam Deck, I bought less from GOG and more from Valve. And this won't change a thing: it doesn't matter if they make a Linux-native frontend to the horrible GOG Galaxy. I just want my games to launch as seamlessly as they do from Valve's UI, not yet another launcher that I have to launch on top of Valve's system UI. I am already doing that with Heroic Games Launcher, which is far better than whatever they will concoct in-house and supports many other stores.
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    >I just want my games to launch as seamlessly as they do from Valve's UI Valve integrated steam all the way down to the OS level to do all that. GOG galaxy meanwhile is focusing more on being an accompanying app to optionally use than centralizing everything under GOG. I think Galaxy trying to strive to be as "seamless" will break the very philosophy of GOG to begin with; being a store to grab games you truly own, not a platform to immerse yourself in.
  - Andrex 8mo ago
    It's nice, Linux being an open platform, that if something isn't on Steam you can just install GOG and get it there.
  - the_af 8mo ago
    GOG supported Linux from before Galaxy. I don't use Galaxy at all. My GOG games work on Linux. It's a good company.
  - zoeysmithe 8mo ago
    While on the other hand I'm often frustrated and feel limited by a steam-only deck and am going to start installing the other store fronts. I have games there I've gotten cheaper or even free. I don't like being locked into steam and "Gabe the goodest billionaire" propaganda exists to keep people from engaging in competitor products. I also want to support stores that take less from developers, especially smaller ones. Steams 30% cut while Epic is 0% up to $1m is concerning. I want smaller devs to succeed better. Steam is a huge compromise even if its a 'fan favorite' quasi-monopoly. So yes I want gog to be native linux on things like the deck.
delaminator 8mo ago
I always make sure to not use the GoG downloader just download the game. I don't need a client with your branding all over it, that has socials and my library and all engagement bait like that. I figure it's one step away from putting the DRM back on so you have to use the launcher to get a game from GOG. Just let me buy games and then shut up.
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  Like it or not, a lot of people love a virtualization of their library. So the option is nice. I like GOG's launcher because 1) it's open source and 2) it can show other gamijg libraries thanks to fan maintained plugins. Those aspects give me a sense that the goal here (outside of to lower the friction into GOG's store) is indeed to serve the user And if that changes, it's easy to take my ball and go home. GOG trying to push hard on any DRM is basically them surrendering to Steam.
  - delaminator 8mo ago
    Going to a website's hardly massive friction is it ? I've got tens of games through GoG and it's always my first port of call if I want a game. Because it keeps out of the way. If it's got value to people, fair enough, it's got value to people. That's just my opinion. All I want you to do is sell me games. But we all know about enshittification and MBAs trying to round the wagons.
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      I agree with you. I'm still a greybeard who organizes my games in a folder and finds the exe to click. At best I'll keep a handy folder of shortcuts for games I play often on my desktop. I even keep my startup programs to a bare minimum of my communication lines (if I wanna boot up steam, I'll type it in the search bar or wait for the launched game that requires it). But we're in this hyper optimized world where kids are literally being auto scrolled through short form content. Attention spans have been utterly shot. So yes, there's a large number of people out there that see "going into a website and finding a game" as too much friction. That's a larger societal issue that I can't do much about in times where my country needs to debate the merits of citizens being shot on the streets by federal agents. Maybe one day we can get back to a point where proper educational and parental supprt resources is, say, a top 20 issue?
indolering 8mo ago
Why is the launcher not at least public source? GOG's value add is the service it provides, not the specialness of its launcher. Hopefully they will pursue a container/Flatpak native system but probably not!
Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
On the upside, this might mean I'll buy more stuff from GOG again. Steam+Proton is just so darn convenient.
- trwired 8mo ago
  This is one thing that's been puzzling for me ever since I switched to Linux full time a few years ago and so also started gaming on it. In my experience GOG bought games handled by Lutris/Heroic/Mini Galaxy trump Steam in convenience almost every time. There's been quite a few deal breaking issues with Steam client and/or Proton that went unaddressed by Valve for months that just never happened to me on the GOG+game manager combo. (Remember the most recent Steam rewrite that made certain UI elements not work on Linux and which still needs a workaround option in the client years later?) All that on top of another application requiring full browser engine under the hood eating resources just to be able to launch a game. I don't know if I am just extremely unlucky to get hit with every Linux related issue on Steam and notice its drawbacks or if people are offering Valve unreasonably high leniency, because they see then as some sort of champion of gaming on Linux, while not giving enough to other players like GOG. Pardon my rant.
  - Tade0 8mo ago
    The Steam client was always flaky as hell - on Windows as well. I've always wondered were problems on Steam's side or on the side of game devs implementing its APIs? Anyway I personally experienced scaling issues, but chalked that up to my DE being unreliable. I also occasionally can't click on certain UI elements, but I recall this being a problem in Windows as well.
  - nottorp 8mo ago
    > made certain UI elements not work on Linux ... and on Mac OS. For a while i had to play games with what control has focus to PAY them.
thrownawaysz 8mo ago
>Competitive Salary – We ensure fair and attractive compensation that reflects your skills and experience: 18 000 - 27 000 PLN/month I know it's eastern Europe but that's $5000-7500 a month, barely $90k a year. It sounds like a solo job too so a lot of responsibility for this salary.
- tokai 8mo ago
  US devs are vastly over payed.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 8mo ago
  Welcome to Europe!
- lewispollard 8mo ago
  Yeah that's a good salary in Europe. It's only slightly less than I make in the UK as a senior.
  - flumpcakes 8mo ago
    Ditto. It seems like the graduate wage in the US is 2x my senior salary in the UK, which sounds very similar to yours. It seems massively inflated compared to other US jobs. Tech jobs in the UK seem to be more inline with other sectors.
- delta_p_delta_x 8mo ago
  > $90k a year. $90K a year goes much further in most of Europe barring the centres of the biggest cities—let alone eastern Europe—than it does in the US. NYC and Bay Area salaries are outrageously inflated, with much of the take-home being funnelled into four/five digit rents or mortgages for houses built out of matchsticks, car loans, health insurance payments, and more. None of this is necessary or costs as much in most of Europe, or the rest of the world, really.
  - lurk2 8mo ago
    > $90K a year goes much further in most of Europe barring the centres of the biggest cities […] NYC and Bay Area salaries are outrageously inflated. Apples to oranges.
kleiba 8mo ago
Geez, that headline was hard to parse.
anthk 8mo ago
Tons of libre game engines will work with GOG data: https://osgameclones.com https://osgameclones.com
everdrive 8mo ago
I'm very excited for this. GoG is a DRM-free platform (for the most part) and I see it as the only positive competition Steam has. Imagine how bad the gaming landscape would be if a company like Epic soundly defeated Valve. They would enshittify at record pace. GoG doing well would only put positive pressure on other players. Ideally, you want your opponents to be healthy and sane, in case they win. And sane opponents drive the market towards better outcomes. I'll definitely buy some classics from GoG with their Linux client.
sylware 8mo ago
Oh, really? GOG is now providing a 'correct' set of ELF64 binaries as a client? (I guess (wayland->x11, vulkan->cpu)) Hopefully, they will support self-hosted email servers not in the DNS, mobile phone numbers, and wallet codes.
alturp 8mo ago
The so-called fragmentation people criticizes in the comments is also a strength for free software systems in long term.
- lionkor 8mo ago
  Fragmentation means competition, and competition is usually good as long as it lasts
  - alturp 8mo ago
    exactly and in case of free software it is not even competition with financial incentive and (not always) so many projects can live long without a good output because of this. i think many people do not appreciate the usefulness of 'non-useful' things
- immibis 8mo ago
  [dead]
ForHackernews 8mo ago
There's some great Linux gaming distros out these days, https://bazzite.gg/ https://bazzite.gg/ is based on Fedora and https://chimeraos.org/ https://chimeraos.org/ is almost like SteamOS for non-Steam hardware. It ships a console-like UI on top of an immutable Arch base.
t0bia_s 8mo ago
One of reasons why I buy games exclusively on GoG is clientlessness. I don't like when clients messing with game updates, because of modding incompatibility. Unfortunately modding is reason, why switch to linux for gaming is not easy.
- graynk 8mo ago
  That's also one thing Galaxy gets right. You can turn off auto-updates and that won't stop you from playing the game (unlike with Steam, which will just replace your "play" button with "update"). They also support rolling back updates, but I never tried that and I'm not entirely sure if this works for every game, or if this is something a game developer has to actively support.
  - t0bia_s 8mo ago
    I don't find any advantages of having client of GoG games to be honest, updates was only one, but not in case with modding.
    - graynk 8mo ago
      I like seeing my achievements and playtime (but also it's more of a nice to have)
      - t0bia_s 8mo ago
        Why? I find nothing interesting about it when I play a game.
cynicalsecurity 8mo ago
Finally. The previous hate GOG showed towards Linux was absolutely ridiculous.
- flumpcakes 8mo ago
  What is the story behind that? I would have thought GOG would be neutral at worst about Linux as a platform considering their anti-DRM pitch.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 8mo ago
What a waste of effort. Just provide your current installers or even fallback to plain old tarballs.
Jigsy 8mo ago
I do wish more companies would bring their games to GOG. That said, Square finally released some of their Final Fantasy games on it yesterday, so hopefully that's changing.
awedisee 8mo ago
Based take little dude. Gamers all care very much about "openness". Did you forget that in 1985 Nintendo created the first hardware-based security system designed to prevent unlicensed and low-quality games from running. Gamers used to own the games they purchased via cassettes, disks, and later even digital copies. Now through platforms like Epic and Steam you are provided a digital "license" to play the game. ALL of this speaks to the "openness" of gaming and it is ALL important to gamers. As previously stated though, game creators have been forced to choose the platforms they can create their games for. By the 90s the majority of personal computers were running MS-DOS and Steve Jobs had a base take on games being "toys" and did not belong on Macintosh products. Fast forward to the early Oughts and you see games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush making millions by producing games on ARM technology which really pushed the entire industry forward to focus multi-platform gaming outside of the tradition routes of either PC or console or both. Furthermore triple A studios led the charge and made big decisions that smaller studios would follow until around the release of Cyberpunk 2077. This in my opinion was the big turning point that gamers decides to act against large studios from all of the decision making that has turned a relative open system to a closed system. The invention of the Proton protocol to allow gaming on Linux Machines is FORCING industry to ABIDE by the wishes of the customer. The gamers. The gamers are FINALLY winning! This isn't just about openness on operating systems and being able to own the thing you purchase. Its also about efficiency. Windows is a bloat farm that has what feels like a million service hosts running in the background sending telemetry data to NOT me. Furthermore, if windows is not optimized to use your hardware efficiently, why would your favorite game? Changes like the Proton protocol are bridges to re-align the supply/demand curve by forcing the customer and producer back to the negotiation table so the gamers voice can be heard. In closing, gamers have had limited options due to technological limitations, vendor lock ins, corporate anti-competitive practices, monopoly exploitation, or predatory pricings. With inventions like ARM and Proton protocol, gamers have a louder voice to force game makers implement "openness" in their products.
tsoukase 8mo ago
The Linux billion dollar question is if the doubling of it's share in desktop in the last 2-3 years is going to saturate or continue doubling or exponential.
- jdkfkgkkdbkd 8mo ago
  To the moon!
Artoooooor 8mo ago
Yay I suppose?
999900000999 8mo ago
I do the vast majority of my gaming on my handheld with Bazzite configured to feel like a Steam Deck. I basically don't leave the Steam UX. Valve has done such a great job here I don't see why any Linux user would consider buying games anywhere else.
- nemomarx 8mo ago
  The heroic launcher looks like it was trying to solve this and let you use cheaper gog games in your normal steam library. And I've seen similar tools for emulators to show up basically like native steam games
  - jimmydoe 8mo ago
    Heroic is the best attempt so far, but when comes to handheld UX, it’s meh.
  - 999900000999 8mo ago
    Okay. But I still probably have to hop into desktop mode to configure stuff. I don't even know how to install non steam applications on my current stepup.
- thoughtpalette 8mo ago
  What handheld do you use? I'm window shopping an upgrade from my miyoo mini.
  - 999900000999 8mo ago
    Lenovo Legion Go. The original one with detachable controllers. The SSD is really easy to replace, and my logic is the controllers have to go bad eventually. Edit: comes with a nice case and 2 USB c ports. Be realist with what games will work, frame gen only goes so far. I'd rather spend 80$ on new controllers vs 600$ on a new device.
lenerdenator 8mo ago
I have been playing Fallout: New Vegas on my ThinkPad T570 running Bazzite Linux for the last few weeks. It's been... amazing. A good game, running at workable framerates, no more crashes than usual (it's a Bethesda game, after all), and the software was free as opposed to building out a new PC with Windows 11. It's like rediscovering PC gaming after years of it becoming bloated and a cash grab.
shmerl 8mo ago
Congrats! Their Linux support was behind. GOG's new owner is doing the right thing.
jurf 8mo ago
Finally. It was the reason I was always reluctant to buy something from GOG.
JohnFen 8mo ago
I'm genuinely confused about all this. Can someone help me out? I've been buying and playing games from GOG on Linux for a very long time with no need for GOG Galaxy -- which is a thing I know nothing about. Since this announcement, I've been trying to figure out why I'd need it. It seems like it's just a convenience application and social connection point (leaderboards, etc.). In which case, it's not something of interest to me. However, I've also seen references to Galaxy that imply that it's necessary to play games -- which is obviously untrue in general, but perhaps there are some games that require it? Anyway, I'm tremendously confused by all this.
- Night_Thastus 8mo ago
  Galaxy is purely convenience. If you want to see all your games from all storefronts (Epic, Steam, GOG, etc) in one place, Galaxy lets you do that. (Along with the social stuff) You can still play GOG games without any launcher, which is how it's intended to work. Some people really like having a launcher to keep track of everything, so this isn't a nothing burger. It's one more convenience to help convince people to move over.
  - JohnFen 8mo ago
    Ah, thank you very much!
- kirbs 8mo ago
  As far I'm aware as a casual user of Galaxy, you're correct. It's just a convenience application with some light social features. I find it slightly more convenient when installing games on a new machine. I've never personally seen a game that required using it.
  - eikenberry 8mo ago
    Convenience is 100% Steam’s most important feature. Finding games, installing them, updating, auto-login, cloud saves, probably more that I can’t think of right now.
giancarlostoro 8mo ago
One of the reasons I have not touched GOG more seriously is probably because they have no native presence. I hope they consider making it open source, so anyone from any distro could contribute to it. I feel like it would be the healthier choice for GOG.
LooseMarmoset 8mo ago
While you're waiting for a GoG native client, I can whole-heartedly recommend: Heroic Game Launcher: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ RPM/Deb/Flatpack/TGZ/AppImage for Linux DMG for MacOS Intel/M1+ EXE for Windows Heroic supports GoG, Amazon Luna, and the Epic Game stores. Heroic even streamlines the app updates so you don't have to figure that out.
deleted 8mo ago
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kn100 8mo ago
literally the only two reasons I still have windows on my laptop currently are fusion360 and apex legends. I was happily playing Apex Legends on Linux for years until EA decided to disable Linux support due to "cheating". While I understand their concerns, I can't say as a regular player the cheating problem is any better or worse than it was before they removed Linux support. As for fusion360... Freecad is getting mighty good these days...
- Blackthorn 8mo ago
  It's not free but...zw3d has full* native Linux support. You'd be forgiven for not knowing this because they only offer it on their Chinese website, even though it comes complete with a fully localized English version that you just have to switch on in the settings. * Integrations with online parts libraries don't seem to work (don't know why they didn't bother, as it looks like it just spawned a web browser anyway), and the simulation add-ons aren't available either, but the main program itself is equivalently functional.
Radle 8mo ago
Once Gaming hits Linux for real Windows will simply die. Explorer takes 10 seconds to open when the folder in question has a couple of Gigs, blue screen crashes are for some reason back in win11. The entire thing takes ages to boot. It's simply to bloated.
jamesgeck0 8mo ago
Friendly reminder that GOG ignored and downplayed the GOG Galaxy 0-day privilege escalation bug CVE-2020-24574 [1] for literal years. They tried to brush off the security researcher who reported the issue by rotating keys and claiming it was fixed. Their non-serious stance towards security means Galaxy isn't really software I want running on my system anymore. 1. https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-24574 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-24574
destroycom 8mo ago
Sadly, their "native" client is a web browser. Besides the usual complaints about electron and CEF applications, another pain point is they work horrendously in emulation. GoG Galaxy is only available as an x86 application on Windows. I'm running Windows ARM64 in a VM on an M-series macbook to play some games occasionally, and Galaxy is the slowest piece of software I have. Ironically, it runs worse than the games it spawns, which have a much more complex rendering procedure (and, like Galaxy, they also run in emulation, since the binaries are x86). Emulation works particularly slow with JITted languages, so having the entire UI written in JavaScript doesn't help at all. I even checked their job posting in the hope that it will be about a ground up rewrite for GNU/Linux, without the browser (since they are looking for a C++ developer), but it seems there are no plans to change that in the porting process. Which makes senes, it's a lot of work, but still a pity. On a tangential note, requirements like this in the job posting also do not inspire much hope for improvements in the near future. > Actively use and promote AI-assisted development tools to increase team efficiency and code quality
- zamadatix 8mo ago
  I always thought it was a bit funny GoG GALAXY 2.0 went the web tech route for parts of the client and still managed to get itself stuck in a place where it ships an x86 only binary on macOS anyways.
  - jshier 8mo ago
    Steam's ARM support is still beta, and Battle.net is still x86 only. So it seems more typical than not for these sorts of things.
  - cr125rider 8mo ago
    How’s Rosetta 2 handle it?
    - zamadatix 8mo ago
      About as usual for a CEF/Electron app last I tested ~ a year ago. I.e. "impressively well considering, but still not all too great". For a while there was an issue where it was launching games in compatibility mode, but I assume that's been long fixed without needing to migrate the base app (if anyone regularly uses GoG on their Mac feel free to chime in, I only have a work MacBook these days).
bhewes 8mo ago
Sweet I have about 500 of games on gog and I use heroic launcher on cachyos. Probably a total of 1.3k of titles across steam, gog and epic any idea gaming isn't Linux now is dumb thinking. Glad to see gog work on native.
whywhywhywhy 8mo ago
Got a Steam Deck recently and I presume this is the power of Proton mostly but I'm amazed how it feels entirely native on everything I've tried so far. Really makes me wish games were the only thing keeping me on windows but unfortunately I use Adobe a fair bit and Cinema4D.
hyperman1 8mo ago
As a Linux GOG user, I hope they don't change too much. It works very well already.
TheGRS 8mo ago
I decided I'm going to take the plunge soon. I've used Windows for my personal computers for a long time (25 years? more if you count our family computers back in the day). I have only used linux desktops for little hobby projects, in Pis and VMs, and most of my experience has been headless servers. I loaded up Mint on a thumb drive pretty recently and it seemed like it would be good enough for running my steam games and VS Code. I'm actually liking the idea a lot because while I've been very happy with WSL, there is still a wee bit of friction developing locally with it, especially for game development stuff. And when developing its usually in the linux CLI anyway. Docker usually has some bumps too. Thankfully I have my old PC still lying around and it'll play most of the games I like, so I'm gonna give it a spin soon and see if its the right fit for me. Maybe I can use a bot to help me document setup better than I have in the past too.
ece 8mo ago
Developer tools have always been pretty well supported on Linux, it seems like gaming is also getting there except for anti-cheat. Maybe productivity tools will follow.
yunnpp 8mo ago
Thank God. I know Lutris integrates with the GOG library, but having an official GOG Galaxy client and some quality assurance on the underlying wine/proton config would be the dream.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo ago
Oh wow FINALLY. the main reason why I stopped buying from gog is this. I can now buy there again.
tete 8mo ago
Please make it open source. Please create an API. Please, if you feel like you have to have your own client, build it, but don't ignore the reality of Linux gamers using a whole set of tools and one doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. Especially for the older games you will get a lot more reach. You'd even reach beyond Linux (BSDs, etc.). Please don't forget that a big chunk of your audience are nerds and that a lot of games run on engine re-implementations by nerds. It's great that you make a client, but if you really want to offer something that would make people get games on GOG then do something that Steam does not offer, while probably being easier for you. If that is too much to ask, please, at least do it in an unofficial capacity.
subscribed 8mo ago
Go, GOG, it's so close for me to migrate. The last obstacle will be the most working mostly effortlessly with my Nvidia on Fedora / Ubuntu.
cloudengineer94 8mo ago
If we didn’t have Kernel Anti Cheat in Windows, it would be a godsend for Linux gaming. It’s literally the only issue missing (and some games not available under Xbox game app but I mean it’s Microsoft as publisher so no intention for Linux version)
peeqingtom 8mo ago
[dead]

738 points by franczesko 8mo ago

mft_ 8mo ago

I’m loving the huge uptick in coverage that Linux is getting recently, from the stories about switching from Windows, to the huge leaps made to support gaming. I’m now hoping that this will gradually push the big publishers to go the extra mile and figure out their anti-cheat stuff on Linux too, so the remaining big games can make the transition.

l0b0 8mo ago

"GOG GALAXY is a long-lived product with a large and complex C++ codebase." Also known as a shitshow. Hopefully the new engineer(s) will be encouraged to at least add some tests and refactor things to stay sane. No mention of a license, though. I guess it'll stay closed source.

thaumasiotes 8mo ago
> I guess it'll stay closed source. It's a DRM implementation. It has to stay closed source.
- bpye 8mo ago
  There is no DRM on GOG. https://www.gog.com/blog/what-exactly-is-drm-in-video-games-and-why-should-you-care/#9-drm-free-how-do-i-get-it- https://www.gog.com/blog/what-exactly-is-drm-in-video-games-...
  - stavros 8mo ago
    Famously so. The main method of deployment was an offline installer before they made Galaxy, and AFAIK Galaxy just downloads and runs the installer.
    - gamesieve 8mo ago
      Not quite. You can use Galaxy to download the offline installers (or just do that through the website), but when you install a game through Galaxy, it downloads a special build which it just copies to the right location, without running a separate installer.
    - KptMarchewa 8mo ago
      No, it doesn't use offline installers. Source: worked on that in the past. https://content-system.gog.com/ https://content-system.gog.com/
    - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
      The running game can also call out to Galaxy and unlock, or not unlock, ingame content based on what it hears back. It's pretty difficult to imagine a definition of "digital rights management" that doesn't include this.
      - CopperWing 8mo ago
        As far as I remember, the only games which optionally need Galaxy running are those will online multiplayer, and only if you want to play online. This is because the original developers shutdown their own servers for matchmaking or originally used Steam servers for that. GOG servers are only replacing those.
        gamesieve 8mo ago
        There are also a handful of games which put some additional purely cosmetic content behind an online check. That could be the start of a slippery slope, which people are justly upset about, but they then do an injustice to their cause by generalizing from those cases.
        account42 8mo ago
        It's not a slippery slope but already full blown DRM plain and simple. Both online functionality limited to GOG-run servers and checks for cosmetic content.
  - da_grift_shift 8mo ago
    Yet the standalone offline installed games won't run without libgalaxy.dylib (Mac) or Galaxy64.dll (Windows) which is responsible for outbound connections to https://galaxy-log.gog.com https://galaxy-log.gog.com and https://insights-collector.gog.com https://insights-collector.gog.com? To be clear: if you buy Disco Elysium on GOG, download the "offline game installer" without using Galaxy, install it, and run the game on a desert island, it will work (the network requests fail open). But if you try to run the game after removing the bundled dylib/DLL, it will not. Why do Galaxy-free games ship with a mandatory dependency on Galaxy?
    - nottorp 8mo ago
      > Why do Galaxy-free games ship with a mandatory dependency on Galaxy? Because the developer linked the dynamic library in at compile time instead of writing additional code to load it at runtime and disabling/enabling features based on its presence. You can call it budget limitations, incompetence or lack of respect for the customer. Doubt it's intentional DRM though.
    - immibis 8mo ago
      [dead]
  - krige 8mo ago
    Last I checked, there is loads of DRM on GOG and most of the games that have it, force you to use Galaxy.
    - tommica 8mo ago
      Really? What games are those? I've not encountered a single one :/
      - krige 8mo ago
        Off the top of my head Crime Cities on launch forced me to use Galaxy to play it. I vividly remember this because the game also ran like complete crap.
        gamesieve 8mo ago
        Galaxy can be required for multiplayer aspects in games, but if what you say is true for the singleplayer part of the game, GOG will consider it a bug, and will get it fixed. There's nothing in the Crime Cities GOG forum about this, nor in the various tracking threads in the main forum, and generally GOG users are extremely sensitive about anything which even reeks of forcing Galaxy, so I'd strongly expect any issue to be known. I've seen cases where the developer implemented a bad online check, so that if you blocked the program from accessing the internet while the OS reported being online, the game would hang or crash, but being fully offline would work. Could it be that something like that was at play here? Oh, or that you simply picked the wrong installer for the game, and thus ran the Galaxy-installer rather than the offline installer?
        Springtime 8mo ago
        I think too it can be misleading since on Windows the default LNK shortcut that is created after the game installation launches Galaxy with arguments instead of being a path to the direct game EXE (which works entirely without Galaxy and how I run games). They do this to push Galaxy for convenience I suppose as most are used to clients that handle updates but it can be confusing if some wonder why for instance their offline installer shortcut opened Galaxy instead.
  - PunchyHamster 8mo ago
    I guess depends what you consider DRM, some games appear to have problems https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/label_the_games_that_have_drm https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/label_the_games_that_have_...
    - WorldMaker 8mo ago
      GOG's original and somewhat current line in the sand is "must have an offline-capable installer". For a lot of Good Old Games that is enough to guarantee DRM-free. Unfortunately in the Live Service world it is a concession that allows too many loopholes such as Sony single player games that still need a PlayStation Account and a half-dozen telemetry services active before they get to actual gameplay. Sony, as a particular example worth flogging, also makes use of the loophole that an anti-cheat rootkit can be installed offline, easy. I think GOG is saying a lot of the right things in terms of Game Preservation being a long term goal for them. I think they are between a rock and a hard place that the store would be a lot less active if they couldn't offer the latest games from companies like Sony, and they want to be on good terms with such companies to get access to their giant back catalogs for Preservation efforts which also presumably includes sales numbers of recent titles for justification. But yes, I'd also love to see them push back a bit harder on some of these publishers a bit further than "needs an offline-capable installer" and mabye include more steps towards some definition of "should run offline-capable", because yeah things like "Live Services" and account systems and mandatory telemetry systems and rootkit anti-cheat systems are often de facto DRM just wearing another hat of "user convenience" or "achievement tracking" or "game safety" tools. I don't think GOG can make that push alone, though. There are too many industry trends to try to buck to get further in those directions. (Thinking about the recent Anthem shutdown as a recent for instance of a mostly single player game that is entirely unplayable because EA shutdown live services this month.)
      - gamesieve 8mo ago
        There are no games on GOG which require a PlayStation account for their single player gameplay. (AFAIK, but I think I'm pretty tuned in and would know.)
  - account42 8mo ago
    And we have always been at war with Eurasia.
- KwanEsq 8mo ago
  This is factually incorrect. GOG famously has no DRM.
  - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    Try checking on the facts first. GOG famously has a slogan that says they have no DRM. They are lying in their slogan.
- falcor84 8mo ago
  Why? Can't DRM be implemented in open source, and only have private keys kept secret?
  - elsjaako 8mo ago
    If we have DRM with some private key, then I guess your idea is I download the game files and some private key and that allows me to run the game. If I can send you the private key and the game and it allows you to run the game with no further inputs, then the DRM is trivially broken (even without open source). If it does some online check, then if the source is open we can easily make a version that bypasses the online check. If there is some check on the local PC (e.g. the key only works if some hardware ID is set correctly), we can easily find out what it checks, capture that information, package it, and make a new version of the launcher that uses this packaged data instead of the real machine data. If you use a private key to go online and retrieve more data, having it be open source makes it trivial to capture that data, package it, and write a new version of the launcher that uses that packaged data. Basically, DRM requires that there is something that is not easy to copy, and it being open source makes it a lot easier to copy.
    - Borealid 8mo ago
      How would you define it if: - the DRM/delivery software is open source - the game payload is sent to you encrypted using the public key of a secure enclave on your computer - while the game runs all its memory is symmetrically encrypted (by your own CPU) using a key private to that secure enclave. It is only decrypted in the CPU's cache lines, which are flushed when the core runs anything other than the game (even OS code) - the secure enclave refuses to switch to the context in which the CPU is allowed to use the decryption key unless a convolution-only (not overwriteable with arbitrary values) register inside itself had the correct value - the convolution-only register is written with the "wrong" value, by your own computer's firmware, if you use a bootloader that is not trusted by the DRM system to disallow faking the register (ie, you need secure boot and a trusted OS) That doesn't seem to fit in any of your models. There's no online check, you can't send someone else the key because it's held in hostile-to-you hardware, you can't bypass the local-PC check because it's entirely opaque to you (even the contents of RAM are encrypted). You can crack into a CPU itself I guess? I don't think the mechanism of the DRM being open source helps with the copying AT ALL in this design. This design is, by the way, quite realistic: most modern CPUs support MK-TME (encrypted RAM mediated by a TPM) and all Windows 11 PCs have a TPM. Companies just haven't gotten there yet.

pjmlp 8mo ago

Thankfully it seems to be not yet another Electron crap shell.

Anonyneko 8mo ago
In my experience, Galaxy works no better than a web app, unfortunately. Similarly laggy and lacks the snappiness you'd normally associate with a native app.
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  Oh well.
KptMarchewa 8mo ago
It's not Electron, however it uses Chromium Embedded Framework underneath.
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  Oh, another desilusion then.
high_na_euv 8mo ago
Electron is best crossplatform tech available
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  For everyone that doesn't know anything else.
  - hedora 8mo ago
    Name a better alternative that works on iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, MacOS and web.

EspadaV9 8mo ago

No. Please don't. Contribute to something like Heroic Launcher instead. Don't create something new just for GOG. Help make the existing tools better. It'll mean GOG has to do less work, and the programs people are already using will get better. Or even just sponsor Heroic so they can send more time we can working on it themselves.

gamesieve 8mo ago
They're not creating something new. They're taking their existing tool (which - for all its flaws - is still far ahead of Heroic in many ways), improving it further, and changing it to also work on Linux. If they then go add additional features like wine integration to that tool to make it overlap more with Heroic is something we're all assuming, but not actually a given.
- bravetraveler 8mo ago
  A lot of words for "yes they will insist on fragmentation"
  - dandellion 8mo ago
    If you see it form the point of view of a Linux user it's more fragmentation, but if you look at it from the point of view of a gamer it's less fragmentation. Guess who their target audience is?
    - bravetraveler 8mo ago
      Guess what has been serving those gamers, actually I'll be kind: Heroic.
  - OrangeRange 8mo ago
    Everyone in the linux world insists on fragmentation, though? It's a part of what makes it great and a mess at the same time. And what of it? Every time a for profit company uses open source they'll either create a closed fork, and if they can't they'll create closed source modules for it. I'm not saying it's bad to wish for companies to support FOSS, I'm just saying it's an unrealistic expectation to have.

anthonj 8mo ago

That's very nice to hear. But diffuclt to beat valve here, they are actively contributing to drivers and wine. When you buy even just windows software from steam you are helping funding that.

xtracto 8mo ago
I don't think they are trying to beat valve. GoG has been like those airlines that fly where no major airlines want to fly. Filling a underserved but large market.
- Tade0 8mo ago
  I have a hunch that the currently sole owner just wants to do this until retirement. GoG is financially stable so there's no pressure to increase revenue. I see no simpler explanation why someone would buy out a subsidiary like that. All in all, GoG thrives on people being sentimental and it's totally in character for the owner to be sentimental as well.
  - generic92034 8mo ago
    Not wanting to buy DRMed games now is counting as sentimental? I beg to differ. There are a lot of reasons for buying games free of DRM.
    - Tade0 8mo ago
      Younger generations grew up with DRM already present. Same with anti-cheat really. The most common reason I hear people don't make the switch to Linux is that certain games work only on Windows due to the type of anti-cheat they use.
nialv7 8mo ago
They don't need to beat valve. The contribution made by valve is going to benefit GOG too. That's the power of open source.

nottorp 8mo ago

New owner means their disgust of Linux is fading.

emsign 8mo ago

I'm very hopeful that Linux gaming will save the open PC desktop despite big tech is coming to destroy it. Or at least keep PCs alive for another decade. Gamers are still a huge factor as hardware customers. GOG creating a Linux launcher and Steam Box with SteamOS coming out soon should benefit PC users in general not just gamers since Microslop sees Windows like a social experiment where they can test AI on unsuspecting lusers, as an ad platform and a store front now.

canpan 8mo ago
Steam developing proton was what made it possible for me to change fully. No dual boot or anything needed. It's great. Funnily I also run GoG games through steam proton.. But looking forward to the GoG client working!
- theshrike79 8mo ago
  I'm still wondering why Apple hasn't taken a few billion of their trillions and just built/bought a Proton style layer for macOS. The computing power is there, we just need the ability to run Windows-only games on Macs with a single click.
- the_af 8mo ago
  Steam with Proton is simply incredible. And now it doesn't even split games in "Linux" vs "Windows"; it simply assumes all games run on Linux. And they mostly do! Though to be fair I had to tweak a couple to make them run, and Space Marine II absolutely refuses to play past the cutscene, but most other games "just work".
  - tombert 8mo ago
    I was amazed that the PC port of Spider-man Myles Morales worked perfectly with no tweaking at all. That’s the newest AAA game I own (I think), and it runs silky smooth and hasn’t had any issues. It wasn’t that long ago that Wine was only really useful for games that were at least 5-10 years old. Proton is amazing.
  - 8mo ago

easyThrowaway 8mo ago

Hopefully they'll somehow support Proton and Valve devices. Trying to run older windows-only games bought on GOG with launchers like Heroic is a bit of a hit or miss, despite the Steam releases of the same games having somehow a bigger chance of working out of the box. I guess there are some weird differences between the default Proton Runtime and the proton-ge/wine-ge builds.

prmoustache 8mo ago
If you have steam installed on the same machine, you can use proton runtimes from steam already.
- consp 8mo ago
  I use proton experimental to run most windows tools with no linux support. Small script in the script nautilus folder and there you go "run-win.sh" for all (util a native tool emerges).
  - paladum 8mo ago
    Hi, can you share that script ? I strugle to find simple doc on running win apps or games with proton outside of steam.
    - easyThrowaway 8mo ago
      I'd love to see it, too. There are a few Gists floating around supposedly letting you run a third-party game using proton, But everything I've tested fails with little to no usable debug indications on what's going wrong.
Kuraj 8mo ago
It wouldn't make sense not to.

alex_duf 8mo ago

A lot of hate in the comments, I think it's great that companies are in a position where they think it makes sense financially to support Linux as a target platform.

kaoD 8mo ago
They're just trying to ride the wave of Valve's deck (and they will fail). The fact is that, since I bought the Steam Deck, I bought less from GOG and more from Valve. And this won't change a thing: it doesn't matter if they make a Linux-native frontend to the horrible GOG Galaxy. I just want my games to launch as seamlessly as they do from Valve's UI, not yet another launcher that I have to launch on top of Valve's system UI. I am already doing that with Heroic Games Launcher, which is far better than whatever they will concoct in-house and supports many other stores.
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  >I just want my games to launch as seamlessly as they do from Valve's UI Valve integrated steam all the way down to the OS level to do all that. GOG galaxy meanwhile is focusing more on being an accompanying app to optionally use than centralizing everything under GOG. I think Galaxy trying to strive to be as "seamless" will break the very philosophy of GOG to begin with; being a store to grab games you truly own, not a platform to immerse yourself in.
- Andrex 8mo ago
  It's nice, Linux being an open platform, that if something isn't on Steam you can just install GOG and get it there.
- the_af 8mo ago
  GOG supported Linux from before Galaxy. I don't use Galaxy at all. My GOG games work on Linux. It's a good company.
- zoeysmithe 8mo ago
  While on the other hand I'm often frustrated and feel limited by a steam-only deck and am going to start installing the other store fronts. I have games there I've gotten cheaper or even free. I don't like being locked into steam and "Gabe the goodest billionaire" propaganda exists to keep people from engaging in competitor products. I also want to support stores that take less from developers, especially smaller ones. Steams 30% cut while Epic is 0% up to $1m is concerning. I want smaller devs to succeed better. Steam is a huge compromise even if its a 'fan favorite' quasi-monopoly. So yes I want gog to be native linux on things like the deck.

delaminator 8mo ago

I always make sure to not use the GoG downloader just download the game. I don't need a client with your branding all over it, that has socials and my library and all engagement bait like that. I figure it's one step away from putting the DRM back on so you have to use the launcher to get a game from GOG. Just let me buy games and then shut up.

johnnyanmac 8mo ago
Like it or not, a lot of people love a virtualization of their library. So the option is nice. I like GOG's launcher because 1) it's open source and 2) it can show other gamijg libraries thanks to fan maintained plugins. Those aspects give me a sense that the goal here (outside of to lower the friction into GOG's store) is indeed to serve the user And if that changes, it's easy to take my ball and go home. GOG trying to push hard on any DRM is basically them surrendering to Steam.
- delaminator 8mo ago
  Going to a website's hardly massive friction is it ? I've got tens of games through GoG and it's always my first port of call if I want a game. Because it keeps out of the way. If it's got value to people, fair enough, it's got value to people. That's just my opinion. All I want you to do is sell me games. But we all know about enshittification and MBAs trying to round the wagons.
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    I agree with you. I'm still a greybeard who organizes my games in a folder and finds the exe to click. At best I'll keep a handy folder of shortcuts for games I play often on my desktop. I even keep my startup programs to a bare minimum of my communication lines (if I wanna boot up steam, I'll type it in the search bar or wait for the launched game that requires it). But we're in this hyper optimized world where kids are literally being auto scrolled through short form content. Attention spans have been utterly shot. So yes, there's a large number of people out there that see "going into a website and finding a game" as too much friction. That's a larger societal issue that I can't do much about in times where my country needs to debate the merits of citizens being shot on the streets by federal agents. Maybe one day we can get back to a point where proper educational and parental supprt resources is, say, a top 20 issue?

indolering 8mo ago

Why is the launcher not at least public source? GOG's value add is the service it provides, not the specialness of its launcher. Hopefully they will pursue a container/Flatpak native system but probably not!

Kim_Bruning 8mo ago

On the upside, this might mean I'll buy more stuff from GOG again. Steam+Proton is just so darn convenient.

trwired 8mo ago
This is one thing that's been puzzling for me ever since I switched to Linux full time a few years ago and so also started gaming on it. In my experience GOG bought games handled by Lutris/Heroic/Mini Galaxy trump Steam in convenience almost every time. There's been quite a few deal breaking issues with Steam client and/or Proton that went unaddressed by Valve for months that just never happened to me on the GOG+game manager combo. (Remember the most recent Steam rewrite that made certain UI elements not work on Linux and which still needs a workaround option in the client years later?) All that on top of another application requiring full browser engine under the hood eating resources just to be able to launch a game. I don't know if I am just extremely unlucky to get hit with every Linux related issue on Steam and notice its drawbacks or if people are offering Valve unreasonably high leniency, because they see then as some sort of champion of gaming on Linux, while not giving enough to other players like GOG. Pardon my rant.
- Tade0 8mo ago
  The Steam client was always flaky as hell - on Windows as well. I've always wondered were problems on Steam's side or on the side of game devs implementing its APIs? Anyway I personally experienced scaling issues, but chalked that up to my DE being unreliable. I also occasionally can't click on certain UI elements, but I recall this being a problem in Windows as well.
- nottorp 8mo ago
  > made certain UI elements not work on Linux ... and on Mac OS. For a while i had to play games with what control has focus to PAY them.

thrownawaysz 8mo ago

>Competitive Salary – We ensure fair and attractive compensation that reflects your skills and experience: 18 000 - 27 000 PLN/month I know it's eastern Europe but that's $5000-7500 a month, barely $90k a year. It sounds like a solo job too so a lot of responsibility for this salary.

tokai 8mo ago
US devs are vastly over payed.
isbvhodnvemrwvn 8mo ago
Welcome to Europe!
lewispollard 8mo ago
Yeah that's a good salary in Europe. It's only slightly less than I make in the UK as a senior.
- flumpcakes 8mo ago
  Ditto. It seems like the graduate wage in the US is 2x my senior salary in the UK, which sounds very similar to yours. It seems massively inflated compared to other US jobs. Tech jobs in the UK seem to be more inline with other sectors.
delta_p_delta_x 8mo ago
> $90k a year. $90K a year goes much further in most of Europe barring the centres of the biggest cities—let alone eastern Europe—than it does in the US. NYC and Bay Area salaries are outrageously inflated, with much of the take-home being funnelled into four/five digit rents or mortgages for houses built out of matchsticks, car loans, health insurance payments, and more. None of this is necessary or costs as much in most of Europe, or the rest of the world, really.
- lurk2 8mo ago
  > $90K a year goes much further in most of Europe barring the centres of the biggest cities […] NYC and Bay Area salaries are outrageously inflated. Apples to oranges.

kleiba 8mo ago

Geez, that headline was hard to parse.

anthk 8mo ago

Tons of libre game engines will work with GOG data: https://osgameclones.com https://osgameclones.com

everdrive 8mo ago

I'm very excited for this. GoG is a DRM-free platform (for the most part) and I see it as the only positive competition Steam has. Imagine how bad the gaming landscape would be if a company like Epic soundly defeated Valve. They would enshittify at record pace. GoG doing well would only put positive pressure on other players. Ideally, you want your opponents to be healthy and sane, in case they win. And sane opponents drive the market towards better outcomes. I'll definitely buy some classics from GoG with their Linux client.

sylware 8mo ago

Oh, really? GOG is now providing a 'correct' set of ELF64 binaries as a client? (I guess (wayland->x11, vulkan->cpu)) Hopefully, they will support self-hosted email servers not in the DNS, mobile phone numbers, and wallet codes.

alturp 8mo ago

The so-called fragmentation people criticizes in the comments is also a strength for free software systems in long term.

lionkor 8mo ago
Fragmentation means competition, and competition is usually good as long as it lasts
- alturp 8mo ago
  exactly and in case of free software it is not even competition with financial incentive and (not always) so many projects can live long without a good output because of this. i think many people do not appreciate the usefulness of 'non-useful' things
immibis 8mo ago
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ForHackernews 8mo ago

There's some great Linux gaming distros out these days, https://bazzite.gg/ https://bazzite.gg/ is based on Fedora and https://chimeraos.org/ https://chimeraos.org/ is almost like SteamOS for non-Steam hardware. It ships a console-like UI on top of an immutable Arch base.

t0bia_s 8mo ago

One of reasons why I buy games exclusively on GoG is clientlessness. I don't like when clients messing with game updates, because of modding incompatibility. Unfortunately modding is reason, why switch to linux for gaming is not easy.

graynk 8mo ago
That's also one thing Galaxy gets right. You can turn off auto-updates and that won't stop you from playing the game (unlike with Steam, which will just replace your "play" button with "update"). They also support rolling back updates, but I never tried that and I'm not entirely sure if this works for every game, or if this is something a game developer has to actively support.
- t0bia_s 8mo ago
  I don't find any advantages of having client of GoG games to be honest, updates was only one, but not in case with modding.
  - graynk 8mo ago
    I like seeing my achievements and playtime (but also it's more of a nice to have)
    - t0bia_s 8mo ago
      Why? I find nothing interesting about it when I play a game.

cynicalsecurity 8mo ago

Finally. The previous hate GOG showed towards Linux was absolutely ridiculous.

flumpcakes 8mo ago
What is the story behind that? I would have thought GOG would be neutral at worst about Linux as a platform considering their anti-DRM pitch.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 8mo ago

What a waste of effort. Just provide your current installers or even fallback to plain old tarballs.

Jigsy 8mo ago

I do wish more companies would bring their games to GOG. That said, Square finally released some of their Final Fantasy games on it yesterday, so hopefully that's changing.

awedisee 8mo ago

Based take little dude. Gamers all care very much about "openness". Did you forget that in 1985 Nintendo created the first hardware-based security system designed to prevent unlicensed and low-quality games from running. Gamers used to own the games they purchased via cassettes, disks, and later even digital copies. Now through platforms like Epic and Steam you are provided a digital "license" to play the game. ALL of this speaks to the "openness" of gaming and it is ALL important to gamers. As previously stated though, game creators have been forced to choose the platforms they can create their games for. By the 90s the majority of personal computers were running MS-DOS and Steve Jobs had a base take on games being "toys" and did not belong on Macintosh products. Fast forward to the early Oughts and you see games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush making millions by producing games on ARM technology which really pushed the entire industry forward to focus multi-platform gaming outside of the tradition routes of either PC or console or both. Furthermore triple A studios led the charge and made big decisions that smaller studios would follow until around the release of Cyberpunk 2077. This in my opinion was the big turning point that gamers decides to act against large studios from all of the decision making that has turned a relative open system to a closed system. The invention of the Proton protocol to allow gaming on Linux Machines is FORCING industry to ABIDE by the wishes of the customer. The gamers. The gamers are FINALLY winning! This isn't just about openness on operating systems and being able to own the thing you purchase. Its also about efficiency. Windows is a bloat farm that has what feels like a million service hosts running in the background sending telemetry data to NOT me. Furthermore, if windows is not optimized to use your hardware efficiently, why would your favorite game? Changes like the Proton protocol are bridges to re-align the supply/demand curve by forcing the customer and producer back to the negotiation table so the gamers voice can be heard. In closing, gamers have had limited options due to technological limitations, vendor lock ins, corporate anti-competitive practices, monopoly exploitation, or predatory pricings. With inventions like ARM and Proton protocol, gamers have a louder voice to force game makers implement "openness" in their products.

tsoukase 8mo ago

The Linux billion dollar question is if the doubling of it's share in desktop in the last 2-3 years is going to saturate or continue doubling or exponential.

jdkfkgkkdbkd 8mo ago
To the moon!

Artoooooor 8mo ago

Yay I suppose?

999900000999 8mo ago

I do the vast majority of my gaming on my handheld with Bazzite configured to feel like a Steam Deck. I basically don't leave the Steam UX. Valve has done such a great job here I don't see why any Linux user would consider buying games anywhere else.

nemomarx 8mo ago
The heroic launcher looks like it was trying to solve this and let you use cheaper gog games in your normal steam library. And I've seen similar tools for emulators to show up basically like native steam games
- jimmydoe 8mo ago
  Heroic is the best attempt so far, but when comes to handheld UX, it’s meh.
- 999900000999 8mo ago
  Okay. But I still probably have to hop into desktop mode to configure stuff. I don't even know how to install non steam applications on my current stepup.
thoughtpalette 8mo ago
What handheld do you use? I'm window shopping an upgrade from my miyoo mini.
- 999900000999 8mo ago
  Lenovo Legion Go. The original one with detachable controllers. The SSD is really easy to replace, and my logic is the controllers have to go bad eventually. Edit: comes with a nice case and 2 USB c ports. Be realist with what games will work, frame gen only goes so far. I'd rather spend 80$ on new controllers vs 600$ on a new device.

lenerdenator 8mo ago

I have been playing Fallout: New Vegas on my ThinkPad T570 running Bazzite Linux for the last few weeks. It's been... amazing. A good game, running at workable framerates, no more crashes than usual (it's a Bethesda game, after all), and the software was free as opposed to building out a new PC with Windows 11. It's like rediscovering PC gaming after years of it becoming bloated and a cash grab.

shmerl 8mo ago

Congrats! Their Linux support was behind. GOG's new owner is doing the right thing.

jurf 8mo ago

Finally. It was the reason I was always reluctant to buy something from GOG.

JohnFen 8mo ago

I'm genuinely confused about all this. Can someone help me out? I've been buying and playing games from GOG on Linux for a very long time with no need for GOG Galaxy -- which is a thing I know nothing about. Since this announcement, I've been trying to figure out why I'd need it. It seems like it's just a convenience application and social connection point (leaderboards, etc.). In which case, it's not something of interest to me. However, I've also seen references to Galaxy that imply that it's necessary to play games -- which is obviously untrue in general, but perhaps there are some games that require it? Anyway, I'm tremendously confused by all this.

Night_Thastus 8mo ago
Galaxy is purely convenience. If you want to see all your games from all storefronts (Epic, Steam, GOG, etc) in one place, Galaxy lets you do that. (Along with the social stuff) You can still play GOG games without any launcher, which is how it's intended to work. Some people really like having a launcher to keep track of everything, so this isn't a nothing burger. It's one more convenience to help convince people to move over.
- JohnFen 8mo ago
  Ah, thank you very much!
kirbs 8mo ago
As far I'm aware as a casual user of Galaxy, you're correct. It's just a convenience application with some light social features. I find it slightly more convenient when installing games on a new machine. I've never personally seen a game that required using it.
- eikenberry 8mo ago
  Convenience is 100% Steam’s most important feature. Finding games, installing them, updating, auto-login, cloud saves, probably more that I can’t think of right now.

giancarlostoro 8mo ago

One of the reasons I have not touched GOG more seriously is probably because they have no native presence. I hope they consider making it open source, so anyone from any distro could contribute to it. I feel like it would be the healthier choice for GOG.

LooseMarmoset 8mo ago

While you're waiting for a GoG native client, I can whole-heartedly recommend: Heroic Game Launcher: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ RPM/Deb/Flatpack/TGZ/AppImage for Linux DMG for MacOS Intel/M1+ EXE for Windows Heroic supports GoG, Amazon Luna, and the Epic Game stores. Heroic even streamlines the app updates so you don't have to figure that out.

deleted 8mo ago

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kn100 8mo ago

literally the only two reasons I still have windows on my laptop currently are fusion360 and apex legends. I was happily playing Apex Legends on Linux for years until EA decided to disable Linux support due to "cheating". While I understand their concerns, I can't say as a regular player the cheating problem is any better or worse than it was before they removed Linux support. As for fusion360... Freecad is getting mighty good these days...

Blackthorn 8mo ago
It's not free but...zw3d has full* native Linux support. You'd be forgiven for not knowing this because they only offer it on their Chinese website, even though it comes complete with a fully localized English version that you just have to switch on in the settings. * Integrations with online parts libraries don't seem to work (don't know why they didn't bother, as it looks like it just spawned a web browser anyway), and the simulation add-ons aren't available either, but the main program itself is equivalently functional.

Radle 8mo ago

Once Gaming hits Linux for real Windows will simply die. Explorer takes 10 seconds to open when the folder in question has a couple of Gigs, blue screen crashes are for some reason back in win11. The entire thing takes ages to boot. It's simply to bloated.

jamesgeck0 8mo ago

Friendly reminder that GOG ignored and downplayed the GOG Galaxy 0-day privilege escalation bug CVE-2020-24574 [1] for literal years. They tried to brush off the security researcher who reported the issue by rotating keys and claiming it was fixed. Their non-serious stance towards security means Galaxy isn't really software I want running on my system anymore. 1. https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-24574 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-24574

destroycom 8mo ago

Sadly, their "native" client is a web browser. Besides the usual complaints about electron and CEF applications, another pain point is they work horrendously in emulation. GoG Galaxy is only available as an x86 application on Windows. I'm running Windows ARM64 in a VM on an M-series macbook to play some games occasionally, and Galaxy is the slowest piece of software I have. Ironically, it runs worse than the games it spawns, which have a much more complex rendering procedure (and, like Galaxy, they also run in emulation, since the binaries are x86). Emulation works particularly slow with JITted languages, so having the entire UI written in JavaScript doesn't help at all. I even checked their job posting in the hope that it will be about a ground up rewrite for GNU/Linux, without the browser (since they are looking for a C++ developer), but it seems there are no plans to change that in the porting process. Which makes senes, it's a lot of work, but still a pity. On a tangential note, requirements like this in the job posting also do not inspire much hope for improvements in the near future. > Actively use and promote AI-assisted development tools to increase team efficiency and code quality

zamadatix 8mo ago
I always thought it was a bit funny GoG GALAXY 2.0 went the web tech route for parts of the client and still managed to get itself stuck in a place where it ships an x86 only binary on macOS anyways.
- jshier 8mo ago
  Steam's ARM support is still beta, and Battle.net is still x86 only. So it seems more typical than not for these sorts of things.
- cr125rider 8mo ago
  How’s Rosetta 2 handle it?
  - zamadatix 8mo ago
    About as usual for a CEF/Electron app last I tested ~ a year ago. I.e. "impressively well considering, but still not all too great". For a while there was an issue where it was launching games in compatibility mode, but I assume that's been long fixed without needing to migrate the base app (if anyone regularly uses GoG on their Mac feel free to chime in, I only have a work MacBook these days).

bhewes 8mo ago

Sweet I have about 500 of games on gog and I use heroic launcher on cachyos. Probably a total of 1.3k of titles across steam, gog and epic any idea gaming isn't Linux now is dumb thinking. Glad to see gog work on native.

whywhywhywhy 8mo ago

Got a Steam Deck recently and I presume this is the power of Proton mostly but I'm amazed how it feels entirely native on everything I've tried so far. Really makes me wish games were the only thing keeping me on windows but unfortunately I use Adobe a fair bit and Cinema4D.

hyperman1 8mo ago

As a Linux GOG user, I hope they don't change too much. It works very well already.

TheGRS 8mo ago

I decided I'm going to take the plunge soon. I've used Windows for my personal computers for a long time (25 years? more if you count our family computers back in the day). I have only used linux desktops for little hobby projects, in Pis and VMs, and most of my experience has been headless servers. I loaded up Mint on a thumb drive pretty recently and it seemed like it would be good enough for running my steam games and VS Code. I'm actually liking the idea a lot because while I've been very happy with WSL, there is still a wee bit of friction developing locally with it, especially for game development stuff. And when developing its usually in the linux CLI anyway. Docker usually has some bumps too. Thankfully I have my old PC still lying around and it'll play most of the games I like, so I'm gonna give it a spin soon and see if its the right fit for me. Maybe I can use a bot to help me document setup better than I have in the past too.

ece 8mo ago

Developer tools have always been pretty well supported on Linux, it seems like gaming is also getting there except for anti-cheat. Maybe productivity tools will follow.

yunnpp 8mo ago

Thank God. I know Lutris integrates with the GOG library, but having an official GOG Galaxy client and some quality assurance on the underlying wine/proton config would be the dream.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 8mo ago

Oh wow FINALLY. the main reason why I stopped buying from gog is this. I can now buy there again.

tete 8mo ago

Please make it open source. Please create an API. Please, if you feel like you have to have your own client, build it, but don't ignore the reality of Linux gamers using a whole set of tools and one doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. Especially for the older games you will get a lot more reach. You'd even reach beyond Linux (BSDs, etc.). Please don't forget that a big chunk of your audience are nerds and that a lot of games run on engine re-implementations by nerds. It's great that you make a client, but if you really want to offer something that would make people get games on GOG then do something that Steam does not offer, while probably being easier for you. If that is too much to ask, please, at least do it in an unofficial capacity.

subscribed 8mo ago

Go, GOG, it's so close for me to migrate. The last obstacle will be the most working mostly effortlessly with my Nvidia on Fedora / Ubuntu.

cloudengineer94 8mo ago

If we didn’t have Kernel Anti Cheat in Windows, it would be a godsend for Linux gaming. It’s literally the only issue missing (and some games not available under Xbox game app but I mean it’s Microsoft as publisher so no intention for Linux version)

peeqingtom 8mo ago

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