Heck yeah!
they’ve been working on a Linux client for, what, 10 years? I’ll believe it if it happens.
A really dumb question from a non-gamer. If I were to buy a game from GOG. Say Doom, can I simply run the Windows installer with bottles? I have no interest in “modern” games and I seldom play, but I have a taste for the occasional trip down memory lane.
I do use a couple of windows programs in bottles without issue, (Bambubuddy and Meshmixer), but I don’t know jack all about buying games.
What’s a bottle in this context?
Bottles is a container that is like WINE for windows applications. It was easy to install as a flatpak in kinonite and easy to use.
I’m a poor Linux user so might not be best person to answer, but bottles on Linux provides a framework for programs to emulate a windows environment so you can run non Windows apps within Linux. This is a bad explanation, if anyone knows better please chime in.
I don’t know what they could put on the table except for something like Big Picture, which is not nearly as fleshed out on Heroic.
And even then, Big Picture is already available for most gamers, because Steam is already installed.
I think it would’ve been a better use of resources to just officially support Heroic. GOG support exists because of their open distribution system. So why make use of that software?
Idk, some user here who otherwise is supremely anti-corporation, anti-DRM and anti-closed source said they absolutely can NOT use GOG over Steam because there’s no native Linux client. Apparently that’s a complete showstopper for some people, despite the existence of Heroic and many other tools you could use. “The games just don’t work”
Heroic is ultimately outside of GOG’s sphere of influence. If you decide to officially lean on them and they decide to drop GOG or Herioc development entirely they’d have to scramble for a replacement.
And honestly I only use Herioc to interface with GOG, i’d probably prefer use the official application if there was any.
Yeah I get from a user’s perspective why they would like an official client. But I personally don’t believe it would attract enough new users to make maintaining a Linux version worthwhile from the firms perspective.
Especially managing game compatibility on Linux seems like a nightmare.(I take this back, I was thinking about it and I haven’t had any issues with Proton for a while now.) But hey, their board probably already weighted this out before making the decision so I might just be underestimating the crowd it would attract
Heroic exists independently of GOG, which limits them to the decision of an independent developer. Essentially, they are at the mercy of Heroic dev to support GOG.
Porting their own application ensures they maintain control over software stack and also get improved security.
Activities. My “friends” can’t see what and how much I play. My only entry there is from testing Amazon Luna.
Now if they would stop being so selective about what they allow on their platform. There is a wide array of popular games available on Steam and DRM-free on Itch but for some reason they aren’t available on GOG.
I get that some people have been loudly calling for curation on Steam, but curation is a terrible thing. The customer should be the one to decide what they buy (provided the developer isn’t mass-producing asset flips). If they want a middle-ground they can just not promote any unendorsed games.
I’m actually going to try it out. Assuming there will be wine/Proton included
Year of the Linux desktop year
Games are one thing that keeps people stuck on Windows so more games on Linux, either native or through API emulation, does potentially allow more people to consider the switch.
It’s often also professional software such as Photoshop or AutoCAD that keep them on Windows. Programs they use a lot all day for work.
I would say that it’s often not the same computer.
You know why we say it every year? Because every year is the year of the Linux desktop
Inb4 some damn electron app
Oh no a multiplatform app that just works, I would 200 percent prefer to have a native all that will instill the Lord’s fear into the heart of several un(der)paid interns. Blood and bones I say , blood and bones
You, you get the sarcasm :) Yeah, I’d love a platform specific version so I don’t have to rely on terrible JS, but alas, here we are.
Fine by me. As long as it does the job.
probably proprietary too 💔
heroic is a good foss launcher for gog games. epic too.
it also supports amazon and zoom platform games.
Will it too be 100x heavier than needed?
And completely redundant because there are already FOSS game managers that support GoG they could contribute to?
If the official macOS client is anything to go by, I wouldn’t get too excited. Just use Heroic instead.
Amazing, it only took them about a decade from it being the most voted for feature of all time until they started working on it. That gives me great confidence that they’ll treat us Linux users like first class citizens /s
This new effort started when the new CEO bought back a majority of shares. He was one of the original owners. Back then their Linux efforts were also better.
Yeah I’ve seen much more wctive development in GOG since he took over. I mean GOG left the beta phase after years.
That’s interesting, I might give it more credibility then, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Oh, come on. They are right about the DRM, I can give them the benefit of the doubt.
I’m glad they’re doing it, but I’ll believe it when I see it. This seems like a marketing thing more than anything else, like most things GoG does. Which brings me to:
They are right about the DRM
Except they don’t believe that themselves: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1
Plus, if you disconsider the whole “having to use Steam to download binaries is a form of DRM”, AFAIK the same games that are DRM free on GoG are DRM free on Steam.
I’m all in favor of no DRM in games, but being able to play the games on my OS of choice is miles more important than them being DRM-free, because I honestly don’t care about the DRM status of a binary I can’t use. So I’d rather keep giving money to the company that’s investing in making me able to play games. I used to buy games from GoG back before Proton and DXVK, but those projects made Steam so much more attractive for Linux users that it is not even a contest.
That poster’s opinion of what is DRM is… interesting.
Which poster? There are 124 pages of posters talking about different DRM issues on GoG
The original post. Sorry, I thought that would have been more implicit than it maybe was.
Why ? We already have heroic launcher.
Yea, I’d honestly rather them invest in heroic launcher.
Same. Create APIs for Heroic launcher and Faugus launcher to interface with and send achievement results or work with them to integrate achievement modules that can be called for the same purpose.
They should also give them some funding, maybe in exchange for something like defaulting to opting into Gog pop-up ads on client open with an ability to uncheck it for anyone who has linked a Gog account. That way Gog still gets to do their marketing to those who want it and Heroic gets funding.
Otherwise I like others fear a shitty electron app or something else with lots of problems, just plain ugly, and more a vehicle for pushing ads and sales than serving Linux players. If anything I also fear them making it more difficult for Heroic and other launchers to work in order to attempt to push users to their app which has the ads.
GOG Galaxy is like Steam but for GOG games, in case anyone else was wondering.
I think it also has integrations for some other things too, so you can use it to launch all your games from various launchers instead of remembering which games are on which launchers and opening each one to search for the game you want to play. It centralized your games into one spot which can be nice.
Like the other comment says, it’s closer to Heroic Launcher. It is owned by GoG, but it also interfaces with other stores. Valve will/would never do this.
Its a bit better than that, its a bit closer to an all in one launcher/downloader client for all your games from (steam)/gog/epic/etc
I think Heroic basically already does that though
It does. More options aren’t bad.
It’s a launcher for other game launchers, but it doesn’t provide downloads for other launchers.
Next step is adding a decent spanish translation to the website.
It’s about damn time.
