GOG.com announced in a forum post yesterday that they’re conducting closed beta testing for their GOG Galaxy 2.0 client. As part of the invite-only beta, testers will be able to try out the ability to purchase titles from other digital stores.
The text of the announcement is as follows:
We created GOG GALAXY 2.0 to give gamers a better way of organizing all their games across multiple gaming platforms into one library. Since its launch, the most requested new feature has been the option to buy games not only from GOG.COM, but from other platforms as well, straight from the GOG GALAXY app.
Today, we’re happy to invite the first group of gamers to test the brand new store we’re working on, and share their feedback with us.
In the new store, we will be welcoming games from both GOG.COM and beyond – including titles previously exclusive only to other gaming platforms. With the internal beta launching today, invited users will have the option to buy games from a selection of hand-picked Epic Games Store exclusive titles, alongside all GOG.COM games. Most importantly, all purchases are covered by our 30-days refund policy as well as 24/7 human support.
There is still plenty of work ahead of us. As the internal beta test continues, we will be inviting more gamers, expanding the store’s catalog and introducing new features. For a chance to be part of this test, join GOG GALAXY today at gogalaxy.com.
To make use of this feature, users will need an Epic Games Store account, and would presumably need corresponding accounts for other storefronts like Steam as they are added to the client.
Food For Thought
While this does give players another option, particularly with regards to reducing the sting of EGS exclusives, one of the big question marks is how GOG.com will handle EGS purchases with regards to DRM. Presumably, if you buy a title through GOG Galaxy 2.0 with an EGS SKU, any DRM which the publisher inflicted on the game would be in place, but if you buy the GOG.com version, it would not.
This is a big no sadly: “any DRM which the publisher inflicted on the game would be in place, but if you buy the GOG.com version, it would not.”
Searching GOG.com forums and Reddit for what official GOG staff has posted, this isn’t the case. All this “feature” is letting you do is buy Epic Store Games from the comfort of the GOG Galaxy client, while GOG gets a cut of the sale. Yet to install or play these titles you still have to use the ESG Launcher. Which sort of defeats the purpose of all this and still requires you to use a Epic login and any DRM placed on the game the Epic version has. :/
At least this is what -Chandra- a verified GOG rep on Reddit stated and SmollestLight “GOG Team” forum account has implied in replies to other people.
I suppose the idea is to get people on Galaxy and feed them GOG advertisements, but to me this could all blow up in their face. Because if a developer knows GOG will be selling third party games of theirs under another stores banner, why should the developer/publisher bother to make a version for GOG that is DRM free. The game is still being sold and advertised by them, so it’s almost like it’s on the official store. Even if it’s only within the client.
That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.
As for why a developer might balk (more) at a DRM-free version with this move, hard to quantify. Presumably, they wouldn’t put up more of a fuss, since all GOG Galaxy would be doing is simply pointing to the DRM-equipped versions on EGS (and possibly other stores later) as well as the DRM-free GOG.com version. I would like to think GOG.com is going to make at least a cursory effort at differentiating the source. Could be a little star next to the GOG SKU and a padlock next to the EGS SKU. But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.
“That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.”
Well being as GOG stated it’s all “curated” or “hand-picked exclusives”, it probably will mean that GOG will not take any action to curate other than to curate games that are purchased on both stores. Likely Cyberpunk 2077 will be only purchased through GOG.com and not the Galaxy Epic Game Store. At least this is what I gather from everything said. I could be wrong, but that does make the most since if GOG is to be trying to push their own service.
The problem then in my eyes is once they have a game that was already listed that wasn’t on GOG, how will they handle this. Because now you’re time exclusive isn’t exclusive anymore and will this matter to the developer to put anything on GOG since their now in a situation of potentially making customers mad. Which could lead to needing as you stated a lock and star. (People get mad over everything today. There are people mad over Galaxy being required to use it for online multiplayer and claiming it’s “DRM”. Which wouldn’t surprise me if people got mad over a removal of the choice of where to purchase, even though GOG stated it’s “Hand-picked”).
Yet I still think from a developer/publisher standpoint multi-store fronts and versions being maintained can be costly. If GOG is offering to sell you the Epic version it could easily be skipped over for a DRM-free version. Such as how Control Ultimate Edition or similar games just recently came to GOG. Because now the developer/publisher is saving money and doesn’t have to push out updates for a different build. (Because if you use GOG you know first hand how developers have abandoned games for Steam :/ leaving us with outdated versions).
–
“But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.”
–
I haven’t played that game, but sounds like a deal breaker if chunks of say the single player were pulled. Because what exactly was removed from a side-scrolling beat’em up? Only thing I could see removed is maybe multiplayer if it was heavy on using say the Steam-api. Which again points back to the whole problem of making games for multiple stores to maintain different builds of the game.
“That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.”
Well being as GOG stated it’s all “curated” or “hand-picked exclusives”, it probably will mean that GOG will not take any action to curate other than to curate games that are purchased on both stores. Likely Cyberpunk 2077 will be only purchased through GOG.com and not the Galaxy Epic Game Store. At least this is what I gather from everything said. I could be wrong, but that does make the most since if GOG is to be trying to push their own service.
The problem then in my eyes is once they have a game that was already listed that wasn’t on GOG, how will they handle this. Because now you’re time exclusive isn’t exclusive anymore and will this matter to the developer to put anything on GOG since their now in a situation of potentially making customers mad. Which could lead to needing as you stated a lock and star. (People get mad over everything today. There are people mad over Galaxy being required to use it for online multiplayer and claiming it’s “DRM”. Which wouldn’t surprise me if people got mad over a removal of the choice of where to purchase, even though GOG stated it’s “Hand-picked”).
Yet I still think from a developer/publisher standpoint multi-store fronts and versions being maintained can be costly. If GOG is offering to sell you the Epic version it could easily be skipped over for a DRM-free version. Such as how Control Ultimate Edition or similar games just recently came to GOG. Because now the developer/publisher is saving money and doesn’t have to push out updates for a different build. (Because if you use GOG you know first hand how developers have abandoned games for Steam :/ leaving us with outdated versions).
–
“But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.”
–
I haven’t played that game, but sounds like a deal breaker if chunks of say the single player were pulled. Because what exactly was removed from a side-scrolling beat’em up? Only thing I could see removed is maybe multiplayer if it was heavy on using say the Steam-api. Which again points back to the whole problem of making games for multiple stores to maintain different builds of the game.
Hmm, so what made you delete my reply to your reply? I also asked a valid question about the game you mentioned.
Hey UnholyCircuit, your comment was not deleted from our end, it looks like Disqus goofed, my apologies, comment was manually imported thanks for bringing to our attention
Thank you, I was in the middle of summarizing it and noticed your update, nice to see it can be saved. I thought I might have broken a rule or angered someone for something. Happy that isn’t the case. 🙂
Hmm, Disqus goofed. I believe that I’ve heard that happens a lot actually. Not exactly sure what site it was, but believe it was a video streaming one that used this and peoples comments were constantly being removed. Sounds like a massive headache in the end result of using a third party plugin. Which I guess YMMV.
Anyway, thanks for the above repost once again.
We are pretty lax here and your comments have been insightful so we glad you have a discussion with us (: , upon further inspection , it was actually Wordpress that flagged the comment and didn’t submit it to Disqus. That sucks for the site, so far Disqus has been good, it’s better than Wordpress commenting from what I can tell. This was the first time happening on here so I’ll be keeping better tabs with the commenting on here. Thanks for your understanding!
Always bound to be issues with filter systems so it’s understandable. Machine learning while it can be good can even flag things wrongly. When the overlord Foolgle’s machine learning can bork I can understand another being in the same boat. Nonetheless, maybe this hiccup can improve the filter system a little on this site. Haven’t touch Wordpress or Disqus in anything I’ve ever hosted so can’t comment the control you have on it. Yet again makes since and hopefully a brighter future so to speak with not having to worry about said mentioned problem. 🙂
Always bound to be issues with filter systems so it’s understandable. Machine learning while it can be good can even flag things wrongly. When the overlord Foolgle’s machine learning can bork I can understand another being in the same boat. Nonetheless, maybe this hiccup can improve the filter system a little on this site. Haven’t touch Wordpress or Disqus in anything I’ve ever hosted so can’t comment the control you have on it. Yet again makes since and hopefully a brighter future so to speak with not having to worry about said mentioned problem. 🙂
Well this is the third time now it has happened. If this isn’t just happening to me then this for sure will scare people away from posting. It looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you if it’s not just targeting me for some reason. Hope you can get the problem ironed out. If it is within your power of the third party plugins.
I’m sorry about that, I’m not sure why wordpress is flagging comments so aggresively to spam, I should be able to reverse the comments to approve soon. We defintely don’t want to scare people away from discussions
It’s all good. I’m not here complaining about it. Though good news is you at least could experiment with other anti-spam plugins with Wordpress. If not in a license already or something for one of them.
Good to see you’re in a temporary fix for the time being. Hopefully the bots stay away from it in the time being. Though I suppose some of that would be handled with Disqus too as you enter your information into it.
Anyway, hope you have a full solution soon enough. If you need me to post to test a new one out I’m happy to try. Since the current seems to love me, lol. 🙂
Thanks UnholyCircuit! It looks like one of the way wordpress flags for moderation is the amount of outbound links. It’s default is 2 or more is way to many , usually the reason spam is to put up a bunch of links, I have now told wordpress that 10 < or over is to many. If you want to comment in another post would love to keep debugging to make sure this doesn't keep ocurring (:
Post made in Apple vs Epic. Did four “com” on things to make them links so to speak.
Not sure on the depth of WordPress, but it’s based in PHP right and has a sort of web interface. Does it also have a domain blocker? Might be able to link filter stuff like .info or other known spam links and just import some of the known sites via a online database. Again only speculating as I’ve never used WordPress first hand and basing my assumptions off of tools I’ve previous used in the past.
Thanks for the help UnholyCircuit. Yes Wordpress is php based. It has IP blocker but I didn’t see a domain blocker. Wordpress filtering doesn’t seem that robust, probably need a plugin. Also Disqus should have their own filters, and probably better at detecting spam through their network. Hopefully now Wordpress won’t hold posts for moderation and just allow Disqus manage the spam on their end.
I have turned off wordpress anti-spam, it looks like it’s too aggressive, all your comments have been re-imported, unfortunately it has added another thread instead. Again apologies for this and appreciate your help and hopefully getting this bug resolved
Just realized it might be difficult to write everything up. I will repost on your behalf
UnholyCircuit:
“That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came
to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will
likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.”
Well
being as GOG stated it’s all “curated” or “hand-picked exclusives”, it
probably will mean that GOG will not take any action to curate other
than to curate games that are purchased on both stores. Likely Cyberpunk
2077 will be only purchased through GOG.com
and not the Galaxy Epic Game Store. At least this is what I gather from
everything said. I could be wrong, but that does make the most since if
GOG is to be trying to push their own service.
The problem then in my eyes is once they have a game that was already listed
that wasn’t on GOG, how will they handle this. Because now you’re time
exclusive isn’t exclusive anymore and will this matter to the developer
to put anything on GOG since their now in a situation of potentially
making customers mad. Which could lead to needing as you stated a lock
and star. (People get mad over everything today. There are people mad
over Galaxy being required to use it for online multiplayer and claiming
it’s “DRM”. Which wouldn’t surprise me if people got mad over a removal
of the choice of where to purchase, even though GOG stated it’s
“Hand-picked”).
Yet I still think from a developer/publisher
standpoint multi-store fronts and versions being maintained can be
costly. If GOG is offering to sell you the Epic version it could easily
be skipped over for a DRM-free version. Such as how Control Ultimate
Edition or similar games just recently came to GOG. Because now the
developer/publisher is
saving money and doesn’t have to push out updates for a different
build. (Because if you use GOG you know first hand how developers have
abandoned games for Steam :/ leaving us with outdated versions).
–
“But since developers know that GOG.com
doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of
Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.”
–
I
haven’t played that game, but sounds like a deal breaker if chunks of
say the single player were pulled. Because what exactly was removed from
a side-scrolling beat’em up? Only thing I could see removed is maybe
multiplayer if it was heavy on using say the Steam-api. Which again
points back to the whole problem of making games for multiple stores to
maintain different builds of the game.
This is a big no sadly: “any DRM which the publisher inflicted on the game would be in place, but if you buy the GOG.com version, it would not.”
Searching GOG.com forums and Reddit for what official GOG staff has posted, this isn’t the case. All this “feature” is letting you do is buy Epic Store Games from the comfort of the GOG Galaxy client, while GOG gets a cut of the sale. Yet to install or play these titles you still have to use the ESG Launcher. Which sort of defeats the purpose of all this and still requires you to use a Epic login and any DRM placed on the game the Epic version has. :/
At least this is what -Chandra- a verified GOG rep on Reddit stated and SmollestLight “GOG Team” forum account has implied in replies to other people.
I suppose the idea is to get people on Galaxy and feed them GOG advertisements, but to me this could all blow up in their face. Because if a developer knows GOG will be selling third party games of theirs under another stores banner, why should the developer/publisher bother to make a version for GOG that is DRM free. The game is still being sold and advertised by them, so it’s almost like it’s on the official store. Even if it’s only within the client.
That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.
As for why a developer might balk (more) at a DRM-free version with this move, hard to quantify. Presumably, they wouldn’t put up more of a fuss, since all GOG Galaxy would be doing is simply pointing to the DRM-equipped versions on EGS (and possibly other stores later) as well as the DRM-free GOG.com version. I would like to think GOG.com is going to make at least a cursory effort at differentiating the source. Could be a little star next to the GOG SKU and a padlock next to the EGS SKU. But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.
“That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.”
Well being as GOG stated it’s all “curated” or “hand-picked exclusives”, it probably will mean that GOG will not take any action to curate other than to curate games that are purchased on both stores. Likely Cyberpunk 2077 will be only purchased through GOG.com and not the Galaxy Epic Game Store. At least this is what I gather from everything said. I could be wrong, but that does make the most since if GOG is to be trying to push their own service.
The problem then in my eyes is once they have a game that was already listed that wasn’t on GOG, how will they handle this. Because now you’re time exclusive isn’t exclusive anymore and will this matter to the developer to put anything on GOG since their now in a situation of potentially making customers mad. Which could lead to needing as you stated a lock and star. (People get mad over everything today. There are people mad over Galaxy being required to use it for online multiplayer and claiming it’s “DRM”. Which wouldn’t surprise me if people got mad over a removal of the choice of where to purchase, even though GOG stated it’s “Hand-picked”).
Yet I still think from a developer/publisher standpoint multi-store fronts and versions being maintained can be costly. If GOG is offering to sell you the Epic version it could easily be skipped over for a DRM-free version. Such as how Control Ultimate Edition or similar games just recently came to GOG. Because now the developer/publisher is saving money and doesn’t have to push out updates for a different build. (Because if you use GOG you know first hand how developers have abandoned games for Steam :/ leaving us with outdated versions).
–
“But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.”
–
I haven’t played that game, but sounds like a deal breaker if chunks of say the single player were pulled. Because what exactly was removed from a side-scrolling beat’em up? Only thing I could see removed is maybe multiplayer if it was heavy on using say the Steam-api. Which again points back to the whole problem of making games for multiple stores to maintain different builds of the game.
First off, terribly sorry about the whole comments thing. I’m not sure if WordPress preempted Disqus or what happened, but I find it irksome that it happened.
With Streets of Rage 4, that particular decision seems to have been taken on the part of either Dotemu (the publisher) or Lizardcube (the developer). As far as I know, there’s never been an explanation (technical or otherwise) for why the online multiplayer is limited just to Steam. I wouldn’t think it would be an API related issue, since presumably GOG.com (or more properly CD Projekt RED, its parent) would have access to Steam APIs to ensure functionality on their original games, and there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use an API to help ensure “cross-vendor” functionality. I’d like to think both Valve and GOG.com would anticipate potential issues of cross-play on commonly offered titles and make sure they were ironed out. But the loss of functionality on Streets of Rage 4 sets a bad precedent.
As far as games leaving GOG.com after their exclusivity period on other storefronts ends, it’s potentially a risk. But I can’t see them leaving money on the table if they’ve basically test marketed a title and gotten good response from it. They’ll have already burned through the early adopters, but the ones who were waiting for the exclusivity period to end could be lucrative for them.
It seems to have happened again on my reply to “Gameluster” on his last reply. Not sure why Disqus or Wordpress doesn’t like me. No big deal on that post though as it wasn’t really a question or anything.
–
“I wouldn’t think it would be an API related issue, since presumably GOG.com (or more properly CD Projekt RED, its parent) would have access to Steam APIs to ensure functionality on their original games, and there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use an API to help ensure “cross-vendor” functionality.”
–
As far as I have seen the Steam-API is only halfway open-sourced. Not everything of the API is non-proprietary. Which is why when a lot of games that are cross-play, the developers are using their own backend for the servers and communication of multiple services.
Sort of like how Rocket League could connect consoles and Steam together (or now Epic and consoles since the Steam version was suppose to be pulled sometime due to the deal with Epic Games) you could play together with the console gamers, but couldn’t text chat, voice chat, or various other things since the backend used each systems tools for those features. It only handled the assigning of names, matchmaking, and connections via server.
Verse say a game like RecRoom that uses it’s own servers, voice, friends list, et cetera and connects consoles and Steam gamers together. A lot more work had to be placed into that to make it happen. Yet, it kind of had to be done in a VR title in my opinion. Any other game and this kind of dedication might have been lost.
–
I can’t see them leaving money on the table if they’ve basically test marketed a title and gotten good response from it.
–
That is one of the weird things about GOG’s team. Their curation sometimes is insane. They’ve turned down so many well selling games for reasons such as “To Niche” or “We don’t think GOG customers will like it” when there are open community wishlist for said titles with hundreds of votes on games that have sold to tons of people on other platforms. If I’m not mistaken they even turned down Dark Souls 2 developers for being to niche. There are some older threads out there with the list of all the games GOG has refused. Though I believe someone screen-capped the Twitter post of the developers saying GOG refused their game. (I could be mistaken, because there are a lot of developers that get asked for a GOG version and then get refused. Some even refused more than one time. I believe the highest is like four times with GOG egging them on saying “It’s almost there”).
It seems to have happened again on my reply to “Gameluster” on his last reply. Not sure why Disqus or Wordpress doesn’t like me. No big deal on that post though as it wasn’t really a question or anything.
–
“I wouldn’t think it would be an API related issue, since presumably GOG.com (or more properly CD Projekt RED, its parent) would have access to Steam APIs to ensure functionality on their original games, and there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use an API to help ensure “cross-vendor” functionality.”
–
As far as I have seen the Steam-API is only halfway open-sourced. Not everything of the API is non-proprietary. Which is why when a lot of games that are cross-play, the developers are using their own backend for the servers and communication of multiple services.
Sort of like how Rocket League could connect consoles and Steam together (or now Epic and consoles since the Steam version was suppose to be pulled sometime due to the deal with Epic Games) you could play together with the console gamers, but couldn’t text chat, voice chat, or various other things since the backend used each systems tools for those features. It only handled the assigning of names, matchmaking, and connections via server.
Verse say a game like RecRoom that uses it’s own servers, voice, friends list, et cetera and connects consoles and Steam gamers together. A lot more work had to be placed into that to make it happen. Yet, it kind of had to be done in a VR title in my opinion. Any other game and this kind of dedication might have been lost.
–
I can’t see them leaving money on the table if they’ve basically test marketed a title and gotten good response from it.
–
That is one of the weird things about GOG’s team. Their curation sometimes is insane. They’ve turned down so many well selling games for reasons such as “To Niche” or “We don’t think GOG customers will like it” when there are open community wishlist for said titles with hundreds of votes on games that have sold to tons of people on other platforms. If I’m not mistaken they even turned down Dark Souls 2 developers for being to niche. There are some older threads out there with the list of all the games GOG has refused. Though I believe someone screen-capped the Twitter post of the developers saying GOG refused their game. (I could be mistaken, because there are a lot of developers that get asked for a GOG version and then get refused. Some even refused more than one time. I believe the highest is like four times with GOG egging them on saying “It’s almost there”).
Hmm, so what made you delete my reply to your reply? I also asked a valid question about the game you mentioned.
Hey UnholyCircuit, your comment was not deleted from our end, it looks like Disqus goofed, my apologies, comment was manually imported thanks for bringing to our attention
Thank you, I was in the middle of summarizing it and noticed your update, nice to see it can be saved. I thought I might have broken a rule or angered someone for something. Happy that isn’t the case. 🙂
Hmm, Disqus goofed. I believe that I’ve heard that happens a lot actually. Not exactly sure what site it was, but believe it was a video streaming one that used this and peoples comments were constantly being removed. Sounds like a massive headache in the end result of using a third party plugin. Which I guess YMMV.
Anyway, thanks for the above repost once again.
We are pretty lax here and your comments have been insightful so we glad you have a discussion with us (: , upon further inspection , it was actually Wordpress that flagged the comment and didn’t submit it to Disqus. That sucks for the site, so far Disqus has been good, it’s better than Wordpress commenting from what I can tell. This was the first time happening on here so I’ll be keeping better tabs with the commenting on here. Thanks for your understanding!
Always bound to be issues with filter systems so it’s understandable. Machine learning while it can be good can even flag things wrongly. When the overlord Foolgle’s machine learning can bork I can understand another being in the same boat. Nonetheless, maybe this hiccup can improve the filter system a little on this site. Haven’t touch Wordpress or Disqus in anything I’ve ever hosted so can’t comment the control you have on it. Yet again makes since and hopefully a brighter future so to speak with not having to worry about said mentioned problem. 🙂
Always bound to be issues with filter systems so it’s understandable. Machine learning while it can be good can even flag things wrongly. When the overlord Foolgle’s machine learning can bork I can understand another being in the same boat. Nonetheless, maybe this hiccup can improve the filter system a little on this site. Haven’t touch Wordpress or Disqus in anything I’ve ever hosted so can’t comment the control you have on it. Yet again makes since and hopefully a brighter future so to speak with not having to worry about said mentioned problem. 🙂
Well this is the third time now it has happened. If this isn’t just happening to me then this for sure will scare people away from posting. It looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you if it’s not just targeting me for some reason. Hope you can get the problem ironed out. If it is within your power of the third party plugins.
I’m sorry about that, I’m not sure why wordpress is flagging comments so aggresively to spam, I should be able to reverse the comments to approve soon. We defintely don’t want to scare people away from discussions
“That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.”
Well being as GOG stated it’s all “curated” or “hand-picked exclusives”, it probably will mean that GOG will not take any action to curate other than to curate games that are purchased on both stores. Likely Cyberpunk 2077 will be only purchased through GOG.com and not the Galaxy Epic Game Store. At least this is what I gather from everything said. I could be wrong, but that does make the most since if GOG is to be trying to push their own service.
The problem then in my eyes is once they have a game that was already listed that wasn’t on GOG, how will they handle this. Because now you’re time exclusive isn’t exclusive anymore and will this matter to the developer to put anything on GOG since their now in a situation of potentially making customers mad. Which could lead to needing as you stated a lock and star. (People get mad over everything today. There are people mad over Galaxy being required to use it for online multiplayer and claiming it’s “DRM”. Which wouldn’t surprise me if people got mad over a removal of the choice of where to purchase, even though GOG stated it’s “Hand-picked”).
Yet I still think from a developer/publisher standpoint multi-store fronts and versions being maintained can be costly. If GOG is offering to sell you the Epic version it could easily be skipped over for a DRM-free version. Such as how Control Ultimate Edition or similar games just recently came to GOG. Because now the developer/publisher is saving money and doesn’t have to push out updates for a different build. (Because if you use GOG you know first hand how developers have abandoned games for Steam :/ leaving us with outdated versions).
–
“But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.”
–
I haven’t played that game, but sounds like a deal breaker if chunks of say the single player were pulled. Because what exactly was removed from a side-scrolling beat’em up? Only thing I could see removed is maybe multiplayer if it was heavy on using say the Steam-api. Which again points back to the whole problem of making games for multiple stores to maintain different builds of the game.
This is a big no sadly: “any DRM which the publisher inflicted on the game would be in place, but if you buy the GOG.com version, it would not.”
Searching GOG.com forums and Reddit for what official GOG staff has posted, this isn’t the case. All this “feature” is letting you do is buy Epic Store Games from the comfort of the GOG Galaxy client, while GOG gets a cut of the sale. Yet to install or play these titles you still have to use the ESG Launcher. Which sort of defeats the purpose of all this and still requires you to use a Epic login and any DRM placed on the game the Epic version has. :/
At least this is what -Chandra- a verified GOG rep on Reddit stated and SmollestLight “GOG Team” forum account has implied in replies to other people.
I suppose the idea is to get people on Galaxy and feed them GOG advertisements, but to me this could all blow up in their face. Because if a developer knows GOG will be selling third party games of theirs under another stores banner, why should the developer/publisher bother to make a version for GOG that is DRM free. The game is still being sold and advertised by them, so it’s almost like it’s on the official store. Even if it’s only within the client.
That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.
As for why a developer might balk (more) at a DRM-free version with this move, hard to quantify. Presumably, they wouldn’t put up more of a fuss, since all GOG Galaxy would be doing is simply pointing to the DRM-equipped versions on EGS (and possibly other stores later) as well as the DRM-free GOG.com version. I would like to think GOG.com is going to make at least a cursory effort at differentiating the source. Could be a little star next to the GOG SKU and a padlock next to the EGS SKU. But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.
“That is pretty much in line with the article. The scenario that came to mind when I was first writing this up was Cyberpunk 2077. EGS will likely have some DRM. GOG.com will not. The potential confusion point I see is somebody buying the EGS SKU through GOG.com and thinking they’re getting the DRM-free GOG SKU.”
Well being as GOG stated it’s all “curated” or “hand-picked exclusives”, it probably will mean that GOG will not take any action to curate other than to curate games that are purchased on both stores. Likely Cyberpunk 2077 will be only purchased through GOG.com and not the Galaxy Epic Game Store. At least this is what I gather from everything said. I could be wrong, but that does make the most since if GOG is to be trying to push their own service.
The problem then in my eyes is once they have a game that was already listed that wasn’t on GOG, how will they handle this. Because now you’re time exclusive isn’t exclusive anymore and will this matter to the developer to put anything on GOG since their now in a situation of potentially making customers mad. Which could lead to needing as you stated a lock and star. (People get mad over everything today. There are people mad over Galaxy being required to use it for online multiplayer and claiming it’s “DRM”. Which wouldn’t surprise me if people got mad over a removal of the choice of where to purchase, even though GOG stated it’s “Hand-picked”).
Yet I still think from a developer/publisher standpoint multi-store fronts and versions being maintained can be costly. If GOG is offering to sell you the Epic version it could easily be skipped over for a DRM-free version. Such as how Control Ultimate Edition or similar games just recently came to GOG. Because now the developer/publisher is saving money and doesn’t have to push out updates for a different build. (Because if you use GOG you know first hand how developers have abandoned games for Steam :/ leaving us with outdated versions).
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“But since developers know that GOG.com doesn’t allow DRM on its titles, it may end up closer to a repeat of Streets of Rage 4, where chunks of functionality were flat out removed.”
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I haven’t played that game, but sounds like a deal breaker if chunks of say the single player were pulled. Because what exactly was removed from a side-scrolling beat’em up? Only thing I could see removed is maybe multiplayer if it was heavy on using say the Steam-api. Which again points back to the whole problem of making games for multiple stores to maintain different builds of the game.
First off, terribly sorry about the whole comments thing. I’m not sure if WordPress preempted Disqus or what happened, but I find it irksome that it happened.
With Streets of Rage 4, that particular decision seems to have been taken on the part of either Dotemu (the publisher) or Lizardcube (the developer). As far as I know, there’s never been an explanation (technical or otherwise) for why the online multiplayer is limited just to Steam. I wouldn’t think it would be an API related issue, since presumably GOG.com (or more properly CD Projekt RED, its parent) would have access to Steam APIs to ensure functionality on their original games, and there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use an API to help ensure “cross-vendor” functionality. I’d like to think both Valve and GOG.com would anticipate potential issues of cross-play on commonly offered titles and make sure they were ironed out. But the loss of functionality on Streets of Rage 4 sets a bad precedent.
As far as games leaving GOG.com after their exclusivity period on other storefronts ends, it’s potentially a risk. But I can’t see them leaving money on the table if they’ve basically test marketed a title and gotten good response from it. They’ll have already burned through the early adopters, but the ones who were waiting for the exclusivity period to end could be lucrative for them.
It seems to have happened again on my reply to “Gameluster” on his last reply. Not sure why Disqus or Wordpress doesn’t like me. No big deal on that post though as it wasn’t really a question or anything.
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“I wouldn’t think it would be an API related issue, since presumably GOG.com (or more properly CD Projekt RED, its parent) would have access to Steam APIs to ensure functionality on their original games, and there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use an API to help ensure “cross-vendor” functionality.”
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As far as I have seen the Steam-API is only halfway open-sourced. Not everything of the API is non-proprietary. Which is why when a lot of games that are cross-play, the developers are using their own backend for the servers and communication of multiple services.
Sort of like how Rocket League could connect consoles and Steam together (or now Epic and consoles since the Steam version was suppose to be pulled sometime due to the deal with Epic Games) you could play together with the console gamers, but couldn’t text chat, voice chat, or various other things since the backend used each systems tools for those features. It only handled the assigning of names, matchmaking, and connections via server.
Verse say a game like RecRoom that uses it’s own servers, voice, friends list, et cetera and connects consoles and Steam gamers together. A lot more work had to be placed into that to make it happen. Yet, it kind of had to be done in a VR title in my opinion. Any other game and this kind of dedication might have been lost.
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I can’t see them leaving money on the table if they’ve basically test marketed a title and gotten good response from it.
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That is one of the weird things about GOG’s team. Their curation sometimes is insane. They’ve turned down so many well selling games for reasons such as “To Niche” or “We don’t think GOG customers will like it” when there are open community wishlist for said titles with hundreds of votes on games that have sold to tons of people on other platforms. If I’m not mistaken they even turned down Dark Souls 2 developers for being to niche. There are some older threads out there with the list of all the games GOG has refused. Though I believe someone screen-capped the Twitter post of the developers saying GOG refused their game. (I could be mistaken, because there are a lot of developers that get asked for a GOG version and then get refused. Some even refused more than one time. I believe the highest is like four times with GOG egging them on saying “It’s almost there”).
It seems to have happened again on my reply to “Gameluster” on his last reply. Not sure why Disqus or Wordpress doesn’t like me. No big deal on that post though as it wasn’t really a question or anything.
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“I wouldn’t think it would be an API related issue, since presumably GOG.com (or more properly CD Projekt RED, its parent) would have access to Steam APIs to ensure functionality on their original games, and there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use an API to help ensure “cross-vendor” functionality.”
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As far as I have seen the Steam-API is only halfway open-sourced. Not everything of the API is non-proprietary. Which is why when a lot of games that are cross-play, the developers are using their own backend for the servers and communication of multiple services.
Sort of like how Rocket League could connect consoles and Steam together (or now Epic and consoles since the Steam version was suppose to be pulled sometime due to the deal with Epic Games) you could play together with the console gamers, but couldn’t text chat, voice chat, or various other things since the backend used each systems tools for those features. It only handled the assigning of names, matchmaking, and connections via server.
Verse say a game like RecRoom that uses it’s own servers, voice, friends list, et cetera and connects consoles and Steam gamers together. A lot more work had to be placed into that to make it happen. Yet, it kind of had to be done in a VR title in my opinion. Any other game and this kind of dedication might have been lost.
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I can’t see them leaving money on the table if they’ve basically test marketed a title and gotten good response from it.
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That is one of the weird things about GOG’s team. Their curation sometimes is insane. They’ve turned down so many well selling games for reasons such as “To Niche” or “We don’t think GOG customers will like it” when there are open community wishlist for said titles with hundreds of votes on games that have sold to tons of people on other platforms. If I’m not mistaken they even turned down Dark Souls 2 developers for being to niche. There are some older threads out there with the list of all the games GOG has refused. Though I believe someone screen-capped the Twitter post of the developers saying GOG refused their game. (I could be mistaken, because there are a lot of developers that get asked for a GOG version and then get refused. Some even refused more than one time. I believe the highest is like four times with GOG egging them on saying “It’s almost there”).