For those of you who do not yet know, GOG's Galaxy is akin to Valve's Steam, with a few differences.
Moving on, this is what Destro had to say when answering what Galaxy's launch date is.
Encouraging? Or not so much? What this means to me is that there is still plenty of time to vote for GOG to make Galaxy open source! Make it so, folks!
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Moving on, this is what Destro had to say when answering what Galaxy's launch date is.
DestoThere is no such thing as release date for Galaxy because Galaxy is not a single feature that we can just release and say "done" but an ecosystem of features. That's also why the date is so vague. Other reason would be that we prefer to underpromise than underdeliver :)
Coming back to your question - I'd break it down into few parts
First, some of the Galaxy features were available in closed multiplayer beta of The Witcher Adventure Game (networking & backend, matchmaking, lobbies, in-game chat). FYI, we've sent over 150.000 beta keys as of today and while we will be soon concluding this beta, there will be many more Galaxy-powered games like that coming, one of them in the very coming weeks ramping up into many more in the months after (way over 40 devs have access to our SDK but here we're depending on developer release schedule).
Then there is also a Galaxy Client - some parts of it, like auto-updating, were already available in mentioned The Witcher Adventure Game, and the full app supporting entire library is also coming but keep in mind this is not a small task - all our games are being rebuild to offer installation and updating via Client while also keeping their standalone installers, which creation we'd like to automate as well rather than making the whole pipeline an overkill. Then, many other features - like achievements for example - also depend on having Galaxy powered game that supports them in the first place. And as you'd expect different games then require different features.
Finally - many other features which will be later needed to power other stuff are actually already released on GOG - good example here are Galaxy accounts system, which all of you are now using... maybe some of you noticed this when we've launched new login and signup forums. It sounds like no big deal but there are many dependencies here - friends system is just one example which is also linked to achievements somewhat, which might require some overlay which in turn depends on a Client.
Encouraging? Or not so much? What this means to me is that there is still plenty of time to vote for GOG to make Galaxy open source! Make it so, folks!
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What these Platforms effectivly do in my eyes is turning my PC into a console - i trade the last freedom of software i have for more convenience. personally i dont care much about open source in games at all, but what is really important for me is beeing able to play the game without some 3rd party software requirement - DRM free.
And when i see people easily willing to trade in their software freedom for convenience i really wonder why they switched from windows in the first place, as in my eyes gnu/linux was the attempt to regain freedom of software to begin with.
I think you are right. I switched to Linux only because I did not want to buy windows licenses for my 3 old computers after Windows XP era ended and I newer actually cared about other stuff.
Ah, I completely misinterpreted your post. :S: Yeah, they all run on DOSBox it seems, so they probably just need to renegotiate their distribution deals with the publishers.
That's it. I started seriously using GNU/Linux 15 years ago. Things have changed very much and as it has matured more people educated by Windows has arrived. For a lot of them it's not about freedom but by chance. 15 years ago no one used it by chance, it wasn't as easy to use as nowadays.
Everyone is free to use the software as he/she wants but I care very much about who's creating it and maintaining it the way it is, with all that freedom. Some people that enjoys it today doesn't care about all the things that make us unique and have taken us so far. It's like people that enjoys nature but at the same time kill it throwing trash and making fires. They take whatever is good for them at the moment, use it and throw it away when weared down, then jump to the next good thing. Some people care some people don't, they just want to enjoy it while it lasts.
Now back on topic, I hope Galaxy becomes what Steam should have been, and not just a copy. Being optional and working inside the game without compromising performance and privacy would be strong points.
EDITED: some important typos.
Only Dungeon Keeper 1 runs on DOSBox. The other games need wine :/
I think it is nice that i will be able to manage my games with the gog client soon, and yes competition is good :)
But the only difference I see between gog client and steam client is that steam also offers games with drm. So why not buying drm free games only on steam? Wouldn't that be the same?
But, for my part, I really do thank Steam for the Linux push and that's why I mainly use Steam.
This said, the reason I dropped Windows is all about security, viruses, spywares, processes running in the background and all that crap that plagues windows.
I just hope GoG and Desura will be permitted to run on SteamOS... That Valve won't make it impossible for them to run on their OS just like MS would have done... Another reason why I hate them...
But since SteamOS (not the steam client) is open source, it shouldn't be a problem.
you miss understood then .. we are in the GoG Galaxy topic.
and my post here was a reply to Imants who said "We have steam allredy why do we even need Galaxy?"
Yeah. I read on too many forums something like "We already have Windows, why do we need Linux (and/or) SteamOS?".
I'll never make mine this way of thinking...