With the Steam Deck only a few days away from release, it seems people are wondering the support status of other stores. Seems GOG won't be supporting it, which isn't surprising.
Currently, GOG does support Linux with direct downloads, although they only officially support a few versions of Ubuntu. They do not, however, support GOG Galaxy on Linux. This has been a bit of a problem, as some games with multiplayer rely on Galaxy meaning a few Linux builds on GOG came without multiplayer.
Speaking on Twitter, in reply to a YouTuber asking if they will support the Steam Deck they replied:
There's no official GOG support for SteamDeck. But since the device has an open architecture, as we understand, you can install Windows and as such also run GOG games.
They never replied to our email enquiring about it.
Technically, you won't need to do that. GOG Galaxy can run in Wine, although unsupported. On top of that, projects like Minigalaxy exist, Lutris has GOG download support, Bottles has a GOG installer and even Heroic Games Launcher is working on Linux support that's close to release - so there's options available on SteamOS 3 with the Steam Deck to get GOG games. However, Galaxy features are generally locked to their own app.
One reason that's likely GOG aren't working to expand their Linux support to Galaxy and Steam Deck, is that they aren't exactly doing well financially.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: denyasisQuoting: GuestThe only appeal they have now is to offer DRM free games
I think GOG kinda lost it's way when DRM-free stopped being a thing customers cared about.
When they started, it was a good play. There were a lot more stores and the number of stores was decreasing, so people could be concerned about losing their library if a store closed.
Today, I think people are not worried that a store like Steam will close, or are that worried about DRM in general asuch as they were in the past. I think GOG as a store didn't really figure out how to react to that in a meaningful way and still haven't.
I never stopped caring about DRM, but I sure stopped caring about GOG right around the same time they stopped caring about Linux users.
Quoting: Alm888GOG does not want to profit from Steam Deck. It wants to topple it. At the very least, a Steam Deck is another platform, adding a headache to GOG's "tech support" (imagine what troubles will arise when the support will be flooded with numerous "Deck+Windows" GOG users' support requests due to issues with controllers for DOSBox-wrapped games). And at the worst case scenario, Steam Deck will divert users from GOG towards Steam. So, the quicker Steam Deck flops the better (for GOG).
If GOG doesn't care about Deck they could have just said: "we don't support it, just like we don't support [insert any other console name]". You're making a lot of assumptions in order to justify a shitty answer when the most simple answer is that they don't give a fuck about the Linux support anymore.
So, let's stop playing the fanboy's here while trying to bury your head in the sand. GOG is an utterly POS store for Linux users, the only value you can get is the "DRM Free" promise they make. Take it for what it is, don't waste keyboard with a fantasy tale of their market strategy.
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