GOG Officially Expands Linux Support With Native Galaxy Client In Development

Long-time Slashdot reader pyroclast shared this report from Linux Journal: After years of requests from the Linux gaming community, GOG has officially confirmed that it is developing native Linux support for the GOG Galaxy launcher. The announcement marks one of the biggest shifts in the company's history and signals a stronger commitment to Linux as a first-class gaming platform. While GOG has offered DRM-free Linux game downloads since 2014, its Galaxy launcher has remained exclusive to Windows and macOS — until now. Although the company has not announced a release date, GOG says Linux has become a major area of investment, with development already underway...

Unlike the web-based game downloads that Linux users already have access to, GOG Galaxy serves as a full-featured game management application. The launcher currently offers features including:

— Automatic game installation and updates
— Cloud save synchronization
— Achievement tracking
— Playtime statistics
— Game library organization
— Integrated storefront browsing
— Friends lists and social features
— Cross-platform launcher integration

Today, Linux users typically access these capabilities through community projects such as Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, or Bottles. A native Galaxy client would provide an officially supported alternative with direct integration into GOG's ecosystem...

For GOG, supporting Linux more fully aligns with its philosophy of giving users greater control over their purchased games.
The article argues this news shows Linux growing in importance for game publishers. After the rapid adoption of Valve's Steam Deck, there's also been continuous improvements to Proton and Vulkan, increasing hardware compatibility, and native Linux game development efforts.

"As more companies recognize the platform's growth, Linux users can expect broader support from game publishers and software developers alike."

That's cool

[OrangeTide]

I'm glad they're supporting Linux even more now. There aren't a lot of us but maybe with Microsoft constantly making their OS worse, some more converts will show up.

The thing is, I don't really use GOG Galaxy because the big value add for me is that I can download and install games to run off line. And admittedly this is what GOG Galaxy does in the background (and it will even backup the installer and fetch bonus content if you want it to). But I don't necessarily need galaxy to run my games, as the installer already does a nice job putting it under my desktop's menu and I can browse or search for games.

Where Steam's app is ahead is that it has better integration with friends lists and makes it easier to invite your friends into a game. It's not that huge of a deal because Discord can already do some of that on Linux today if you grant it permissions necessary for it to track what game you're playing.

Re:

[jhoegl]

GOG might be some good competition for Steam, but dominance is pretty strong.
Glad to see it though.
As for discord knowing what game your playing, who cares... FFS.

Re: That's cool

[paulatz]

Even if GOG finally released the Linux client today, and it had feature parity with the Windows one, it is because of Valve money that Linux has become such a great gaming platform.

I'll keep buying my games on Steam, at least for now: it is not just a matter of market dominance, but supporting a corporation that is giving back to my community.

Re:

[Archfeld]

if you don't have an offline installer you didn't "buy" a game you leased it for an indeterminate period. I've been on steam for a long time, but I don't support a platform with money if I can't play my game at my cabin with no net. Granted Steam has some offline ability but it is flaky and doesn't work for all titles.

By your logic Gaming owes itself to MicroSloth and we should all support that crap. The only thing Valve gives back is that which is required by the various licenses, and they have made a good

Re:

[paulatz]

You may be able to keep running the game after GOG goes bankrupt, but since most of their games only have Window version, without Wine/Proton (financed by Valve) you would have to run it on that dumpster fire of spyware that is Windows 11. Also note that it is perfectly possible to run Steam games without Steam and even offline, on Linux via Lutris launcher, on Android with Gamenative or Gamehub.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Most people buy games for entertainment not for archive/collecruin, it they run untill they're tired of them they don't really care. i wonder how many games on steam that has recieved 0 new content in at least 5 years have a significant weekly pleyrr number.

Re:

[Archfeld]

Funny but the only game I own on Steam is the Doom/Doom2 full collection. It is 50 years old, gets new maps daily from many different dev's. I play on the free UZDoom engine which is as good as most today. I play the original BG and BG2 quite often, they are old as well. Beyond BG3 I've not found too many compelling new games. I use Steam for Demo's and to see what is new. I buy on GoG and Itch.

Re:

[nicubunu]

Doom is only 33 years old.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Even if GOG finally released the Linux client today, and it had feature parity with the Windows one, it is because of Valve money that Linux has become such a great gaming platform.

I'll keep buying my games on Steam, at least for now: it is not just a matter of market dominance, but supporting a corporation that is giving back to my community.

The main reason to go with GoG is DRM free games. Every game on GoG is provided DRM free, and you can download offline installers for games and save them. If GoG vanis

Re:

[r1348]

They have been promising a Linux client for over a decade now, and that never came to be. Meanwhile Steam ate their lunch.

Re: That's cool

[drinkypoo]

I think this is because you don't need one to install and play games, we had playonlinux and we have lutris and heroic. I haven't used the latter but lutris makes installing and playing games from GOG very easy.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

I agree the GoG might be a bit late to the game, but how many years have linux relly been a solid alternative fir gaming ( I ask because I have no idea)? Allso GoG has not really had the incentive Valve had, valve did not want to pay Microslop for every steamdek they make so they had the incentive to to invest in proton, Gog not so much since they don't produce/sell hw

Re:

[r1348]

Steam on linux was released in 2013, well over a decade before the Steam Deck.

Re:

[zelurker]

Yeah I agree the biggest difference with steam is the community, but steam client is very broken in linux, notifications are almost unusable to follow a thread, which makes it less and less interesting.

Also for now you have minigalaxy for gog, an unofficial "port" of gog galaxy, it's not exactly a port, it doesn't try to do all what gog galaxy does, but it gives you an access to your whole gog library in an instant, you can download and install/uninstall games in just 1 click, and they are installed with th

Re:

[bn-7bc]

You might be right, I don't relly use the community features for much beyond the workshop, so I really couldn't comment. I suspect my usige pattern is not that a typical. So basically for a lot of people steam is a store+ launcher whit mod distribution on the side, and for that it works rather well iMHO. And rgecsicual bits, meh we have discard for that

Re:

[Spacejock]

When I imagine what the next version of Windows might look like I picture something with AI and ads and tracking crammed into every part of it.

Oh wait, that's kind of what we have now. But assuredly it'll be even worse, so I expect the Linux percentage to keep growing as it gradually becomes known as the best PC platform for gaming.

Re:

[mjwx]

I'm glad they're supporting Linux even more now. There aren't a lot of us but maybe with Microsoft constantly making their OS worse, some more converts will show up.

The thing is, I don't really use GOG Galaxy because the big value add for me is that I can download and install games to run off line. And admittedly this is what GOG Galaxy does in the background (and it will even backup the installer and fetch bonus content if you want it to). But I don't necessarily need galaxy to run my games, as the installer already does a nice job putting it under my desktop's menu and I can browse or search for games.

Where Steam's app is ahead is that it has better integration with friends lists and makes it easier to invite your friends into a game. It's not that huge of a deal because Discord can already do some of that on Linux today if you grant it permissions necessary for it to track what game you're playing.

I personally couldn't give a crap about friends lists... I'm a Linux user, I don't keep a lot of friends anyway.

To me GoG Galaxy it serves two purposes, 1 for games that are too large to be downloaded easily such as Cyberpunk 2077 which has about 50 parts to download and for games that get updated regularly. Aside from that it's a convenient launcher.

Re:

[serafean]

> this is what GOG Galaxy does in the background (and it will even backup the installer and fetch bonus content if you want it to

Lutris does most of that too. Granted no automated updates etc, but this is a case where joining the existing ecosystem would've been a real nice move.

Typical slashdot....

[ufgrat]

No link to article, assumes everyone knows what GOG is.

Hard to believe no one takes slashdot seriously.....

Re:

[vyvepe]

I clicked the story just to find out what does it mean. I hoped for a post explaining it but no luck.
Google indicates it likely stands for Good Old Games. [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[gweihir]

If you do not, then the story is probably not for you.

A little late ...

[Qbertino]

I was a hardcore GOG advocate, because they opposed DRM and offered native Linux runtimes of their games. However, their Linux support was pretty lackluster in recent years. Game versions meant to run on Ubuntu 16 and 18 and unusable on any recent version. About half a year ago, after many attempts to get things running on current Linuxes, I finally caved and moved from GOG to Steam, since they offer a hassle-free Linux experience with a curated central Linux-compliant runtime environment.

I presume GOG has

Re:

[mjwx]

I was a hardcore GOG advocate, because they opposed DRM and offered native Linux runtimes of their games. However, their Linux support was pretty lackluster in recent years. Game versions meant to run on Ubuntu 16 and 18 and unusable on any recent version. About half a year ago, after many attempts to get things running on current Linuxes, I finally caved and moved from GOG to Steam, since they offer a hassle-free Linux experience with a curated central Linux-compliant runtime environment.

I presume GOG has noticed people giving up on GOG and now has decided to follow suit. I hope they can build a compelling experience, but they've lost me for now.

The main reason I've given up on GOG, which is to say I rarely buy anything from them any more is because their marketing emails stopped listing prices, instead going with the ambiguous "XX% off" which doesn't actually tell me what the price is, it's telling me what it isn't and I know it's designed to get more clickthroughs but it really has the opposite effect on me and I've unsubscribed from their mailing list.

Sadly this kind of behaviour has become all too common these days... FFS, if you want to sel

Wind of change?

[devslash0]

I'm happy with my offline installers (of which I've got over 200). The whole appeal of GOG was that you could download a complete installer and keep it forever because the game was DRM-free. Installing a client, and renaming offline installers to backup installers sounds like they may be building up to removing offline installers one day...

Re:

[ConceptJunkie]

I don't think that's likely. GOG has been around for almost 20 years. If they were to renege on providing offline installers, what could that possibly gain them? That only makes sense if they are planning to reimplement DRM, and that would immediately kill the company.

Just use Qt!

[Gravis Zero]

They could have a unified codebase if they shifted to using Qt for everything. It can do GUI, system config, accelerated graphics, joysticks/gamepads, touchscreens, et cetera. If you want to improve compatibility then Qt is the obvious way to go. It also targets smartphones so if you want to make ports for that, it's an option.

Steam Input

[mccalli]

I've honestly no idea if it's possible, but if they could find a way to get Steam Input into there or the equivalent of their own then I could use it. I have an original Steam Controller, you used to be able to use it on non-Steam games but for a few releases now Steam took that ability away. Some way of emulating or creating an alternative to Steam Input would be superb.

Nice

[TwistedGreen]

Good idea. Given that most of the games I play on GOG are emulated anyways, I might as well be playing them on Linux.

Good

[gweihir]

At some point, probably not too far off now with their failing AI strategy, Windows sill become totally unsustainable. It is good to have several alternatives in place.