I posted this in the Epic hate thread but thought i'd pop it here: I'd not heard of GOG Galaxy 2.0 - sounds like it's in closed beta - but it sounds like a solution to the multiple game launcher problem, allowing you to access all your games across steam/gog/epic/origin and so on.
Ok, ok, ok, Here's a link to @Gareth Halfacree 's article. I'm only 2 months behind, an improvement for me but i did link a pretty video.
Anyone else trying this? You can finally see all your games in one place which looks like a killer feature to me as I forget I own stuff!
It's great for seeing everything you have installed, but some launchers do not (currently) play well with it. Select a steam game to play, it runs Select an epic game, you have to run it in epic again Same for uplay and the ms one (at least for me) So a good idea that needs work, and unless you plan to buy all your games from GoG, then you still need to use the other launchers to buy. Now if we had GoG 2.0 with a store that combined all the other options so you could buy a game in one place from any estore, that would be cool
For most games, you can just launch the .exe directly, or a shortcut to the .exe with the "-EpicPortal" flag*. For a handful, getting the launch flags is a more involved process but can still be done to launch gamers directly without the Epic store loading. * Will not work for launching through Steam. Steam lets you add launch flags to Steam-installed games, but will ignore them if you try and add them for non-Steam games.
Not sure what logic you're using there? You can get games for free so surely legit sites should learn to give everything away for free? Confused.
I'm talking about site design. You search a game, and it lists all the sites that have it available sorted by price and edition. I think this would be an ideal model for GOG to follow. Search a game and list all the platforms its available on with pricing and editions. As far as I know, no such site currently exists that compares pricing across GOG, Steam, Epic, Origin, Microsoft ect.
Ah phew I misunderstood Although I don't know if that would be in their interest anyway, potentially actively promoting rivals. Combining libraries is a way to get more people onto the platform, showing other shops would do the opposite I would think, unless GOG were always cheaper which they wouldn't be.
Combining libraries will get gamers onto their platform, a shared marketplace would go a long way towards keeping them in GOG 2.0 If I don't need to open Steam to buy games I don't need to open steam, provided they sufficiently expand community features.
99% of the time if I'm buying something through Steam I'm buying it through the website anyway. Because all the Steam store within the Steam program is is the Steam website but displayed in a smaller box on a slow and tabless browser. Sadly unlike GoG I cannot download the installer through the website too, and you're stuck jumping through the hoops of launching Steam, logging back in, waiting for Steam itself to update, trying to find where the heck they've hidden all the UI elements in this update (and figuring out how to disable the pointless fscking chat and overlay that it's re-enabled for the umpteenth time), finding where they've hidden the Downloads option and telling it to stop trying to spam updates in order to download the game you actually want, then finally quitting Steam so you can just launch your game in peace. Then having to launch and the kill Steam again on starting the game because fscking Steamworks wants its pound of flesh before it will let you run the damn game but is still too dumb to perform whatever auto-config it wants to do during the process of installation.
Which is no use if they're not spending money at GOG. Third-party comparison sites are your only option, here - Steam's never going to tell you if GOG's cheaper, and GOG's never going to tell you if Steam's cheaper.
