To people who have used GOG Galaxy: what do you think of it?
- Thread starter Mister K
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It is another Steam, but thats why I like it. I like having everything organized and connected.
Most of my issues are things that Steam has that Galaxy doesnt. As long as CDProjeckt Red stays being the golden child of gaming morality, it can only get better.
Most of my issues are things that Steam has that Galaxy doesnt. As long as CDProjeckt Red stays being the golden child of gaming morality, it can only get better.
I've never paid it much mind, so I suppose that is rather high praise for something that's only meant to facilitate you getting to play your games faster. Apart from some launch issues, Galaxy has run smoothly, hasn't caused any weird bugs and has allowed me to more easily manage my GoG downloads and installations. At this point I see no reason not to use Galaxy if you have a library over at GoG.
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At the moment it works well but all it does is serve as a downloader, auto patcher and a way to organize your games, it has very little functionality, I mostly have it as an auto-patcher which can be disabled for each game individually.
It's basic but functional, nothing else much to say really. I like that you don't actually need to use it to launch your games once installed, but that it can nonetheless be used as a clean and easy way to access your library and keep your games up to date.
It works. As Kaleion said, it downloads and patches your games. Other than that it has few other features, like game time tracking and achievements (if you care) but there isn't much to it:
- Like Steam you have a store tab. I don't use the store - I visit it through an actual browser. But like Steam it's merely a thin browser.
- You also have a Library tab. It has your currently installed games on the left hand side and you can filter by searching. Again, like Steam. The main library is a bit better organised than Steam in some ways, as you can view and search through games by multiple criteria - including genre and custom tags. And yeah, you have custom tags, the same as Steam. One thing that slightly annoys me is that the games are paginated - I'd rather be able to see all of them instead of clicking through. At least the limit is 100 per page, so you don't have that much clicking but it's there.
- it has an in-game overlay...but I don't use it. Dunno what it does. It might be showing achievements in-game as you get them, which would explain why I've disabled it.
- there is Friends and IM feature. Like Steam chat.
- You can import folders with games. That's actually different than Steam. All you can do there is define several Library locations but in Galaxy, you could just have a game installed and then import it into the client, so it'll be patched and tracked but it's installed wherever you want, not under a predetermined directory structure.
- You can dock to system tray
That's mostly it. So, it's mostly like Steam but lacking some of its features (which, really, I can live without) and adding some small touches to other features. To be honest, I'm pretty happy with it. The improvements I'd expect are:
- being able to control download speed. Currently it only has a pause button and a setting for maximum number of connections (where the highest you can go is 10). Now, personally, I am fine with using max speed for anything. However, I would definitely class the download speed limit as something that should be there. And hopefully work - Steam took a while to include it and like a year or two to make it not suck. I would hope that Galaxy includes that sooner and has it operational straight away, too.
- remove pagination of games. Really - I've got the client installed on my machine - what's the point of paging the data? I know it's not something big but it just bugs me.
- have some option to update in the backround or something. It's another mildly irritating thing - it feels like every time I open up Galaxy it says "There was an update, do you want to restart to apply it?". Well, in reality it's probably around twice a week but it's still annoying. It'd be perfect if it could update without restarting or at least if it could do that automatically (presumably when not in use).
Overall - few small annoyances, but it does everything I'd expect from a game client aside from the download speed thing.
- Like Steam you have a store tab. I don't use the store - I visit it through an actual browser. But like Steam it's merely a thin browser.
- You also have a Library tab. It has your currently installed games on the left hand side and you can filter by searching. Again, like Steam. The main library is a bit better organised than Steam in some ways, as you can view and search through games by multiple criteria - including genre and custom tags. And yeah, you have custom tags, the same as Steam. One thing that slightly annoys me is that the games are paginated - I'd rather be able to see all of them instead of clicking through. At least the limit is 100 per page, so you don't have that much clicking but it's there.
- it has an in-game overlay...but I don't use it. Dunno what it does. It might be showing achievements in-game as you get them, which would explain why I've disabled it.
- there is Friends and IM feature. Like Steam chat.
- You can import folders with games. That's actually different than Steam. All you can do there is define several Library locations but in Galaxy, you could just have a game installed and then import it into the client, so it'll be patched and tracked but it's installed wherever you want, not under a predetermined directory structure.
- You can dock to system tray
That's mostly it. So, it's mostly like Steam but lacking some of its features (which, really, I can live without) and adding some small touches to other features. To be honest, I'm pretty happy with it. The improvements I'd expect are:
- being able to control download speed. Currently it only has a pause button and a setting for maximum number of connections (where the highest you can go is 10). Now, personally, I am fine with using max speed for anything. However, I would definitely class the download speed limit as something that should be there. And hopefully work - Steam took a while to include it and like a year or two to make it not suck. I would hope that Galaxy includes that sooner and has it operational straight away, too.
- remove pagination of games. Really - I've got the client installed on my machine - what's the point of paging the data? I know it's not something big but it just bugs me.
- have some option to update in the backround or something. It's another mildly irritating thing - it feels like every time I open up Galaxy it says "There was an update, do you want to restart to apply it?". Well, in reality it's probably around twice a week but it's still annoying. It'd be perfect if it could update without restarting or at least if it could do that automatically (presumably when not in use).
Overall - few small annoyances, but it does everything I'd expect from a game client aside from the download speed thing.
I have never grit my teeth while using GoG Galaxy which is a lot more than I can say for other services. The less said about the debacle that was Games for Windows Live, the better. Or in my case, I only use four letter words, obscenities or incoherent frothing rage. UPlay is another service that needs a visit from Dream's eldest sister.
It has basic functionality and is relatively light on computer resources, rarely glitches or fouls up and works perfectly well if you plan to play offline and mainly use it for patches and installations. All in all I seriously could not make a recommendation against it.
It has basic functionality and is relatively light on computer resources, rarely glitches or fouls up and works perfectly well if you plan to play offline and mainly use it for patches and installations. All in all I seriously could not make a recommendation against it.
I had some issues getting the Witcher 3 expansions to install.
- I played the main quest in May 2015 and I waited until Sept 2016 to play both expansions.
- When I loaded up GOG Galaxy, having not used it at all during that time, it automatically started downloading about 10GB of Witcher 3 content. I assumed it was patches, but figured it could include the expansions as well.
- After it finished installing, I bought the season pass.
- Nothing else started downloading, so I loaded the game. Nothing appeared different, I checked the list of installed DLCs from the menu and saw no mention of the expansions.
- After about 5-10 minutes of Googling "how to install Witcher 3 expansions", I happened to notice 2 new buttons had appeared on my GOG Witcher 3 page to download the expansions (they weren't there when I started Googling because I had thoroughly looked all over that page for any kind of install options).
- I clicked the first one, and left it downloading.
- After a while I checked back, it had finished downloading the first one, but I had to manually click the second one to start that downloading.
- When that had completed, it was quite late, so I needed to go to bed.
- Next day I loaded the game and saw no evidence of anything being different, including on the list of installed content.
- After another 5-10 minutes of Googling I noticed 2 new buttons had appeared on my GOG Witcher 3 page to install the DLCs (they weren't there before).
- Again, I had to manually click both to get them to install.
- After loading the game I finally saw a different menu screen, several popups telling me how to start playing the expansions, etc.
Overall, I was not impressed. Every time I've bought DLCs through Steam, they've always automatically downloaded and installed immediately, without me having to micromanage every step of the process, and at no point have I ever started to worry about "shit, has my purchase actually been made properly? What is going on here?" like I was starting do during this situation.
On the plus side, I've played Witcher 3 and its expansions for around 150 hours with no in game problems, crashes etc, caused by GOG Galaxy.
- I played the main quest in May 2015 and I waited until Sept 2016 to play both expansions.
- When I loaded up GOG Galaxy, having not used it at all during that time, it automatically started downloading about 10GB of Witcher 3 content. I assumed it was patches, but figured it could include the expansions as well.
- After it finished installing, I bought the season pass.
- Nothing else started downloading, so I loaded the game. Nothing appeared different, I checked the list of installed DLCs from the menu and saw no mention of the expansions.
- After about 5-10 minutes of Googling "how to install Witcher 3 expansions", I happened to notice 2 new buttons had appeared on my GOG Witcher 3 page to download the expansions (they weren't there when I started Googling because I had thoroughly looked all over that page for any kind of install options).
- I clicked the first one, and left it downloading.
- After a while I checked back, it had finished downloading the first one, but I had to manually click the second one to start that downloading.
- When that had completed, it was quite late, so I needed to go to bed.
- Next day I loaded the game and saw no evidence of anything being different, including on the list of installed content.
- After another 5-10 minutes of Googling I noticed 2 new buttons had appeared on my GOG Witcher 3 page to install the DLCs (they weren't there before).
- Again, I had to manually click both to get them to install.
- After loading the game I finally saw a different menu screen, several popups telling me how to start playing the expansions, etc.
Overall, I was not impressed. Every time I've bought DLCs through Steam, they've always automatically downloaded and installed immediately, without me having to micromanage every step of the process, and at no point have I ever started to worry about "shit, has my purchase actually been made properly? What is going on here?" like I was starting do during this situation.
On the plus side, I've played Witcher 3 and its expansions for around 150 hours with no in game problems, crashes etc, caused by GOG Galaxy.
It's nice. I've used it some and never had any real complaints about it. I see it really no differently than I would an optional Origin client. It's definitely not Steam, but nothing can ever be Steam except Steam.
To make a bad MMORPG analogy, Steam is your monolithic WoW while Galaxy is something more akin to the first Guild Wars; it's nicely put together and has its uses but lacks features, things to do (ie: games), and user-base size.
To make a bad MMORPG analogy, Steam is your monolithic WoW while Galaxy is something more akin to the first Guild Wars; it's nicely put together and has its uses but lacks features, things to do (ie: games), and user-base size.