GOG.com

[Lacrymas]

They aren't advertising playing your games offline. You can play your games on Steam offline as well. Galaxy won't become mandatory because they know they have nothing else to offer outside no-DRM to compete with Steam.

 

[Owl]

Is there a way to fix DX:HR Director's Cut's graphics to not be at a shitty Wii level?

There is a mod that you can use to tweak a few things like color grading and bloom, to make it look more like the original. But I don't think the DC looks that bad; they changed the lighting and shading so it looks different, and there are a few misaligned/glitchy textures in a few places, but it's not substantially worse than the original. The bigger problem is the bugs, for example i get severe stuttering in the DC when I enter a new area, while the original runs smoothly.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

SsethTzeentach just did a review of Wizardry 8, for those that are interested and never got a change to play it. He also has a 90% GOG discount code on the review page, to entice people to play the game. The code is valid from May 8th to May 12th. Very bro of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G0yeNCu5VU&feature=emb_rel_end

 

[Anthedon]

I haven't touched anything GoG related for a while, so I still have the old client installed. I have no interest in any social garbage features or the unifying clients stuff. Is there a reason to upgrade to 2.0 besides that?

 

[Strange Fellow]

Perhaps. Are you interested in a vastly inferior interface?

 

[racofer]

Perhaps. Are you interested in a vastly inferior interface?

Don't you guys like phone interfaces? It is 2020 for fucks sake!

 

[Anthedon]

Perhaps. Are you interested in a vastly inferior interface?

Nah, I got the new Steam interface for that.

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Given that the old GOG downloader was recently shut down for good, would I be crazy to suggest that it's only a matter of time before Galaxy is mandatory?

What I imagine is that you would be able to play your games while offline, hence still being "DRM-free", but there could be a silent Galaxy process that runs every 24h/48h/week to authenticate your installations. So, as long as your system was online within the past few days, you can play your games offline... but not indefinitely. If your system has been offline for more than a few days, you'd need to connect first so that Galaxy can re-authenticate your games. This way GOG could still advertise "playing your games offline*".

No regional pricing was once a core pillar of GOG's business model, but that got in the way of selling newer titles so GOG did away with that philosophy. They can boast about DRM-free or "Hey we're the good guys who put gamers first!" but we know it's not helping them sell games to the extent they'd expect. GOG's big thing was DRM-free classic games that could be played without the hassle of the old DRM or nuisance of modern clients.

Is this far-fetched? GOG has already burned through most of the goodwill with their longtime users, so I wouldn't put it past them to bend but not break on the DRM-free model.

You're not the only one to worry about the introduction mandatory Galaxy. I've been crystal balling this scenario for the past 2 years now.

Come Cyberpunk 2077, we'll all gonna get a big fat DRM dildo shoved up our collective ass. Mark my words. They won't call it DRM of course, they'll give it some weaselly spin and call it "customer protection" or something along those lines.

CD Projekt's games have always been at the forefront of eroding gog's values - be it regional pricing, geolocking or introducing microtransactions. DRM is the next step, if only for the fact there are no other values left to violate.

Getting rid of the downloader was another big step towards making Galaxy mandatory. When CP comes out, it will likely be eleventy billion Gigabytes. Have you ever tried downloading eleventy billion Gigabytes with your browser? It can be cumbersome, which is why the Downloader was still a useful tool. Why retire a useful tool shortly before a major release? *thinking emoji*

I've been wondering how they will weasel their way out of their assurances that they will always have offline installers. So, here's how I think it's going to work: You can download the game from your browser, but you'll need to have a Cyberpunk profile to play/save your game etc (or, if you're already a user, you'll get logged in via your Galaxy/gog profile). Conveniently, non-gog customers who open a profile via Cyberpunk would automatically create a corresponding Galaxy/gog profile, which would boost the numbers of active gog users. All the while gog could still claim: "Whaddya want? It's sill DRM-free! It still has offline installers!"

Something like that is coming. You wait and see!

Is there a reason to upgrade to 2.0 besides that?

It's not like you have a choice about it. If you start ye olde Galaxy, after a while you'll get a notification about a 2.0 upgrade and your only choices are "Upgrade now" or "Upgrade later". If you choose "Upgrade later", it'll automatically update the next time Galaxy starts uo.

 

[Lacrymas]

SsethTzeentach just did a review of Wizardry 8, for those that are interested and never got a change to play it. He also has a 90% GOG discount code on the review page, to entice people to play the game. The code is valid from May 8th to May 12th. Very bro of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G0yeNCu5VU&feature=emb_rel_end

Is there someone on this forum who hasn't got Wiz 8 already? They discount it constantly and it was one of the first things I bought on GOG.

 

[Endemic]

Oh look, Steel Division 2 is on sale

https://af.gog.com/promo/20200508_weekend_sale?as=1649904300

 

[Semiurge]

They aren't advertising playing your games offline. You can play your games on Steam offline as well.

This and Steam lets you play even if it's been offline for years.

 

[DalekFlay]

You're not the only one to worry about the introduction mandatory Galaxy. I've been crystal balling this scenario for the past 2 years now.

Even if they made Galaxy required... which they have said repeatedly they will not do and fixing this so fast supports that rather than contradict it... as long as you can download offline installers through it (which you can) then it's not DRM. It's just a more elaborate downloader.

You guys are walking paranoia bombs. Probably read your wives text messages when they're in the shower.

 

[Bara]

Well Trudograd up on gog under in development.

Still wondering on when gogs going to finally get around to putting up KoTC already.

 

[Removal]

KoTC already.

I was under the impression they had deeply insulted Pierre by telling him they didn't want his Dune II clone that no one played and he's been upset about it to this day

 

[Bara]

I'm unaware of this Dune clone stuff but he submitted KoTC back in December 2019 to be put on gog and a week or so back he said gog finally reached back to him and should be on gog "soon."

 

[Infinitron]

I'm unaware of this Dune clone stuff but he submitted KoTC back in December 2019 to be put on gog and a week or so back he said gog finally reached back to him and should be on gog "soon."

Old story: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...gue-creator-of-knights-of-the-chalice.122956/

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Found some very handy instructions on how to prevent the forced update to the (terrible) Galaxy 2.0 client:

I noticed the Update prompt mentioning "Beta", despite me having unchecked the participate in Beta checkbox in Galaxy 1.2 settings, and the prompt had me chose between "Update" and "Update later". That's pretty much Microsoft newspeak for "Yes" and "Yes". And I haaaaate it, so much.



Intermission

WARNING: Once you've received this popup, the next time you restart Galaxy, you will be forcibly updated to the v2.0 BETA.

Sidenote: If you closed (quit) Galaxy after the prompt, DO NOT start a GoG game through the start menu shortcut. Doing so will start Galaxy first, which will then in turn update to v2.0 BETA. Starting the game EXE directly, or with a manually created shortcut, won't start Galaxy.

In case the update already happened, all you can do is...
- uninstall Galaxy, and reinstall v1.2 from an old setup (Link: hosted by GoG).
- DON'T let Galaxy start automatically after the setup (untick the box).
- Then, before you start Galaxy, follow the steps in the "tl;dr" section below.

Furthermore...
After you're done, you may have to import each of your games again, if you installed them to a custom path (which I did) rather than the default Galaxy suggested path. This is an annoying manual procedure and takes a ton of your time, especially if you have a few modded games, which may be validated and "repaired" (broken) when importing them in this way (which I have, and had happen to me - Fallout New Vegas, I think it was). You may want to backup-copy these games in their entirety (whole folder), and paste that copy back over the game folder after Galaxy is done... "repairing".

End of intermission.



Triggered by this, I did the research and, sure enough, the forum is full with absolutely fair outrage about it. Reading about how the client is, effectively, still very much a Beta, only confirmed my apprehension to update.

So I clicked "Update later", then went ahead and disabled autostart, added "/runWithoutUpdating" to the shortcut, made a backup of the folders, then chopped off any and all files and folders that could be connected to the already downloaded update. In particular, I removed...

C:\ProgramData\GOG.com\Galaxy ...
... \redists\GalaxyUpdater.exe
... \autoupdate
... \autoupdate-verified
... \temp\desktop-galaxy-updater
... \selfupdate.json

If anything breaks, I'll try to restore from my backups. I refuse to use a half baked, clu(s)tterfuck of a client, especially when it's being forced. MY machine, MY realm, GTFO.



Extremely disappointed with GoG right now. I've been with them from the early days and never ever in my entire life accepted or installed Steam, still remember a friend of mine showing it to me when it was new back in the day, and I hated it. It was such a baffling concept to me, "why would anyone, ever"... and here we are.

So, thanks GoG, I hate it.



*Addendum:
Out of curiosity, I exchanged the GalaxyUpdater EXE with the Windows Calculator EXE, just to see how often it would be called. The Calculator popped up a LOT. I deleted it after half a day, but I had to close the calculator about 4 times or so.

Also, I found this in the community wishlist: Allow users to stay with Galaxy 1.2

Signal Boosting: Open letter to GoG



______________________________________________________________________________________________



tl;dr:
To cleanly disable update, do the following:

0) Recommended: Make a backup first (ZIP the folders, put it somewhere in case you need it later)

1) Delete C:\ProgramData\GOG.com\Galaxy\redists\GalaxyUpdater.exe
2) Disable Galaxy autostart in settings
3) Add "/runWithoutUpdating" to the Galaxy shortcut
- Right click short cut, properties, "Target" box
- append a space and "/runWithoutUpdating" at the end (without quotation marks)

Should be fine now, but there may be some setup files already downloaded and "waiting" to be installed, which will never happen now, thus it's just dead weight on your harddrive. If you want to clean that up...

4) Optional - Clean-up: Delete...
Inside of C:\ProgramData\GOG.com\Galaxy ...
- ... \autoupdate
- ... \autoupdate-verified
- ... \temp\desktop-galaxy-updater
- ... \selfupdate.json

5) Unrelated to update, but if you want to clear some space while we're already here...
- delete the contents of the \logs\ folder (mine was 600MB in size, jeez).
- after a few days, if everything works fine, you may delete the backup ZIPs. I'd keep them, tho.

6) Make your voices heard by voting in this community wishlist topic: Allow users to stay with Galaxy 1.2

 

[markec]

I dream that when new Dune movie is out that GoG will use the newfound interest in the setting to release all of the old Dune games.

 

[Jarpie]

I dream that when new Dune movie is out that GoG will use the newfound interest in the setting to release all of the old Dune games.

Herbert's estate owns the old games, as the rights went to them after the license ran out, and they told GOG that they don't want Dune, Dune 2 etc to be rereleased saying "if it's old, it should stay old"...hilarious how there's been reprints of Herbert's books.

 

[markec]

I dream that when new Dune movie is out that GoG will use the newfound interest in the setting to release all of the old Dune games.

Herbert's estate owns the old games, as the rights went to them after the license ran out, and they told GOG that they don't want Dune, Dune 2 etc to be rereleased saying "if it's old, it should stay old"...hilarious how there's been reprints of Herbert's books.

Let me dream, also what is their address so I can hire some goons to change their mind.

 

[jebsmoker]

that's fucking stupid. it would be great if emperor: battle for dune was re-released on GOG

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I dream that when new Dune movie is out that GoG will use the newfound interest in the setting to release all of the old Dune games.

Herbert's estate owns the old games, as the rights went to them after the license ran out, and they told GOG that they don't want Dune, Dune 2 etc to be rereleased saying "if it's old, it should stay old"...hilarious how there's been reprints of Herbert's books.

Why the hell can we buy the Lynch movie, and that documentary about the earlier Dune production then? Are you saying Universal actually gave Herbert's estate enough of a pile of cash to keep that thing out? What, is Universal's "we don't give a shit" money more than GOG's "let's talk" money?

 

[Sceptic]

It's Brian Herbert. Don't try to understand. Only madness lies there.

And in the name of whatever you consider holy, don't go anywhere near his prequel/sequel books.

 

[Jarpie]

I dream that when new Dune movie is out that GoG will use the newfound interest in the setting to release all of the old Dune games.

Herbert's estate owns the old games, as the rights went to them after the license ran out, and they told GOG that they don't want Dune, Dune 2 etc to be rereleased saying "if it's old, it should stay old"...hilarious how there's been reprints of Herbert's books.

Why the hell can we buy the Lynch movie, and that documentary about the earlier Dune production then? Are you saying Universal actually gave Herbert's estate enough of a pile of cash to keep that thing out? What, is Universal's "we don't give a shit" money more than GOG's "let's talk" money?

Universal probably still owns the rights to the film.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're hoping that new film would get new game made, and that rereleasing old games would affect the sales or something.

 

[RuySan]

I dream that when new Dune movie is out that GoG will use the newfound interest in the setting to release all of the old Dune games.

Herbert's estate owns the old games, as the rights went to them after the license ran out, and they told GOG that they don't want Dune, Dune 2 etc to be rereleased saying "if it's old, it should stay old"...hilarious how there's been reprints of Herbert's books.

Why the hell can we buy the Lynch movie, and that documentary about the earlier Dune production then? Are you saying Universal actually gave Herbert's estate enough of a pile of cash to keep that thing out? What, is Universal's "we don't give a shit" money more than GOG's "let's talk" money?

Universal probably still owns the rights to the film.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're hoping that new film would get new game made, and that rereleasing old games would affect the sales or something.

Herbert was a joyless person (he didn't allow Iron Maiden to mention Dune in their song "to tame a land", because he was against Heavy Metal), so it's no wonder his heirs are also joyless and hate video games.