https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3tqIukBKg

Sounds like some real rock and roll.

Indeed, they're on the ball, so they don't mess around!

Fixed it.

I think there would be more backlash if GOG weren't so niche. I'm guessing a lot of goggers are happy to put up with these quirks as long as they get DRM-free; that's some self-selection bias in the community. Alas, the vast majority of gamers don't complain because they're on Steam and don't see the problems here. There *would* be a shitstorm if GOG had half as many users as Steam does.

I like your optimistic attitude. Still, I'm a little irritated because there is no technical excuse as to why DRM-free should imply late updates or other problems we have to live with. It is a completely orthogonal issue. Updates are not a coin. That is a false dichotomy. GOG could easily give early, untested updates for grabs and mark them as such. "We haven't tested this yet, thus we cannot help with any problems. This update could break your game (or worse). Feel free to try, at your own risk."

Best of both worlds. Get early updates if you like, or get tested updates if you prefer.

I am concerned that these issues are creating a negative feedback loop, with gamers complaining about GOG or about certain developers on GOG, and then developers find GOG & GOG users to be a troublesome bunch that leads to bad experiences, and go on to prefer & encourage everybody to just stick with Steam.

Too bad some levels are Steam exclusive. :D

I always feel a bit surprised when I see someone, who has been quite active in the forums since 2010, having so few games in the service. Not positively or negatively surprised, just surprised. Like Keanu Reeves "Whoa?!?"

Is it that you have so very selective taste when it comes to games, or you mostly buy games on other services (like Steam), or you just don't have money to buy more games? How many games do you have e.g. on Steam?

Yes, constructive criticism is good. It is just that... well... to be blunt, sometimes you've seemed even annoyed that people buy newer indie games on GOG, as if you are against it somehow. I don't know, maybe I am wrong, I just sometimes get that kind of feeling from your messages.

I recall earlier some people opposing the idea of GOG branching out and selling anything but some old games (not available anywhere else), ie. against indie games available also on Steam coming to GOG. But you are not one of those freaks, right? What to you has been the primary reason to come to GOG, and shop here (instead of e.g. Steam or other services)?

What do you mean? I thought many people are already quite vocal about it, including you (even though you don't really have much of games on GOG, not sure if you have them on e.g. Steam). There's even the GOGmix of "publishers who treat GOG customers as second class citizens", which I personally think is a good shamelist of games which are not properly supported on GOG. I quite often check that list when thinking of buying a game on GOG, just to see if there are known issues with the support, and missing some important updates.

There's variance there though. For instance, the OP of this thread seemed dismayed if a GOG update is delayed by one week from the Steam version. I personally don't find that so bad or even surprising at all, especially considering GOG also updates the standalone installers themselves while on e.g. Steam you can receive the update only through a client where the publisher itself does all the updating themselves.

There has been discussions about what GOG should do about it, but I don't think there is one answer that fits all cases. Some have suggested GOG should "demand" the publishers to update the GOG version ASAP in the agreement, but should this really concern also non-critical updates? And what would be the penalty? What if such extra clauses in the agreement, that other stores (like Humble Store) don't have, scare even those publishers away from GOG which most probably would keep their games up to date?

Yes in a case where the GOG version is fully abandoned with critical problems that have been fixed in other stores, GOG might have to consider pulling the game from the store. But not necessarily always.

But then there would also be much more incentive for all publishers to keep also the GOG version up to date, in a timely manner. A bit of a hen and egg situation.

My guess is that these affect why updates to GOG are usually delayed compared to e.g. Steam versions:

1. Since there are much more Steam owners of the game usually, the publisher prioritizes updating the Steam version, and only serves the GOG customers later, maybe even combining several Steam updates into one bigger GOG update. Sometimes GOG itself might want to combine several updates into one, or even skip some updates as not that important.

2. On Steam the publisher can update the game all by themselves, Valve doesn't have to meddle with it at all AFAIK. On GOG that is not currently possible, at least if we expect the standalone installers to be updated too. My understanding (guess) is that GOG is quite much involved getting the installer versions updated too, if not for another reason but to keep the installers and their updates somewhat coherent (even starting from filenaming, and what kind of installer software is used).

So maybe it isn't really the "DRM-free" that causes delays, but the standalone installers that GOG offers (and Steam doesn't). So, should GOG then abandon the installer versions and allow publishers to update only the Galaxy versions? Maybe that would speed up updates also to GOG, but people like me who exclusively use the non-client installer versions wouldn't like that idea.

Hence, I personally am fine with compromises. I can live with updates coming somewhat later to GOG versions, and sometimes even some updates or features missing altogether from the GOG version. For instance, I decided to buy the GOG version of Brutal Legend even though it doesn't have online multiplayer support (which is Steam-only); also in many cases I don't care that much if the GOG version is missing a level editor (as nowadays I don't see myself to invest that much time into one game, to start making extra content to it myself). Too bad though if some usermade content is made Steamworks-only, but that is not something that GOG can affect much necessarily.

Would it be ok to you if such updates would appear only to the Galaxy version?

I fully agree. Most developers and/or publishers, though, are the ones who don't. Steam (almost) dominates the market, offers them 150% times better deals or greater publicity aftereffect and 90% of the gamers, are steam persons, either exclusively, or mostly... Bitter/sad truth be said, its easier to offer updates faster and more frequently, in a place like steam (because of the client and other things), because it needs less work and frustration. Some games don't even get expansion releases here, even if we are being promised them (like the new recent expansion of Postal 2)...

Yes, it's unfair, it's frustrating... But it happens. Worst case, is having to choose. For me, No1 is DRM-Free, any time, over everything...

It has what now?
Steam has levels that gog version doesn't?
Can't see what's missing according to descriptions.

£6.99 on steam, £8.09 on gog, so gog users are (again) paying more for a partial game?


As for the whole gog users being second class citizens in the updates/patches thing, it's about time gog put something in the contracts that said patches are to be released here at the same time as they are everywhere else, or at the very least within Nth amount of time (a couple of weeks max' or similar).

They want gog to get bigger, that won't happen if some of us have quit buying here because games get abandoned, patches never appear &/or steam versions get things that gog versions will never see.

Levels based on Portal.

It's not just those of us here - repeatedly missing out on patches, content etc. is affecting their reputation in general. Look at discussions elsewhere for games planned for release here and it's not uncommon to see posts along the lines of "I plan to buy this on Steam because GOG have issues with getting updates for new games"

For the purposes of this thread, let's assume the premise from the opening post is true and that it is *GOG* causing the delay here, not the publisher or developer. See above. I think after a developer or publisher has decided there's something important enough to push an update for, it should be left to the players to decide whether it is important enough for them. If it affects them, or if the lack of an update would make it impossible to play online with friends with updated versions on the other platform, then no middle man should step in and say it's not important. This is a valid point, but again if we assume the premise of the thread is true, then GOG seriously needs to give more fucks (and employ more people to do the work if that's the issue). On the other hand, it's also a fairly solve-able problem technically to make it easy for a publisher to push updates in a format that can be most of the time (if not always!) automatically packaged into a stand-alone installer of GOG's choosing. AFAIK GOG doesn't really mess with file naming, not in new games anyway; at most, they have their own helper scripts and launcher shortcuts and such. Messing with file names is a whole another level of giving people trouble especially when it comes to modding and so on. I don't see any reason to do that. Most games would break anyway if you started renaming its files. They should not abandon the standalone installer. What they can do is improve the process (it can be more or less automated), or hire more people to do it if they can't keep up otherwise.

If a publisher can directly lay out his files and updates in a format that works for Galaxy without middle men, then there is nothing to stop GOG from using an installer that isn't called "galaxy" but employs the same format. I can't see why you think this functionality would somehow have to be tied to Galaxy. No, see above. That is yet another false dichotomy.

Although if GOG said that we must pick fast updates (but Galaxy only) or slow updates (but both ways work) then I'm afraid I'd have to give my support to Galaxy, even though I do not use it. Seeing as it is, most gamers prefer clients and timely updates are no doubt a bigger concern for the average gamer than the standalone installers. I think if slow updates & missing stuff & all that don't get fixed soon enough, that will hurt GOG's bottom line more than the second-class treatment of SA installers would. And in the long term, that will have an effect on us all. Of course, if you're ok with GOG remaining the small niche boutique store forever, then maybe these effects are not so important.

This is what I am very very worried about. And I'm afraid it's not just the gamers who will prefer Steam due to these issues. Bad reputation must spread among devs too. And it does not help. And these devs will further encourage gamers & others to just stick with Steam.

The discussion already expanded beyond that, but either way, there were only two examples used (Wuppo and Hollow Knight), and apparently one of them already got updated in the meantime with an update that wasn't so critical after all (as far as I read).

GOG makes sure that there is certain coherent way the installers and their patches are named, and that they use the same format etc..

Humble Bundle installers are an example where it is left to the publshers to handle. The file naming are all over the place (there is no even seemingly coherent way the installers are named), as are the installer formats. Sometimes there is no installer at all, just a zip file which you uncompress manually and launch the exe file.

If it is that simple, why hasn't e.g. Humble Bundle set up such an automated system so that all their DRM-free installers would use similar naming conventions and similar installer formats? Why are they all over the place on HB?

It might even be that many publishers themselves would oppose the idea that they would have to follow certain GOG-rules for the standalone installers (naming etc. according to GOG's rules), instead of e.g sending GOG the same installer that they have already published on Humble Widgets or in a Humble Bundle. Many of them might feel it should be enough that they send GOG one set of files, in the "Galaxy format".

That reminds me when at work we tried to agree with our suppliers that they would use a similar template for their release notes, but that attempt was doomed. Most of them said that either we take any release note in the format that they are already using, or will not get any release notes at all. From their point of view it was understandable: in case they have several customer companies (besides just us), they don't want to have to rewrite the release notes several times for different customers, but just send the same version to everyone.

It means more expenses, which means higher prices. How much more would you be willing to pay for you GOG games?

Are you saying that currently Galaxy downloads an installer and then (automatically) installs it? That's not how e.g. Steam works, it doesn't download an installer, but downloads the game files directly to the hard drive and then maybe some one-time script that sets up dependencies etc., possibly run when you run the actual game the first time.

I think what you are trying to suggest that there would be no actual standalone GOG installers anymore, but just e.g. a zipped file with all the game files in it, and some sort of script (taking care of dependencies, registery entries etc.) that the user runs after uncompressing the files manually to some game directory.

Yes, and those people are largely already using Steam, and will continue using it even if GOG Galaxy was up to par with it otherwise (ie. updates would appear even the same day (which they wouldn't anyway as publishers consider GOG lower priority)).

I am pretty sure GOG knows much better than you or me what is beneficial to them. They have the real numbers, you are just guessing. E.g. the people suggesting GOG should never have started selling newer games but just old classics not sold anywhere else and blaa blaa blaa...

I haven't gotten to test it myself yet, but the patch allegedly fixes a save-impairing bug that prevented two important items from spawning. If you played the old version and did one of the arena trials, you could never get the item(s) on that save file even with the update because they're only programmed to drop the first time. It's currently unknown if a future patch will be able to add a way for those missing the items to get them, but if not then anyone who got to that point in the original GOG version will have to start the game over if they want 100% completion. I've started the game over after the update, and my old savefile (which wasn't even at 80% yet) had almost 22 hours into it.

So yeah, the update is pretty important.