I wrote this little note on my website on the feeling of purchasing a DRM-free game from GOG. Now what I wonder, not knowing much about GOG - why isn’t GOG larger than it is, what’s the catch? Because this experience was rad.
why isn’t GOG larger than it is
Most people end up preferring the convenience and features on Steam. Valve also put a ton more effort into Linux.
At the end of the day any PC gaming store is having to compete with Steam, which is feature-rich and has an established user-base. Steam DRM is also quite weak, and even has to be opted into by the developer. For those that do mind having to deal with Steam’s baggage, other DRM-free platforms exist too.
GOG has also had some PR problems in recent years that probably get in the way of adoption, such as their refusal to list a game due to controversy from China about an in-game stamp that combines the names of Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh, and their attempt to piggy-back off of a trending hashtag promoting trans awareness.
They’re also tied to CDPR, who have damaged their image through their poor launch of Cyberpunk (for which they pulled a similarly controversial Twitter stunt), and their treatment of staff during development, after previously stating they would not force them to crunch.
Oh, I’d love if it GOG (and Itch) shipped AppImages in general. I’ve gotten really appreciative of them in the recent months and have a lot of fun with Satisfactory Mod Manager which ships those.
GOG’s installer story on Linux is a bit poor from my experience. Or at least it is on my laptop. I’ve been playing with Lutris a bit, but mostly, I just want a single system to run and install games because I have a general philosophy not to use the market leader (shop local, shop small) so I always get on Itch or GOG when possible.
In my circle GOG is huge. I have more friends and family on GOG than anywhere else. Out of the 39 ppl I have on GOG only 4 of them have Steam. I think it’s because my gaming group is older that prefer the offline binary games that have mp built in without a launcher.
I think more modern gamers are looking for always online games and GOG does not carry those types of games and only recently got into the online gaming arena via Galaxy which I think was a mistake on their part.
I personally love GOG, but they had some hiccups in the past, like the Witcher 2 launch. They advertised Linux support, but apparently the game was using an emulation layer, not native. The backlash was very hard and I guess many people still haven’t moved on.
I still think they’re cool, but Linux is definitely not a priority for them (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk).
That was not specific to GOG, all stores had the same version which used the eON porting tech from Virtual Programming.
True, but I always thought that the grudge many people have against GOG was related to this. After all CDPR makes both, GOG and The Witcher.
