Just wanted to get other's opinion on wheter GOG Galaxy has been a success of an idea for a gaming client up to this point? How would you compare it to other gaming clients outside of Steam in terms of features?

That may be a hard question to answer without hard data a we have seen a number of people here show there dislike for the client, however at the same time we see people asking for more features and parity in comparison with Steam, achievements being a prime example.

Plus a lot of people are requesting a Linux version be made available and the galaxy forums are somewhat active.

Honestly I would say it's not a success but at the same time not a failure due to it still being debated about between those who are for it and against it.

I will say the biggest things for me are cloud save support, and yes acheivements. I would say compatibility but that is one of the core standards for GOG.

1) It depends on what you mean by "success." And

2) It also depends on which version of Galaxy you are talking about.

If by "success," you mean: it's a useful program that gives GOG customers the features they want and need, and without any of the crap bloating it that they don't want or need: then Galaxy 1.2 and earlier was an amazing success and a brilliant, wonderful program.

In contrast, Galaxy 2.0 is the antithesis of a good program: it's an abomination. It's uncomfortable & needlessly tedious to navigate, uncomfortable to look at, and bloated with all kinds of unnecessary, aggravating crap (like seeing what DRM-infested games from DRM stores that other people have played...why do I need that garbage cluttering up my Galaxy screen for?!).

On the other hand, if by "success" you mean financial success that brought in lots of new customers to GOG: neither Galaxy 1.2 or earlier, nor Galaxy 2.0 have accomplished that.

But Galaxy 1.2 was never designed or expected to do that, as far as I can tell.

In contrast, Galaxy 2.0 was given gigantic (at least, "gigantic" relative to GOG's relatively small amount of income) investments of time & money by GOG, and a huge marketing push, which was specifically intended & expected to lure in all the customers from every DRM client/store under the sun, and convert them into new GOG customers, on the basis that they crave to have all their DRM-infested games from other stores in one place that isn't Steam, and therefore they will buy from GOG since GOG will provide that.

That idea turned out to be the antithesis of a "success:" it was an epic failure to the maximum degree possible!

And a lot of people, including myself, correctly told GOG that that idea was going to be an epic failure as soon as it first emerged and it was clear that GOG was going all-in with that very horrible strategy.

But as usual, GOG didn't listen, ignored the feedback from customers that they were pursuing an extremely terrible idea, and so they continued down that path, and then it flopped colossally, just as we rightly predicted it would.

I'm sure Galaxy 2.0 being a major flop is one of the main reasons (but not the only one) for why GOG is currently in dire financial straits.

I don't use it but from a marketing perspective, whilst Galaxy has been mildly "technically successful" for the GOG platform, I don't think it's been the financially "saviour" they were betting on, and I do believe the vision some had at GOG of people on other DRM'd stores flocking en masse to GOG in droves because of pushing Galaxy 2.0 as a "meta-client" (a client that manages other clients) was extremely naive. Playnite already existed and whilst it has a following, hardly anyone who buys every DRM'd game on Steam, EA, Uplay, etc, says "I'm tired of having 5x clients, so I'll install a 6th DRM-Free client to manage the other 5 DRM'd ones".

Likewise "people will stop caring about which store they buy games from if they see and start everything from within Galaxy" isn't that true on any large scale. Even ignoring the "No Steam, No Buy" crowd, that illusion of a 'seamless' experience falls apart as soon as you start Steam / Epic / Origin, etc, games directly without Galaxy even once (or we see yet another weekly thread about how the unofficial Galaxy plugins have broken / desynced, or you use / dual-boot with Linux, etc).

I think the mistake is falsely believing people "switch" to stores because of client features and over-focusing on that at the expense of other more tangible stuff (like not turning people away from 5-6 week support wait times...) In reality, people didn't start using Steam in 2004 because of Steam features (most features were added 2009-2015). People switched to Steam because major developers switched to Steam (30% Steam cut + free Steamworks DRM vs 50% physical distribution costs + needing to separately license SecuROM, etc = +20% more profit) and people just followed where the AAA games went starting with Half Life 2. Achievements & Cloud saves came years after that, and whilst some may like them, they're not the main reason people select specific stores. People are ultimately here on GOG due to DRM-Free & older games (client or not), and over on Steam / EA / Origin due to the AAA games.

galaxy was and still is a horrible steam abomination and a giant waste of money

Been a great success, GOG losing money, CDPr bring galaxy in house. GOG having to say they still support drm free. Most users now stop by to buy 1 or 2 games. No loyal fan base anymore. Offline installers now lumbered with and reliant on it. Older customers mostly gone. So yes, depending on how you look at it a great success.
Are clients successful in general, yes, but then cancer is successful in its endeavour as well. And clients are the cancer of the gaming world, worse than drm which can be removed, clients alter the mentality of the users.

I'd like to bring up a point from a different angle on this subject.

Galaxy is often viewed as wildly popular due to the number of users who supposedly use it. Thus someone like me who insists on the offline installer will get called various names such as "vocal minority" et al. However, if we think about it more deeply, there is quite the flaw in just lumping all Galaxy users together.

Some users do use both Galaxy and offline installers, but I assume get counted as "Galaxy users." Some people may have tried Galaxy even just once, and not liked it, but in theory this could still pad the count of Galaxy's numbers. The constant marketing/pushing of Galaxy has surely gotten people to download it even if by accident.

Let's also consider the past fiasco when Galaxy was included in offline installers (for our conveeenience, of course. And to be clear this is not the same as the still-existing issue where all new installers seem to come with Galaxy.dlls that make games that would otherwise play on an old OS like XP apparently unplayable).

The point is, if GOG is set on Galaxy, they can theoretically spin all the above facts in a way that appears on the surface as though there is this overwhelming love of Galaxy, even if the reality tells a different story. I want the data from an alternate timeline where offline installers got equal or more focus, which unfortunately we can never get.

I think it has been a moderated success, at least as a replaceme t for Epic Games Store, it's practical, stable most of the time and don't use a toon of resourse to execute all the games from the different stores. I know many Epic users that use it because is more stable than Epic Launcher, is the first option of many new users on GOG. Launchers are here to stay, you want it or not, new generations not even know what an installer is, Steam did that to people, hell, even I use it, it's quicker to install a game through a Launcher than download the offline installer and install the game (I love offline installers by the way, I think is one of the best features from GOG) , you just have to send an invitation to play a game with a friend insted of try to connect IP crossing your fingers.
It's good, not perfect but good. Surely much better than Epic Launcher, that shit consumes more resources than Google Chrome and don't even work.

Thanks everyone who has responded with a detailed response. I was going to say for success standpoint about an idea that has been executed with features that you want if you had to use a client. I know I like the conveince of just downloading a game all in one download not in different parts, or dowload patch updates separately.

I got confused for a sec because of our shared profile pic lol.

I would say it is a partial success. As an avid Galaxy user, I enjoy using it and it has replaced every other client for me. However, if we're referring to "success" as how well Galaxy has fulfilled its goals, we can take a bit more of an objective look at it.

The main goal was to upgrade GOG's optional client with new features and a prettier UI. This was only partially a success. I've only used Galaxy 2.0, so I can't speak too much on this subject, but from what I've heard, there are some Galaxy features from the 1.x line that have yet to come to the 2.x line. None of these features are crucial to me, personally, but I understand why some want them to come to 2.0.

Another goal was to be a one-stop destination for gaming clients overall. This was a success, with a minor caveat: most integrations are still unofficial and tend to crash or disconnect. In some cases, such as a recent issue with the Ubisoft integration, users had to edit one of the config files to get it working due to Ubisoft changing some crucial ID that the integration relied upon. Once more integrations go official, this will (hopefully) be less of an issue. To GOG's credit, however, they allow the users to craft their own integrations. While the client may not be open source, the integration side of it is at least partially open source. Additionally, the social features are still quite limited, sadly.

In terms of how it installs and runs games, it's mostly a success but it also does have some issues and lacks a detailed download & installation metrics as Steam, and even EGS, have. As a result, it leads to a lot of people who get confused when it seems like Galaxy is crawling or just isn't doing anything, which can certainly be frustrating. Other than that, though, it installs and runs games very well on faster drives, especially if it's installed on an SSD and trying to install a game to that same SSD.

In terms of the privacy goal as stated on the Galaxy page, this is one area I do think GOG needs to work on. While I do have more trust in CD Projekt than some people, the fact that they claim it's a privacy-friendly client yet does still involve anonymized telemetry is a bit misleading. It collects far less data than other clients and, again, it's anonymized, but I'd prefer it if telemetry was an opt-in feature rather than an always-on feature. More and more people are becoming privacy-conscious nowadays so that would only help things. I'd be glad to keep telemetry on if it improves the client because of my love for this company (it's rare for me to be okay with that sort of thing), but it should not be forced by any means.

One of the final things I'll look at is its optionality. That's arguably the most important aspect of it. I know a lot of people outright dislike game clients but I'm not one of them. I think they should ALWAYS be optional, not just here on GOG, but everywhere. I am happy to use a game client if I'm given a choice but I do not like being forced to use them. This is the area that GOG needs to be a bit more careful with. While there are some areas that they can't really help (such as online multiplayer for games built for other platforms), they need to ensure that all offline installers are kept up to date with the installation present in Galaxy, or at least provide a clear reason why an offline installer is outdated (such as if the developer is lagging behind). For the most part, Galaxy IS definitely optional and I think a lot of people overreact regarding its optionality but there is certainly room for improvement.

Overall, I think Galaxy is definitely a partial success in that it achieved a lot of its goals BUT it also has room for plenty of improvement. The fact that GOG has a client with such ambition and potential, yet is meant to be totally optional, is a huge selling point for people who may not be as anti-DRM as many of us are. If GOG is careful to keep its optionality in balance, the rest of the improvements will only help the site and the service. That's why I was glad to hear that they're still intending to work on Galaxy going forward.

not yet but will be

GOG staff post seems to refute your idea "such as if the developer is lagging behind"
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_2022_update_a_look_at_the_present_a_glimpse_into_the_future_16662/post173

Relevant quote: So, if a dev has pushed an update to Galaxy, there is no reason it can't come to offline installer. The dev could shut down completely and GOG would still have the ability, if I read this right. It would in fact be "GOG lagging behind;" as, apparently, there is some wonky reason why some offline installers don't get the updates right away.

A few other odds and ends from your comment:
GOG can "help" the games which have multiplayer locked behind online and clients. The way to "help" is to not accept them on a DRM-free store whatsoever. You/others may not like this solution, but it is clearly something they could have done and choose not to do.

"For the most part" understates the fundamental problem. "This sandwich I ordered arrived mostly free of boogers, well sure the chef did hock a loogie on the one part too, but if I just eat around all that it's a mostly good sandwich." We shouldn't have to compromise at all and in fact already don't compromise in other areas of our lives.

I understand why businesses want DRM, microtransactions, always logged in, etc. I don't understand why we should feel we have to accept any of it especially if a place is previously known for being DRM-free. Gaming worked perfectly well, much better in fact if you ask me, before all of this exploitative stuff came into existence.

Still making this ludicrous, logic-free plea for the fact that you have self-control issues? Typical.

Bad analogies are always bad.

To me, Galaxy fails in being optional, reliable and with an orderly UI. And I guess on being an ad for EGS too.

I like my launchers to be optional, and only use them when I'm not in the mood to dig a specific executable or run a specific command. Ubuntu's launchpad and Windows' WinLaunch work far better for that purpose. And also, I like to be able to set my own multiplayer sessions no matter how long it's been since the game was released or if the company is no longer around, to not have a product shoved down my throat when I don't want it, and to not get DRM'd products pretending to be DRM free, specially with the launcher facilitating it.

About being reliable, back when I tested it, and going by posts that appear every now and then, their integrations tend to be unstable. Also, the launcher has known issues that have been around for a while and were never patched. And it's poorly optimized. And it segregates Linux (although, not having it on Linux may be a blessing in disguise with how it is now). Playnite tends to be much better in most of those regards, except on the available platforms part (only on Windows for the foreseeable future, apparently).

And I don't like to figure out how the developer of a software wants it to be used. Instead, I prefer to have the option to configure the UI in a way I'm more comfortable with. Or at least to have a more simplified UI, if a custom UI can't be achieved.

And about the option to buy games from other stores from within Galaxy, first, it's a nice way to facilitate DRM even more and to lose even more of your market share. And second that with only Epic joining the project, it feels like some sponsored ad GOG is doing for them.