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General discussionIntroducing: GOG Galaxy, the DRM-Free online gaming platform(917 posts)(917 posts)
(917 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 06, 2014
Freedom of choice. Optional client. Cross-play. Coming soon to all gamers!

Earlier today (or was it yesterday for you?), during the [url=http://www.gog.com/news/cd_projekt_red_gogcom_summer_conference]CD Projekt RED and GOG.com’s Summer Conference we dropped the news about our next big step forward! GOG.com has always been home to more and more of the the best games in history (for Windows and Mac), both classic and new. Differing in shapes, flavors, and sizes they had one thing in common: they were mostly single-player, and our focus was mainly on the experience of a singular gamer. If that's your thing, nothing really will change. You can always enjoy your favorite games 100% DRM-free on GOG.com, with no need to activate your game online or remain connected to play your single-player title. Just like GOG.com has always been about.. But what if you want to play with your friends?

Today we are excited to announce GOG Galaxy, a truly gamer-friendly, 100% DRM-free online gaming platform that will finally provide the GOG.com community with the easy option to play together online. GOG Galaxy will allow you to share your achievements, stay in touch with your pals and get the updates for your games automatically. We've developed this technology to improve your GOG.com experience. We think GOG Galaxy really deserves your attention and we hope many of you will give it a try! But, here's the great thing: it is totally optional, so it's all up to you! If you do not want to play online, or use our optional client to access these features, then no worries, you will always be able to play the single-player mode 100% DRM-free, and download manually the latest updated version of your favorite title from our website. Now, for one more feature we call cross-play. We always believed in an open world for gamers, with no obligation to be tied to a specific platform or client; and this is why GOG Galaxy will allow gamers to play with their buddies who use Steam, without any need to use any 3rd party client or account, nothing, nada. We’re taking care of connecting GOG.com and Steam players, so just sit back, relax and give it a try.

See the outtake from the CD Projekt RED & GOG.com Summer Conference

Talking of which, we are proud to announce the soon-to-come launch of the beta phase for The Witcher Adventure Game, a faithful adaptation of the board game of the same title. It allows up to 4 players to play together, whether they use Steam or GOG.com. Cross-play at its finest! If you wanna get the chance to try it out, please visit and sign up to get in the queue for your beta access key. You can also simply take advantage of our amazing [url=http://www.gog.com/tw3]pre-order offer for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which includes 2 beta access keys for he Witcher Aventure Game, delivered to you as soon as we start handing them out to public.

We believe GOG Galaxy has the power to provide the best of both worlds. Playing the single player mode of your favorite game, 100% DRM-free, while still having the OPTION to use our soon-to-come client for an enhanced experience (auto-patching, achievements, and much more) or play online with other GOG.com (and Steam) players if you so wish.

There will be more GOG Galaxy titles coming up this year, so stay tuned for more news and get the word around!
Post edited June 06, 2014 by G-Doc
Posted August 01, 2014
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skeletonbow: For GOG: I have a GOG Galaxy request which might seem obvious to ask for but I'd rather ask it pre-emptively just to be safe. ;)

It appears from observations of the GOG forums and elsewhere out there that GOG Galaxy is extremely highly anticipated and that when the new client and services do get launched either in beta form or official release, there is going to be a massive shitstorm of people all running to get it all at once. It will be like the Fallout game freebie giveaway, where 10 billion people all show up to the party at once and melt the GOG webservers.

So my request... my seemingly obvious request... is to please guess how many servers you are going to need to handle the load of people that will show up for any major release (beta or otherwise), and then double that number, then triple it again, and please do it at 9:00am on a Monday with no holiday the following day, and support employees who have the power to provision extra servers around the clock with a single mouse click to keep us all from ever having to see our friend the GOGbear. ;) Likewise, any servers involved in the signup process and backend management of Galaxy services hopefully will be scaled up massively at launch so that there is ample resources to handle the load.

Not that I wouldn't be patient if the servers were to become bogged down for such a big event, but we all know that there are a zillion forum members who will end up grabbing their pitch forks and jabbing GOG with them rapidly if the website or servers don't respond in less than 5 microseconds so... When in doubt, throw 10 times as many servers on the wire just to be safe. ;oP

One more thing... the request isn't so much for myself as I'm rather patient personally, but it's rather both for other GOG customers that aren't necessarily patient, and more importantly for GOG to avoid getting a black eye if they're unable to handle the load. Don't want to see that happen! :)
There is a huge problem with this though. Servers are expensive. Expensive to buy. Expensive to run in the long run. Expensive to maintain.

If a business has so many servers that they can handle insanely abnormally high loads with no issue, it means the rest of the time, there's a LOT of wasted server capacity.

Those extra servers wouldn't come out of the goodness of GoG's heart. They'd be reflected in higher game prices.
Posted August 01, 2014
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Boffo97: There is a huge problem with this though. Servers are expensive. Expensive to buy. Expensive to run in the long run. Expensive to maintain.

If a business has so many servers that they can handle insanely abnormally high loads with no issue, it means the rest of the time, there's a LOT of wasted server capacity.

Those extra servers wouldn't come out of the goodness of GoG's heart. They'd be reflected in higher game prices.
90s thinking. :) Today we live in the world of dirt cheap cloud computing where you can provision new servers with a few mouse clicks and it's dirt cheap. You pretty much pay by the gigabyte, not by the number of machines being used per se. Even the smallest blogs out there are using CDNs these days. There isn't necessarily any need to actually buy servers or even lease dedicated servers and pay a premium for them. There are many ready to use solutions on the market already. Amazon's EC2/S3 among others.

Cost is literally pretty much a non-issue these days.
Posted August 01, 2014
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Boffo97: There is a huge problem with this though. Servers are expensive. Expensive to buy. Expensive to run in the long run. Expensive to maintain.

If a business has so many servers that they can handle insanely abnormally high loads with no issue, it means the rest of the time, there's a LOT of wasted server capacity.

Those extra servers wouldn't come out of the goodness of GoG's heart. They'd be reflected in higher game prices.
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skeletonbow: 90s thinking. :) Today we live in the world of dirt cheap cloud computing where you can provision new servers with a few mouse clicks and it's dirt cheap. You pretty much pay by the gigabyte, not by the number of machines being used per se. Even the smallest blogs out there are using CDNs these days. There isn't necessarily any need to actually buy servers or even lease dedicated servers and pay a premium for them. There are many ready to use solutions on the market already. Amazon's EC2/S3 among others.

Cost is literally pretty much a non-issue these days.
Then one would think this never would have been an issue at all. Logically, given that there have been server overload issues, there must be some reason CDNs wouldn't work for GoG, or the GoG staff are just too dumb to think of this.

I'm pretty sure it's not the latter.
Posted August 05, 2014
I'm noticing a lot of word olympics going on; GOG promises "100% DRM-Free" and now they are promising "100% DRM-Free (singleplayer)".

I hope this doesn't become an excuse to start requiring a Steam-like client be around all the time "for multiplayer", then when "enough people" are using the client to go ahead and decide "well there are enough users that we've decided to switch wholly over to a Steam" model. It would be so very easy to work that angle.
Posted August 05, 2014
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Skrylar: I'm noticing a lot of word olympics going on; GOG promises "100% DRM-Free" and now they are promising "100% DRM-Free (singleplayer)".

I hope this doesn't become an excuse to start requiring a Steam-like client be around all the time "for multiplayer", then when "enough people" are using the client to go ahead and decide "well there are enough users that we've decided to switch wholly over to a Steam" model. It would be so very easy to work that angle.
It's not really word olympics at all. It's a requirement of developer/publisher hosted multiplayer that the game has to be checked if the client is legit, no cheats, that you actually purchased it, etc. Single player will be DRM free as it should be, but if you want to do multiplayer and it's not on your own LAN but through a developer/publisher hosted server lobby/matchmaking service, then you can't not be subject to some DRM for that.

GOG could also set Galaxy up with a gaming VPN, particularly for the older games that don't have active players/servers or a way to dial-up anymore, and Galaxy would be the mediator between those games. I'm thinking old games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D where you could play on LAN or dial-up back in the day, but they had no way to connect across the internet. If Galaxy had a gaming VPN built in would essentially be a virtual LAN that these games would see and be able to connect for multiplayer goodness. And that multiplayer wouldn't need DRM, unless you consider having to log into your GOG account to not only download/install the games, but also set up your own VPN "lobby" that would be shared among your friends list in Galaxy to be DRM.
Posted August 05, 2014
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Skrylar: I'm noticing a lot of word olympics going on; GOG promises "100% DRM-Free" and now they are promising "100% DRM-Free (singleplayer)".
Where do you see that?
Posted August 05, 2014
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darkwolf777: GOG could also set Galaxy up with a gaming VPN, particularly for the older games that don't have active players/servers or a way to dial-up anymore, and Galaxy would be the mediator between those games. I'm thinking old games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D where you could play on LAN or dial-up back in the day, but they had no way to connect across the internet. If Galaxy had a gaming VPN built in would essentially be a virtual LAN that these games would see and be able to connect for multiplayer goodness. And that multiplayer wouldn't need DRM, unless you consider having to log into your GOG account to not only download/install the games, but also set up your own VPN "lobby" that would be shared among your friends list in Galaxy to be DRM.
I was wondering if GOG could allow mulitplayer for older DOS games (that had it back in the day) in some fashion but the responses from fellow GOGgers was basically, "No." I don't know how all that works but if GOG could help make multiplayer setup easier for people who want to play Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital, etc., and provide a service similar to Hamachi, that would be great.
Posted August 05, 2014
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darkwolf777: but if you want to do multiplayer and it's not on your own LAN but through a developer/publisher hosted server lobby/matchmaking service, then you can't not be subject to some DRM for that.
That's just false.
Posted August 08, 2014
Since there is no NDA, according to the e-mail I got, here is a screenshot:
http://puu.sh/aJE7Y/0e19d6360e.jpg

And another one:
http://puu.sh/aJEjm/8e066aba05.jpg

I will, at the request of GOG, not post ingame screenshots of "The Witcher Adventure Game":
We know the beta is not restricted by any sort of NDA, but on behalf of CD PROJEKT RED we kindly ask you not to publish and/or stream any gameplay videos from it. As you know, the game is in a very early stage of development, and at this point it's not representative of the final, polished and feature-complete product quality they are striving to deliver. Thank you in advance! :)
Post edited August 08, 2014 by Protoss
Posted August 08, 2014
Is Galaxy going to make it easier for developers to push updates out? I've been playing Trails In The Sky and steam gets updated constantly while GOG has only received a single cumulative update several days ago and is far behind.
Post edited August 08, 2014 by JetGumRadio.124
Posted August 08, 2014
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JetGumRadio.124: Is Galaxy going to make it easier for devs to push update out? I've been playing Trails In The Sky and steam gets update constantly while GOG has only received a single cumulative update several days ago and is far behind.
We just got the latest set of updates today and the new patch for LoH is available for download :)
Posted August 08, 2014
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JetGumRadio.124: Is Galaxy going to make it easier for devs to push update out? I've been playing Trails In The Sky and steam gets update constantly while GOG has only received a single cumulative update several days ago and is far behind.
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JudasIscariot: We just got the latest set of updates today and the new patch for LoH is available for download :)
Not an answer to the question ;) It'd be nice to hear some news about hearing some news about Galaxy soon ;)
Posted August 08, 2014
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JudasIscariot: We just got the latest set of updates today and the new patch for LoH is available for download :)
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popperik: Not an answer to the question ;) It'd be nice to hear some news about hearing some news about Galaxy soon ;)
We can only push updates out as fast as we get them. We don't get an update then no one does as we cannot manufacture a patch out of thin air :)
Posted August 08, 2014
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popperik: Not an answer to the question ;) It'd be nice to hear some news about hearing some news about Galaxy soon ;)
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JudasIscariot: We can only push updates out as fast as we get them. We don't get an update then no one does as we cannot manufacture a patch out of thin air :)
I think the question was: "When GOG Galaxy has gone live, can devs push updates directly, without GOG being a middle man?"
Posted August 08, 2014
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JudasIscariot: We can only push updates out as fast as we get them. We don't get an update then no one does as we cannot manufacture a patch out of thin air :)
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Maighstir: I think the question was: "When GOG Galaxy has gone live, can devs push updates directly, without GOG being a middle man?"
Actually, I don't really care if there's a middle man as long as it becomes faster.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionIntroducing: GOG Galaxy, the DRM-Free online gaming platform(917 posts)(917 posts)
(917 posts)