GOG always claimed Galaxy is supposed to be optional. If it prevents games releases here, it means it's treated by developers as mandatory, and it disproves GOG's claim. I agree with you, that games don't need that, or to put it differently, Galaxy libs need to remain optional.

Yeah, many pre-Galaxy GOG releases have features such as achievements or online multiplayer. We can expect that in the future an ever increasing number of new releases will be crippled or incomplete for people who don't want to use the "optional client".

I'm not sure why client has to be tied to usage of libraries that connect to GOG services by games. I.e. they don't need to. Game can ship with those libraries, and work without you using the client.

I suppose, but the question is, does GOG want that? Just look at how they've been pushing Galaxy lately. I doubt it's in their interest to make any of Galaxy's "exclusive" features available without it.

That's how Steam works (Steam libraries require their client), but GOG don't need to copy this unnatural restriction. I'm not using any Galaxy enabled games though. Is it already this way? I.e. using Galaxy services requires using the client, or games ship with Galaxy libraries on their own in standalone installers?

My understanding is that games on GOG (excepting those rather few that are not yet compatible with Galaxy) ship with libraries that Galaxy hooks into if it's running, but can't do anything on its own. There was a thread about a bundled galaxy.dll file that made games incompatible with XP, and I'd assume that this is the function of said dll.

Same issue now with the upcoming Tooth and Tail release on gog. The developer was very forthcoming and exactly identified the problem as missing Galaxy client for Linux.

Thanks for the pointer! I'll expand the first post with a list of known Linux releases which are missing here because of Galaxy. If you know more, please add below.

Looks like Sudden Strike 4 is another victim of this.

See: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/some-thoughts-on-the-new-strategy-game-sudden-strike-4.10130

I'd almost bet money that if and when GOG ever does release a Galaxy client for Linux, that a number of the games that have Linux ports but not on GOG due to a current lack of the client and runtime libs will not bother producing a GOG Linux build because a good portion of the games will have exited their development and maintenance cycle and be in "we support it now in terms of if you buy it as-is and it works for you that's awesome, but we wont be patching it any more or doing anything involving development, release engineering, and QA testing" phase.

That's the sad part of the equation.

They consider themself to be the platform of freedom but they don't support the platform of freedom ...
GOG is so hypocritical ... Because they have problems with librairies ? How Steam have done to release their platform on Linux ?

I loved you with you no-DRM politic but now, i go on Steam even if i hate it !!!
I want to play at Sudden Strike 4 and others games which are not here because of you !!!

That's exactly what I expect. I doubt many will revisit their past games for Linux GOG users, who are just a minority here. I blame it on GOG really, not on those developers, I can understand why they wouldn't do it. What I don't understand is why GOG can't make their Galaxy client functionality cross platform and not requiring any GUI to be released with it.

I think they have some architecture issue. If I understood correctly, in order for games to work with Galaxy, there needs to be GUI Galaxy client running, right? And I suppose no one made one for Linux, and this causes this whole mess. Why couldn't they make a headless portable Galaxy client library first? Really, we aren't in some stone age of computing. Cross platform network code should be doable. That would allow releasing Galaxy supporting games for Linux, even if no one made their GUI fronted for Galaxy updater and the rest.

Depending on the game in question, assuming a game is available on at least one other platform and is available for sale on at least one other storefront (but probably all of the Steam ones), GOG probably gets anywhere from 0.5% to 10% of the sales at best, probably averaging around 3% I presume. Linux accounts for around 1% of game sales tops on average from snooping around Steam stats and other random searching. 1% of 3% would be 0.03% of total sales for a game for Linux on GOG presumably.

So I can see from the business side why GOG isn't eager to put all of their irons into the Linux fire, and I can see why game pubs aren't exactly pushing the issue either. I don't think doing a half-assed shim library is going to win them any friends though. That'd be devoting a good chunk of developer resources already to try to please some people and end up likely pleasing nobody at all, and probably pissing off a lot of people in the process. The game just becomes "Why did they make the libs available and no client, that's stupid!!!" comments everywhere. I really highly doubt that they would do this for that reason and that if they commit the resources to developing the libs, they might as well commit the rest of the resources to working on the client as well.

I just don't think they're going to do either for a very long time. Whether we like it or not (and I don't really), it's really a game of "lets wait and see if Linux platform uptake increases over time rather than pouring our extremely limited resources into it and taking them away from our money maker". But it's a bit of a catch-22 also, because if Galaxy was fully available for Linux they'd likely see more sales from Linux enthusiasts who currently are stuck having to get their games on Steam. The question is whether the increased Linux sales would provide the best ROI on the resources invested compared to all other projects and sub-projects those developers/resources could be working on. Sadly, it probably isn't the case and that's probably why we wont ever see full Linux support here.

It's just easier to play the positive-communication "Yeah, we're working on it but no timeline yet." card endlessly and leave people in limbo than to actually do something and put it out there than it is to say "Yeah, we'd like to but it makes no business sense right now, sorry to be the harbinger of cold hard reality." as that feels like a double drop-kick in the nuts. Companies get further by giving customers messages of hope rather than messages of "sorry about your luck, no dice." though and that's more or less where things are at and likely will remain for years to come unless some miracle happens in Linux land and there's an uptick in Linux marketshare for gaming. :o(

Not really. Dishonesty backfires, and irritates people way more than simply not providing support.

It isn't necessarily dishonesty. They can have all of the honest intentions in the world and just not have any developers dedicated full time to it leading to it not happening any time soon. They haven't said "we have an army of developers working on this right this second" afterall. They've essentially expressed their intentions without committing to anything concrete on a specific timeline, which leaves things completely wide open. By not committing to a date, they are essentially not committing to doing it at all however.