You sound like the kind of mindless consumer who would be perfectly fine in a world where ownership, control and choice is entirely taken away from the user in favor of shallow convenience. You call out my critical thinking skills but your defense has been flimsy at best and you have no concept of the bigger picture because you see games as just disposable entertainment, not as an art form that deserves to be protected and preserved.

You have had so many strong rebuttals in this forum already but you just can't see what they're saying can you?

No wonder you're a moderator in this new version of GOG.

100% this. And i hope that is all it is, and not a move to eventually abandon DRM-FREE as a core value.

I never use Steam/Epic/Origin (or any of the other big DRM game stores) or even GOG Galaxy (to make it clear to GOG where my DRM FREE stance really is) to get my games. They have to be 100% DRM free and from platforms that support that or i won't buy your game.

So i'm THAT hardcore about this issue. I walk the walk 100%.

Having said that i can also see if this is really just a desperate move to bring some of that massive loot from Epic Store to the GOG coffers, it might just be a necessary business move? And as long as it never forces me to have to use DRM as a new default (like GOG really does give up on the DRM FREE thing) then i will carry on simply ignoring (not buying or supporting) the games and developers that insist on DRM.

I guess we shall see, and this does have all the dangers of being another part of the slippery slope GOG has recently started to go down (from issues like No Man's Sky to the Galaxy client itself).

But if this is just to get some scraps from the Epic table to help keep GOG going it makes some sense. It's not as if i'm ever going to be desperate enough to want to play Fortnite for example! I can carry on happily ignoring all that in this new GOG era.

I really doubt the sanity of the people who made this decision.

Who comes to GOG to buy DRM'd games? Who needs this "feature"?

And adding that to a client which is by far complete regarding basic functions, has several issues of varying severity.

How about fixing the problems first, before adding fishy stuff that nobody asked for?

To be fair, you can't really blame GameN16bit for what essentially is a de facto state of the modern-day gaming industry, with very few exceptions. It's becoming more and more of a crude business, much like anything else, and less of a place where artists get to express their creativity without someone from marketing or sales cutting in.

This is probably one of the reasons we are seeing a resurgence of indie developers.

As for GOG, it started its business by taking an issue with these things, but now it's grown beyond them apparently and needs to become more "competitive" and less of a niche to please its investors... at least that is the motivation I see behind these questionable developments. The past is the past - welcome to the new GOG, a linchpin for a Galaxy in accelerated expansion.

That's simply not a very honest description. The fact that "Not GOG sold" Epic games purchased via Galaxy specifically comes with GOG's 30-day money back guarantee and GOG's own post even states "Most importantly, all purchases are covered by our 30-days refund policy as well as 24/7 human support", demonstrates that you are actually "selling them directly". It's the same thing that differentiates "Fulfilled by Amazon" (Amazon does support + refunds = a direct sale) vs "Fulfilled by Merchant" (3rd party does support + refunds = an indirect sale) for Amazon Marketplace sales. This isn't just personal opinion, many countries legal systems do use "who refunds the money and provides the first 14-30 day support" as a litmus test for who is legally deemed "the seller".

I doubt many Galaxy users see "At least I'm not forced to see special offers for GOG games from inside Galaxy" as some positive even remotely on par with DRM-Free. Most people would actually be quite happy with GOG advertising special offers for their own games in their own client (after all, you do exactly that in offline installers where clickable banners make even less sense if not being connected to the net results in "page not found" after clicking on such banner, right?...)

I don't know anyone who has installed Galaxy to use as a "meta-launcher" yet remains ignorant of GOG's existence. That makes no sense at all given you have to log onto GOG to download Galaxy in the first place. The people genuinely unaware of GOG are those who've never bought games here and have never installed Galaxy or GOG account. It's like "getting more people aware of Linux" not by targeting non-Linux users in advertising campaigns, but instead by having a feature of Linux be a meta launcher for Windows apps - that's only visible to those already using Linux... Raising awareness of GOG for non-GOG users would be the exact opposite - being able to buy GOG games from within Epic / Steam clients. All you're really doing is raising awareness of the Epic Games Store for existing Galaxy users...

I think people are confusing "I don't like multiple clients" with "I don't care where I buy my games from". They're not the same thing at all. Having Galaxy start 3rd party games which often still need their own clients to handle DRM doesn't even solve the former any more than Playnite did.

Except this flies in the face of standard business practise used around the globe. You don't see Apple offering a website portal to buy from the Samsung store. You don't see Intel offering AMD hardware for sale. You don't see genuine Ford car outlets selling brand new Toyota cars on their showroom floor.

GOG letting its competition sell through its software client is undercutting the sales of GOG.com's own catalogue. Even if the titles on offer are different - as a business the goal is to separate the customer from their money at the best profit to yourself, not to chase a customer out the door in the direction of a competitor. And it has an erosive effect over time when GOG's own "suppliers" (clientele) no longer have to bother adapting their product to GOG's platform in order to get visibility and sales here. And once that visibility is obtained, you risk seeing your customers leaving to buy direct from the shiny new supplier.

This is a short-term profit at the cost of a long-term loss. I do hope it turns out to be a hoax.

To quote the GOGBear: "Since its launch, the most requested new feature has been the option to buy games not only from GOG.COM, but from other platforms as well, straight from the GOG GALAXY app."

I wonder if this is an autocratic way of saying: "The people need this!"

I'm in the Galaxy 2.0 forum quite often and I've never read people requesting this... but a lot of people complain about a proper tag management feature missing, cloud saves management missing, sort by purchase date missing, and a lot of bugs.
A Linux version is also in high demand:

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy#order=votes_total

Well maybe all the people who wanted this must have sent tens of thousands of postcards to GOG HQ. The net surely doesn't know about this wish.

"Good news" indeed:/
One can only hope that this may bring more publishers here. With true DRM-free content ofcourse.

This is all predominantly why I get so hot under the collar when I discuss it, I am frustrated beyond measure by the current trajectory of the gaming industry but I do think GameN16bit shares some of the blame by being willfully complicit in said direction. More and more people don't think about, let alone challenge the status quo, consigning themselves to 'that's just how gaming is now', becoming way to comfortable with convenience, and even getting annoyed with others for daring to complain about something they've accepted as the norm.

Problems don't stop being problems just because they're no longer trending.

Indies are sadly starting to fall into the same trap as the AAA scene as well, I'm seeing more and more cheap garbage coming out of the indie scene as time goes by, less passion projects and more lazy 'people will buy this because retro, or simply looking 'indie' is trendy' cash in products.

Also it really does seem like GOG is no longer trying to be competitive or disruptive, and that they've resigned themselves to just existing as another me-too cog in the wheel.

"Oh we can get on both GOG and Epic store if we put our game on Epic? That sounds great!"

Yeah, we'll get more publishers. On Epic.

It was cretinous and self-defeating enough when GOG rejected Mushihimesama and said 'we'll reevaluate if it does well on Steam", but this, this takes the biscuit.

How can they think that this will do anything in the long term other than lose GOG games?

I was just wondering; a question for you Galaxy 2.0 users, can you, now that you can buy EGS exclusives through GOG Galaxy 2.0, buy Maneater, a one year EGS exclusive game, that by the way has Denuvo DRM!?

No. This wouldn't be half bad. It's actually even worse.

It's like "Vegeterian Foods" allowed Burger King to run a booth in the corner.

I mean, if GOG allowed you to buy, say, Zoom, itch.io or other DRM-free games from Galaxy, I could kind of understand it...