Adding an update on this...

After more than 5 weeks for this support ticket, I've been responded to on Twitter about my complaints that I'm not getting responded to by support. I also have a ticket from March which is yet to see a response. I've passed on some details about the active tickets through that platform in the hopes of getting some progress. Hopefully things will actually move forward here eventually.

Good day. Galaxy client is very bad! It does not contain a very important function called: Sort by date of purchase.

If we keep shopping on GOG.com, nothing will change!

PLEASE DO NOT BUY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HERE AT GOG.COM. ONLY THIS IS FORCED TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE CLIENT.

They haven't seen money from me in two months. I buy everything on Steam, where the client is absolutely perfect !!!
Not a single GOG employee will respond here, under this discussion, because they are strictly forbidden by management.
And why are employees banned? Because they could tell the truth about how this company works or doesn't work. And the management of the company is afraid of that.

That's why I really ask you not to buy NOTHING here, don't give them any money!

It all looks like GOG.com goes bankrupt in a moment because it absolutely doesn't listen to its customers !!!
Thanks.

Well, apart from being literally nonfunctional for a significant number of users without "upgrade your PC" being a valid excuse (I've seen it struggling and severely impacting performance on brand new gaming systems). And the whole "it's a literal health risk for some people" thing. Both of which have been known about for over 7 months with Valve openly refusing to even try and address some of the known problems. And the recent progression into actively locking users out of the only workaround that lets them have access to their accounts.

If there's any need for discussion about which is worse between GOG and Steam, there's far more compelling reasons to avoid Steam than there are to avoid GOG.

I dont care about sorting by date of purchase, who is going to leave just because of that? lol. Also Steam is far from perfect, the UI is bad and inconsistent, you dont own any of the games,etc

Finally got a reply from support. Message below, and my reply to it below that, divided by lines of -----------s. I have edited out some extra information from both posts, mostly names and references to the topic of my ticket from March, which got merged into this, replied to as part of this ticket's reply, and resolved, very late, but in a single reply.


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Hello, and my sincere apologies for not being able to get back to you sooner - our services are overwhelmed due to COVID-19 outbreak.

Thank you for your detailed feedback regarding the app - I will make sure to forward it further. If you'd like to share your feedback or suggestion directly with our GALAXY teams in the future, please use the option "Share feedback" in the client (available from the drop-down menu after clicking the cogwheel in the upper left corner).

You can keep your sorting options by selecting "Continue previous session" as your starting page in the client's settings.

The issue with games missing from the library can be solved by performing a clean re-install of the GALAXY - you can do it by running the unins000.exe file located in the GOG GALAXY installation folder, and then removing the following files:
C:\ProgramData\GOG.com
C:\Users\All Users\GOG.com
C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\GOG.com\Galaxy\Configuration

[CONTENT REMOVED HERE]
[NAME REDACTED]


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[NAME REDACTED]

Firstly, I want to thank you for getting back to me, even though it has taken (a lot of) time. I understand that this current situation is difficult on everyone, and having a proper in-house support platform has obviously made managing this situation more difficult for you. The benefits of your support being actually part of the company are, in my view, worth some delays, though I do wish it hadn't taken THIS long.

[CONTENT REMOVED HERE]. Unfortunately, the following problems still need to be fixed:

1. The current lack of colour scheme options is a literally service-breaking problem for a significant number of users. Even though I personally like the default look of Galaxy 2.0, it isn't a sensible default view for what's intended to be an easily-used and user-friendly platform to access games through. More options in that regard are needed BEFORE you push the client live, not months later.

2. You have only provided a WORKAROUND, not an actual solution (as in: PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING) to the problem of customers losing access to games in their libraries. This is also a service-breaking problem. Having to manually delete files on top of uninstalling before you reinstall the client AFTER the fact is NOT anything close to an acceptable solution.

3. The "solution" for making view options persist across sessions is also an unsuitable workaround, and not a proper solution. I want my game launcher to open on my game library with a list of games visible to browse through. I don't want it to open on a full-screen game page for the last game I had been playing, and I don't want it to have a history of all the browsing between games and other pages in between games from prior sessions. But I also want it to remember the way I consistently keep my game library sorted while doing so. Having to take additional steps every time I exit OR launch the client should not be necessary in order to get basic functionality out of a piece of software.

4. There is still no proper sidebar list view, nor any assurance that one will be coming. This is the default view mode in almost every other launcher, and exists in some form in literally every other launcher, including your own previous version, FOR GOOD REASON. The only way to fix this currently is, as with the above problems, an extremely awkward input-intensive workaround that requires repeated maintenance, NOT a proper solution.

5. More useful than a "restore previous session" option would be a "remember last game played" option. Obviously for proper functionality, this needs to also come with the aforementioned sidebar game list as an option. Such an option would NOT load the entire past history of all browsing through games and exploring various pages on the client, and would NOT require that launching the client opens up on the last game page that had been viewed specifically. It would simply load the library page, whenever that page happens to be accessed, with the most recently viewed game already open.

On top of those problems, you have the fact that, while KNOWING your client was not ready to have its "beta" label removed, and while KNOWING your support platform is experiencing massive delays, a new unfinished beta version of GOG Galaxy was forced onto users, including those who have explicitly opted out of beta testing. That this was even considered as an idea within the company is concerning, let alone making it all the way through everyone who would have to review such a decision without being laughed away like someone thought it was an out of season April Fools' joke.

As for how to share feedback, as I noted previously, I have rolled back to the last known stable version of the client (1.2.67.58) and will not restore its ability to update itself until its status as last known stable version is officially recognised, OR until 2.0 is actually confirmed by users to be in a fit state for launch. For the duration of this problem, I have been actively holding back on spending money I would normally have been spending on games, and most of my purchases have been from competing platforms rather than your own. I'm not 100% cutting off purchases through your store, but until this is resolved, I won't be as active a spender as I intend to be when you have fixed it. There are other users treating this problem more harshly than I am, and with how consistently negative the current attitude toward the forced update to 2.0 is, I don't see any good arguments against reverting it to being treated as the beta it so clearly is.

Thank you very much, again, for your time and effort with this issue,
[NAME REDACTED]


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Spoiler: I actually signed it as "obliviondoll" but since I'm cutting the support employee's name it seemed only fair to cut mine out too.

Back to serious matters though, I think I'm being fair in my harshness about this issue. Not sure everyone will agree, but I am sure there will be people disagreeeing with my position from both extremes, some saying I'm too nice and others too harsh. It'd be an argument to moderation to assume I'm right because of that, but I'm comfortable being in that middle ground on this issue. I have seen a number of other game companies set themselves up to look much worse than GOG do right now, but that doesn't negate the fact that the timing of this issue in particular makes it a really stupid decision to have made in the first place, and even without the timing it seems very ill-conceived as a business decision in general.

I'm an outsider and I haven't used Galaxy 1.2 but I have been very interested in Galaxy 2.0. The main thing that's holding me back is concerns about how the plugins work (Steam, Origin etc) and the slight risk that these plugins could be turned malicious by a third party. Besides that I think that the launcher, the UI and overall idea is very appealing.

I'd have to learn more about what makes you guys so upset with CDPR and Galaxy on this forum so please inform me in a polite manner because I don't think throwing insults at anyone gets the point across. You have money invested, I get that. Features are missing, the UI is harsh for people with colorblindness. Games breaking, Issues launching games etc. Please fill me in about other issues.

I want to say: As an outsider with no prior experience with 1.2, Galaxy 2.0 looks pretty dope. Visiting this forum and seeing overwhelming negativity did really surprise me. Some criticism (not all) is.. well.. why the fuck would I interact with you as a software developer, I guess? Or as a person? I'd tell my team to look at the usable feedback and focus on that. This thread seems pointless at a glance.

Good for you. Glad you had a response, and I like the middle path you took with this issue. You do not have to be extremely harsh or even disrespectful to make a point seriously. Let us just hope that CDP/CDPR/Gog has the capability to understand and correct their behaviour.

The central problem isn't the details of every list item that's a problem. You've mentioned - to some degree - the major problems in the quote block above, but "features are missing" is very vague and covers a number of individually serious issues. But as mentioned, listing out all the problems isn't how to explain why this is such a big problem. The following should explain it though...

I don't know exactly when it happened, it could have been February or even earlier, but by mid March at the latest, GOG's customer support was operating on a "4 week" response delay. They were telling customers not to expect a reply for nearly an entire month after contacting them. That 4 week delay in responses is still in effect now. Given the nature of GOG's support team as an in-house affair, this makes sense. It's frustrating, but it's understandable.

At the time, GOG Galaxy 1.2 was the current lead platform, and 2.0 was still actually being treated as a beta. The forums were much quieter than they are now, but had every single one of the major flaws already being discussed. It was widely-regarded to be a good idea, but not ready for launch. Which was fine, because it was clearly labelled as beta, and was being treated as such. Updates became slow, again for obvious reasons.

The issue is that at the end of April, Galaxy 1.2 was functionally phased out and 2.0 pushed into its place. This happened without fixes to any of the platform-breaking problems that had been getting reported during months of beta testing. It happened in violation of user settings explicitly opting them out of beta testing. And it happened while the company had already known for well over a month that they didn't have a support safety net in place to address concerns.

And THAT is the core problem here. The idea behind Galaxy 2.0 is fine. It's just far from being release-ready, and not being treated as the beta it's meant to be. Users who aren't here to beta test, aren't here to beta test. So they are entirely justified in being upset about being forced to do so anyway.

I think you meant to say, "not being treated as the broken beta it evidently still is". =D

And, even more so, as a developer... for what reason, if ever, do you push a beta out to a larger audience...?
There's only 3 reasons I can think of.

Reason 1): You accidentally hit the "push to live" button. Whoops.
Reason 2): Your publisher tells you "I don't care about what you say, release date is right now".
Reason 3): You need to get bug reports from a larger audience to help development along.

Now, for 3), as a dev you know this decision has to be properly prepared for and expected to massively increase the support team's workload for a considerable amount of time, until the dev team has figured out how to crunch (absolutely not a fun thing to do) and hotfix or properly patch all the bugs and issues that come flooding in. You need a lot of manpower to manage that, all hands on deck.

And you know when you just don't go for reason 3)? In a time when you already know your current, normal support response times exceed 1 whole month and you are unable to have "all hands on deck" due to a very serious pandemic.

Maybe, GoG had a reason 4): <???>
But without telling us, we can't know.

I'd say reason 4: galaxy 2.0 is programmed by a subcontracted group, that group had "march 31st" as deadline but didn't bother doing anything about the bugs for months and... yay ! release !

... but... but that would be Reason 2), then...
Because, GoG saw it, and still pushed it live rather than continue work or delay.

*Edit: Also, I don't think you're a Phoenix.*Squints* =,=
... I think you're actually a turkey! Let's test that theory.
... blululqu!

I am also supporting you, GOG has been disappointing us a lot lately, let our claims be heard.

I don't know how I missed this thread for over a month but I just wanted to say that you don't know how refreshing it is to see CONSTRUCTIVE criticism for once, instead of the constant hate and whining. As a huge fan of GOG, GOG Galaxy and CD Projekt overall, it's so frustrating to see constant hate for this platform despite the fact that it's doing what no other platform is doing, and that is creating a bright future for digital gaming.

Thank you for being an adult and expressing your criticism in a constructive, mature manner.

Given our past disagreements in other topics, I'm grateful to see a positive reaction from you on this! It means a lot to me.