As far as I'm aware, there's no way to see how many folk are playing a set game online via GOG or Galaxy.

This is something I think GOG could really do with,especially as few games have cross client play.
Earlier, steamcharts showed just over 110 players in Ashes of singularity.
Whilst I understand there's most likely less on GOG, if we at least saw others were regularly active in set games, it'd make it more likely that customers could stick with GOG,rather than having to buy a key for steam, where we can see if game's active or not before we buy it.

Has anything ever been hinted at like this?

It might happen, optionally, at some point with Galaxy but 'tracking' your activity is an absolute no-no for a good portion of the (core) drm-free crowd, so at best the numbers will always be highly irrepresentative of the actual numbers I imagine.

As such, adding it might actually reflect badly on GOG due to the (relatively) low numbers it will portray which is likely to be misconstrued by many players and even worse maybe even some devs/publishers.

Yeah, showing lower numbers than steam could seem bad,but good for those that'd rather MP via GOG rather than steam.
I agree tracking would be bad,so just a number of players playing to keep GOG MPers happily playing via GOG.

Wait...people play multiplayer through GOG?
Most people here are opposed to the idea of it since it's likened to DRM (you have to have some sort of account and be online constantly to play multiplayer).

I don't understand why somone has to buy a key for Steam, just to see how many others might play the same game (maybe that is interesting for multiplayer games but for single player games?).

Why can't you see how active it is before you buy on Steam and then buy in on GOG instead?


Apart from that I have nothing against the idea, as long as one can opt-out from (has to opt-in to) it. I don't want anyone else to know what games I'm currently playing.

Why do you think Galaxy exists? It's main purpose is to shoe in multiplayer

I wouldn't want it to be like steam where you can see who exactly is playing what and for how long.
Just a Nth number of players were playing Nth game in the last 24 hours.

...which is no doubt the reason a lot of people didn't like the idea of Galaxy, either.

GOG's got a long list of high-priority features that they'll probably build before something like that, and they've never ever mentioned anything like that before that I'm aware of, however I've speculated recently that it would be a very useful feature also which I hope they implement some day as well. It probably won't happen for quite some time though I believe considering the important features that are lacking at the moment and how long it is taking to implement.

One thing though is that even if/when GOG implements a "GOG Stats" feature on the site and in Galaxy, it is impossible for it to fully represent the number of players of particular games accurately as it could only count people who were playing it through Galaxy and who they're able to count. Many people play GOG games without Galaxy though so there's no way to know about them. Still, the statistics for Galaxy players would still be useful both to players such as ourselves, but I imagine also to GOG. :oP

I admit I haven't done much online multiplayer with GOG games to date however I have played AvP multiplayer 3 or 4 times and had fun with it, and The Witcher Adventure Game quite a lot on and off also, and to a much smaller degree lately another game I wont mention.

Looking through my list of games I can't seem to find many I've done online multiplayer with, but I have done LAN multiplayer with a number of them too. In that case though the problem is finding games my friends also own or are willing to buy for LAN multiplayer which sometimes is a problem, although the odd gift to them solves that at times too. :)

But then in fairness to GOG... I don't really play that much multiplayer on Steam either. Most friends are too busy with life to connect with more often than not, or likewise don't own the same games. :)

Some games that have multiplayer on Steam don't have multiplayer at all on GOG (ie: Full Spectrum Warrior games, but many others also). Then for those that do, they might be separate isolated multiplayer worlds unless the game supports crossplay for example, or it might be that the game has online multiplayer on Steam using Steamworks matchmaking, but on GOG it just has LAN multiplayer. I wouldn't fully trust Steam's statistics or multiplayer activity to be truly reflective of GOG multiplayer activity.

I should mention that the multiplayer games I have played on GOG where you just connect with random unknown players rather than with an organized group of friends - I often have to either start a game and wait 2-5 or more minutes for someone to join, or wait an equal or more amount of time for someone else to create a game that I can join. Not sure if it is like that elsewhere also, but it's often like that for example with The Witcher Adventure Game, and much more likely if you have a 4 player game.

Ah, that I understand. This is of course important information when buying a multiplayer game how man other gamers are active. One thing of course is that if everyone waits until others are playing it, that never works. But for the Witcher Adventure Game or all other games where you randomly connect they should give a measure like the average waiting time, so everyone can judge the activity.

Cross-play is the ultimate solution because it maximizes the benefit for all (and in particular for users of smaller gaming communities like GOG).

It's not enough for a game to state that it has multi-player, a statement about how active multi-player is, is needed too.

Now I understand this proposal and I fully support it.

Yeah, average waiting time sounds like a great idea actually. I'd like to see that in games too. Not sure if it is present in any that I remember or not. Agreed on crossplay also, not just for GOG, but it would be nice if all gaming platforms came together to maximize compatibility like that. Not that it'll ever happen mind you. I suppose it is more in the hands of individual developers more than anything though.

If one is looking for an active online multiplayer community to connect to random unknowns, then for sure it'd be nice to know how active it is. Not quite as important for small groups of friends perhaps geographically separated that want to have a self contained MP experience, but knowing the servers work is important (although GOG does document that at least). The best info we have on that nowadays is Steam's stats and any in-game browser info though. Would be nice to see more stats for sure.