While I agree it shouldn't be a priority, portable cross-platform development should be. You have to plan for cross-platform. If you don't, you'll have a bunch of problems with non-Windows ports later.

For example, you could use cmake to generate Visual Studio project, instead of creating the project directly in VS. This way you open the doors to generate a future unix makefile or a Xcode project without worring about technicalities. Supposing you use cross-platform technologies (html5 app based on webkit/blink, most likely), this will make porting much easier.

Just my 5 cents on cross-platform development. :)

Rmakagon has built Galaxy using QT5, Chromium Embedded Framework 3 1750 (including ffmpeg, libEGL, libGLESv2), POCO C++ Libraries (including SQLite3, OpenSSL 1.0.1j, Expat 2.1.0, zlib 1.2.8, PCRE 8.36), ICU 52, etc. Built on a Jenkins server to boot. They've clearly planned for cross-platform compatibility right from the start. That's why it's so hard to imagine why they haven't released anything in all this time.

But here's the thing. Windows and Mac versions are now out of beta. 1.1 is promoted as being just around the corner. If the GNU/Linux client is released now, the same level of quality is going to be expected. They've made it unnecessarily hard for themselves, and annoyed everyone in the process.

It's even harder if they rarely ever communicate with us. Are the problems technical or commercial? If they communicate with us how do they count the Linux users, we would probably take more care not to get counted in "Windows" while purchasing games. A lot of the games marked as Windows or Windows/Mac only, also work under Dosbox, WINE, ScummVM or other emulators/engines.

Still nothing. Although they finally stopped hiding the .exe from GNU/Linux user agents.

Oh absolutely! Looking at my finished games list, I've finished more games under Wine alone than all native GNU/Linux games.

As mentioned in the comments at: Gaming on Linux, Tropico 5 Complete Collection has no GNU/Linux build on but does have GNU/Linux builds on [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/245620/]Steam.

Why? Seems this would explain it; from the GOG page: "Multiplayer Notice: Please note that the GOG Galaxy Client is required to access Multiplayer" which obviously is *still* not on GNU/Linux after all this time. So Galaxy is no longer the simple browser replacement it once was, but is causing users to get a sub-par gaming experience if you don't use/have it, and preventing developers from publishing GNU/Linux titles.

Thanks again GOG for making problems for GNU/Linux users.. but at least we still have Steam. I'm on 240 games in GOG, and 1029 games on Steam. So I've been purchasing 13 games on Steam to every one game on GOG since August (mainly the old Star Wars and Star Trek titles - those few exceptions that actually have GNU/Linux support on GOG but not Steam). Until GOG gets the hint and releases a GNU/Linux Galaxy client, I'll continue voting with my wallet.

Shut up, why don't you? GOG has been very supportive and are doing what they can to contribute to Linux gaming. You bitching won't help or make them go faster and they also won't miss your 10 bucks. Why don't you try to be supportive instead of being negative? I'm also waiting for GOG Galaxy on Linux. So are a lot of other people. But say they do release it faster because people are bitching (it won't happen, but say it does) you know what you're going to do then? You're going to bitch about the bugs and the crashes and how subpar it is compared to the Windows version and Steam and blah blah blah...

I would love to be supportive. If you've read the thread, you know I've posted bug reports that went ignored because I was using Wine (which ideally GOG would at least consider supporting). It would be awesome to have something positive to say, but all I can see is the lies about "coming soon" and otherwise complete silence.

For GOG's part, preventing developers from releasing titles on GNU/Linux is the exact opposite of being supportive. That's *hurting*. How can you not see that? If they have QA issues with it, GOG could just slap a beta label on it or something. But they're not doing that.

I wouldn't know how sub-par Galaxy is to the Windows version, because (unlike you, apparently) I don't do Windows. And frankly, I wouldn't complain if it's full of bugs provided I'm given some reason to genuinely believe that GOG is actually trying. Wine is full of bugs, but I regularly contribute with bug reports, stack traces, testing patches, etc. Whatever I can do to assist. I know it's full of bugs, but the Wine devs *welcome* support. GOG OTOH... they really don't. Not in my limited experience.

Well, GOG has shifted its vision over the years. It used to be the DRM-Free Revolution with constant interaction with the blues and updates/plans being discussed with the community all of the time. Now it's a closed store with everything going on behind the scenes, no blue interaction, heavy curation of content, software that rarely gets fixed or updated, and many compromised principles. Basically they got tired of being community driven and open.

And it's not just his $10 they're losing. They lose money from many more users for their bad decisions and inaction. They have so many ways to make money and improve the service, and yet they waste time on "catching up" to the competition. Their inability to handle criticisms and proper suggestions has led to internal problems as well.

None of this should be new to you though. Telling people not to complain as it gets worse and worse implies that you support the status quo and want to see GOG go to hell. GOG is like Steam + reddit, where they only admit there's a problem when the community says so in bulk. It's the only thing they have demonstrated an ability to respond to on a 100% consistent basis. So more bitching is what we need to see around here if we want them to fix any shit.

...you do realize that GOG is a smaller studio than Valve.


EDIT: Speaking of Valve. You should see what are they doing right now. It's just terrible.

Yup. And GOG could still be making more money than them. They just lack the vision and ambition.

If that happens, they would behave similarly to Valve now.

Nope. You're just using that flawed logic to rationalize why GOG always has to stay small for you (and thus everyone else). Not being open to the possibility of success AND having quality principles is fallacious. This is why I spend more time arguing against people here than agreeing with them. Everyone thinks their inability to see a positive future is evidence for the lack of one. :P

Couldn't have said it better myself. It's sad that some people feel disenfranchised by other companies/entities out there enough that they can't embrace the thought that an idea itself is neither good nor bad (in the context we're speaking of here), but how it is done and what the motivations are behind it can be good or bad or more likely some combination of the two even. People are sometimes inclined to throw the baby out with the bath water, usually out of some form of fear or another.

It's unfortunate because there are a lot of interesting ideas out there that other people or companies have come up with but which have not necessarily tried to maximize the benefit to the end user or customer for example, or more realistically have not tried to find a nice balance point to maximally benefit the customer and the company/organization. But that does not preclude some other entity taking some good ideas and using them as the basis to do something more beneficial to the customer/user and find a better balance point. In a competitive market like the entertainment industry it is that kind of differentiation that can be a huge selling point at helping a company to grow, simply by seeing an opportunity to provide their customers with a competing product/service more finely tuned to their views of what the customer really wants and putting the customer needs higher on the stack than the competitors. It would be a mistake to see these things as black and white issues where it is all one way or the other however. It is always generally some kind of balancing game going on, and trying to provide something that takes an idea and improves upon it in a more customer friendly way as much as possible can be a big win. Some people can see the possibility of such things happening, and others may or may not see it but always fear the worst possible scenario based on what their own past experiences and perceptions have been, perhaps thinking that is the only way that does actually exist.

Sadly, even if the future does have positive evidence some people will always look for the negative aspects of it if there are any, or continue to forsee how the negative is yet to come... :)

Are there an update on the Linux GoG-Client now?

Because i only play on my Steambox and would love to have Galaxy on it. If you don't plan to make Galaxy for Linux any more I will buy my Games on Steam for the Box. Because I am to lazy to install and deinstall Games to be honest. Actually i don't care about the social and community features in Galaxy, i only want to have the one click installer. It is a Mint System on my Box if that is helpful. And I know you guys have a lot of stuff to do and planed, i just wanna know. Because i started to buy my old favorites on steam now, and if you guys say you plan to bring a Galaxy beta to Linux in 2017 I will wait of curse. Because than i can buy the games for my box on GoG.

Well, you don't technically need Galaxy to play GOG games on linux. It's just an extra client, some might say fluff. You can simply download from the website your games and install/play them on Linux (those which have linux support or work fine with wine).