Just curious as I was planning to buy games on this launcher as well so if anyone could let me know I’d appreciate it a lot thanks guys..

You can use steam to run a train...
Yet if you use gog, you will have your games (installers)

Some say we are in the second-class carriage
I say it's only for the people with courage (unexpected fun)

We are forgotten by service, conductor, engineer seems missing
But you can have a game now where two girls are kissing


And today I woke up checking today's game
Here is You with your question, giving Day a Name

Thanks GOG!

No GOG is not as popular as Steam.

Many people prefer GOG because it promotes and officially supports DRM-free releases, and also because it offers many older classics.

If neither of those are important to you, maybe GOG doesn't have any real advantage over Steam (that I can think of).

For me though, since DRM-free is quite important to me, I buy 99% of my games from GOG, even if it means I will miss lots of AAA releases. Doesn't matter, GOG still has lots of interesting games to play, I see it similar as if one was to play only Nintendo Switch games, similarly you would then also miss lots of releases but who cares right?

GOG is quite a popular gaming platform for DRM-free games. Steam is the largest gaming platform so no other platform is as popular as Steam however. Did you have any other questions or concerns about GOG?

I don't understand why this is a question that has a right answer, or a solution to.

Steam is without a doubt a significantly larger and more robust of a platform. GoG along with its Galaxy client can do maybe 25% of what Seam is able to accomplish today. Granted, less than a decade ago, GoG was only able to do about 5%. The gap is closing at a snail's pace, but closing nonetheless.

That being said, GoG stands for good old games. There are titles here which you'll probably never find anywhere else (outside of shady pirating and mucking around with emulation). Before it was delisted, the original saga of Baldur's Gate (not the remake) was only obtainable through GoG and actually ran wonderfully. The same is true for a ton of games which are likely never going to see the light of day on any other platform.

If you are thinking of getting a recent game that has a large community, I'd pick Steam any day. If you're looking for a more nostalgic experience and try to play ancient games which are probably not going to run any other way, then GoG is the way to go. I've not personally found any direct use for Epic yet, but they have been doing a ton of giveaways so there's that.

GOG is like making love to a beautiful woman:

You know she is not the most popular girl in town, but you just don't care. At least she is STD- and DRM-free.

It all comes down to the concept of DRM (Digital Rights Management). Either you care about this or you don't.

I'll try to explain: The nice thing about buying physical items in the real world is that you can take them home with you and are free to do with them whatever you want whenever you want. Neither the manufacturer nor the seller can ever change their mind and restrict your allowed usage of said items or take them away from you entirely.

In the world of digital games, buying them from explicitly DRM-free sources such as GOG is what comes closest to this ideal. You buy a game, you download (!) a DRM-free offline installer and are then free to do with it what you want.
(Well, for your *personal* purposes. Please don't share it with others as developers, publishers and GOG as a distribution platform are all dependent on the sales as income. But that's only fair and kinda self-evident. No one can work, create and live for free.)

On the other hand, buying from Steam might offer you a much bigger selection of games. But it comes with a catch: The platform isn't DRM-free. Games are often protected by DRM and copy-protection mechanisms. Many even require permanent internet access to work. You are dependent on Steam's Client to access your games that they manage for you. "Buying" games from Steam is more like paying subscription fee for a public library. You own nothing, but only acquire a limited license to access whatever *they* decide is accessible to you today.

It's your choice.

Your games aren't tied to the launcher on GOG.

no

I believe Steam made like 3 billion in profit in a recent previous year, and GOG made like $1-2 million in profit in 2023.
A user here calculated GOG's market share (compared to profit from PC gaming overall I believe) at less than 1%.

So GOG is a lot smaller, but seems to have a dedicated audience.

(rip GOG, nobody will release here b/c you're too small, time2die /s)

Also as others have mentioned, you don't have to use the Galaxy launcher for single-player games.
(Here is a discussion on the apparent exceptions and related issues though)

No. To be honest, Steam have much bigger game library, games on Steam are more frequently updated and community is much larger than on GOG.

Of course they are... After all restrictions, it is still very, very, VERY easy to buy games on Steam (Ubisoft Connect, EA Origin, Battle.net...). Sometimes, they cost even cheaper than for western countries. Same goes for all countries: Russia, Belarus, Iran and so on. But it is almost impossible to buy game on GOG. GOG is the only exception.

GOG is definitely not as popular as Steam or Epic. But unlike many games there, the ones on GOG are DRM-free, meaning you don't need to be signed in to an account to play. But most importantly, GOG patches a lot of old games so they are playable on modern systems, most notably Fallout 3 and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, 2 games behind the reason I made an account here.

Q: are you planning to buy here for the "popularity" of the launcher (which you don't need, btw - if you don't want to play online MP, etc), or for the (DRM-free) games, that are available here?

GOG =/= Galaxy. That's prety much the defining feature and greatest advantage of GOG. Not that GOG itself seems to be aware of that anymore.

I'm not sure how the store's popularity could factor into buying games. I can only assume you may be thinking about mutliplayer and the likely size of the playerbase for games you buy here? If you care mostly about multiplayer and intent on using the client only, GOG is probably not the store for you. If you care about the single player experience and want offline installers of your games you can back up and keep always - that's GOG. But then, how popular it is has nothing to do with that. No.