Almost all games released on GOG now have cloud saves functionality from day one. But there is a large amount of titles, more than half of the GOG catalogue, that were released before the launch of GOG Galaxy and that have no cloud saves or overlay and should be reviewed and updated.
These games don't have particular problems that would prevent the implementation of these features and should finally be brought up to par with the rest of the catalog.

I'd also like GOG to focus more on making Galaxy overlay compatible with more games, as it's inexplicably not available with fairly recent games.

I sincerely hope that the frenzy of adding compatibility with other launchers will not be to the detriment of these basic features for GOG's most dedicated and loyal customers.

I would love to have access to my cloud saves, at the moment I don't use them at all (GOG/Steam) because many of my games got messy with saves. Don't know why can't we edit our cloud storage by ourselves.

I use Savegame Manager to locally backup my saves. (because "DRM-free" is the main reason I buy games here)

Games can only have cloud saves added if : 1. The developers still have the source code and are willing to go back and add the relevant "calls" to Galaxy*.dll's then recompile and update the game, or 2. If it's done externally on a source port level (eg, DOSBox). GOG can't force it into games they don't have the source code to, it's up to the developer to add it. 100% cloud saves isn't even true of older games on Steam and GOG really is no different.

As for the wisdom of forcing Galaxy features into every single game here, personally I'm wary of any game that has core functionality "hard coded" to a store-front (GOG no exception) regarding potential compatibility issues that could arise in future. Eg, say the worst happened and GOG went out of business, Galaxy became abandoned (both the client and the offline .dll's), the server's shut down (so you'd lose them anyway) and after a while a security issue was found and perhaps future Windows Defender 2.0 then started quarantining Galaxy.dll's since there was no-one to patch it. That would literally break the games for everyone (even those using offline installers) whilst the originals would be more likely to continue to run fine.

Also, the compilers used to compile games have different dependencies vs the 90's / 2000s ones they were originally compiled on that could cause issues. And the long delay in starting some games where, eg, Galaxy-enabled Bioshock 2 takes 5x longer to start vs the Steam version not only still hasn't been sorted, I actually saw the same thing last night on a relatives PC with the new GOG Dishonored vs Steam version side-by-side. Click to start (both on same SSD and already pre-cached into RAM once) and his offline GOG installer version sits there pinging away through a series of ports 52801, 52802, etc, (visible in the Network tab of Resource Monitor), before eventually decided to start (total start time = 12s network pings + 5s actual game load = 17s). The Steam version starts in 7s (2s client check + 5s actual game load). I don't know if Galaxy dll's are causing this slowdown, but if so they need to fix these issues before doubling down on them. Client-less DRM-Free versions should be starting faster not 2.5x slower than the DRM'd ones.

If people want cloud saves they can have that option, but my one personal wish would probably be the exact opposite - before going hell-bent forcibly rewriting all old games here to be "tied" to Galaxy dll's, make sure at least one "clean" pre-Galaxy version minus all the integration is made available for offline installers for long-term archival purposes. "This 1996 game requires Visual Studio 2025 and .NET 6.0 to run and starts twice as slow because of the local-looped cloud Internet calls in the store 'wrapper' it came in" is not why I buy games here...

Then you add your game folder(s) to the exceptions.

Here, have one of my home baked biscuits! :-)

Would you be able to elaborate how requiring the source code is neccessary for cloud saves? I'd agree that above does apply to achievements (in regard to API calls) but enabling cloud saves on any game would be fairly straight forward in my opinion.

Most games, especially older ones, have specific folders where they store their save data. Usually you can pinpoint it to either the game folder, my documents or appdata. All GOG needs to do is let Galaxy check (one of) these folders for changed save files, unless im mistaken. This would enable cloud saves. (It's why you end up with 100+ save files in Fallout 3/New Vegas for example if you forget it automatically uploads the entire folder contents)

I thought it was more deeply integrated than that (where the game itself 'calls' on Galaxy.dll), otherwise what would be the point in including the Galaxy.dll files in each game folder if the games were unlinked to them? Clearly many GOG games are compiled to them as deleting the Galaxy.dll files in offline installer versions (with no Galaxy installed) throws up error messages like "This program can't start because Galaxy64.dll is missing from your computer". If all Galaxy does is just simple replication of the save game folder outside of the game itself, well you can already do that with GameSave Manager and a DropBox account yourself without the need for any client, even for old pre-GOG / pre-Steam disc based games (plus games that save as a Windows Registry key instead of a file).

Evixios in this case is right: GOG's cloud saves simply create a copy of the save files on their server. The only thing needed is that GOG Galaxy knows where the file is, and I know for a fact that the GOG staff does this job and they don't need to have the source code of the game. Also, they can do it without having to consult the game developers, which is why I wonder why this feature hasn't been implemented for all past games.

I know that there are other programs to copy the saves, but honestly I would prefer it to be all automated within GOG Galaxy without having to learn how to use a thousand other applications.

I'm not an expert, but in recent experience, e.g. Fallout New Vegas, just checks the folder at shutdown and uploads everything. You end up with 100 save states before you notice. There's probably a logic to the galaxy.dll file in folders as you describe, I'd imagine location/type of save file to expect/filename etc. in order for it to work properly.

Maybe the integration is deeper than that, but as you mention, a simple use of GameSave Manager is sufficient for cloud saves, so I'd expect GOG not to reinvent the wheel for their cloud save system and just upload the file it needs to know.

EDIT: Was still typing up this message before Alexim posted :)

If it can be done entirely "externally", then fair enough, though I'm honestly a bit bewildered at a feature that's so limited to so few titles vs what GSM has done for free for years with a far larger database and even a choice of cloud providers. GOG having to manually create Galaxy specific profiles one game at a time vs just copying the thousands of pre-existing profiles seems like the ultimate in reinventing the wheel.

That's what GOG are good at though (remember the "we just bundled the whole Galaxy installer into each game's offline installer" thing - before removing the whole lot again...) ;-)

The Steam overlay messes with some older games, you always see mention of it on PC Gaming Wiki. Not saying that's the reason GOG haven't gone backwards and done it, but it might be a disincentive.

I've never understood the need for cloud saves but many do want them. Hopefully GOG works on that for you guys.

There's tons of ways for GOG to improve, I guess they just have to set priorities to work on.

I think gog should just rent the steam client. It’s obvious there’s nobody left who actually wants a store different to steak, so why bother?

I generally don't care for cloud saves, but they would actually be useful for me right now as I've been playing Icewind Dale 2 on two separate laptops (my bigger and older Win7 laptop sitting at home, and this smaller Win10 laptop that goes with me).

Yesterday I zipped up the mpsave-directory in IWD2, with the intention to copy it over to this laptop so I can continue playing the game on this laptop today, away from home. Only thing, I forgot to actually copy it to this PC. Damn, there that mpsave.7z file now sits on my other PC at home.

Earlier I used to email that file to myself so that I could always get the save files from my online mail account, but now it has grown so much that I either have to use some USB drive, shared directory or online data folder to move it back and forth between the two PCs. Oh well. Cloud saving would have just taken care of all this automatically.

Then again, when using Steam cloud saves, sometimes something has gone wrong and I seem to have lost some of the save games I'm sure I had before etc. Maybe there was a network hiccup just when it was supposed to sync the saves at some point etc.

Taking care of it manually at least guarantees you can only blame yourself if something goes wrong, but it is still extra effort and planning ahead.