-----
PART 4/?
-----
No. People are viewing them as what they are: different products belonging to the same company. That's what they ARE.
And let me remind you that Galaxy was first and foremost designed as GOG extension of all things.

If you buy a washing machine in a supermarket you don't buy it directly from manufacteur. The shop is the proxy.
Does it meant tho that the shop is NOT responsible for washing machine not meeting safety standards?

If people would start selling illegal items on Ebay would then Ebay not be responsible AT ALL?
After all it's THEM that ALLOWED these things in there.

Why do you think Megaupload got taken down?
"They should have gone for uploaders' heads only" eh?

"Don't blame GOG for selling DRM products, we are 'JUST' a proxy" eh?

If you are selling expired goods in shop it's YOUR responsibility and not manufacteur's (which provided you with expired goods in the first place) since you KNOW what you are selling.

GOG would be a proxy for EGS if this deal would become real.
Whether you like it or not GOG would then become directly responsible for whatever consumers are interacting with THROUGH GOG.
In this case it would be being responsible for allowing sale of DRM products through a partner site. Which "coincidentially" "who would have thought" just so "HAPPENS TO BE" against one of GOG fundamental principles (which just "happened" to bring big chunk of consumers to this platform in the first place).

Since "you don't work for GOG" and "they don't pay you" where do you ACTUALLY get this info / data from?

You know, as a community moderator assigned by a company X for your tasks you should do your best to not hurt company X public picture.
That includes not spreading baseless allegations and suggesting people things like some sort of official authority.

To a degree? YES? (console commands, offline mode, custom skins, etc) Your point? (you just lost it)

Using computer every day does not make you buy new computers "just because".

Do you donate to Wikipedia when using it frequently?
Or Mozilla Fundation?
DO YOU?

I don't think you understand this issue.
Also by creating "unified launcher" you are only HIDING a problem. You first have to create the account in each of this services.
And the original service pages still come into play when dealing with some special case security stuff.
I cannot possibly see likes of Steam or Origin letting some 3rd party have a possibility of man-in-the-middle proxying data flow through their glorified iframe when high security account management is involved.

Also I would like to see you TRY to stop all those 3rd party launchers from stealing window focus when they launch "in the background" >:)

No. It will be a question of "am I willing to sacrifise smaller amount of dedicated loyal consumers in exchange for larger group of definitely-less-loyal average-joe store jumpers who MAY possibly MAYBE prove more profitable in the long run".

"Life is too short to worry about 'little things'. Come get these 'free' games without thinking about consequences and what you are actually paying with, such as your private data. /what was that?/ Nothing, I didn't say anything, come, we have 'free' games" - T. Sweeney (or some such)

"Come buy this game from EGS by purchasing it through GOG proxy instead of actual GOG for the same price. /but then GOG will get less profit/ What was that? Don't worry about it. Life is too short to worry about 'little things'"

There is very sharp difference between proxy launcher and proxy storefront.

"Oh no, how can all this free open source software exist? It must be horrible. What do they even gain from it?"
"GPL is evil. Quick, let's make a wicked prioretary license riddled with catches so they will never stop paying us"

You can also close your eyes and walk around the world. You will not see when you step into shit then.
You would also not even feel the added pressure under your shoe if you would disable your foot sensors as a cyborg. Ayyyyy... Cyberpunk*TM and stuffz... Am I right? /s
*THIS POST DOES NOT CONTAIN PAID PROMOTION, I AM NOT WORKING FOR NOR AFFILIATED WITH CDPR* /s

Then do it on your DARN PRIVATE ACCOUNT! Not on MODERATOR one!

This disclaimer is just nonsense. Do you think this is your get out of jail free card allowing you to spit out any nonsense you can think of without consequences?
Do you think the COMPANY will infinitely allow you to hurt it's public picture by baseless suggestions?
Just because you scribbled this small text does not make you invincible. When using moderator tagged account you ARE subject to special rules and prohibitions and the COMPANY will be forced to void your tag if you cross the line too far. Don't forget about it.

(edit: fixed some spelling)

Negotiation between GOG and Epic must have started at least 6 months ago. This isn't a overnight move, specially with Galaxy integration on beta™ stage.
It simply can't be coincidence we get a avalanche of unexpected games just before the release of de deal?

Crap, even Konami?

Not sure if it's been discussed already but the thread is hard to follow, in that case, quoting Breja: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It is a possible future scenario. Galaxy already offers an option to connect with Game Pass (Microsoft) and started to test selling curated games from the Epic store. Imagining future outcomes where GOG can merge those 2 options to make a couple of extra bucks is easy. I understand that it require specific deals and partnership with the publishers or stores. Not an easy task, but not an impossible one.

It is called extrapolation. Does not mean I am right indeed, but it is a possible long-term outcome.

I avoid spiky discussions here but as a drm-free dude (one that still plays through installers, check my recent threads!) and someone who loves the idea behind the damn thing I'm kinda buzzed to say the least. Yes, GOG, I'll still play and buy your games but this is weird, man.

GOG being always drm-free, top GOG execs proudly cheering the drm-free revolution on videos and interviews and such... and this? Goes against what they're up to for the past 12 years! Tough to swallow but that's my opinion.
Kinda tough to believe, to be very honest. Don't get me wrong. Personally I enjoy gaming, period. Steam, OnLive, Nintendo eShop, DotEmu, Gametap, Impulse, Gamersgate, Desura, Humble, Stadia, Origin... I've been there. The more, the merrier. But GOG is GOG, man. We can't replace it.

As someone (a consumer) who babysteps in the majority of these deal$ and such I have nothing to say to y'all. Not an expert.
BUT as someone who's here for a decade, still playing through Galaxy and installers (and with tons of already downloaded ones in the past and recently eagerly waiting to be played) I, for the first time, will say: not that happy with this; you gave voice to this service. Created the drm-free day and such. GOG is drm-free, promotes it. Period.

Weird, man. I say... weird. Personally, again, I'd be way happier with some cloud gaming solution.. like "here's witcher 3 you bought on gog. Can't run it? No worries, try our streaming and stuff, but the game's all yours". That would be awesome.

I can't be bothered to respond to this long, lets face it, rant... but man does this sound familiar.

I'm curious... I would love to know what special rules I'm subject too? Please do tell? My "special rules" are the same rules that you have... it's called the forum code of conduct, you can find it here:

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001814049-Forum-Code-of-Conduct?product=gog

I "scribbled" this small text because some people have a hard time understanding that community mods do not work for GOG and do not represent GOG in business matters and that we are free to have our own opinions and views. I grew tired of having to explain this every 3 pages. I'm glad that you are worried so much about my mod tag though, as if GOG hasn't been reading this thread. We do communicate.

Thank you. Have a goodnight though, I wish you the best. As I have to go to work tomorrow, at my actual job... so I need to sleep.

------

Disclaimer: I do not work for GOG.com, nor am I paid by GOG.com. All views expressed in this post are my own, and do not represent the views of GOG.com or it's employees. My views are expressed as a fan, gamer, and fellow GOG user... that is all. Thank you.

"It's not Good Old Games anymore, it's GOG."

(͡ ͡° ͜ つ ͡͡°)

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Limiting "Steam scraping" to trusted partners via say encrypted connections could very easily be passed off as "Enhanced Security" or "Enhanced User Privacy". If they "toyed" with server settings so that if there were a flood of requests that appeared to be from a non-Steam client (possibly identified from coming from private IP addresses / VPN's whilst missing a unique identifier added to future builds of closed source Steam, whilst the known Static IP address of partners like Humble, Fanatical, EA, Ubisoft, etc can easily be whitelisted), the response could be slowed down and that 'feature' that 'accidentally' resulted in Steam loading quickly whilst Galaxy starts taking minutes / hours to populate) could easily be passed off as an "Anti DDOS feature triggered by unauthorized connections". Being "threatened" isn't a requirement at all for Steam to make changes to their own client. Likewise "large software corporations wouldn't hurt the competition if they are too big", seriously? Like Microsoft's "Halloween Documents", funding SCO's troll lawsuit, etc, vs the 1% Linux competition?

People can agree to disagree on many things but the level of naivety here is staggering... I mean if you own a company and your existing business model is under your control (your competition can't do a thing about contractual agreements with publishers for DRM-Free builds) and you change that to basically gambling everything on a new business model which involves pointing a telescope through your competition's windows and combining the information gathered into a "meta-product", the very first question I'd be asking is "What's my backup plan in case they decide to install tinted glass..." GOG's DRM-Free games are under GOG's control. GOG's continued ability to "scrape" the competition's servers are very much under the long-term control of the server owners...

First that with No Man Sky, then that with the EGS.
I will not pre-order Cyberpunk 2077, but wait and see. I can well imagine that something will come with Cyberpunk 2077 that I don't like.

I already spelled this out, but it seems that finally someone did understand this.

I think GOG is very, very aware that they are gambling on this matter and also on other store integrations, so the only official integrations are XBox and Epic (go figure). Other integrations are relegated to the "community" where they can waive away any responsibilites. I suspect that behind the "FriendsOfGalaxy" (https://github.com/FriendsOfGalaxy) who maintain integrations for Steam, battle.net, Origin, Epic(sic), Rockstar Games and others, are in reality GOG employees who do this in paid "free time".

For a table of official and unofficial integrations (scroll down) see https://github.com/mixaill/awesome-gog-galaxy

If you haven't done already, you really should download all your offline installer now.

I think that it is important that customers like Breja or AB2012 or adamhm or some others I forgot to mention speak out against this GOG move and in my opinion have made quite some good arguments.

Since I have given up on GOG when they decided to throw out their principles, I can‘t boycott them again (doing that already for their many idiotic decissions in the past). I‘m only here to see how they fuck up one more time and to be entertsined by some people like that totally unbiased moderator who so happens to be inline with his bosses. This is just coincidence I‘d say. ;-)

So long, I‘ll be waiting for no response from GOG as we know them.

I really don't expect any official responses here or any back-peddling more than lip services or correcting minor details, but never their general direction.

It was a fun ride, but nevertheless, so it's just grabbing popcorn and watching them digging their own grave.

I too worry about this and in fact cancelled my preorder when I realized that my money would basically be going towards funding a multiplayer mode with microtransactions. People are either unaware of history or want to ignore it despite all obviousness to the contrary. CDPR can say all they want about how Cyberpunk singleplayer is complete and the multiplayer is just a free bonus. I don't need to fund their dreams of becoming a Rockstar.

It makes sense that eroding values is not an instant thing. Another user brought up the metaphor of the frog boiling, which I think I too have invoked before. It is unlikely there will ever be some eureka moment where the company outright says "Ok it was a good run but now we are officially announcing the move to a DRMed store!". It's obviously going to be more gradual than that even if the end result is the same.

That's the concern with this Epic move. And I don't believe it is a "ridiculous" argument nor that it has been answered realistically in any sense.

I don't care about multiplayer at all, which is why GOG was perfect for me in its pure form, even though I understand MP is important for a lot of players. The problem I have with CP2077 is when they start to say that there are no microtransactions in it, because that's blatantly false.

It reminds me of the video a few Marcins made about not having downgraded The Witcher 3 visually, which was also completely false and verifiable. They like to play on words like any bad salesman from EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Activision, etc.

I'm not even mad, just realistic.

Just want to point out that not all games on Itch.io are DRM-free. There are games that will only give you a Steam key. For example Syberia 3:

https://plug-in-digital.itch.io/syberia-3