Just installed on my lappie. I already like that it seems to be much quicker to boot up than the old version. That new library looks so much better, too.

Honestly I would have hoped that GOG customers would be more familiar with this given this has been the last refuge for gaming.

Ill be brief with it. Since Sony started this in retaliation to the Geohotz incident in 2011? 2012? Sony first misinterpreted a SCOTUS ruling related to AT&T to mean they were free to force customers into binding arbitration and could demand their subscribers abdicate their legal rights of class action lawsuit.

This action was initially highly contested which thanks to the courts in places like Germany as it crept from company to company such as Steam, MS, EA, Etc, those courts deemed that provision unlawful and had to be struck from agreements in those European countries.

However in the US, it was never really even addressed. As such the arbitration clause has been added not only to gaming sites, but digital media sites terms of service, and even physical goods.

This acts as a backdoor form of DRM as it has with every other company who has implemented this provision into their terms of service. Coupled with "we reserve the right" taking away the only meaningful consequence to companies for their actions in the form of class action lawsuit, and allowing for dispute resolution to be governed by "divide and conquer" binding arbitration, it effectively removes any threat of consequence for any corporation who implements it as all cases of dispute are decided on an individual basis that can easily be swept away in arbitration court by the company paying for the arbiter. Instead of a class action lawsuit which is infinitely harder for a corporation to dismiss.

It effectively gives a blank check to a company to pull a Darth Vader and "Alter the deal" in perpetuity. It then forces customers who do not agree with changes in a TOS to have to make the choice to either fight in a losing arbitration case, or abdicate access to their paid content by refusing to agree to those terms. Effectively holding a customers content hostage until they agree to any and all demands made in a TOS presented.

This is exactly how it has played out in EVERY instance it has been implemented, From Sony to Netflix, Steam to itunes. What was considered questionably legal less than a decade ago has now become standard operating procedure for many industries. Predominantly those utilizing digital distribution.

Up until now GOG has been one of the last bastions to NOT include this questionably legal provision. Now it is true that with G2.0 all that does is apply the arbitration proviso to G2.0. You still have access to G1.0 and the ability to download directly via web browser, or gog downloader.

That said, the fact that GOG has paid a lot of money to attys to draft this boilerplate and this is being rolled out in G2.0 means that it is GOGs intent to utilize this.While of course it will not be immediate, over the course of potentially years you will first see it be implemented as default into Galaxy 1.0 and later still it will be implemented as a part of accessing your account even through a browser.

This is indirect DRM no matter how you look at it. The day will come now that you WONT be able to freely access your content without first agreeing to this and with the agreement comes eventual enforcement. Exactly as it has EVERY single time it has been implemented.

So the point is, before anyone "just scrolls down" to agree to those terms of service they NEED to understand what they are agreeing to because it is not simply THEIR access that they are effecting... its effecting ALL of us. Albeit not immediately.

I hope that clarifies and I hope that if any of you were unaware of this that you will now take the time to better understand what this actually means.

Please read my above post. Also please understand that hoping today that it wont get to that point tomorrow is only going to result in it being too late to legally do anything about it when it does happen and it effects ALL gamers regardless if they agree to it or not as long as some DO in fact agree to give their rights away.

You might not be effected by it, but your decision WILL effect all gamers here at GOG.

Hopefully this will get them enough negative feedback to fix the UX. Which has been awful in the closed beta. Beyond feature-lacking-ness, everything takes 404573498573495634987 times the clicks to do, and there's all this extraneous graphics and whizz-bang and social features that distract from being able to install and play games.

And then there's that godawful "games people are playing" feature that keeps displaying to me DRMed and microtransactional F2P shit from other services that I'm offended to see.

It literally has no meaningful enhancements over Galaxy 1.

And once again no mention whatsoever of Galaxy's by far greatest feature:
Optional and not mandatory* for:
-purchasing games
-downloading games
-installing games
-playing games
-updating games
-uninstalling games









*If you couldn't care less about multiplayer functionality, achievements, etc.

Open beta, neat.


Oh, wait, we're supposed to complain in here...

Another Tuxian checking in. I don't care if you have to clone Lutris to get started, at least throw a bone.

No GOG announcement is complete without some fearmongering in the forum.

I think it just simply needs to be accepted that for Galaxy, the DRM-Free crowd isn't the target audience (and before you start jumping up and down remember the fact that not every consumer of GoG is here for DRM-Free or at least that's not the first priority). It does do exactly what it's advertised to do, which is consolidate libraries across multiple clients. The people that would take advantage of this are probably not DRM-Free advocates if they got many games scattered over DRM platforms like Steam/Origin/Uplay.

I've always had the bigger question of how something like Galaxy 2.0 benefits GoG in the long term. Does it bring in new customers who will actually buy their games on GoG? I'm not so sure.

Don't say that while Galaxy 2.0 is still using Electron for its GUI. Just give us a public API and let the community build its own client. XKCD 927 stays as relevant as ever. You know, maybe having all these many clients would not be such a problem if they were not written in Electron of all things.

Lets be realistic. I am not jumping up and down preaching like a crazy person. I have been among those who have watched this war of attrition creep its way to consume every gaming platform. I am not fear mongering because all I have stated is both verifiable facts and history. It HAS happened before and it is now happening here.

With DRM free being a bigger element of GOG, the reality is that it just puts deployment on a longer timeline. Rest assured that GOG has not invested large sums of money into attorneys to draft this as well as analysts to predict how the community will respond to this if the intention was to not make it uniform. Who puts up a fence around their property to leave a gigantic gate open?

The reality is when more users have agreed to this set of terms of service than have not you WILL see it begin to expand within GOG and it WILL encompass your account level in a browser so you CANT Buy, download, access, uninstall, ect without having to agree to these terms and conditions. It is a fact. They did not add it unless they intend to eventually use it, they did not spend money to deploy it unless they intend for it to become standard. It took the whole industry less than 10 years for this to become effectively standard, So It seems probable that within GOG it might take about as much as 5 years for it to be accepted by the majority of the GOG community.

I am presenting everyone with the facts, the history and I openly ask that people NOT take my word for it. READ the terms of service in their entirety, Understand the history of how this has been deployed, Make up your own mind on if you can honestly say then that you truly think that GOG has went through this and simply will not end up encompassing all of GOG in it.

If it is alarmist its because gamer apathy has allowed this to make its way to the last bastion against what is basically inevitable now. It is not fear mongering because the damage has already been done. Its a call for people to actually understand what they are agreeing to and detailing the truth of what their hitting Submit is actually doing.

BLADE RUNNER???

when????

ahhhhhh!!!