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Playnite seems to do the job well enough but it's also an open source project that somewhat resembles modding a game like Fallout 4, you (may) want to add various add-ons that can be difficult to set up, especially the theme mods that then support other mods (or not).

Generally default installation seems to work fine after you jump through hoops to get all the stores set up, same as Gog galaxy, really. Most common stores come with the download and there's built in "mod manager" to download more if needed.

Main drag to my mind is that the details view does not show the small game icons for e.g. Epic or Origin, presumably because Playnite doesn't know how to extract this data from those stores. EGS library shows SOME icons but majority of the games don't, the integrated IGDB doesn't apparently support these icons. If you add SteamgridDB metadata add-on, you get some additional icons and if you add Universal Steam source, you get practicall all of them, but the latter slows down re-scanning for metadata quite a bit.

So far so good, but for regular user GOG Galaxy is probably much easier to set up than Playnite. I've got some 120 mods on my Fallout 4 game including Horizon so I'm not a stranger to fiddling with plugins but probably most gamers will go with whatever is installed by default. The initial library scan takes much longer than with GOG, granted I've got 1141 titles spread over the different stores but still this is rather slow progress based on how long it takes to retrieve one item.

Videos don't appear to be supported and I'm not inclined to mess with them, it seems to be somewhat involved business available through add-ons only.
Post edited December 01, 2021 by Barleyman
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Barleyman: Playnite seems to do the job well enough but it's also an open source project that somewhat resembles modding a game like Fallout 4, you (may) want to add various add-ons that can be difficult to set up, especially the theme mods that then support other mods (or not).
It's probably worth noting on the "but it's an open source project" part...
...so are most of Galaxy 2.0's cross-platform connectivity features.

Playnite's versions have been, from what I've seen of both, more regularly and consistently updated to actually retain viability. And also as noted, Playnite running with Galaxy 1.2 is more stable and reliable about providing access to your GOG games than Galaxy 2.0 is. Because Galaxy 1.2 actually gives properly reliable access to your game library and 2.0 still has issues with that.
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Barleyman: Playnite seems to do the job well enough but it's also an open source project that somewhat resembles modding a game like Fallout 4, you (may) want to add various add-ons that can be difficult to set up, especially the theme mods that then support other mods (or not).
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obliviondoll: It's probably worth noting on the "but it's an open source project" part...
...so are most of Galaxy 2.0's cross-platform connectivity features.

Playnite's versions have been, from what I've seen of both, more regularly and consistently updated to actually retain viability. And also as noted, Playnite running with Galaxy 1.2 is more stable and reliable about providing access to your GOG games than Galaxy 2.0 is. Because Galaxy 1.2 actually gives properly reliable access to your game library and 2.0 still has issues with that.
Completely irrelevant if product x uses open source bits, if the overall product is professionally managed. Many systems use open source parts but it doesn't mean you have to peruse github change notes to decode cryptic ini-file tweaks or perhaps hang in discord where people have to repeat the same information over and over since there's no way to store it. In case of GOG (and most commercial solutions in general) you get what you get as it's been set up by GOG people and it works or not. With OS solution you get dozens of poorly documented themes and plugins which may or may not play nice together, or work at all, perhaps being out of date.

I did point out that Playnite mostly does what it needs to do out of the box but videos don't and that's an obvious thing. From a quick look current solutions seem to want to download the video to local computer and then use a 3rd party (you have to install and configure it of course) video player to play it. Maybe. A little bit.

I will *not* spend untold hours re-inventing the wheel trying to figure out an obscure setup that someone could and should have put together once in an installatable package or at least a robust setup guide.. No, I'm not going to program it better all by my lonesome, I'm already busy reprogramming Libreoffice all by myself, thank you for asking.

Not that videos are mission critical but since you went with the open source rah rah angle.
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Barleyman: but since you went with the open source rah rah angle.
Or, more accurately, since YOU went with the "open source rah rah" angle and I provided relevant information about it. Because, as noted, while Galaxy 2.0 is a "professional" product, the majority of its platform integrations are third-party open source implementations with no promises being made by GOG about their stability or integrity. And while you're correct in saying that any given integration "works or not" that "not" isn't exactly helpful. And when it happens, it's not GOG who fixes it, it's the third party who built the integration and may or may not be too busy reprogramming Libreoffice to fix it today, come back in a week or 3. And when they break, some of them do require some digging on github to find where the problem came up and dig through additional 3rd-party workarounds to an already-3rd-party tool in order to get them back up and running while you wait for the original 3rd party to get around to fixing it properly.
It (integrations) works or not, and it happens to work, that's a non-starter right there. No interest messing with another launcher that doesn't offer something I need. If Steam "change profile to public" thing pops again, I might change my opinion.

I don't know what GOG games do not show up, mine seem to work fine. Main benefit of Playnite = Don't see the name of the game in tile view plus I'd have to reprogram gimp alone before I can wish something worked better.
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Barleyman: It (integrations) works or not, and it happens to work, that's a non-starter right there.
Or it WOULD be if the integrations (all of them except the officially-supported ones, which are the minority) were actually working consistently. But they don't, and they all break down semi-randomly.

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Barleyman: No interest messing with another launcher that doesn't offer something I need. If Steam "change profile to public" thing pops again, I might change my opinion.
This, however, is totally fair. It's up to you which collection of open-source methods of accessing other platforms you happen to prefer using. My point was simply that this platform is also using the same kind of process that you were claiming is "bad" in other apps doing the same job.

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Barleyman: I don't know what GOG games do not show up, mine seem to work fine. Main benefit of Playnite = Don't see the name of the game in tile view plus I'd have to reprogram gimp alone before I can wish something worked better.
There's a number of problems for a number of people with different games. Initially there was a problem with some games simply not showing up at all, now they'ved fixed the long-term loss of access, but there's still similar problems they have yet to respond to. The remaining problem is that some games have a delay after purchase before they show up in your Galaxy 2.0 library, with different games at different times taking anywhere from a few minutes to several days to become accessible in the app.

Previously, it was a much more severe issue, but it was dependent on you having the "wrong" game to see it. Now, it's only a temporary problem so you can work around it just by being patient (and might get lucky with not a long wait before it fixes itself). Still the kind of problem that Galaxy 1.2 never had and Galaxy 2.0 shouldn't have gone live without fixing, especially the more serious problem which to be clear, they took well over 6 months AFTER forcing 2.0 onto users before they fixed it.
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obliviondoll: It's entirely possible to be fine while using Galaxy 2.0 so if it works for you, that's great. If you want a stable and reliable app with a well-designed interface, I'd recommend looking almost anywhere else, though. I hope it doesn't cause you any problems in future, but given the current state and ongoing problems it has, I won't be surprised if you run into issues.
I've been reading through a lot of threads without replying and thinking that linking GOG Galaxy to other platforms might be what plays a part in making it unstable.

Also people have trouble logging in sometimes and i wonder if they have it set to auto or if they manually type in their password, If set to auto you may not get any of the fail safe options available when logging in manually.

I only have steam and GOG but i don't have them linked to each other, I don't really see the point.
It's been nearly 6 months since my last post and I have stopped using it and moved to Playnite. I gave Playnite another go and after getting used to it, it's in a different league to Galaxy 2.0

I may return in the future, but GoG just isn't progressing fast enough for me. It's stagnated and barely any improvements have been made in a long time now. Integrations are still sloppy and unreliable and the customisation is still pretty limited. They have been doing this for a while now and I'm just not seeing enough improvements since I started using it. I kept saying to myself that they would get around to things eventually, but I have been using GoG for 2 years now, and I have not really seen any noticeable improvements since day 1.
Galaxy 2.0 does seem to have stagnated development-wise but it is still the best platform around in many respects. I hope development gets ramped up a notch because GOG could really dominate the Game Organiser scene with Galaxy 2.0 and that introduces a lot of people to the GOG store.
Post edited March 12, 2022 by krashd
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krashd: Galaxy 2.0 does seem to have stagnated development-wise but it is still the best platform around in many respects. I hope development gets ramped up a notch because GOG could really dominate the Game Organiser scene with Galaxy 2.0 and that introduces a lot of people to the GOG store.
I'd argue that it has the POTENTIAL TO BECOME the best platform around, but it's nowhere near close to that right now. I won't use Galaxy 2.0 until it has restored basic functionality that's available in 1.2 (as promised when they said Galaxy 2.0 would be a feature-complete replacement for the existing version once it's ready for launch). Galaxy 2.0 is still labelled as beta, is still obviously in beta, isn't feature-complete as a replacement for 1.2 as promised, and is well short of even being on track to be a suitable replacement in the foreseeable future with the current rate of progress. In spite of this, it's being forced onto users who aree opted out of beta testing with no option to roll back except by manually editing files in the app to keep it lockd at the last known stable version (which was the most recent 1.2 build).

It has some great features which some people have more use for than others, and it has some cool ideas which are either not implemented properly or not at all yet. It also has more than its fair share of bugs of the kind which shouldn't be in a live build of an app, including occasionally service-breaking ones like not even being able to correctly provide access too all the games you own through GOG itself, let alone the similar issues with other platforms.

Support response times, based on several issues I've contacted the company about over the past couple of years (some of which are still unresolved in spite of being reported in 2020), are fluctuating from several weeks to several MONTHS between replies, in spite of the excuse of the pandemic causing workplace troubles having quieted down for literally every other company in th world since they last even promised a timeframe for responses at all. It was literally a few months after already getting past the point where everyone else was starting to sort themselves out again, when GOG got worse by so large an amount that they stopped promising even as short as a 4-week turnaround on support contacts.
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Ghost Robertson: I've been reading through a lot of threads without replying and thinking that linking GOG Galaxy to other platforms might be what plays a part in making it unstable.
I'm aware of at least 5 issues which were reported before the beta became a forced update, which are still unresolved, and which have been confirmed to be impacting multiple users who aren't connecting any other services to Galaxy 2.0
Post edited March 15, 2022 by obliviondoll