tl;dr
Buy it on Steam, avoid anything that relies on crappy GOG Galaxy like a plague, and buy those on Steam too.
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Hello GOG users,
Considering the stellar (pun intended) quality the game is at the moment thanks to all free (and still ongoing!) updates, I was decided on buying it on next promo, like many of you might be doing right now. The last "elephant in the room" remained - where to get it, on GOG or Steam.

Given that up to this point I had more than hundred(s) games on GOG, and just a few titles on Steam - all of the latter gifted, too - the choice seemed obvious. Or was it?
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1. To put it plain - if you want to play NMS in multiplayer - like, at all - you're better of with Steam version, cause there is no crossplay between Gog Galaxy and Steam players. Despite no license/law related issues to write GOG Galaxy in a way that would support it, there are even FOSS examples of how top do it, like:
https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator

BUT, to make use of it, GOG Galaxy would need to *not* be the closed source, OS-locked piece of crap it is. You *could* be playing together with other GOG Galaxy users, if you are lucky, and the stuff works for you without jumping through fire loops.

2. I'm a Linux-based system user, exclusively. "No Man's Sky" doesn't have native linux build, but *is* native Vulkan game, and developers - despite never promising it - are making sure it runs well on wine, including releasing fixes specifically targeted at improving Linux support via wine. This is the rare case of situation where I'm ready to turn the blind eye on lack of native port of "new" game, which generally, should be mandatory to even consider something is made by professionals. (c'mon, it is 2020, not 1997...).

So, no problem? Yes, but if you're using Steam version, not GOG one. And not because there is any lack of support from Hello Games on GOG - sadly, the issues are purely on GOG's side, or speaking in broader terms, of whole mother-business, (CD Projekt) stance. In this case, it manifests itself in the form of GOG Galaxy and its lack of native Linux support.

With Steam, you have native linux client, and built-in Proton support for the game itself, that ties seamlessly with the native storefront. You just run it, and it "works".
On GOG, you're not only left for yourself re making it work via WINE (which wouldn't be much of a problem), but you're also forced to run GOG Galaxy through WINE due to lack of native port of the client (despite it being promised years ago, and being #1 and #2 at same time of most wished items for GOG Galaxy), which is a MAJOR PITA, and not guaranteed to ever keep working with Galaxy updates.

To put it plain again - GOG Galaxy suck. Playing multiplayer through GOG Galaxy suck, if you ever want to be able to play with anyone at all (ironically, it is the GOG that does platform lock-in here, not Steam), but doubly so, if you are on any sensible operating system.
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Summing it up, the situation is so grim on GOG's side, that the GOG's policy was making it basically a no-brainer to decide in favor of Steam. I'm definitely going to do so with any game that uses store API for anything crucial (multiplayer, daily challenges, etc), at least until GOG pisses me enough for losing all the love for the platform I still have.

Seriously - hoping that CDP will take it's head out of their collective ass at some point, and stop this lock-in politics re platform support. Until that, though, the GOG Galaxy is a total crapshot (and missed opportunity of being anything relevant), that should be avoided like plague. With it, decision about where to buy games relying on support form mechanics like that, is obvious, too.

/CatLady

Depends what you want really.

For me I prefer not running any kind of games client with potential communication security issues, not sure if GOG have any security experts on the team but historically if Valve can get it wrong (they have many times), so can GOG (and the one time I pointed out a security issue with GOG Galaxy on the forum the topic was quickly hidden / buried = Either they were massively embarrassed or they didn't want the general public to know to decrease the chance of the exploit being used, which was a bit like shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted, it was news already on the internet at the time. Anyway, that didn't inspire confidence if I can pick them up for something security related).

I also prefer non-multi-player, and occasionally have to travel, so prefer a game that is not tethered to the internet.

GOGs Offline Manual installation games therefore suit me fine.

I use Galaxy occasionally to participate in testing Experimental updates, but soon after the updates go live I revert back to Offline installation (though No Man's Sky has been updating far too often recently to allow me time to revert).

The main thing that bugs me about GOG is the amount of time Offline Installation files take to produce, out of all platforms NMS supports, GOG Offline files are usually last to be ready for download. Understandable though seeing as the manual instalers have to be created separately, which is probably even more awkward right now with Coronovirus measures in force.

I used to have a steam account, but only because I was playing Bugthesda games. Binned it all after getting a bit too jaded about Bethesda never responding to issues and leaving the fixing up to the community. They could do with taking a leaf out of Hellogames books on how to support customers.

I get where you are coming from with Linux though, in an ideal world I would switch purely to Linux OS if all games I wanted were well supported. Thats the only reason I put up with windows.

I can play NMS (without galaxy) under linux mint using wine. The setup was very easy, just installed latest wine version, then NMS and then i need to set the vulkan driver to the default wine vulkan driver.
Thats it.

Can you play multiplayer?

I am trying to get my GOG version of No Man’a Sky to work with multiplayer on Linux and I am struggling so much. I have tried on multiple operating systems with multiple comparability layers and no luck.

Whichever version of Wine or Proton I use, it won’t launch to the main menu, it will launch me straight to the single player menu and if I try to go back to the main menu it will flash up for half a second and then go return me to the single player menu. The singleplayer is working fine but I want to be able to play the multiplayer.

If you have any tips please could you help me. It is driving me crazy.

Kind regards

I just played singleplayer but in case that you don't know: You need GoG Galaxy to play Multiplayer. Maybe you already know that but if not: You need Gog Galaxy. If just install the game you will never be able to get to the Multiplayer screen, even if you're using Windows.

So there is not cross between GOG and Steam players ?

When I enter the anomaly, for example, and I open my network options to check nearby players, myself has a GOG icon, there are other players with a keyboard/mouse icon and others with joypad icon.

What are those for ? joypag for console players and keyboard/mouse is GOG only ?

Not true, I've played a few times with 2 friends who have the game on Steam, while I have it here on GOG.
You just need to have them added as Friends in the game. You can't rely on the Steam Friends to find and join games.
I'll admit, it's probably easier if everyone was on the same environment, like Steam.

Hmm .. I assumed the GOG icons were for GOG-players and the keyboard icons for steamers? Again, just assuming.

I have both Steam and GOG versions of NMS and I can play with my Steam friends while I'm on GOG. I also have the windows store/xbox version and that's the only place where I see actual icons for the various systems, ie xbox, steam, playstation. But I haven't seen GOG in there.

Steam players have the little piston icon. Not sure what they keyboard icon is, Microsoft store maybe?

As a programmer, I have no clue why people tolerate Steam. Its simply a filthy monopolist with intolerable business practices.

Like, the steam client can install any software on your computer without your consent, and it could do that since day one, even before Steam was a monopoly.

Not even Microsoft does that. And I cant actually avoid Microsoft. My clients use it, so I have to use it.

There is no way I would tolerate such a software, ever.

Then again I dont understand why people actually use Facebook. A website that finances itself through violating privacy.