Just what are GOG up to?

WARNING: Both Steam and GOG are hot, powerful topics that tend to get tempers flaring. DO NOT let that happen here. If you disagree with my post, that’s fine. Do so civilly and I’ll happily debate it with you. If you turn it into a flame fest I’ll just ignore you and possibly delete you comment.

I’ve been pondering this ever since the run up to, and eventual launch of the Witcher 3. During this time GOG took several actions that both took me by surprise, and frankly feel like a contradiction of their main DRM free policy. Let’s take a look at what these are!

First a little history lesson on GOG (Good Old Games) for those that aren’t aware of who they are and what they do. They started life in 2008 in Poland, their aim was to acquire the license to sell old out of print games, tweak them so as they would run on modern systems; and then sell them, the site was an overnight hit, selling games that were nigh impossible to get running. Over time their catalogue expanded until it rivalled Steam for sales of old games.

There were several reasons for this, the first being their belief in DRM free, so you’d buy, download, and that was it. Many were growing cautious of Valves dominance, its abuses of that dominance; and dodgy practices. So GOG became a viable alternative.

There was also the effort put into their releases, and I feel this is what pushes them into the spot light more than anything. Most of the original games on GOG simply won’t run right on modern systems, they weren’t designed for them. So GOG spent the time and effort into rescuing these older titles, tweaking the settings, and in some cases creating wrappers to run the game.

You would often find the same game on Steam, full of complaints about it not running. This is due to Valves lack of curation, publishers are dumping old back catalogue on the system without consideration for if the game is working. From 2012 they (GOG) started to pick up more recent titles for sale, and some new release indie games and even indie videos. Then from 2014 they officially started to release full on AAA titles, though their first launch AAA wouldn’t come until 2015 with The Witcher 3.

So, given this history you’d be forgiven for thinking that GOG was, and is a great place to shop. Especially if you’re in a place with limited internet, or just don’t like being online all the time for Steam.

And until recently I would have agreed with you, until certain things came to light, and they introduced their new Steam Client GOG Galaxy Client. The new client was introduced as a way to entice devoted Steam users over, claiming to offer a ‘fully featured’ client, with game time tracking, achievements, chat, friends list and forum integration. As well as functions such as auto updating of games, patch roll back (for when a game patch breaks a game!), cross play with Steam, and pop ups telling you when a wish listed game is on sale.

Again you might be sat here thinking, what’s wrong with that? Honestly, nothing; if it worked. GOG tied the release of the client for its open beta at the same time as the sites overhaul, making it look more like Steam. This, as you can imagine, didn’t go over so well for a lot of the users who came here to get away from Steam. What’s more there was no (apparent) need to change things as the original site design worked perfectly. This was especially true on customer’s game shelf, where all you purchased games were displayed. You could rearrange them willy nilly and have them displayed as you want them, something you can’t in the new look. Which only lets you sort by A-Z or purchase date.

Note the Galaxy Banner as well as the limited sorting option.

They’ve also pulled support for the original GOG Downloader, which again worked perfectly and was much loved.

I bet you’re probably thinking its old fogies hating change right? And you may be right to a degree, many users don’t see a need for change because it all worked perfectly fine. Why fix something not broken?

However it’s made worse when you realise the thing they’re replacing it with is broken to the point of being unusable for a lot of people. Let’s take a look at all the problems with the system:

One of the biggest issues, but also one of the most minor issues. Galaxy breaks the core precept of non DRM, though I consider Galaxy DRM-light, it’s still DRM. What I mean by that is that it isn’t a simple downloader anymore. When you launch the game from its desktop icon it launches the Galaxy program and you have to click play in there to get the game to actually launch.

Now, I will say, you can get around this by digging into the program files, finding the install directory and copy/pasting the .exe to the desktop. However, this is something you shouldn’t have to do. Not if GOG is still aiming to keep the DRM free moniker.

Next up is the plethora of technical problems that have plagued this ‘fully featured’ client. Half of the functions that it’s claiming to have aren’t even in the client yet. In truth the only part of the client that seems to be working as intended, is the store, which doesn’t surprise me.

Witcher 3 was the first major release to be pushed through Galaxy, and it has thus far been a disaster. One of the initial problems (and still is today) became apparent during the preload, where people reported getting sub 100kb/s downloads, which would mean a looong download for a 25GB game. However those that downloaded either through the website or through the GOG Downloader, were getting full speeds.

I myself had the same problem, downloading through Galaxy I barely passed 60kb/s, but when I downloaded through the GOG Downloader I was at max speed, 10mb/s.

This lead to other problems, such as corrupt data, in complete downloads, and broken installations as the client was not adding the registry keys for the game. You can’t even pause a download, like you can on the original Downloader. If you try, it just deletes the game and you have to re-download it all over again. Imagine the rage of having 20gb of a 25gb download only to have it wiped because of an internet drop, or you needing to pause for some reason. There’s also the problems with the auto update feature, corrupting the game, deleting saves, corrupting saves.

When you complain about the state of Galaxy all you get, both from staff and forum users, is a tirade about it being a beta. However nowhere on the site home page, or download page, does it say it’s a beta.

Update: They’ve now updated the download page slightly, the download buttons now says beta, but everywhere else beta is missing.

Nor do you, in my opinion, push a beta as being ‘fully featured’ when it isn’t. Also you don’t make it so hard to find the original download method, to the point that people will take the client just for an easy time.

Let me be honest, I actually have no issue with the client itself. Yes I do feel it’s a waste of time, and yes I am one of those ‘if it’s not broken don’t fix it’ guys. I also don’t see the point of the client, since no one was asking for it. People come to GOG to get away from Steam and its buggy client, they don’t come here for an even buggier client.

My issue here lies in the way that GOG have pushed the client making it almost mandatory (there’s unconfirmed rumours they plan to do away with all site downloads eventually, and just have the client). The fact that it’s so buggy and unworkable, despite the claim it’s fully featured, and the fact it flat out doesn’t work as intended; tells me there’s some rush on this for some reason. I actually find myself wondering if this is some way to appease publishers of new games (EA, Ubi etc. etc.) to the site by adding some sort of DRM feature, even in a light form.

If they’d come along and said: “Here’s the alpha build of our new client, its buggy, use at your own risk. But we could use help bug squashing and getting user feedback”. That would have been perfectly fine, leave it like that, work on it make it stable and WORKING, and then add it as an option.

The simple truth is not everyone wants a Steam like experience, more and more people are looking for alternative sources for games. What’s more 3^rd party site are starting to take larger and larger shares of sales from Steam as people prefer to buy elsewhere; or wait until one of the big sales and pick up a game super cheap.

Most of the users of GOG like the simplicity of the GOG Downloader, which is essentially a download manager for the website, and includes things like PAUSE DOWNLOAD.

Next up we have the so called GOG 30-day refund policy. This was brought in due to changes in European law which now states that they (digital retailers) cannot refuse ‘reasonable’ requests for refunds. Now while that is still going through the legal wrangling of becoming law, sites like Origin and GOG brought in a 30day refund policy. Though Valve being Valve turned round and told the EU to get stuffed…again, and refused to adopt a refund policy, but that’s a whole other topic!

Update: In a surprise move Valve have now updated their refund policy and are now the leader when it comes to refunds. You can check out my post on their new policy here.

On the surface GOG’s policy sounds really good, but in reality it’s the same policy that they already had. As well as the same policy Valve had.

Rather than being a plain, get a refund in 30days (like the Origin one), they break it down and say it only applies if the game is broken and they (GOG) can’t get it to work for you. Only then will you be given a refund.

However even that has now been proven to be false, over the technical issues of Witcher 3. There have been countless reports of crashing and other technical hitches that for a lot of people make the game unplayable. Given the 30day refund policy you’d think GOG would give you refund, but they won’t. As far as GOG is concerned if a game launches it’s ‘working’, doesn’t matter if you can’t play the game.

Another great point was a guy who is disabled, found he couldn’t rebind the keys which he needed. He also couldn’t use the CDPR answer of AutoHotKey, as that clashed with other programs on his system that he needed for general life.

GOG refused a refund because the game launched, and key rebinding isn’t a technical issue. The forums had the useful reply of ‘well, CDPR never promoted the game as being disabled friendly’.

Seriously, is that where we’re heading where every game now has to be branded as being disabled friendly, left handed friendly, deaf friendly etc. etc. Are we so far down the path of the obnoxious politically correctness that we can’t accept the fact that accessibility should be considered in every game? But again, that’s another topic…

Back to the question, just what are GOG up to? Given the way things have played out over the past month or so, I’m inclined to say that they’re heading towards suicide.

In the process of trying to reinvent themselves as a Steam clone they’re going to drive away a lot of users. What’s more it’s easier for people to quit GOG, since you aren’t tied to them (at the moment at least). You can download the game, stick it on an external HDD and that’s it. Since all the installers are offline and DRM free (for the minute) there’s no need to go back.

If they push Galaxy to the point where you need it to download the games (which seems to be where they’re heading) they’re going to be lose a lot of customers as people will (and do) see it as breaking the no DRM promise.

However I do understand where this is coming from, to a degree. As they’re starting to secure more and more AAA releases the publishers are very aware of piracy. Witcher 3 is a great example, a mere five minutes after its release it was up on several torrenting sites. Publishers aren’t happy about piracy in general, but with GOG piracy is a given. So publishers are going to want some assurances and some sort of DRM in place to slow it down.

Though, as anyone with a brain (and yes I’m saying most publishers are brain dead) knows you can’t stop piracy or even slow it really. Only way you can ‘stop’ it is to do a full online component such as Diablo 3, or SimCity used to have; however the back lash both those received shows how well that works, to the point that Sim City was ultimately given an offline mode.

For me, GOG stands on the precipice of doom, it can (as it sadly seems to be) carry on its path to becoming a Steam clone. Or it can turn around and look for alternative methods. I hope they turn around, and fix that damned refund policy so it’s an actual refund policy!