Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

It seems at some point over the last month or two, GOG finally removed the "in progress" notice for GOG Galaxy coming to Linux.

Something that was a bit overdue, since they clearly have no plans to actually bring GOG Galaxy to Linux despite it being the most voted-for feature request for many years. GOG and CD Projekt never really took it seriously though, with even the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account trolling "We can assure you: it‘s not us. We are the driving force behind 'add Linux support for GOG Galaxy' though" in reply to GOG post about showing 2077 gameplay.

Every time I've spoken to the GOG team over the last few years, they just repeatedly told me it wasn't planned, despite the wishlist entry still listing it as "in progress" and their original announcement mentioning it would come to Linux too and that it was "being done with PC, Mac and Linux in mind" (so much for that huh?).

At least there's applications like the Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris that can help you manage your GOG games on Linux. Still, it would be nice if GOG at some point put some more resources into improving their Linux support. Plus, if you're going to be using a Steam Deck, buying from Steam just makes a lot more sense when it's far easier to access so I imagine that's eventually going to cost GOG a few more sales too and they're not exactly doing well.

It is a shame for those that want the Galaxy client, as I actually love what GOG do. The main idea that you can just log in and download a full offline installer is great and their repeated revivals of old games is wonderful too. But without Galaxy, some games end up missing features for Linux or just skipping a Linux build entirely on GOG.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Editorial, GOG, Misc
35 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
88 comments
Page: «5/9»
  Go to:

BlooAlien Jul 1, 2022
Quoting: RaabenI keep trying to support GoG, but they keep giving me less and less reason to.

I kept wanting to support GoG, but they kept piling up reason after reason for me to just stick with Steam and Humble Store. This admission of their ongoing lie is just the "final nail in the coffin" for me, virtually guaranteeing they'll never see a single dime of my money.
BlooAlien Jul 1, 2022
Quoting: ShmerlAbout Steam Deck, I'm still not clear if input support and all the controller related stuff is tied to Steam or not. Let's say you get a GOG game (whether native or Wine use case). How are you going to integrate it with controllers without Steam? Is it possible? Are there open source libraries for Steam Deck controllers support that can be exposed to games and Wine?

Maybe https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/12/standalone-steam-controller-driver-and-ui-sc-controller-gets-a-sweet-small-upgrade/ still works?
Shmerl Jul 1, 2022
Quoting: BlooAlienMaybe https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/12/standalone-steam-controller-driver-and-ui-sc-controller-gets-a-sweet-small-upgrade/ still works?

I'd expect something like that is needed, yes. But I haven't seen anything addressing Steam Deck specifically.
Shmerl Jul 1, 2022
Hm. Looks like they are working on it. That's promising:

https://github.com/kozec/sc-controller/commit/4d0e6c7d469bc14119adfbf90ea2bcc45e331b95

I hope they'll publish some instructions how to use this on the Deck to enable controllers for non Steam games.

Python though isn't a good idea for APU use case. I wish they'd used some compiled language for better performance.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 July 2022 at 11:52 pm UTC
Mountain Man Jul 1, 2022
They should have replaced the notice with the image of a middle finger and the caption "To our Linux customers". Because that's how it comes across.
CyborgZeta Jul 2, 2022
I used to like GOG. But Valve bends over backwards to cater to a Linux user like me, so I'm sticking with Valve for the foreseeable future. Plus, I've been a Valve fan since I played Half-Life back in the day, but that's neither here nor there.
Leopard Jul 2, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: denyasisI'm a little sad GOG is struggling, but their business model failed and they seem to be struggling with what to do next.

Which is a problem when your business model is to be the anti-Steam and in the process, Steam becomes a near Monopoly.

I'm the end, turns out people are really more ok with DRM and a nice, albeit mandatory, client than they bet on.

How do you retake market space without alienating uses that bought in on those founding principles?

Perhaps the bigger problem is that they had principles in the first place.
I think you're making an unwarranted assumption. I don't think the principles involved hurt them. Certainly not around here, where everyone basically says "I like their principles, if only they didn't suck in other ways". The Linux crowd is perhaps unusual there, but I think GoG's problem is that while their no-DRM idea was good and by and large helped them, it wasn't enough to beat a competitor which was superior in some other ways and had big network effects.

It may be that GoG tried to grow too big. Sometimes you have a small but profitable business, you decide to expand, you spend a bunch of money to expand, and it turns out the additional revenue isn't enough to make up for all the new expenses.

Actually their principles and possibly falsely reading the market might have caused this situation.

Attracting users with Good Old Games repacked in a form that works on modern systems is a niche market.

What glorifies a store is mostly AAA's because mainstream user base wants to play them. DRM is a norm in AAA market so GOG's Drm Free policy is not in their favor here due to it essentially blocking them from that store.


So in a way GOG is in a weird spot where it is niche due to reasons above but likely has more expenses/operation costs compared to other niche stores such as itch. So self sustaining is probably hard.
fenglengshun Jul 2, 2022
...god fucking dammit, I was actually one of the people who had their hopes up. You know what? Fine, if they don't want to support Linux, then open up the Cloud Save API so that Heroic, Lutris, and Mini Galaxy can easily access them. THAT is literally the one reason withholding me from buying games on GOG. I'm even willing to pay more (since they don't have regional pricing for my region) if it meant I could get the VNs I want and I could have Cloud Save to go with them!

Fuck GOG man. Until they open up Cloud Save, they're a no go for me, no matter how much I want to just buy Muramasa and Evenicle 2 (because, yes, they have that) from them.
Pit Jul 2, 2022
Quoting: jens(they could have made Proton completely closed, but decided to go 100% Open Source!).
It's based on wine. So no, they could not have kept it closed. So please don't make an essential requirement look like they did a great thing.
Purple Library Guy Jul 2, 2022
Quoting: Pit
Quoting: jens(they could have made Proton completely closed, but decided to go 100% Open Source!).
It's based on wine. So no, they could not have kept it closed. So please don't make an essential requirement look like they did a great thing.
It needs Wine to work, but Proton itself is a separate thing, and Wine is LGPL not GPL, so there's nothing to stop someone from attaching Wine to a closed module. Sooo, yes, they could have kept Proton closed.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.