I will support this if they refuse to do achievments - and block any means of implementing them.

Maybe then we can have some nice quiet time. :/

How hard is it to unzip a folder? Most of the time thats all you'd need to do.

^^^---- I agree with what Mr. Pink said ----^^^

I doubt itch is sinking a whole lot of money into theirs. It's been open source (and actively soliciting code contributions from users) for as long as I've been aware of it, and likely for as long as it's existed.

Man, Linux must suck way harder than I thought.

Hotter Take: Any application of which bases itself in Electron is a debasement upon the name of good coding practices.

Why people find the debauchery of running of a glorified Chromium window to be such a thing worth doing instead of properly building an application or program is something which baffles me.

Though I do agree that GOG should take Galaxy behind the shed and KABLAM. My personal choice is Lutris, for what it matters.

I would the main features of most "first party" launchers is auto-install, auto-update, online support, achievements & co (regardless if some peoples don't like them or care about them, personally I don't, others do), and as far as I know heroic don't support any of those feature. As long as it is not the case I don't see anybody dropping their own client for it as being a good idea.

It's the same issue with Galaxy and it's "one launcher for all stores" initial ambitions, yes you can launch a Steam game from Galaxy and it is cute and all... but at the end of the day if you want said game to be updated you still need to launch Steam which make the feature mostly useless.

The only way I would see it working would be if Gog, Epic, Steam or others agreed on some common open API to handle download, updates, achievements, multiplayer, etc... I thought it was the idea Gog had when they announced thier collaboration with Epic but apparently it wasn't the case,

The main benefit I see in Galaxy is the ability to switch versions. Patches sometimes introduce questionable or undesirable changes (The I of the Dragon as a recent example), and being able to easily switch back is a life saver in those cases. Would really like if it allowed swapping between all the versions and not just the last 5 though.

Don't really see this being feasible with installers only other than hosting all the versions separately, which would consume ludicrous amounts of space. I use it as a supplementary tool and it's fine at that.

But isn't this already what they are doing? Except they only make it available through Galaxy for some reason? Afaik Galaxy uses the same installers in the background that you'd use without Galaxy.

Don't think so. It definitely does not reinstall the entire game when you swap versions. Seems like some sort of a diff system, where it just replaces the files that are different.

I quite suspect there is more going on than you realize.

Galaxy is about power and control, and GOG won't really get that from a third party app, not reliably anyway.

One has to examine why GOG developed Galaxy in the first place, and there are of course multiple reasons.

1. They no doubt needed to upgrade from the old GOG Downloader to gain more features.
2. They needed to compete with what is in place at other stores like Steam, to get more customers or keep some existing customers satisfied.
3. Achievements is a big deal for many gamers.
4. Multiplayer outside of LAN is also a big deal.
5. Cloud services for game saves is vital to many.
6. Feedback and Statistics. These are important to GOG and also to game providers.
7. etc

I say all that, as a gamer who does not like Galaxy, but who has tried it a little bit with a few versions. I'm not into achievements or even multiplayer really. And I guess it hasn't helped that I have mostly used Galaxy on a low powered PC, that I only use for downloading and not playing games ... so its flaws have been more obvious to me.

I don't have any problem with others wanting to use Galaxy.

I don't have a problem with Galaxy existing, except for too much focus by GOG on the download & install aspect, rather than Offline Installers, which have been relegated to the Extras menu. And the main reason for that for me, is the sending of mixed messages by GOG when it comes to DRM-Free.

If GOG customers are engaging in download & install with Galaxy, and not downloading and backing up Offline Installers, then they aren't engaging in DRM-Free. They are relying on a persistent web connection to GOG to get their games, and so not having local backups. That activity is not supporting or encouraging DRM-Free, neither is it supporting Game Preservation properly.

I understand why GOG have Galaxy, even though I don't agree with some aspects of it. It seems fairly obvious to me, that Galaxy is mostly about compromise, and without it they might struggle to attract game providers and customers.

Galaxy has become the elephant in the room for many of us.

GOG and the developers of Heroic are supposedly working together. I'm not sure that means an eventual replacement for Galaxy, or whether it is mostly about Linux and perhaps Offline Installer customers. That remains to be seen.

Certainly I and others want something better than Galaxy. I've always thought a Galaxy Lite, a cutback version, was a good idea. Ideally what I would really like, is a command-line version, similar in some ways to SteamCMD for Steam and Legendary for Epic.

Not sure if I get your hatred for launchers. I don't see why having a more convenient option to install your games is such an issue for some people. There are very few benefits to having individual installers over a launcher (aside from backups).

I actually agree with most of what you said, but I should point out that you really don't have to rely on a web connection to make use of a launcher (technically speaking). You could argue that you need a connection to initially install your games (if you don't install them manually), but any launcher could simply add a "scan folders for games" feature to find your games that are already installed. I actually used to use this feature all the time whenever I had to reinstall my OS, that way I didn't have to reinstall all of my games. A launcher could also theoretically make it possible to auto install your games from your backup folder, if you decided to install your games using offline installers (which would make things a lot easier for most people). I would certainly agree that launchers still have a lot of work to do, but they could implement a lot of really cool features that would satisfy even their biggest haters.

Of course, and fairly standard, so that aspect wasn't the focus of my post.

And I agree, there can be some benefit for having a local offline games backups browser, that can also install from a local backup copy of your games. Though personally I don't see the benefit of it as a play launcher, unless you want record keeping and achievements, LAN etc. EDIT - And as I keep my backups safe on external drives, that are only connected when they need to be, I'd not use Galaxy for browsing and installing anyway. Instead I just rely on folder structure and folder images to find and access what I would want to install.

As a more recent dabbler into the depths of linux, I can attest that linux has it's good and bad days...and then it has it's "why god why?!?" days the rest of the time.