GOG.com announced today that its Steam-like service, GOG Galaxy, has entered its public open beta phase. As the press release reads, for the past few months, GOG Galaxy – the DRM-free online gaming platform – has been in the closed alpha stages of testing with the help of thousands of gamers.
Piotr Karwowski, VP of online technologies, said:
“With GOG Galaxy, we can start bringing new, big games to GOG.com. The first major release will be The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which will offer automatic updates, achievements and stats. We’re getting ready to release and fully support even more AAA titles in the future.”
GOG Galaxy features one-click installation and auto-updates for its library of over 1000 titles, but it also stays true to GOG.com values: it’s all optional. Automatic updating can be disabled for any game; but if you leave it on and a patch breaks something, GOG Galaxy will offer its rollback feature to restore a previous version of the game. Gamers can also download a standalone, DRM-free backup copy of every game, so keeping purchases safe is easier than ever.
Karwowski added:
“For us, quality trumps quantity. We meticulously think about every feature and how can we make it better. We also know that people want to have freedom of choice, so GOG Galaxy and its features are not forced on you. Making it optional is the best motivation for us to make it better; we want it to be so good that you’ll actually want to use it.”
GOG Galaxy offers friends list, game time tracking, achievements, and chat. Gamers can now talk to each other, connect with their group of friends, and see what their friends are playing.
GOG Galaxy is also an online multiplayer & matchmaking solution that, in select titles, includes cross-play: platform-independent multiplayer between gamers on GOG.com and Steam.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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