CD Projekt announced on Good Old Games (GOG) that GOG Galaxy 2.0 is going open beta after being closed to only select few people that sign up for the programme early on. GOG Galaxy was started to help boost GOG as the service was falling behind other more popular PC game launchers and libraries: Steam, Epic, Origins, etc.
GOG Galaxy is client launcher like Steam, but unlike Steam it is optional to GOG Customer, who can buy the games off of the website and import the files into GOG Galaxy library. GOG Galaxy offers similar experience to Steam and was designed to be a competitor to the giant. GOG Galaxy 2.0 plans to massively expand its current services and allow users to collect their libraries into one spot. This plan includes bringing over PC launchers and console libraries together, along with tracking their communities and achievements across all the platforms.
GOG Galaxy 2.0 is also planned to be a universal launcher for all PC games, no matter where it was purchased. Currently: Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Epic Game Store, Steam, Origins, and Uplay accounts are supported on GOG Galaxy 2.0 and can be merged together along with your GOG account. There are many other account integrations available as well but are not fully fleshed out, such as Bethesda’s launcher.
For the past few years, we’ve seen continuous fragmentation of our game collections and gaming friends lists, further proving the need for an application that unites them all,
said Piotr Karwowski, Managing Director at GOG, on the open beta announcement. He continued with, “And I’m sure there are even more clients and launchers on the way, we’re amazed and thankful for the reaction from the community to the app and taking it even further by creating integrations with 20 gaming platforms – allowing everyone to see all their games and friends in GOG GALAXY 2.0.”
Earlier this year, GOG laid off several employees due to struggles financially with the service despite being considered more consumer-friendly service. GOG offers users a 30 return period if they downloaded the game and no questions asked if they have not, compared to Steam’s small window of only being able to refund before 2 weeks or before playing more than 2 hours. GOG is also DRM free unlike Steam and other services.
The closed beta did bring forth some issues, such as not seeing active friends across all platforms and the global search feature was buggy, but those issues are being actively fixed and workarounds have been implemented. After several updates and fixes, the team at CD Projekt feel that GOG Galaxy 2.0 is ready for larger-scale testing and feedback from the community. GOG Galaxy 2.0’s open beta service can be downloaded from gog.com.