Whenever you’re a PC gamer, there’s one utility you fully ought to bear for your exhausting power: GOG Galaxy 2.0, the splendid contrivance to prepare your games. All your games.
There are a minimal of seven foremost online sport retail outlets accessible, all competing feverishly to enjoy your credit card. Chronicle throws free games at you every week. Steam holds periodic gross sales, the put aside high-tier games are heavily discounted. And Microsoft’s Xbox Sport Streak for PC offers dozens of “free” games for you to play, desirous a pair of couple of dollars per month. Discovering low-price or free games to play is ridiculously easy.
Retaining song of those games, alternatively, is one other topic totally. In most cases, every online sport retailer offers its bear utility to fetch, gain, and authenticate games, and any sport you’ve downloaded is kept in that retailer’s digital “library.” Remembering which games you’ve bought or downloaded from every retailer technique checking them desirous about my half. Who has time for that? Most gamers potentially correct snatch one or two retail outlets and ignore the comfort. And in the occasion you carry out, you’re missing out.
GOG Galaxy 2.0 adjustments all that. It’s the uber-retailer, an app that connects to all the quite loads of retail outlets and lets you pool your whole owned games into a single, collective situation. Desire to play Some distance Cry 3? You don’t have to shock if the sport is on Steam, or Ubisoft, or whether you picked it up from one other retailer. Merely click on the title icon and originate enjoying.
To be magnificent, GOG Galaxy 2.0 isn’t a fresh invention. We tested GOG Galaxy 2.0 in 2019 as GOG’s online storefront modified into once correct taking form. But after a year or three of polishing and refinement, it’s change into my trip-to utility for organizing all of my online games. I would dispute that I no longer commonly pick games—and yet I’ve in a formulation gathered accumulate entry to to over 650 games that I will play at any time after I desire. Who knew?
Label Hachman / IDG
All of your games in one situation
The magic of GOG Galaxy 2.0 is how it integrates the quite loads of storefronts into its bear unified interface. Officially, GOG Galaxy 2.0 supports solely three online retail outlets: its bear GOG.com retailer, the Chronicle Games Retailer (fresh for January 2022), and Xbox Are living and its Sport Streak Last subscription. Clicking the “Settings” equipment in the higher correct-hand corner, and then navigating to Add games & company>Join gaming accounts, lets you “connect” to every sport retailer. That retailer will then expose you its login interface and authentication contrivance. Once confirmed, GOG Galaxy 2.0 will connect with the retailer and originate “importing” games, populating the app’s fundamental page.
But it doesn’t reside there. Neighborhood participants bear tailored GOG’s SDK to succor quite loads of retail outlets as successfully, loads of of which will be incorporated by default in the foremost GOG Galaxy 2.0 client: Amazon Games, Bethesda, Steam, Ubisoft, Origin, and extra. Clicking the Settings equipment in the higher correct-hand corner, and then navigating to Add games & company>Join gaming accounts lets you add mighty extra, via an automated GitHub search performed on the succor reside. At the side of games bought via Humble’s retailer, let’s dispute, is as easy as typing “Humble” into the search field below Neighborhood Integrations.
Label Hachman / IDG
At this level, GOG Galaxy 2.0 nails its long-established purpose to offer a single unified interface for your whole games. You may presumably presumably maybe also immediate click on and filter any games you outright bear, or bear set in, or come in to you via subscription. Hovering your cursor over every icon will level to its title (which desires to be glaring) besides the retailer on which it’s chanced on. GOG additionally assigns separate icons for quite loads of versions of the sport—much like a “Sport of the twelve months” model, besides to the contaminated sport. You may presumably presumably maybe also additionally scan your PC for games that is never always going to expose up in a retailer, or simply manually add an executable file, too. (You’d solely most frequently carry out this for extraordinarily frail games that haven’t been remastered, much like traditional Having a study Glass games treasure Terra Nova: Strike Power Centauri.)
In particular cases, you should to presumably presumably gain you bear two copies of the same sport via quite loads of retail outlets: Europa Universalis IV is on the market to me via the Chronicle Games Retailer besides the Xbox Sport Streak subscription. You may presumably presumably maybe also snatch to gain from both retailer, even supposing GOG hides this selection on the particular person sport page.
GOG’s Galaxy app does a rather thorough job right here, as successfully. Clicking a sport’s icon from the foremost library of games opens up a separate page, summarizing the sport, highlighting review rankings, and so forth. Since the mix with every sport retailer varies (and some sport retail outlets present aspects others carry out no longer), the richest pages are those connected to GOG’s “legitimate” retail outlets, much like Microsoft’s Xbox Sport Retailer. Here you’ll gain a close checklist of achievements, the amount of time you’ve conducted the sport (gulp!), and how you unsuitable amongst your mates who additionally play the sport.
Label Hachman / IDG
GOG Galaxy 2.0 does bear a ways to head in some respects. I truly don’t glimpse out company to play with, alternatively it’s no longer repeatedly particular what company are online. I might presumably presumably maybe look four company enjoying Microsoft Xbox PC games on the correct-hand nav bar, much like in the screenshot above. The left-hand nav bar, alternatively, will chronicle that zero company are online. However the splendid flaw, in my thoughts, is that GOG Galaxy 2.0 doesn’t chronicle how neat a sport is sooner than to salvage it—no longer everybody pays for unlimited bandwidth or strikes offers to set away with those caps.
At final, GOG Galaxy naturally promotes GOG’s bear gross sales or offers, so that you’ll have to test Chronicle periodically for its weekly free sport or browse Steam for its bear sport gross sales. (If that bothers you, or the indisputable truth that GOG Galaxy is owned by a retailer, you’re going to be ready to test out PlayNite, an launch-source alternative that affords quite loads of the same aspects.)
Label Hachman / IDG
There are additionally particular things that GOG can carry out nothing about, for now. You’ll tranquil have to gain the quite loads of authentication / storefront apps, much like Steam or the Chronicle Games Retailer, and trip away them running in picture for you to play a sport from that retailer. Determined retail outlets don’t enable achievements to be tracked. GOG Galaxy 2.0 additionally can’t change your games automatically for you—even supposing those quite loads of retailer apps can. GOG Galaxy additionally doesn’t yet connect with neighborhood-developed mods or DLC, much just like the Steam Workshop—in the occasion you play games treasure Planet Coaster, let’s dispute, you’ll have to battle via Steam for neighborhood-designed rides and props.
For me, those are forgivable offenses. Moral seeing all of my games in one situation—and being reminded of games I had totally forgotten about—is price it.
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As PCWorld’s senior editor, Label specializes in Microsoft files and chip skills, amongst quite loads of beats. He has beforehand written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
