Tuesday, July 21st 2020
Epic Games Joins GOG in the Goal to Deliver Universal Ownership of Digital Goods
Today owning digital copies of games is a real struggle. There are are many platforms that offer games to be purchased, and some games are platform-specific. Take a look at Fortnite for example. It is only available on the Epic Games platform and launcher, so you have to download and sign-up to that if you wish to play the game. The PC platform is currently struggling with that problem as there is no unified store where you can purchase all of your digital copies of games. That is the main reason why Good Old Games, called GOG shortly, has decided to invite Epic Games and make a universal launcher for all storefronts.
The GOG Galaxy 2.0 is a new storefront that aims to give gamers the ability to "Install and launch any PC game you own, no matter the platform." With Epic Games joining the platform, it is a matter of time before others join. Some are still resistant, however. Steam and Origin are still not okay with that idea and they are keeping it to themselves. It is interesting to see the development of this, and in the meantime, you can check out GOG Galaxy 2.0 here.
The GOG Galaxy 2.0 is a new storefront that aims to give gamers the ability to "Install and launch any PC game you own, no matter the platform." With Epic Games joining the platform, it is a matter of time before others join. Some are still resistant, however. Steam and Origin are still not okay with that idea and they are keeping it to themselves. It is interesting to see the development of this, and in the meantime, you can check out GOG Galaxy 2.0 here.
57 Comments on Epic Games Joins GOG in the Goal to Deliver Universal Ownership of Digital Goods
It is similar with Uplay. When you buy a Ubi game from steam it will launch the Uplay launcher and register the game license in your Uplay account. Then you can just start it directly from Uplay .
What is a launcher, really? What is Steam? Does it do anything for you? Because really, all it does, and this goes for first party launchers like Uplay too, is click that game exe for you. It just has buttons that point to an address. And all the extra it does, is in fact not something you ask for. It usually gets in the way, too.
So isn't Epics approach the best one? They point you to an exe, and they get out of the way. That damn well better be Rockstars launcher tbh. Rockstar's launcher is also its anti cheat, game loading and authentication for online.
This is further underlined by the fact a lot of games you install through Epic won't ask for the launcher to run alongside it. Try that with Origin, Uplay... etc.
GTA V
CIV VI
SP:FBH
Outer Worlds
Borderlands
Far Cry 4 & 5
Watch Dogs
MTG:Arena
representing publishers
Ubisoft
Take Two
2K
WotC
Rockstar
Private Division
From a simple test, those publishers require the launcher to be running and that's a damned big net. I wasn't arguing whether EGS is mandatory or not because your words were "a lot of games don't require" EGS and this is patently not true. Currently a lot of of games do require EGS to be running in the backround.
If you alt-f4 out ofa game and quickly try to launch another one while it's cloud syncing EGS will crash roughly half of the time.
In all industries other than entertainment, production is mandated by law to be separated from distribution. Why? Because that kind of monopoly drives prices up.