If you’re a PC gamer, there’s one utility you completely ought to have in your exhausting drive: GOG Galaxy 2.0, one of the best ways to arrange your video games. All your video games.
There are no less than seven main on-line recreation shops on the market, all competing feverishly to win your bank card. Epic throws free video games at you each week. Steam holds periodic gross sales, the place top-tier video games are closely discounted. And Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass for PC gives dozens of “free” video games so that you can play, all for a number of {dollars} per 30 days. Finding low cost or free video games to play is ridiculously simple.
Keeping observe of these video games, nonetheless, is one other matter solely. In most circumstances, every on-line recreation retailer gives its personal utility to purchase, obtain, and authenticate video games, and any recreation you’ve downloaded is stored in that retailer’s digital “library.” Remembering which video games you’ve bought or downloaded from every retailer means checking all of them individually. Who has time for that? Most gamers in all probability simply select one or two shops and ignore the remainder. And should you do, you’re lacking out.
GOG Galaxy 2.0 adjustments all that. It’s the uber-store, an app that connects to all the different shops and lets you pool your entire owned video games right into a single, collective area. Want to play Far Cry 3? You don’t have to wonder if the sport is on Steam, or Ubisoft, or whether or not you picked it up from one other retailer. Simply click on the title icon and begin enjoying.
To be honest, GOG Galaxy 2.0 isn’t a brand new invention. We examined GOG Galaxy 2.0 in 2019 as GOG’s on-line storefront was simply taking form. But after a yr or three of sprucing and refinement, it’s change into my go-to utility for organizing all of my on-line video games. I might say that I hardly ever purchase video games—and but I’ve one way or the other amassed entry to over 650 video games that I can play at any time when I need. Who knew?
Mark Hachman / IDG
All your video games in a single place
The magic of GOG Galaxy 2.0 is the way it integrates the assorted storefronts into its personal unified interface. Officially, GOG Galaxy 2.0 helps solely three on-line shops: its personal GOG.com retailer, the Epic Games Store (new for January 2022), and Xbox Live and its Game Pass Ultimate subscription. Clicking the “Settings” gear within the higher right-hand nook, after which navigating to Add video games & pals>Connect gaming accounts, lets you “connect” to every recreation retailer. That retailer will then present you its login interface and authentication technique. Once confirmed, GOG Galaxy 2.0 will hook up with the shop and begin “importing” video games, populating the app’s primary web page.
But it doesn’t cease there. Community members have tailored GOG’s SDK to assist different shops as nicely, a number of of that are included by default in the primary GOG Galaxy 2.0 shopper: Amazon Games, Bethesda, Steam, Ubisoft, Origin, and extra. Clicking the Settings gear within the higher right-hand nook, after which navigating to Add video games & pals>Connect gaming accounts lets you add much more, by an automatic GitHub search carried out on the again finish. Adding video games bought by Humble’s retailer, for instance, is so simple as typing “Humble” into the search field below Community Integrations.
Mark Hachman / IDG
At this level, GOG Galaxy 2.0 nails its primary aim to supply a single unified interface for your entire video games. You can rapidly click on and filter any video games you outright personal, or have put in, or can be found to you by way of subscription. Hovering your cursor over every icon will reveal its title (which ought to be apparent) in addition to the shop on which it’s discovered. GOG additionally assigns separate icons for various variations of the sport—equivalent to a “Game of the Year” version, along with the bottom recreation. You may scan your PC for video games that won’t present up in a retailer, or just manually add an executable file, too. (You’d solely usually do that for very previous video games that haven’t been remastered, equivalent to basic Looking Glass video games like Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri.)
In sure circumstances, you might discover you personal two copies of the identical recreation by way of completely different shops: Europa Universalis IV is offered to me by way of the Epic Games Store in addition to the Xbox Game Pass subscription. You can select to obtain from both retailer, although GOG hides this alternative on the person recreation web page.
GOG’s Galaxy app does a reasonably thorough job right here, as nicely. Clicking a recreation’s icon from the primary library of video games opens up a separate web page, summarizing the sport, highlighting overview scores, and so forth. Because the mixing with every recreation retailer varies (and a few recreation shops present options others don’t), the richest pages are these linked to GOG’s “official” shops, equivalent to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Store. Here you’ll discover a detailed checklist of achievements, the period of time you’ve performed the sport (gulp!), and the way you rank amongst your pals who additionally play the sport.
Mark Hachman / IDG
GOG Galaxy 2.0 does have a methods to go in some respects. I personally don’t search out pals to play with, nevertheless it’s not at all times clear what pals are on-line. I would see 4 pals enjoying Microsoft Xbox PC video games on the right-hand nav bar, equivalent to within the screenshot above. The left-hand nav bar, nonetheless, will report that zero pals are on-line. But the largest flaw, in my thoughts, is that GOG Galaxy 2.0 doesn’t report how massive a recreation is earlier than you obtain it—not everybody pays for limitless bandwidth or strikes deals to eliminate those caps.
Finally, GOG Galaxy naturally promotes GOG’s personal gross sales or offers, so that you’ll need to test Epic periodically for its weekly free recreation or browse Steam for its personal recreation gross sales. (If that bothers you, or the truth that GOG Galaxy is owned by a retailer, you’ll be able to try PlayNite, an open-source different that provides lots of the identical options.)
Mark Hachman / IDG
There are additionally sure issues that GOG can do nothing about, for now. You’ll nonetheless have to obtain the assorted authentication / storefront apps, equivalent to Steam or the Epic Games Store, and go away them working if you wish to play a recreation from that retailer. Certain shops don’t permit achievements to be tracked. GOG Galaxy 2.0 can also’t replace your video games robotically for you—although these different retailer apps can. GOG Galaxy additionally doesn’t but hook up with community-developed mods or DLC, such because the Steam Workshop—should you play video games like Planet Coaster, for instance, you’ll have to undergo Steam for community-designed rides and props.
For me, these are forgivable offenses. Just seeing all of my video games in a single area—and being reminded of video games I had completely forgotten about—is price it.
As PCWorld’s senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft information and chip know-how, amongst different beats. He has previously written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
