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GOG.com is opening its new online gaming platform to the public, highlighting its completely ‘optional’ and ‘free’ nature to gamers.
GOG Galaxy has been in alpha testing for months, but will be brought into open public beta as of today (May 5th).
Among the core factors GOG hopes will attract players to its system is Galaxy’s ‘optional’ nature, which allows users to turn off separate parts of the client as they see fit.
These components include features like auto-updates, friends lists, game time tracking, achievements and chat.
Even DRM is somewhat optional – a standalone DRM-free backup of every title can be downloaded and played offline.
Galaxy also includes rollback support, meaning titles can be reversed to earlier patch versions if a newer update causes issues for certain players.
It additionally features multiplayer crossplay support with Steam and standard GOG games, letting players on each platform play together.
Starting out with more than 1,000 games at launch, VP of online technologies Piotr Karwowski pledged that Galaxy would see GOG.com’s formerly indie and retro-focused catalogue expand to cover a greater number of triple-A releases.
With GOG Galaxy, we can start bringing new, big games to GOG.com,” he said.
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 triple-A titles in the future.”
