Re:GOG: Linux "the next major frontier" for gaming as it wor...
by MaulingMonkey on Friday January 30, 2026 @05:50AM
(#46822869)
> It'll mean GOG has to do less work
[citation needed]
GOG's launcher team is presumably already familiar with their codebase, already has a checkout, already has a codebase that's missing 0 features, has a user interface that already matches their customer's muscle memory, and presumably already has semi-decent platform abstraction layer, considering they have binaries for both Windows and OS X. Unless they've utterly botched their PAL and buried it under several mountains of technical debt, porting is probably going to be relatively straightforward.
I'm not giving Linux gaming a second shot merely because of a bunch of ancedata about proton and wine improvements - I'm giving it a second shot because Steam themselves have staked enough of their brand and reputation on the experience, and put enough skin in the game with official linux support in their launcher. While I don't have enough of a GOG library for GOG's launcher to move the needle on that front for me personally, what it might do is get me looking at the GOG storefront again - in a way that some third party launcher simply wouldn't. Epic? I do have Satisfactory there, Heroic Launcher might be enough to avoid repurchasing it on Steam just for Linux, but it's not enough to make me want to stop avoiding Epic for future purchases on account of poor Linux support.
[citation needed]
GOG's launcher team is presumably already familiar with their codebase, already has a checkout, already has a codebase that's missing 0 features, has a user interface that already matches their customer's muscle memory, and presumably already has semi-decent platform abstraction layer, considering they have binaries for both Windows and OS X. Unless they've utterly botched their PAL and buried it under several mountains of technical debt, porting is probably going to be relatively straightforward.
I'm not giving Linux gaming a second shot merely because of a bunch of ancedata about proton and wine improvements - I'm giving it a second shot because Steam themselves have staked enough of their brand and reputation on the experience, and put enough skin in the game with official linux support in their launcher. While I don't have enough of a GOG library for GOG's launcher to move the needle on that front for me personally, what it might do is get me looking at the GOG storefront again - in a way that some third party launcher simply wouldn't. Epic? I do have Satisfactory there, Heroic Launcher might be enough to avoid repurchasing it on Steam just for Linux, but it's not enough to make me want to stop avoiding Epic for future purchases on account of poor Linux support.