Good Old Games Galaxy is in Open Beta!

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. Where Ubisoft’s uPlay and EA’s Origin failed to bring real competition to Valve’s PC gaming powerhouse Steam, Good Old Games will hopefully succeed.

Today, ladies and gentleman, Good old Games Galaxy finally launches. Open Beta, but still, it’s here.

I don’t want to over-hype this, but at the same time, I really want to over-hype this. Steam, despite having a plethora of problems with Steam Greenlight, Early Access, and the most recent debacle with a Mod workshop, has been the undisputed king of PC gaming for many years, and it carries the bloated weight to show it. Nothing has come close to giving Steam any real competition to force it into becoming a better service for us all, and it’s my sincere hope that Good Old Games Galaxy will be the charming newcomer that both gives PC gaming some much-needed competition and force Valve to sweat some of those pounds away.

Like Steam, Good Old Games Galaxy is a PC Gaming Service client you can download onto your PC to both shop and play games on. It has unique achievements, friends lists, chat, servers for cross-platform multiplayer (you can still play with your steam friends!), and all the other expected services you’d find in a game client. But here’s the fantastic part: it’s all optional, and it’s all DRM free.

From the press release:

GOG Galaxy features one-click installation and auto-updates for its library of over 1000 titles, but it also stays true to GOG.com values: it’s all optional. Automatic updating can be disabled for any game; but if you leave it on and a patch breaks something, GOG Galaxy will offer its rollback feature to restore a previous version of the game. Gamers can also download a standalone, DRM-free backup copy of every game, so keeping purchases safe a l easier than ever.

Look, I get why Steam is so popular. I use Steam too, heck, my Steam Library is a lot bigger than my GoG library, that’s for sure. But we need this, we really do. People say to vote with our wallets, well, now we finally have an outlet to do that, even if their library is smaller because some game developers would rather die than give up their DRM.

We like the people at GoG. I know I’ll be downloading this, and I hope you do too.