GOG Galaxy 2.0 was recently announced by GOG Ltd., also known by consumers as Good Old Games, as an app designed to meet the needs of a changing gaming platform market. With its philosophy as a PC gaming platform grounded firmly in anti-DRM policies and consumer-friendly practices, the organization is now taking steps towards modernizing its experience by centralizing all of a user's friends, digital PC games, and those from other platforms.
The new app will tackle this challenge head on through an overhaul of its current desktop client, both giving it an aesthetic makeover and adding functionality in a bid to catch up to both the Epic Games launcher and Steam.
The goal is to connect consumers to this app and them to catalogue all their games within the library function. Of course, GOG only sells PC games, but the app would encourage users to add details of their other games for the PS4, Xbox One, or anything from before, as well cover art and basic meta information to each. In this way, one could see at a quick glance the entirety of their gaming library for reference.
Here is where integration plays an important part. As GOG has access to the Microsoft API, players that connect with PS4 accounts to this new app will also see a complete list of their trophies, locked and unlocked. There are user-made extensions that can be added, so whatever a user wishes to incorporate from their console experience will likely be possible.
There is also the added benefit of GOG demonstrating a history of customer-friendly business practices. In a recent interview with Gamespot, GOG managing director Piotr Karwowski was clear that their business does not sell user data, and that users also have the ability to both deactivate their profiles and strip the associated information from their servers at any point.
All of the effort that has gone into the overhaul of the app focuses on the user experience, meanwhile the built-in store remains unchanged. To those consumers familiar with GOG, this should come as no surprise. While both Epic Games and Steam launch into a long struggle for market dominance, GOG seems content to simply make their user experience more enjoyable and rely on their proven practices to keep their business healthy.
For more information on the beta and its developments, check them out here.