GOG Galaxy 2.0 is Now in Open Beta

You might recall the existence of an editorial I wrote near the end of May, wherein I questioned whether the intentions of the GOG team to massively update and overhaul their launcher, GOG Galaxy, were overly ambitious. Back when I wrote that article, the GOG team certainly had lofty plans for the launcher; however, it was clear they still had quite a bit of work ahead of them in order to actually implement everything they said they had in mind.

Having said that, you might reasonably imagine I was pleasantly surprised to learn just a few minutes ago that this significant update is now officially in open beta. This beta version of Galaxy 2.0 brings with it many of the major features that certainly managed to personally excite me, namely the ability to consolidate most of your separate game libraries into the Galaxy 2.0 client.

I now have my Steam, Uplay, GOG, and Origin libraries nestled comfortably within the Galaxy launcher, and I simply have to say it looks pretty darned cool. That’s certainly not to say there aren’t some minor (mostly cosmetic) issues that should probably be worked out, though; note the PlayStation 3 box art for Battle vs. Chess in the screenshot of my library directly below this paragraph, for example.

Beyond minor nitpicks like that, as well as the other minor nitpick that the game art selected for each title in my library could stand to be a bit larger and centered more precisely, it seems that this initial open beta version of GOG Galaxy 2.0 does the vast majority of what it professes that it wants to do.

Interestingly, the PC Gamer article that initially brought this matter to my attention notes that after you go through the process of connecting each of your other game libraries to the Galaxy client (which is thankfully very simple to do), “your libraries and activity will be imported and maintained automatically.” I’m not currently sure if that use of the word “maintained” in reference to games translates to “automatically updated just like clients such as Steam can do;” I sincerely hope that ends up being the case, but I definitely understand if it isn’t.

Even if that is ultimately not the case and we’ll still have to periodically launch Steam, Origin, and Uplay to update our various game collections and purchase new games, I personally don’t consider that quite a big deal. I think it’s a small price to pay in exchange for the ability to have all my games from all my libraries in a single launcher, even if Galaxy 2.0 hasn’t perfected the beauty of Steam’s new library viewer quite yet. Open beta is still beta, after all.

Within this article, I simply sought to bring to your attention the fact that GOG Galaxy 2.0 is now in open beta. I’ll likely write another follow-up piece to this article after I’ve actually had some time to play around with Galaxy’s features and see what the fancy new launcher is capable of. Until that time comes, I leave today’s final word to you, dear reader. Do you plan to explore Galaxy 2.0 as I do? What do you find appealing or, perhaps, concerning about it? Feel free to sound off in the comments below!