You can also scan your PC for games that may not show up in a store, or simply manually add an executable file, too. GOG also assigns separate icons for different versions of the game-such as a Game of the Year edition, in addition to the base game. Hovering your cursor over each icon will reveal its name (which should be obvious) as well as the store on which it's found. You can quickly click and filter any games you outright own, or have installed, or are available to you via subscription. Adding games purchased through Humble's store, for example, is as simple as typing Humble into the search box under Community Integrations.Īt this point, GOG Galaxy 2.0 nails its basic goal to provide a single unified interface for all of your games. Clicking the Settings gear in the upper right-hand corner, and then navigating to Add games friendsConnect gaming accounts allows you to add even more, through an automated GitHub search conducted on the back end. Community members have adapted GOG's SDK to support other stores as well, several of which are included by default in the main GOG Galaxy 2.0 client: Amazon Games, Bethesda, Steam, Ubisoft, Origin, and more. Once confirmed, GOG Galaxy 2.0 will connect to the store and start importing games, populating the app's main page.īut it doesn't stop there. That store will then show you its login interface and authentication method. Clicking the Settings gear in the upper right-hand corner, and then navigating to Add games friendsConnect gaming accounts, allows you to connect to each game store. Officially, GOG Galaxy 2.0 supports only three online stores: its own GOG.com store, the Epic Games Store (new for January 2022), and Xbox Live and its Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
The magic of GOG Galaxy 2.0 is how it integrates the various storefronts into its own unified interface. Mark Hachman / IDG All your games in one place
(Plus, Windows 11 lacks robust folder support in the Start menu.) Storing them all within an app like GOG Galaxy 2.0 works very well. You could put app shortcuts for all of these in your Start menu, but that would get unwieldy fast. I would say that I rarely buy games-and yet I've somehow amassed access to over 650 games that I can play whenever I want. But after a year or three of polishing and refinement, it's become my go-to application for organizing all of my online games. We tested GOG Galaxy 2.0 in 2019 as GOG's online storefront was just taking shape. To be fair, GOG Galaxy 2.0 isn't a new invention. Simply click the title icon and start playing. Want to play Far Cry 3? You don't have to wonder whether the game is on Steam, or Ubisoft, or whether you picked it up from another store. It's the uber-store, an app that connects to all of the other stores and allows you to pool all of your owned games into a single, collective space. Who has time for that? Most players probably just choose one or two stores and ignore the rest. Remembering which games you've purchased or downloaded from each store means checking them all individually.
In most cases, each online game store provides its own application to buy, download, and authenticate games, and any game you've downloaded is kept in that store's digital library. Keeping track of those games, however, is another matter entirely.
Finding cheap or free games to play is ridiculously easy. And Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass for PC offers dozens of free games for you to play, all for a few dollars per month. Steam holds periodic sales, where top-tier games are heavily discounted. Epic throws free games at you every week. There are at least seven major online game stores out there, all competing feverishly to win your credit card.