Lack of updates also bothers me a lot. This is probably the most serious criticism I have of GOG. Nevertheless, I would rather accept this than buy a game with DRM.

Of course, I always try to find out if the games in question are patched here and therefore I very rarely buy games when they are released, but usually wait a few months. If necessary, I then practice abstinence and do not reward the developer/publisher with a purchase. In the best case, I then buy such a game with an 80% discount.

On the other hand, I would also like to say that we customers can also exert a little influence. Many games were patched after a short time following my friendly request. Most recently, I managed to do this with Dome Keeper. It is not really our customers' job, but I personally still see it as my hobby and some people are happy to pay a little more for it. :)

Of course, you can see it completely differently, just my 2 cents.

Indeed, what you describe was the good old gaming world, where the same (vanilla) game version has been sold everywhere (and had to be tested only once). On fault are not the developers, but todays shops which all have their own proprietary extensions. There is not one tag, one build environment anymore. You have to adjust and test your changes against steamworks, galaxy and probably other crappy, proprietary shop platforms.

Build your game against galaxy and test the result, a lot of additional work to support a minor platform, compared to steam.

What much more concerns me and drives me away from GOG is the refusal, lack of support and sometimes complete ignorance of game versions for the only, theoretically supported, DRM-free OS. Also the missing localizations / language support of games.

Why? Just replace the real Steam dll with GOG's crack. Done.

They still have to test it. And the build environment probably also is different.

Maybe they do test, maybe they don't.

No. There is no different build. That's the whole point of the thing. Just replace one file in the completed build.

You can add Northgard permanently to this list, today's patch that fixes utterly broken online multiplayer has yet to come to GoG.com version.

This is the last of many many times that updates take days or weeks to come to GoG.com later than their main platform Steam.

On top of this, GoG.com has never had access to the World Builder available on Steam version, AND online multiplayer has never been possible on Linux + GoG version.

If you want to add games to this list that don't get updates the same day as the Steam version, I guess you can add probably all games (that still get updates on any platform) to the list.

But then the list becomes quite meaningless, so...

Not really, most of the games I play and are still updated have update parity with Steam, on the same day. Delaying the updates targeting non-Steam stores is a choice by the developers or publishers.

On the other hand I agree that it is not worth adding a game to the list for a single day delay, or it would become overcrowded and practically unusable.

As I wrote already, It's not only single day delays, there are more things to this.

First off, it's a regular feature for Shiro ( Northgard developers) to delays updates to Gog builds often, and not by just one day, there have been times where it's been 10 days or even more.

This wouldn't be so much of an issue if they were somewhat reliable developers and managers of their own games. They ARE NOT. For the past months, at the very least, they break Northgard regularly with broken, untested updates and patches that often require next day hotfixes etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. to restore basic playability to Northgard.

Then, I'll repeat it, Northgard GoG.com build lacks a very important feature which is the World Builder, very much included in the Steam version.

Last, GoG.com Linux build for Northgard is NOT multiplayer playable, since MP requires Gog Galaxy and there's no GoGalaxy for linux.

About Northgard and the updates:

Northgard is definitely in the top 10% when it comes to the supply of updates. It has received regular updates since I've owned it.

Source

I can't say anything about the world builder and the multiplayer, I haven't played the game yet.

Yeah, if we start damning these kind of developers who are still frequently supplying updates to GOG (e.g. because the updates come later to GOG), I guess their simplest solution is not to release their future games on GOG at all.

Unless it is a crossplay online multiplayer game or a very broken indev game that needs frequent updates, I consider a 10 days delay quite ok. As long as the important updates come.

That is exactly why I prefer that they don't try to ship new updates to GOG as fast as they can. Let Steam players test the updates first.

Case in point, Owlboy. It sounded like an interesting game but I read it is missing some major engine update from the Steam version. Sounds bad, right? I digged into it more and it appeared that engine update had broken the game Steam, so I was actually happy it didn't arrive to GOG too fast. I haven't checked if the developers have fixed those issues, on Steam and/or on GOG.

So yeah, I may easily forgive them even skipping some updates on the GOG version, and instead delay and ship the more major and more tested updates to GOG.

If it is somehow married to Steamworks, then I guess that explains why it isn't on GOG. Quite often the same applies to multiplayer support, normally I am fine with the GOG versions lacking online multiplayer (because I buy only single-player games; if a game is mostly an online multiplayer game, I expect it to be free-to-play and will not probably spend a dime on it, even if I test it a bit).

Ah yes, the Linux support...

I play games on Linux too, but with GOG games and most other games in general I think it is a better idea to try to get the Windows version run in Linux, than rely on broken Linux versions that don't work on newer Linuxes anymore because of dependencies, may be even more behind the curve with updates than the Windows version, and quite often the so called "Linux-version" is actually the Windows version wrapped in some outdated version of WINE (Two Worlds says hello! It was much easier for me to get the Windows version run in Linux, than try to get the "Linux-version" run in Linux due to dependency problems).

Overall, at this point I feel Linux must become more Windows-game friendly (with WINE etc.), than game developers should become more Linux-friendly. If the Linux gamer userbase grows a lot, that may change.

I also covered the multiplayer part. I have Northgard with all the DLCs, but at this point I dont' see myself playing it online, Galaxy or not. I don't have Galaxy installed on Windows because I don't like it tries to actively mess up with my offline installed GOG games.

I'll have to look at what the "World Builder" is and how important it is, and whether it is realistic to expect it to ever appear outside of Steam (e.g. due to Steamworks). I am not big on game editors, I spend too much time already playing games, creating new content for them is beyond me. I used to do that more when I was much younger, I e.g. created a few very complicated race tracks for 4D Sports: Driving (or is it called "Stunts!" in Europe...?).

What I would hope though was the GOG would clearly state on the Northgard gamepage that it is missing the World Builder. Then those who care about it could decide not to buy the game.

If you need Galaxy on linux for the multi to work isn't that a GOG issue(and not the game)?

Gating the game multiplayer behind a store client is a choice by the developers. They could have included a DRM-free multiplayer method, but decided not to.

Of course GOG is part of the problem here too, by providing such a client and pushing hard for its adoption. Without Galaxy, multiplayer access could (obviously) not be gated behind Galaxy.

Ofc I agree about that but this is a DRM issue (not the topic of this thread in general)