Am I the only one who thinks the thread title sounds like the opening of a bad joke?

Steams multiplayer is monopolistic.

In the past games handled their own multiplayer and you would connect to their servers or rented servers and you would find them with a number of game server browsers like gamespy,all seeing eye or Xfire.

How do they tie their game to steam now??

Hopefully as the future goes on, GOG will be able to make it easier and easier for devs to code for Galaxy similar to Steam. I wish they could just ctrl-f and replace "steam" with "galaxy" in the code but apparently it's not that easy. :P

You know what makes multiplayer "terrible"? The fact that developers and publishers have insisted in online modes that directly contribute to the non-ownership "games as a service" future that the industry (and millions of misguided Scheme customers) already can't wait to embrace.

LAN or better yet local same-screen/split-screen are where multiplayer is at. The only gripe I have about this subject with GOG is that it seems Galaxy is needed to do multiplayer in some cases. That should not be the case. I want to buy Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 so badly but it really sours the taste to not be able to do LAN. Not using a client, and definitely not going to act as an enabler for same, sorry not sorry.

GOG's very existence relies on how it's different than Steam, if they start to rely on Steam assets then why should anyone deal with them instead of going directly to Steam.

When they were doing Galaxy I did think that the point of what they were doing was to be more like Steam for developers. To be as compatible as possible with their existing software and development methods, and also to be compatible with multiplayer. The major issue is that that's easier said than done. Valve is a creativity slow-cooker and produces really good stuff. gog simply can't just cook themselves up a Steam API.

gog can't go to Valve and ask for all the source and tools from the Steam API to modify and use for themselves because what incentive does Valve have to do that? gog would likely need to modify it a ton anyway because they're not Valve and have very different operational requirements. PoppyAppletree also brings up a great point that even if that did happen, gog would then need to be maintain parity with Valve on any changes to the system assuming of course that the agreement held. As for why gog doesn't just use Steam API, they need more control for their end and they aren't Valve so there are legal issues for them, security issues for Steam, and payment requirement to Valve.

I really don't think you understand the purpose of Steam.

I would go completely the other way and say it would be extremely unlikely to find Steam willing to co-operate with any of it's direct competition. In effect GOG have no choice but to make their own client for mp, for a variety of reasons.

I really think you need an appointment with Sir Chasm.

Maybe GOG doesn't quite believe that adopting and succumbing to Steam is the best way to try to compete with it. That is about as much competing with Steam, as just start selling Steam keys (instead of GOG games that you download and use with GOG's own infrastructure).

If you are succumbing to the competing platform, then you are not really competing with them. At that point, what would be the benefit of buying games from GOG in the first place? Why not just buy Steam keys instead?

So, isn't Gwent multiplayer working, then? Should it also use the Steam API for multiplayer? Should Gwent be available on Steam as well?

Yes, getting Galaxy multiplayer support for 3rd party games is an uphill battle for GOG, but it is a battle nonetheless. Competing with Steam at all is an uphill battle so yeah, you could just as well suggest that GOG should just abolish their own infrastructure and sell only Steam keys.

I don't really think that GOG devs will post a thorough essay about the decisions made and why these decisions were made the way they were made here. Usually they don't do this.

I can speculate a bit.

- Re-implementing the same API is not enough. You also have to make sure that the implementation under the hood behaves in the same way under all possible circumstances or you may run into subtle errors. However, having two independent implementations doings the same stuff is rather a waste of time.

- Re-implementing the same API is less of a drag than you think as long as you give people clear instructions what to replace with what and as long as the overall approach is fairly similar. Replacing some lines with some other lines doesn't take the longest part in software development.

- You're absolutely right that having a competing system is additional effort for devs and surely that's why some devs are Steam exclusive (for all the good or bad this does). Therefore I guess that GOG devs will have made the Galaxy API fairly similar if not identical in parts to the Steam API. We are already there.

- The Steam API is developed by Steam. Blindly copying it means you have to follow them wherever they may lead you. This means losing control. Maybe the Steam API is actually not optimal in some sense and you think you can do better - then maybe you should not copy it one to one.

- Maybe they wanted to, but there were legal reasons like Steam forbidding them to use their API. Currently there is a legal battle between Oracle and Google about usage of the API and some code of Java. It will be interesting to see the result.