GOG has taken its first step towards being a serious Steam competitor

It’s bad enough that the masses on the Internet shower Steam with love and praise, but those of us who actually recognize that the platform has an abundance of flaws, not the least of which is Valve’s indifference to the problems of its users, are forced to use Steam if we want to play games on our PC without resorting to piracy. Steam is the king of PC gaming, and there’s simply no viable alternative, which means Valve can do whatever it wants. However, a new competitor has been gaining ground over the past few years, and it just took its biggest step towards becoming a real threat to Steam.

GOG is best known for its library of classic games — it was originally called Good Old Games — but last year the company announced a new venture that would put it in direct competition with PC gaming behemoth Steam. Called GOG Galaxy, the service is an online gaming platform that includes Steam-like community features and tools like auto-updates to keep your games up to date without any hassle. But the key selling point is that Galaxy includes these features while still ensuring every game can be played offline with no DRM. It was originally supposed to launch last year, but today the platform is finally available in open beta so you can try it out. Galaxy’s social features include things like a friends list, in-game chat, and achievements, and select games will even support cross-platform multiplayer, so that you can play with your friends whether they bought the game from GOG or Steam. GOG is keen to boast that all of the added features are entirely optional; auto-updates, for example, can be turned off or reversed if a patch happens to break a game. “Making it optional is the best motivation for us to make it better,” says VP of online technologies Piotr Karwowski. “We want it to be so good that you’ll actually want to use it.” The service will also let you download a local, DRM-free version of any game you own to keep as a backup.