Good Old Games or GOG is a distributor of… well, video games. As the name implies, the company specializes in older games which are often sold well below their original list price, but there are some newer titles available as well.
Now GOG is moving beyond selling and distributing games through your web browser. The upcoming GOG Galaxy platform is the team’s answer to Steam and Origin: a standalone desktop app that lets you buy and download apps, connect to cloud servers for online play, and receive automatic game updates.
But unlike some other platforms GOG Galaxy is DRM-free and loaded with optional features that you can disable. You can even choose not to use the service at all. GOG will continue to sell games through its website.
While GOG Galaxy supports online features including automatic game updates and online play, you can disable that feature if you don’t want to use it — and all games that have a single player mode will be playable without an internet connection.
You can also use GOG Galaxy to keep track of scores and achievements or to chat with other users… but again, those features are optional.
GOG is also introducing a feature called cross-play which lets GOG Galaxy gamers to play online with (or against) people using Steam. You don’t need to have Steam installed to connect to Valve’s ecosystem, GOG handles it all.
via Engadget
I wonder what they had to do to be allowed to connect to Steam in this way.
Probably this is why they have recently announced Linux (and SteamOS) support.
Not requiring an internet connection for single payer games should be a requirement, not a feature.
without Digital Rights Mitigation it can be