Comment by destroycom

Comment by destroycom 2 days ago

5 replies

Sadly, their "native" client is a web browser.

Besides the usual complaints about electron and CEF applications, another pain point is they work horrendously in emulation. GoG Galaxy is only available as an x86 application on Windows. I'm running Windows ARM64 in a VM on an M-series macbook to play some games occasionally, and Galaxy is the slowest piece of software I have. Ironically, it runs worse than the games it spawns, which have a much more complex rendering procedure (and, like Galaxy, they also run in emulation, since the binaries are x86).

Emulation works particularly slow with JITted languages, so having the entire UI written in JavaScript doesn't help at all.

I even checked their job posting in the hope that it will be about a ground up rewrite for GNU/Linux, without the browser (since they are looking for a C++ developer), but it seems there are no plans to change that in the porting process. Which makes senes, it's a lot of work, but still a pity.

On a tangential note, requirements like this in the job posting also do not inspire much hope for improvements in the near future.

> Actively use and promote AI-assisted development tools to increase team efficiency and code quality

zamadatix 2 days ago

I always thought it was a bit funny GoG GALAXY 2.0 went the web tech route for parts of the client and still managed to get itself stuck in a place where it ships an x86 only binary on macOS anyways.

  • jshier 2 days ago

    Steam's ARM support is still beta, and Battle.net is still x86 only. So it seems more typical than not for these sorts of things.

  • cr125rider 2 days ago

    How’s Rosetta 2 handle it?

    • zamadatix a day ago

      About as usual for a CEF/Electron app last I tested ~ a year ago. I.e. "impressively well considering, but still not all too great". For a while there was an issue where it was launching games in compatibility mode, but I assume that's been long fixed without needing to migrate the base app (if anyone regularly uses GoG on their Mac feel free to chime in, I only have a work MacBook these days).

tstrimple 2 days ago

> Sadly, their "native" client is a web browser.

So is the Steam client.