A few weeks ago, I sat down with GOG managing director Maciej Gołębiewski and new owner (and original co-founder) Michał Kiciński to chat about the venerable storefront’s future without CD Projekt. One of the ideas it was batting about? Checking out this whole Linux thing, since quite a few people seem to be jumping ship from Windows recently.
But beyond expressing a general interest, the pair weren’t willing to make any concrete commitments to Linux as a platform. Well, I guess the intervening few weeks made some difference: in a recent job posting for a senior software engineer for GOG Galaxy (GOG’s optional Steam-like game interface), it straightforwardly says “Linux is the next major frontier” for the client.
“We’re looking for a Senior Engineer who will help shape GOG Galaxy’s architecture, tooling, and development standards with Linux in mind from day one,” reads the posting. “At the same time, GOG Galaxy is a long-lived product with a large and complex C++ codebase.” In other words: you have to be able to get everything hunky-dory on Linux without breaking the entire thing for GOG Galaxy’s pre-existing macOS and Windows user base.
Which is pretty great news. Although you’d think GOG’s whole vibe—keeping old tech going, giving you digital goods you can plausibly say you truly own—would jibe quite well with the Linux community, the storefront’s had a chequered past with it up to now. It originally said that a Linux version of GOG Galaxy 1.0—the first iteration of its client—was low-priority but on its roadmap. That went out of the window when GOG Galaxy 2.0 launched, and all mention of a Linux version was scrubbed from GOG’s docs.
What does that mean? Your guess is as good as mine, and GOG declined to comment when I asked. But it sure leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I suppose we’ll see what GOG’s future is with Linux, and AI, as time goes by.
