I don't like steam. Is there any way that GOG customers can play early access and give feedback?

Early Access is AFAIK only confirmed to become available on Steam and Stadia. GOG has very consumer-friendly practices regarding EA as customers can get refunds up to 2 weeks after purchase, which naturally makes it less lucrative for publishers.

They have a GOG page, so I bloody hope it will come out there as well. If not, then it is definitely a wait for me.

Fingers crossed. Otherwise it's going to be a long wait . . .

What's the difference?

I prefer GOG for couple reasons. Couple rational ones, but in this case the most relevant one is the irrational one - all my cRPGs, old and new, are on my GOG account.

Most of my stuff is on GoG. But I'd rather have bought EE trilogy on Steam since it has achievements.
But for BG3 I don't think it'll play any different if you launch from Steam or GoG.

huh. It's odd that they didn't enable achievements on GOG. Not that I care.

As I said - irrational.

Still, I assume it will come to GOG. It has GOG page, and D:OS2 EA was on GOG as well I believe.

If the game can be modded I'll purchase on Steam; if not I'll purchase on GOG.

The difference for me is DRM free and I'm able to disconnect from the social network. I don't care about achievements. With GOG I can play on an air gaped computer and I can contribute to the discussion when I want and not be surprised when some game event automatically upload to a server somewhere.

Also, the steam forums are troll infested. I don't mind some mild trolling when and if the trolls are clever but the quality of the trolling on steam is pretty poor.

As much as I'm loath to engage in negative commentary about other forums, I have almost invariably found them to be quite problematic: they seem to be overrun with the sort of people whose only contribution is unhelpful remarks.

I'd rather buy on GOG because there is no bad surprise with the DRM. I'm paying all my games, and I don't want to be the host of a Denuvo protection system.
Another reason is I don't like the Steam client very much. It's heavier and bloated with many features I don't use, it's also checking updates all the time and you have little control over that.

But, from comments one can see in GOG's forums, they update later than Steam, and I'm a bit concerned that if I choose GOG for this beta, I will be penalized. Is there any advice from Larian or somebody who has information on this? It's not clear whether it's a delay on GOG's side or on the developer's.

If that's a few days I don't care, but it appears that for games like UBOAT or Plane Mechanic Simulator, for instance, those delays may be much longer.

Never did EA on GOG, but updates/releases tend to be right on time. I don't know if there is anything infrastructure wise, that makes it slower for developers to update.

Larian games have been DRM free since Divinity 2 Developer's Cut, a DRM free patch was released for the earlier Divinity 2 Dragon Knight Saga release and some Beyond Divinity retail releases, and the digital releases of Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity are DRM free (the last retail Divine Divinity update removed the DRM, though the game still requires the disk to play a couple of cutscene videos).

Updates through Galaxy are generally available at the same time as Steam. GOG's patches and updates to the full installers are usually ready within one or two business days.
The timing of Galaxy updates are dependent on the developer; GOG handles the patches and full installers.

Thanks for the reply, that clarifies everything I need to know to make a choice (and hopefully for other people posting here too).

I'm not bothered by most DRM, only by a few ones that are too aggressive, but I certainly appreciate the companies proposing DRM-free options to their customers!

@vometia -- Right. When a question is asked on steam it's almost inevitable that someone will reply "do you want us to play the game for you . . ." and such.

@Redglyph -- Exactly! This forum needs a 'like' button.

@Raze -- do you know if early access will be available on GoG? If not, would you ask the powers that be?

Currently, on PC Early Access has only been announced on Steam.

I will take it as yes... I will also take it as no.

I worder if GOG DRM free policy might be a problem. Larian could be worried that disgruntled players would pirate the game and “provide feedback” without actually showing interest in it (financially). I could understand that. Or perhaps they want to keep feedback to one platform. Or GOG has much weaker infrastructure on developers end. Or they hate free market and consumer friendly business practices and have sold whatever is left of their souls to Gaben.

All are equally possible and most likely the true answer is something I didn’t think of.

Typically there is a primary target platform, which will be Steam because of it's market size. Everything else I would expect to be secondary; how much attention is paid to those platforms is likely driven by their market size and how much they diverge from the primary platform.

GOG, although a much smaller market, is very similar to Steam, in that the base game is on the same OS and graphics API, with MP features either dropped or replaced with Galaxy, so it shouldn't take too long. Stadia, on the other hand, is Linux and Vulkan, so it will probably be a post-release port, unless Google is offering incentives.

i personally dont understand why every one seems to be liking to sell on steam. steam cuts arround 30% of the sell price and keeps it. so why paying so much, just to sell a game, when it can be done from a owned home page?

i rather would like to pay the full ammount to Larian instead

buying on GOG

Two reasons:
1. Valve provide a proven infrastructure to support the availability of a developer's product, along with MP features and various "engagement" APIs.
2. More important, Valve provide a developer with access to, perhaps, 200M people that are pre-qualified as being videogames players. In sales/marketing terms, these are "pink" customers that are known to buy what you are selling, compared to "blue" customers that are unknown random people. Typical conversion of a blue customer ( from, say, broadcast advertising ) is < 5%; it is much higher for pink customers.

Valve simply copied the 30% take that Sony and Microsoft charge developers for access to customers of their consoles.

There have been various challenges to the amount Valve take. For example, EA stopped releasing their games on Steam years ago because they didn't want to pay 30%, and they have Origin, but likely lost many sales because of that choice.

Since late last year, EA returned with their games to Steam. This is most likely a result of Epic Games setting up their games store with a much lower percentage take, which forced Valve into reducing their charge for high-sales games.

Edit: Buying on GOG also involves a fee, it is not free.

Yeah, I think it takes a bit more to properly distribute a game.

The Larian Vault website used to have a storefront to sell the Divinity games. While this avoided distributors' cuts, it also had additional overhead in terms of servers and bandwidth for the game and patch distribution, an extra step when releasing updates to create patches, and extra QA time testing a separate game version and the patches.
In 2015 there was a change to the tax laws in the EU for digital goods, which made it no longer feasible to run an independent storefront, and that feature of the site was shut down.

Out of curiosity, how do Larian deal with MP features when delivering to multiple digital platforms? Do you use your own cross-play layer, or do all players need to use the same platform?

With D:OS1&2, each platform version uses that platform's multiplayer API, and on PC there is Direct Connection and LAN for Steam / GOG / App Store multiplayer.
For BG3 there should be details about multiplayer announced closer to EA/release.

Supporting GOG feels great, they are the most friendly game distributor by far. Steam is a huge mess, every time I install something from them, can't wait to finish it and remove the whole platform asap.

I don't know what kind of Early Access this will be, but based on previous titles (Divinity OS 1 & 2), Larian will finish this game, instead of keeping it EA "forever" as many do on Steam. So I would buy it at full price already, on GOG, if it's released earlier. Looks like it's a game I want to play, though maybe won't have time next months, so won't be a problem waiting for full release. Every Larian game I bought on GOG so far, gave updates for free, so they really deserve an early buy, especially for a game like this.

You know it’s Larian who worked on D:OS1&2 and updated it, not GoG. GoG is just a distribution platform.

The Enhanced/Definitive Edition updates were free on Steam and (for D:OS) the App Store, as well.

Speaking about Early Access, it's August (̶m̶̶a̶̶y̶̶b̶̶e̶) (definitely).

There are no system specs whatsoever posted yet either, perhaps they will delay it all.

Yes of course, those were all thanks to Larian. Sorry for not being clear.

Right, so ignoring consoles, MP uses a player PC as host instead of a public server, allowing you to connect any other PC player you can reach.

I suppose that could be extended to include Stadia players for BG3, but would probably not be using Stadia to best effect.

Thanks.

I hope they delay. The last demos were far from playable, even for early access and they were from a month ago.

Far from playable? As someone who plays Madden, BG3 is definitely playable

I dislike Steam and typically only play a game there I picked up at a discount from Humble Bundle or Indiegala. Everything else is on GOG (OK, I do have free games from Epic). My entire Divinity collection is on GOG. What I like about GOG is that I can play the game anywhere and don't have to worry about an internet connection. With GOG, the game will synch up later if I've lost the internet connection. I also like DRM free stuff; it's a major PIA to wait for Steam to confirm everything (especially if it's been a month or more since I played anything there).

I really do hope Larian gives GOG users EA, but if they don't, here's my question:

Can I buy BG3 during EA on Steam and then get my key (when the game launches 1.0) for GOG?

I'm thinking the answer will be 'no' as they'd then have to send Steam keys at launch to everyone who's in EA on Steam and who wants to remain there. One of the beauties of EA is that the game can be updated on the user's account at the time of retail release.

Unfortunately, I think many who prefer GOG will wind up waiting until retail release. As a result, Larian will miss many data points. I know Larian did use GOG for EA of DOS:2, but they may have had problems, which would explain why they are only offering Steam. I'm not even thinking about Stadia as that belongs to Google, and Google tends to mess up whatever they run. They've recently messed up YouTube where you don't get notifications anymore on the gmail account.

I prefer GOG as well and I'd rather wait than be forced to buy it on Steam.

As a side note, what I don't understand is why the game is being offered everywhere else except Epic. I know that there's a lot of hate towards Epic, but I didn't expect a major studio like Larian to buy into it too. Isn't the major beef against Epic about "denial of choice", yet your not letting the consumer choose Epic if they want? Incidentally .... I'd choose Epic over Steam. Also, Epic gives the studio a bigger slice of the pie, while Steam skim 30%.

As for Stadia .... we don't even have it here.

They put it on steam first because this is where they will get the broader audience they need for EA. As well, they have done that in the past with DOS so they must have all the infrastructure ready to gather data as well for BG3. I am pretty sure if they had time to set things up properly they would have reached other platforms. But it seems BG3 development requires all the resources they have so they chose the easier path for EA release.

Because Epic is owned by Tencent and Tencent has ties to the Chinese government.