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GOG Activity Feed Experiment

The GOG Galaxy Game launcher has some tricks or flaws in order to get a game to appear in the user’s activity feed. From my experience, some games would appear, and others would not. Because of the open nature of GOG, there are several ways to install games obtained from the game publisher. Sadly, when a player is trying a new game, the “User has started playing Game” item in the activity feed will only show some of the installation methods. Thus I’m running this experiment to determine the successful ways to get this outcome.

Here’s a list of potential ways to install games with GOG in 2020. All of these methods assume that the user has GOG Galaxy Launcher 2 installed and logged into the user’s GOG account.

  1. By using the Galaxy’s built-in downloading method and hitting the play button from the download page.
  2. By using the Galaxy’s built-in downloading method and hitting the play button from the games page.
  3. By installing via the backup archive download from GOG’s site, hitting play from the installer without adding the game to the user’s library.
  4. By installing via the backup archive download from GOG’s site, hitting play from the installer after adding the game to the user’s library but not linking the executable.
  5. By installing via the backup archive download from GOG’s site, hitting play from the installer after adding the game to the user’s library and linking the executable.
  6. By installing via the backup archive download from GOG’s site, hitting play from the Galaxy launcher after adding the game to the user’s library and linking the executable.

Note that there is an occasional delay on how GOG syncs the activity feed.

Items from this list that I have tried for this experiment so far include:

  1. Installing a game and running from the Download page did not successfully add the item to the activity feed, but tracked time.
  2. See below for a discussion on one game that can appear similar to this.
  3. Installing a game downloaded from another GOG account and playing from the installer tracked time but didn’t add to the activity feed.
  4. Installing a game downloaded from another GOG account and playing from the installer after adding to the library but not linking the executable also tracked time but didn’t add to the activity feed.
  5. A mixed conflict discussed below.
  6. Untested directly but potentially indirectly tested, discussed below.

One game had been sideloaded from the archive installer, and later activated on the GOG account. Several hours had been played before direct account linkage. Time tracking occurred, but not achievement tracking. The game didn’t appear on the activity feed. After the linkage, the gameplay was stored in a different directory. Initially, starting the game from the GOG client did nothing, but after Cloud Saves were synced, the item was added to the activity feed as started playing for the first time.

When installing a game from the archive installer, and then leaving the installer open, I added the game to the library and linked the executable in the launcher. I then hit the Launch button from the installer and the game started. After a few minutes, I closed the game. The time tracking had not occurred in GOG immediately. Out of lack of patience after waiting several minutes, I hit the Play button from the Launcher library. After several minutes of playtime, I closed the game. Several minutes later, the item appeared on the activity feed, and the prior playtime had appeared in the launcher. Therefore, it is a mystery whether it was due to opening from the launcher or from the installer that triggered it. Additionally, there may be a time zone locale issue with the GOG feed on the website, as there is a time difference from the more accurate Galaxy launcher.

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