Newer games, especially of the AAA variety, are becoming more and more dependent on clients. Whether or not you appreciate those features, developers are spending money and time to craft them and many customers have come to expect them, so stripping them out is not an ideal option. It's easy for big publishers to turn over their old games to GOG and have them do all the work, but when it comes to newer titles that are initially tied to Steam, Origin or Uplay and may require a bit more effort, who's responsible for porting over the functionalities? It seems to me that that may be a major sticking point with publishers that might otherwise consider releasing some of their newer games here. Does GOG have a dedicated team working on this or do they have to rely on the developers/publishers?

Gog, of course.

Developers, on orders from the publisher.

The following comment from Firek though not addressed to this question might as well be: Based on this, my guess is they would rely on developers doing most/all of the work.

I think asking about responsibility in this context is somewhat misleading. It presumes expectations which I see as undue. Also the assumption on dependency on the client is a bit extreme. Now those are my opinions, but where you really mislead is where you say stripping out. It's not stripping something out if it does not work in Galaxy / GOG but did in say Steam. Just like one does not strip the engine out by putting Diesel instead of Gasoline in the tank - the car still won't drive, or not as well. So specific features not working in Galaxy is not proof nor evidence of any actual action to remove them, action which would indeed change the moral responsibility aspect if it was true.

So the way I see it, there is no obligation anywhere, so neither GOG nor Devs nor publishers NEED to integrate with all / their platforms.

In terms of WANTING to integrate such meta level features, GOG is probably the main interested party. Devs next, publishers probably won't care at all. If we think of monetization though, it reverses, with publishers the main interested, Devs in he middle, GOG likely least interested.

The theoretically most interesting, yet practically least important, is ethical responsibility. Who SHOULD integrate this stuff. Me I don't think there is obligation, therefore I also don't see an ethical responsibility on anyone specific. It's shared.

Good question Barry.

i'm really sick of your spamming, barry. oops necroposting. damn google results.

when gog said that Galaxy was going to work with Steam, I honestly thought that it just operated on subset or extension of the Steam API. So, basically, developers support Steam and they support Galaxy with little effort. As a developer, building against Steam API, it's like there is a similar or derivative call for everything. Maybe even some names are similar. I figure it's in gog's best interest to do it this way, so this is the way I figured they'd do it. Valve benefits because it means there are essentially two stores supporting Steam API and it means supporting any other client is extra work when they can hit two storefronts at once. They'll like to do that, and this will build pressure against vendors of other clients to make their clients more like Steam, eroding those clients and strengthening Steam. developers aren't going to be encouraged to support a new client by requiring them to do additional development.