Why are you asking me? Don't you know what your point was?

Seems irrelevant in any case. If you can't afford to store the game (via whatever method), don't buy it. Easy.

Because I thought it was obvious?

Might be easier said than done. I don't always look at the specs of something before buying/downloading.

And then the case of if someone else got it for you. I got a copy of Skyrim back in 2014 i think. And i couldn't run it. I tried it, like 3-4 frames a second, naturally shelved the game; I didn't give it another try until much later (2 years?) when i got a machine that could actually handle it. (then hated the game and didn't touch again til 2018 but that's another story).

Sides, being able to install and play it, doesn't mean i can keep/store the installer. And for a lot of people that's enough. Some people have a fix for a few hours or days, and are done with it. Unlike when i could only get 1-2 games on my computer, then i had to decide and stayed with Morrowind and Diablo 2, and nothing else.

Going larger would just cause problems and issues, and GOG have enough of them already.

You also have to consider, that customers vary a lot in how good their web connection is. And some don't have an unlimited data connection, so a failure of a big file download, costs them.

The installer creator that GOG uses, Inno Setup, has a maximum size of 2 GB, which was expanded for GOG to 4 GB.

GOG would have to change to another installer creating program that creates larger files. I doubt they could be bothered after all this time, especially if time and effort and cost are involved.

Perhaps it is different in certain countries, but SSD are still slowly getting cheaper here in AUS, as their popularity grows, so we have a way to go yet.

And regular HDDs kind of vary up and down all the time with price, though I think we have seen the limit as far as lowest price goes.

There will be a point, still a ways off, where the disparity in price between regular HDD and SSD will lessen. Of course that will involve a rise in one and a fall in the other. And who knows what future technology will bring to the table.

Yeah, they could just quietly swap over to NSIS, WiX, IzPack, [i]DCP Setup Maker
[/i] ZeroInstall, and probably a few others; including the wide family of Self-extracting archives.

The more GOG distances itself from paid proprietary software, the more freedom they can retain.

Honestly if there was an easier way to auto-download files, smaller files like 100Mb to 512Mb would probably be better, as you could then pack more in extra space left in spots like DVD's. On top of that, MD5 checksums are fast and easy, and finding a much smaller file to replace would be easier than a larger one. And some people who might still want to write using CD-R's could.

I'd like them to use Blueray packing, but allow it to use Vinyl Record sized writable. Heh be even funnier if you could actually put music on the Vinyl front so you could have it on display or obfuscate it's a backup medium.

And i'd prefer the closer it is to a straight flat directory extract archive; Then allow running optional scripts dependencies or registry entries, and poof, ready to go.

A man can dream right?

ninja'ed

No, I agree, a self-extracting executable in the form of a 7z/peazip file would be aces.

Yep, there are other options, but there must be some reason why they chose Inno Setup ... maybe something to do with internal MD5 checking or maybe a cost for the commercial use etc etc.

What they have done is no longer as straightforward as it used to be.
You'd think they would keep it simple, but they haven't.

In the end, it doesn't matter why exactly the chose it or what could have been. It does it's job and that's all that matters.
And yes, I include the nuisance that it uses a graphics pipeline that in Windows 11 causes it to actually open behind the Explorer window (Windows 11 bug, the same happens if a program creates entries for the new context menu but is opened using the old context menu).

Is it the best solution ever serving the 'wishes' of everyone? Most certainly not. But it installs games and as long as it does that, there is no need to change it.

The checksum/file nature reminds me of Git. Though those tend to be whole files not chunks. Still the filename/checksum makes it easy to check hashes without needing a separate list, so long as two chunks don't somehow have the same hash.

It's a good dream. I'd prefer that too.

one thing they should do at the very least is add as much data as possible to the executable. that would reduce the number of archives a little. the last of the archives is smaller so, by making the executable at least the size of the smaller archive, people have one less archive to download. the executable for the larger installers is currently very small. it is not however difficult to format a memory stick to ntfs. most people does not even have dvds anymore. i used up mine years ago and have not purchased any new ones. why use dvd when i have blu-ray?

They did the exact opposite on purpose. A small .exe means that AV software has only to scan a small file before the installation can begin. We have games that come in a single file. When installed from a local network, depending on the AV software they have to be fully scanned before the first dialog becomes visible. That can take a minute. With a small .exe, the installer opens almost instantly.

Blu-Ray ... I don't think you will find many Blu-Rays that are written with large files. On the contrairy, I am quite sure that you will find Blu-Ray movies being split into 4GB chunks as well. While DVDs can support for example 8.7GB, the files on them are also usually split into smaller parts.

No one stops you from putting multiple bin files on a blu-ray, so there is no real disadvantage with 4GB chunks anyway.

Personally I really don't see how a large number of installation archives is a problem in any way.

I use an external HDD and still like the 4gb chunks. They're convenient sizes for moving around, and if a download fails mid-stream I've only lost > 4GB, not to mention when my data limit is up and my speed is shaped.

I didn't bother with storage Blu-rays. By the time I found little use for single (or even DL) DVDs I had already moved on to drive storage.