Agreed. The day they would sacrifice this.... I'm gone. To TPB if I must, because TINA... sorry devs, please include a "donate" button.


You pretty much nailed it. Thanks!

Since when being bothered by opt-out policy is extreme?

If i want that useless bloatware i download it myself, we are a step away from forcing me to use it, and this is intolerable, paired up with malaware marketing tricks bullshit, well it doesn't sit well with me, and a lot of other people as well

But perhaps you re one of the "upgraded" to windows 10? Remember the article about malaware method of distribution? Article written by prominent and respected journalist as well, rightfully so bothered by the opt-out method microsoft used to push the "optional" down- ops, upgrade

Gog is doing the same, even if not at the same level as this store doesn't even remotely have as much impact, but the strategy is close, if you forget or don't even know about opting-out, you find yourself with this bloatware and don't even know it, same trick all ad marketing company has done for years

For them, ad-aware removal program have a definition, PUP, i wonder if galaxy will have to enter that list at this point, based on this new distribution methods, it surely should

You are free to like galaxy in all it's iteration, but nor you nor anyone else has the right to tamper with my pc by forcefully or pretty much extremely recommanding any unneeded software to run my shit with, as from a normal user standpoint, soon enough there will be no difference between steam and gog and that's, is a really bad thing for gog

After all steam have better prices, better selection of games, lastest AAA release, bundles, additional stores like humble bundles and reseller selling their keys to a wider market while gog prohibit it giving me less available options, multiplayer fully integrated and the steam client package come with additional integration into unix system something gog don't do, plus much better support for developers as well giving them the rights to retire software and disable keys whatever they want AND the illusion of control with drm

All of this and more are advantage that steam have over gog, and the only thin that kept gog afloat and competitive where the small but important differences:

-Customer Come First
-Full DRM Free (Still here, yet)
-Client Fully Optional (Already not any more for a while)
-Decent Customer Support That Actually Answer In Acceptable Time Frame (We are losing this too, slowly, not enough people)

We had other pillars, like equal prices but we lost those. Knowing this the conclusion are grim, good chance the remaining pillars of this store are going straight to hell, and we a re gonna lose those too, and with every move gog make this doubt become a certainty

So excuse us if we are losing faith in gog new management practice, about everything this place stand for, even business have principles after all, all respected company do, throwing them into the trash at first opportunity ruin your image, period. If gog want to stand up to steam by becoming steam, they already lost, steam is far too entrenched in their dominating position and won't move aside for gog, this is a big mistake

I agree that it probably was an ill-advised move...

On the other hand: They have the statistics how many games are download through browser, Galaxy or the good old downloader.
My only guess is that many newbies here downloaded some files (and often only the first one...) and were stumped of what to do with them because it didn't work as expected (setup.exe installs Steam, Steam installs game). There were enough threads in the forum about issues like that. In that case it would make sense to offer to install Galaxy and let it take care of the rest...

No offence but if you are too stupid to double click on setup.exe, your issue are far deeper the using galaxy, especially with the setup already having all additional software included

I think from a PR standpoint, given the anti DRM feelings (IMHO often carried to extremes) of hteir users ,this was not a smart move by GOG.
And if it does add 100 MB to the size of the installers, that is a legitimate concern but I don't yhink it is true for one reason:The size of the installers has not greatly increased since the policy started. The Download for the two Sierra Conquest games....released on Thursday.... was around 15 MB a piece. Most likely the Galaxy option just links to the GOG website and downloads the Galaxy installer.
BUt so long as that is all it does..offers you Galaxy as an option...it is NOT DRM.
I can still install the game and play gqme without Galaxy. And even if you install the game using Galaxy..you can still back up the actual game folder and play it without using Galaxy.
I am not GOG can do no wrong fanboy...I think they have lousy PR sense and could do a much,much, better job of keeping contact with their customers....but a lot of what I am seeing here is not legitimate criticism, but paranoia and hysteria.

A lot of inexperienced people downloaded the setup.... but not the accompanying -bin files. And started the setup... Which left them stranded at "insert disk two". In these cases having Galaxy in the first part.and let it handle the rest is actually a pretty good option. People are used to download only a small exe which then downloads the rest. Think MS with Visual Studio, SQL Server... Or those tiny Steam clients sold on DVD mimicking a full game *blech*

Wouldn't have happened with the Good Old Downloader though...

A big advantage of Galaxy for me is the automatic update of games,and that if you install using Galazy you do not have often large installers take up HD space. You can back up the Actual game file.

It not just that, a lot of people have no clue what bin files are or what they do. Sometimes it's matter of having the exe but not understanding you need ALL the bin files too and they need to be in the same location. But with Steam/Galaxy, they can figure out that big button that says INSTALL.

The policy doesn't start until Friday though, so before / after comparisons won't be possible until then:-

"Starting on Friday, we’re going to include the option to install the GOG Galaxy client from the offline installers downloaded via GOG.com in over 100 games."
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/offline_installers_with_an_option_to_install_gog_galaxy/post1

It's dumb either way. If they bundle the whole 150MB Galaxy, then it'll massively bloat everything out, especially for those with a lot of games. And if they just use a downloader stub, they'll get more support calls from those with default block Firewall rules blocking the stub (which wouldn't happen had they downloaded it the "normal" way via an already white-listed web browser). It also means they'll have to do 2 downloads instead of 1.

If the purpose is to "make things easier without annoying everyone else", I'm really not seeing it...

Edit : As for the "over-reaction", I think most people's concern is more a long-term "slippery slope" issue as to the trend of potentially heading towards "needing" a client in 5-10 years time (Galaxy Never Needed -> You Must Download Galaxy -> ???), rather than purely what happens on Friday.

Edit 2: Sorry tremere110 :-)

It won't be implemented until Friday. And it will only affect a certain number of games initially. The current download of the Conquest games are unaffected by this policy at the moment.

[EDIT] Ninja'd!

List of games affected here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/offline_installers_with_an_option_to_install_gog_galaxy/post31

So your solution to the ignorant is to making them even more ignorant? I like it, you are hired as the new gog curator, congratulations!!

Alright seriously now, i see the point in having a simple and practical installing software where you just feed it the links and download everything for you without any hassle on your part, without needed additional step or unnecessary features, being only 150 mb in size and definitely being option..nope, i fucked up

This feature could have been easily replaced by the downloader, there is no need of galaxy for that, also if i want such features i just get galaxy from the main page, that simple, forcing this thing down m,y throat is not, a pop up for new users or a by flashing banner in your download page would have been enough, not this

How about a smaller version of galaxy just including the downloading-installing feature and nothing else? Would that satisfy the requirement? I could always upgrade to full version if I want to

The new policy hasn't taken effect yet, new installers are due to be posted on Friday. We'll see what's what then, but I'm really hoping they'll reverse this decision.

There are a lot of much better ways they could handle this, I personally favour modifying the website so that when viewing the library the first time through a web browser it shows a message about Galaxy + link to download Galaxy, with this message needing to be dismissed before it shows any download links (and once dismissed it never returns). This approach would have the benefits of not requiring all installers to be re-built and re-tested (which is undoubtedly quite time consuming for GOG staff), not adding extra bloat to installers & not potentially inconveniencing users with the extra wasted bandwidth, disk space and possibility to accidentally install the Galaxy client.

Just update the website, then everyone has to just dismiss the message about Galaxy to get access to download links for the offline installers through the website & they only have to do this once. People expecting/wanting the client experience will be directed to the download for Galaxy, everyone else gets clean offline installers. It's more accurate to say that it offers the user the option *not* to use Galaxy, as the default is to install and use Galaxy. And this needs to be done every time you run one of the new installers - if you forget to do this for whatever reason then you're getting an unwanted Galaxy install.


In the library they're listed as "Part 1 of n", "Part 2 of n", "Part 3 of n" etc. so it's pretty obvious that they're all necessary. Still, the download page would be the best place to make changes to promote Galaxy, as I stated above.

I agree, that 150 MB more to the installers is NOT a good idea. I did not see that the policy will not be implemented unitl Friday.
Frankly, for some of the more recent game, where we are talking multi Gigabye downloads it probably does not matter to much, but for an older game.......

IMHO a "hotlink" to download Galaxy from the GOG website would be a better way to do it.
But I still think that there is a lot of hysteria and overreaction to this. Such is the way of the Internet.

Because it's generally not a good idea to create another piece of software to handle something that Galaxy can already do. Doing that means more resources are needed, because you now got to support the program with programmers, support people, etc. The means bugs that Galaxy has may also be in this smaller version, meaning now you have to fix the same bug twice.

There is a whole list of reasons why that is a bad idea... Galaxy is the new downloader but with expanded functionality.

See, the points you made are exactly the ones I made in my response to fable22 and why adding the option to install Galaxy through the offline installers is in my opinion utter bollocks. The difference seems to be that I don't think that it was some preparation for making Galaxy obligatory.

Come on, why do you think it has become so ridiculously popular to include automated but usually optional or sometimes even forced installations of third party software to installers? Because it works. It drives many users insane, sometimes it's seriously harmful, but clearly this method is successful and popular enough for some companies to pay other parties to include their software in this manner.

Obviously GOG had a brainfart moment here and thought that it would be a good idea to do this for Galaxy, underestimating the frustration this practice causes with many users and especially missing the absurdity in this context where the user base of offline installers consists almost entirely of people who knowingly chose to avoid Galaxy for one reason or another.
The one fundamental difference being that Galaxy does not allow to download installers (at least I'm not aware of that option). I guess many users would be far more content or even happy if GOG present matters in the manner you did and offered the option to download installers through Galaxy. Might be a game changer PR-wise it seems.