As long as it is optional and all games remain DRM free I am fine.


However newer gamers are becoming accustomed to clients and all the add-ons they include such as ease of installation and updates, Achievements, and so on, the Steam client has trained a lot (not all) of newer gamers to only want to use clients so I can understand GOG wanting to have a similar feature to entice those who who are so used to clients that they can not do without them.

Reason I stay with Gog: I don't like to boot up a client for playing a game. I did find out curiosity on Gog Galaxy and tried it really early on but my experience was so bad I decided not to bother again. Still love Gog though.

I think it's great if they try to get more people to aware and use their client. In the past people have complained in other forums that GOG didn't have a client and it was just easier to use Steam, now users have that option. I'm surprised they have kept the Downloader this long, I'm hoping they remove it completely because it's no longer supported but now that Galaxy is out of the beta phase I'm assuming it will be removed in a couple months.

I will continue to use GOG as long as it stays DRM-free and client is optional.

Client is essentially ment to ease the transition of younger players from other gaming platforms who have never known anything else then to use a client and have no idea how to install games without it. Be it users from Steam, Ubisoft, EA or console clients. Is it being pushed? Yes, since its easier to provide support for updates and support for newer games. Just remember that it takes about a week for gog to make a simple installer for a tiny update. In galaxy the update takes about a minute and is controlled by developers. Plus the client is very convenient for a lot of people (the majority of users really).

Personally Galaxy "when it does not glitch out" (very rare nowadays) is just ok. Especially now that you can configure things after the latest update. Still, the gog website expirience in Galaxy is now fallen behind in development with the big store update that is not available for galaxy client. In that part galaxy is very much obsolete. Realistically its just a simple downloader with install and update function and an optional game launcher thats about it. The good part though is that you can still easily backup your installers with it.

I was one of the most vocal opponents against it but without gog dowloader as a real option and constant updates for new and old games on gog I don't really know how I can follow all that anymore so I'm forced to use it. As long as it is optional I have no problem with it. And as long the option of installer backups that don't need galaxy for install, is there, I don't see a problem.

Maybe true, but I also don't see the need to be actively trying to block it either via the firewall. So effectively you seem to be causing your own problems... even if I do agree with you that blocking it shouldn't make it crash out. Call it shitty programming, whatever it is you want to call it. Most likely it's because games (even single player games) call out and connect to various things for various reason when playing and when you block it it probably doesn't know how to handle it so it just crashes, but when you turn off the network connection it knows exactly how to handle it then. You also seem to be using a third party firewall service to handle this based on past comments and that too can have unattended consequences that the game just doesn't know how to handle. Games are generally safe though, so I personally don't see the need to be blocking it with a firewall but I realize some people are more paranoid about this sort of thing than I am.

If I can turn off my network connection though and play offline then the game does work offline... and I assume the same can be said for copies installed via standalone installers and at the end of the day that is what the majority of us care about when it comes to DRM free on GOG.

Now if we get to a point where you can't turn off your network and play games offline with or without Galaxy then yea, I will be right there with you denouncing it (outside of some specific circumstances like if GOG started to sell MMO's or something), but as far as I am aware I've not found a game on GOG that can't be played offline.

This, totally.

I don't think they'll make GOG Galaxy mandatory, but I bet they will phase out the GOG Downloader eventually.

As long as we can still just download the .exe file from our library, it's fine. Doesn't have to be through the GOG Downloader.

I'd just like to drop my 2 cents here, since I think that some people are missing the mark or are just overreacting.

There's a fact that we must all take into account. Times change... They always do. And things change accordingly. Let me write about how I first met GOG.
Before 2010 I refused to buy games online. I refused to buy on Steam. Because, back then, I assumed that Steam was a "rental" service. You bought the game, and Steam loaned it to you. If (for some reason) Valve decided that you no longer were worthy of playing the game or if Valve went bankrupt then...PFFF... there goes your game. That's how I saw Steam until 2010 (and honestly, my view hasn't changed much since then).

Whenever I wanted to buy a game before 2010 I'd just:

A) buy a CD game, without the Steam logo on it
or
B) I'd pirate it (yeah... shame on me)

Then I accidentally stumbled upon GOG. I was searching online for a way to run Commandos 1 on XP properly (the game was running too damn fast). GOG's site stated that their version was sure to run perfectly on newer systems. Since the FAQ stated that I could download the game installer and back it up where I wanted, I decided to give it a try. After trying the free Lure of the Temptress I was convinced. Even more so when Commandos - Behind the Enemy Lines was running perfect on my machine, just like in the times of W95 :)

From that moment on I stopped buying CD games and pirating Steam-only titles. GOG made me change my habits.

During 2010 I used to backup my installers on a DVD.
Now, in 2017 I have to use an external drive.

Times have changed. When GOG started its service, 90% of the games sold occupied less than 600mbs installers. Now, a 2012 game like the Witcher 2 needs 13 GOG files to be downloaded :| Who can waste 13 DVDs to backup a game?

That's where GOG Galaxy comes in. I suspect that many people don't know that Galaxy can be solely used as a "GOG downloader", allowing to download the game installers and extra files into a directory, without being necessary to install the game through Galaxy itself.
I know that some seem to fear that Galaxy is the first step of GOG into DRM territory. But trust me: I only started shopping on GOG because I was guaranteed I'd be the true and sole owner of my game. I use Galaxy all the time on my desktop (not on my laptop) and I have no trouble with it. It's just a tool to help me manage my games and have easier access to them, nothing else.

If GOG, for some weird reason, decided to make Galaxy mandatory to download and play their games, then it'd be GAME OVER for them. They'd just turn into a poorer version of Steam and would be dead in a few months.
The only way GOG can be successful is by becoming an alternative to Steam.

If using an non-obligatory client is needed in order to bring more publishers and games here, then it's good that they use it.

Unfortunately it seems that devs sometimes use their own online systems on their games. Alas, in such cases there's not much GOG can do against that :(
If you buy a game on GOG, you launch it and the game then asks you to create a username for yourself and register on the game's official site, what's GOG to do? Not sell the game at all, even if it's extremely successful?

Look, the point I wanted to make is this: GOG is no longer the "Good Old Games" store of 2011. Times have changed. Games are changing. A game like Total Warhammer now requires 35GB of disk space. It's very likely that in the future we're all gonna need Galaxy in order to download giga-games.
So let's all give GOG some confidence, OK? And for those who haven't already, try the Galaxy client now that it's off-Beta. If you don't like it, then you can uninstall it. You don't even need to play games with it, just try using it as a downloader :)


Sorry to all of those who got bored with this wall of text. -1 Sanity Point I guess :P

Anyway I hope I made my point clear. I don't think GOG's betraying their ideals. Things take time. And we must all adapt and change with the times, being mindful never to lose our focus.

Even a Titan like Steam - with all its $$$$$$$$$ budget - doesn't know where to go sometimes. Just see the Greenlight fiasco and all the trash they have inside. Sometimes I even wonder if Valve won't sooner or later collapse because of its own weight ( and Gabe Newell's) size.

I only use Galaxy to install games and interact with the community.

One of the reasons why I switched over from Steam is the non-mandatory DRM requirement. I really don't want Galaxy to become compulsory to play my games :/

Why use DVDs? Hdds are next to nothing price wise nowadays, you can pick up 6tb hdds for less than £100. Ssds are dropping in value as thier capacity grows, heck my superspeed 64gb pen drive could hold a fair bit. Storage medium is really not an issue nowadays, and I also don't see why people have problems Down loading big files, I have not have a problem download file in browser for years (including big ones like w3).

For the last sentence, I think that is the clear message. The days of the this place being different are gone.

Biggest advantage of GOG is the offline installers. Being able to back up and reinstall them "direct" 100% offline at any point in the future (even if GOG or the entire Internet ceases to exist (hopefully not!)) is precisely what Good Old Games are about - guaranteeing longevity of old games by ensuring they're 100% functional offline. The moment those downloadable offline installers ends or games start "needing" Galaxy to run stable is the moment I cease to be a GOG customer.

A CD-check may seem like a "DRM obstacle" but it's a "locally fixable" one that's within your control (ie, you can rip then load the ISO as a virtual drive, or make multiple backups of the CD/DVD / working NoCD crack / serial number in case you lose one). But what happens if a game is coded to use an "optional" client but flaky enough that it crashes without one (effectively making the client compulsory for stability), then 15-20 years later support for client disappears? That's an "unfixable" obstacle that's no functionally different to always-on DRM...

Looking through my games collection, none of my much loved old games "need" a downloader client nor do I need "game management software" (even with over +200 games installed on a 1TB drive). From ye olde (legal) 80's ZX Spectrum cassette games played through an emulator, to early 90's MS-DOS games, to late 90's classics (Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief, etc). To me, the only truly "DRM-free" games are those without any "external" (online) dependencies at all, and that includes clients even like GOG Galaxy. As long as GOG games don't require Galaxy to function 100% perfectly and stable offline, there is no problem. But any game that suddenly "needs" it in the sense of not running properly without it (eg, crashing when an "achievement" or Leaderboard contact attempt is made via Galaxy DLL), would absolutely be a "functional form" of DRM (even if it isn't "copy protected" in the Steam CEG manner). I think GOG know this and will "keep it real". The real question is what about 10-20 years time?

I totally agree with you. And I wonder why some people here still want to use a non-stable and outdated GOG Downloader. There are many free download managers that are doing this job much better than GOG Downloader. Personally, I use FlashGot for Mozilla Firefox + FDM v3.9.7 to download offline installers.

Why are we discussing this?

THEY ALREADY MADE IT MANDATORY!

Open your fucking eyes! Half of this fucking place only works if you are on Galaxy.

As for Download Mangers, I use one myself, but somehow I have a feeling the next update will render those unusable.

Go and play on the road,crybaby.All you do is cry and whinge about this and that and everything in this place.

As long as I can download a copy of the game to my external harddrive I don't really care that much.
To me that's the big difference between using Steam and Galaxy. Sure they are both clients, but they are still very different in what they allow you to do, as there's no Game Backup option on Steam.

I've been slow to adopt the Galaxy client, but it has actually been very convenient to use.