Oh hi. So I hesitate to post anything because I'm not familiar with the community, but I've been running into confusions that have been alarming me lets say, and I thought it would be useful to share in the threads for those who make decisions about the storefront, Galaxy and everything. I realize that's not likely as this would need to be miraculously upvoted to some height, but anyway here I go:


I'm not completely new to GoG - many, many years ago I think I bought Beneath a Steel Sky - but I am new to today's GoG. Everything is very nice, but I find the library of games contained in my profile links to be kinda odd. I understand that Galaxy is supposed to be used for everything - and that's what everyone wants which is fine - but what's left over for those of us who refuse to have yet another real nice platform piled up onto our desktop is basically just several download links with little explanation of what the hell they might be, and various inconsistencies between titles..

Please don't become disgusted with these luddite words that are coming from my furiously typing fingers - I know what all the files are after puzzling them out and I use Steam just fine. I have used Epic very, very briefly and will not comment further on that; I've used Battlenet in the past when I actually wanted to play their games; I used Origin for a long time before it started getting too EA'y and unpleasant and I've even used the Microsoft Storefront once, which of course I regret to this day.

Why not Galaxy too? Apart from the casual disdain shown above, all of these things together are like a row of retail shops in a mall - and a mall is the very last @&!$ thing I want to deal with anywhere. I finally drew the line for Good Old Games when I first realized a flagship client had been built. I personally was like "No, not like this..." or maybe "Et tu, Brute?" but to be honest I understand why Galaxy has probably been fun to build and also is a good idea survival-wise.

So, after ranting about that, I'll say that the installers could use a boilerplate blurb explaining what they might be about: Why there are multiple parts, what an archive file probably is, what the actual installer might be, that installers sometimes are packed in zip's, that some titles are not always posted with Windows as the default OS... funny, I felt pretty dumb googling "what the hell is an sh file" before I caught that one. Wherever have you been, thrice beloved Linux?

I get the feeling that we're being gently pushed into using Galaxy., That might be fine for many, but I recall clearly as a child being "gently pushed" onto the ride Space Mountain at Disneyland, and as a tiny and skittish 9 year old the result was nightmare material for quite a while. I'm still leery about giant glowing orbs in the dark, which maybe isn't a bad thing now that I think of it... IF I don't want to go there, I also prefer not to be pushed there. Oh well, these have been my words.


P.S. Those quotes are from The Matrix and The Forum respectively. It is March after all, and interestingly the site where young Julius was finally set upon is now a feral cat colony, or was at least. How the times mock themselves...

Yes, this topic might however have been done to death already (hundreds of threads on it).
GOG wants to push galaxy as the vast majority want it.w
We can still download offline installers (albeit with some galaxy components), so we just have to be happy with that.

I'm trying to summarise what you're trying to say here:
You want to have your cake and eat it.

Using the offline installers isn't exactly rocket science*. If you think it is... there's Galaxy! But you don't like Galaxy... Because? It's another Launcher/client?

Zips? SHs? The offline installer for Windows is ALWAYS an exe (with or without a couple of BINs).

People have always been pushing other people towards the "norm", it's the nature of the beast. Knowing that, I think GOG's "push" towards Galaxy is pretty minor. In this 2020 Steam / Mobile gaming word, it's actually amazing that 'downloading offline installers" exists... at all! (not that GOG is perfect, far from it - but some nuance please)

Only if you let it push you into that direction.
You made the "effort" of looking up what an .sh file is and figured out all those things you listed (I take it?) yourself (as opposed to the majority with their short attention spans/patience and general expectation of getting everything handed/presented on a silver platter), so that's already a sign that you aren't that easily swayed to give in to the Galaxy side and its dreadful convenience.

As long as there's demand for offline backup installers & patches, both on the community as well as on GoG's side (surely there's a bunch of older farts working there too, who prefer the old-school ways as well) they won't go away any time soon.

I don't mean to be counterproductive but you're really making this all out to be more complicated than it really is, while most of your text is filler.

"Installers are weird! I think there should be a manual to double click a file!"

Who are you responding to, or just everyone who took the time to reply to you? As I said, this topic crops up at least 3 or 4 times per week, we are just users, we cannot do anything about it.
I have several threads and support tickets open about these kinds of things, and am well known for not wanting the client here at all, gog was supposed to be different end of the day. And yes, I agree, it’s all designed to push us to use galaxy, but unfortunately that is what the majority want.
In terms of downloads, please feel free to vote:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/provide_a_full_and_complete_changelogged_download_system

In terms of galaxy, or galaxy components it’s everywhere:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_galaxy_required_in_certain_games

the tone of this topic is incredibly weird.

maybe they had some copy toner in their coffee?

Maybe we are giving them far too much attention by replying to them time and time again?

There is a reason these posts keep appearing in the general forums.

Boredom?

all the old users are crotchety or crocheting

Unfortunately, you joined too recently to get the joke. Im not going to dig up the thread either.