Avogadro6: @skeletonbow
In general, we're in agreement. I'm not upset with Gog, honestly; they're a business and they do whatever they think it's best for them (even though I dare say sometimes they seem to like shooting themselves in the foot). I just didn't much appreciate the sarcasm of your previous post. :P
Sarcasm? :) I prefer to call it blunt realism as that's what it really is, as will be demonstrated by the various XP/Vista users that drop by to share their thoughts and feelings at the moment and as time goes on. These sorts of events always spawn predictable forum drama and sell lots of popcorn. I'm just saying what 75%+ of people are thinking quietly. :)
skeletonbow: The downloader will likely remain functional for some time to come I imagine
Avogadro6: I think so too, even though in the last few months there's been some issues with some of the newest installers not being compatible with the downloader. For now they've been rare cases, and Gog have fixed them when notified... but I wouldn't be surprised if eventually this will become the norm, to the point of "We've just removed the old downloader page from the site. We're very sorry but at this point we just can't keep ensuring installers compatibility as we once did."
If I deconstruct that, it really boils down to being a hypothesis that Galaxy might be optional now, but that GOG intends to make it mandatory in the future gradually over time. There is no problem with someone having such an opinion of course, because opinions are neither right nor wrong, they just are. The problem though is that there is nothing anyone can say to counter the theory because it hasn't happened yet - and as long as it hasn't happened it can always still happen tomorrow. It's an untestable and unprovable hypothesis ultimately.
Having said that, I take GOG at their stated goal and intention of Galaxy, and it being an optional gaming client. To me this means that they plan on providing game downloads without a client in the future as well. They've stated from day 1 that the downloader will no longer be supported but it will be available for the time being and it still is. I imagine the downloader will go away some time in the future also, but that's probably a ways off since they don't really have to do anything to it to keep it running. It hasn't had an update in over 2 years now or so.
Sure, installers might get broken from time to time inadvertently. That happens because human hands are involved, but it isn't on purpose or out of neglect. Because it might have happened to a standalone game installer isn't really indicative of anything important at all, just statistical noise. Just yesterday the update of Xenonauts 1.65 was released and it works if you download the game from standalone installer, but if you install it via Galaxy the game was broken as reported here in the beta thread and in the general forums. One could just as easily formulate the opinion with similar logic from that, that GOG intends to make standalone patches with your web browser mandatory and that installing games via Galaxy is an afterthought that you can't rely on being stable, and that the problem will likely get worse over time as they try to force people to use the website instead of Galaxy.
Yes, that sounds silly, but no sillier than the conspiracy theories people have about Galaxy taking over the world and GOG purposefully neglecting the pre-existing downloads/patches because of some new evil corporate agenda to become Valve or something. :) I'm not saying YOU are saying this, just that people do say things like that and it is emotionally driven nonsense IMHO.
I've encountered just as many problems installing and getting games to work with Galaxy as I've had without Galaxy, and the forums and Mantis bug tracker are littered with my reports of these problems over time. In fact, I think I can go as far as saying that I've encountered /more/ problems downloading games and extras, installing games with Galaxy than without it over time.
Too many people have one minor problem and get emotionally upset about it and start drawing conspiracy theory conclusions and seek to "blame the new tech" and "blame the people making the new tech" whether there is any real basis for it or not. In the case of GOG, I just don't see any credence to such theories personally. GOG tries to do their best to support everything with or without Galaxy and there are pros and cons to both.
skeletonbow: GOG doesn't provide public stats about hardware/OS usage yet, but using Steam stats shows only 1.8% of survey respondents using Steam are using Windows XP or Vista currently, and those numbers drop month after month. GOG's statistics are probably quite similar I imagine
Avogadro6: Well, 1.8% is a lot lower than I expected TBH. The number is probably a bit higher on Gog, given its focus on old games, but even then, we sure are a minority and personally I don't really expect to be catered to.
I'll just say however, that while I'm no programmer and I have no insight on whatever technical issue has led Gog to drop support of two OS, as of yet none of the other major gaming clients on the market had to do the same.
It's true that recently Origin has cut out some features for Vista users (shopping and some social stuff I couldn't care less about), but other than that it still works fine, and Steam hasn't changed at all.
I do hope that this "shifting manpower" will allow Gog to make some serious progress in developing Galaxy, and maybe finally release a Linux build, because from the little I've seen, they have a lot of catching up to do.
It's just speculation as we don't have any viable data to base strong opinions on for GOG statistics, but I doubt that GOG customers vary in OS usage much more than Steam users or the average person in the general public personally. I'd be surprised if there were more than 2% of GOG customers still using XP/Vista combined. A company is unlikely to throw away 10% of their potential market or even 5% per se, depending on what resource commitment is needed to support those systems. For example, it wouldn't be wise to spend 10% of your resources on supporting 1% of your customers unless those 1% of your customers amount to 10% or more of your net profit.
People like us can speculate as to what the overall numbers might be, but GOG are the ones that have the actual numbers to base the business decisions on at the end of the day. From the other end of the monitor though things are entirely different. For me and you and the next guy, we just want our stuff to work the way we want it and we can be emotionally attached to it and think it should just work forever etc. We might not care if it takes 50% of a company's resources to make something work for 5 people, we just want to not have to change, not have to upgrade etc.
At a certain point though, kicking and screaming if need be - we all have to upgrade our OS and/or computer eventually, and I say that as one who avoids it as long as possible. My day is coming too some time before long. I run Windows 7 and have zero plans of upgrading to Windows 10 or anything that might come in the future from the land of Windows. Chances are companies like GOG will support Windows 7 for many years to come yet, but a day is on the horizon where us 7 users are going on the chopping block too.
When that day comes, I'll be happy to hopefully make a nice smooth transition to Galaxy running on Linux, developed and supported out of the soul and bones of former XP/Vista etc. support resources. :)
Having said all that though... quick, grab some popcorn, the sights have yet to be seen!
