Thanks for taking your time to offer an explanation how it works with Galaxy. :-)

When the basic facilities are already available for Galaxy, why shouldn't it be possible to provide: achievements, time tracker, upload of stats and data to personal profile, cloud saves for non-client users?

Many games try to establish a connection to the internet, or need an active online connection in order to even start, to transmit usage data and other information, some with and some without consent. 80 Days to name one Where an active connection to the internet is mandatory, there should be no reason not to allow connection to MP servers also when there is an online/MP mode.

As it is, no Galaxy, MP button is greyed out. Taking the idea further, providing what Galaxy does without client, generating a random unique ID based on system information for offline installer files would allow to ban someone cheating, using bots, ... Something which I suspect GOG does but for different reason, sort of proof of ownership of legit copies of games and whatever else it does.

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Since I mentioned tracking of usage data, transmitting bug reports and such, GOG could improve the client and make its use more attractive. If they were to strip out any data not needed, personal information whatever it is, BIOS UID, which could identify who and where you are, making it completely anonymous, this would do something for users. Allowing to join online games, achievements, etc. does nothing at all to incentivize its use over offline installers.

As much as GOG wouldn't like to hear it, if staff actually paid attention to discussions or were made aware of them by moderators, Galaxy doesn't offer anything much that would make me consider using it. If I wanted to use clients, I could as well just use Steam and whatever other ones you'd need to actually play games. You know EA/Ubisoft plus their client, plus Steam; Rockstar plus their client, plus Steam, plus Rockstar account.

Rather it seems phasing out offline installers, maybe offering the option to download offline backups from within Galaxy, is their way they'd rather prefer things moving forward. That it's redundant the way it is handled right now may be reason for it, maybe they wish to establish just another client environment, akin to Steam, locking us to it. Whatever the case, they would lose me, since at least on Steam games are maintained, updated, DLC are available which you could wait weeks or months and even years to have them released here, and no running there to pester developers to update and maintain their piece of software over here as they do there. Just saying.

When a game flags an achievement unlock, all it does is issue an API call to the client. It's the client that "interprets" that call into action (which differs from one store to another). If you wanted client features in-game such as achievement management without the client running, then every game would need to include half the Galaxy client's code inside each game .exe (massively bloating them out). The best way of implementing achievements inside a game is when it's done properly as internal achievements (eg, Stardew Valley or Dragon Age Origins). But many games devs are lazy...

As for online multi-player, it's entirely possible to have that without a client (and many source-ports manage it just fine), but that depends on the devs putting that into their games. And game devs are lazy... Likewise, store-level time-tracking is done by counting how long an .exe is open (which can only be viewed from outside of it). This (Steam included) has always been laughably inaccurate though as you could rack up hundreds of hours of play on a DRM-Free game by playing it without the time-tracker / client running, and conversely you can also achieve "80hrs played" without playing a single second by starting a game then leaving it idling on the main menu for days. The most accurate of all is "internal" tracking, eg, Dragon Age Origins that stores actual time-played inside each save game and even shows "Time Played" on the load selection screen. Again though, most games devs are lazy so...

Speaking as a non-client user, I'm actually quite happy that online stuff isn't included in offline installers. If you hard a code a game to make direct connections to GOG servers without a client and anything happens in future that results in GOG shutting down those servers, it's highly likely to break the game. If anything, I prefer the exact opposite - as "clean" offline installers as possible that have no GOG cloud saves / achievements integration or "need" for an offline galaxy.dll at all.

Thank you! Let's hope it'll be fixed soon. :)

Thanks for responding and letting us know.

No, that wasn't quite what I had in mind, managing achievements in-game, for instance. The idea would be to have them unlock on the website, which I hope should be possible without hard-coding that into the .exe

As you already described, achievements are unlocked via API call. Are achievements integrated in the game code or are these calls made externally, accessing one of the Galaxy.dll files and everything else going on happens either within the client or on the website profile or both? If that is the case it is how I would envision it working in a non-client environment.

An important point. Not all blame can be put on GOG. Dev's also got to take responsibility maintaining and not just selling their product here, but otherwise refusing to even acknowledging GOG's very existence, putting all their work and effort into Steam or other stores.

You tell me! Yes, that's beyond useless. Imagine cases where you're spending 800 hrs. (Terraria sic.) and it logs 22 because update somehow failed. :D Something I can very well do without because I'm well aware how much of my precious lifetime I am spending playing games. ;-)

That's quite possible ... I haven't thought about that ... In that case I could well do without achievements being accessible either which way without Galaxy.

Well while I hope that latter part does not occur, certainly at the expense of DRM-Free, I believe in being a realist. We have no hope in hell of changing any path they choose to embark on ... we simply don't have enough collective power.

So I am not going to hate GOG, even if the worst occurs ... I will be totally unhappy if it does, but I have always thought that DRM-Free on a large scale is a tough endeavor to continually deliver ... and that has more to do with DEV/PUB (industry) support than customers.

So amidst my tears, I will be ever grateful for the 12+ years (so far) where they have delivered some great games to us DRM-Free, and if they still manage to provide at least some games DRM-Free, they will continue to get my support for those ... any is better than none. And I want to make it perfectly clear - I WILL NOT BE BUYING DRM GAMES from them.

That's not to say I like GOG for other things they have done. I like them overall, but some things they have done, like remove the old GOG Downloader, bloated Galaxy, bloated website, missing updates, etc etc, have made me very unhappy with them ... so it is a matter of degrees of like and dislike.

Each of us have our own level of tolerance.

I have a friend who moved to Sweden to work in one of the bigger game development studios there.

So it can clearly be done! Moving to another country in order to work there.

It is quite unfortunate, that a store that goes by "DRMfree home, own what you buy" is having problems with the offline installers of all things.

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I hope this isn't due to CDPR's hack tho..

hope it is , it means it can be fixed soon :D
and not a differnt problem

was wondering why there had been a lack of updates lately...

Thank you very much for this statement. Fingers crossed that you will be able to fix this soon.