Fixed your post. ;P

GOG is CDP and there was some serious patches that came down after the big hack of GOG's parent company... I would expect this happening to them. It seems delay is the key word here not "vanished" so once there database and servers are back to 100% I'm confident GOG will be back to normal :)

let's give them the benefit of a doubt and hope they bounce back from their cybersecurity fiasco.

Nvm see my own thread

Would be hilarious if this is later used as an excuse to not update offline installers at all.

For me (and you I guess) they are. Others seem to require them. Each to their own :)

In any case, they should not be processor-intensive. They are one-off events which should not do anything else than just notify.

Yeah, that could actually be happening right now. I've heard enough in this post to suggest to me that this has been going on much longer than this post, and they should've said something back when they found it broke to head detractors off at the pass. It seems they were just outright hoping we didn't notice. Makes me pretty damn skeptical.

Surely you are not questioning GOG's transparency?

How the hell do they expect to trust the plan if we don't even know the plan? A game surprise is a pleasant surprise, but the policy changing and such is not a pleasant surprise. How long until "fixing the automation of the offline installers" becomes "too costly"? I mean, common, why can't they use the galaxy technology to package installers? Shouldn't be that hard to make an archive format with simple compression that gets created (and cached) on attempt to download an offline installer. Do I have to make it for GOG?

Oh, I agree with you 100 percent. That was just my clumsy way of being sarcastic :) It's really discouraging to see GOG become a shell of what it used to be. They seem dead-set on chipping away the very things that made them unique in the first place.

First of all thank you for explaining this to me! Since achievements are integrated in the code, I still don't understand why the same can't be done without Galaxy. Transmitting that data to this website, that is. I'm not talking about displaying popups in-game or any of that stuff. An immersion breaking distraction which I can very well do without.

My point is this: With only one set of files, both containing **achievements, both being able to access GOG's servers to transmit and receive data from it, there is no need for a separate set of patches or adapted DLC either. Which usually take longer to be dispatched to the website versus the client. Both parties get to enjoy what the other one's got access to and both should be happy. What's important is that GOG would profit most from this. Consider how several hundreds of terrabytes of server space could be saved! I would also assume that it takes lots of work off the shoulders of developers having to adapt their patches and updates for both.

So it should be possible is what you are saying. Correct?

If one wanted to one can find out. :-) Steamworks documentation

** Based on the assumption that achievements etc., the code for them, is already present in both offline and galaxy revisions.

Looks like the achivement code can easily be dummied out with an empty dll hook.

You might want to remember that there are more than enough people who like them and you absolutely won't notice any performance difference at all. In most cases you can also turn them off if you dislike them. So why don't let those who want them have their achievements?

If I understood your idea correctly, the big difference is one: internet connection :)

What's happening currently is that when the game decides a goal was achieved, it internally routes a call to the specific client which you launched your game through, so that the client can pop up the achievement banner with info provided from the game. In this scenario, internet connection is not required. The logic for the achievement (e.g. player resurrected 100 times) is within the game code. The way to display the achievement (e.g. "You are a level-100 zombie!") is within the client code. Both game and client are running locally so no internet is required for the achievement to happen and appear.

Your idea, while interesting in theory, would require an always online connection to the internet while playing. When the achievement logic would be triggered, it would have to be transmitted over network e.g. to GOG's servers so that it becomes available (to display on the web, to get permanently registered in your profile, to brag to your friends, whatever else). And then your game's code should get a reply from GOG's server over network to get the achievement confirmation back and display it in-game.

It's not impossible (please read above), but also it's not desirable. Besides "locking" your game to require an online connection (which is a form of DRM), there are other issues such as your own connection quality, speed, bandwidth limits, etc. So imagine playing and defeating a super challenging secret boss. After you defeat it, you leave and walk 10 minutes to get to the next area. And then boom an achievement appears "You are a secret-boss slayer!". OK, I might have gone a bit far there, but you get my point :)