Yes, it is unreasonable.

That's akin to my asshole racist uncle who insist that all black people are criminals because he once got mugged by a black man.

Okay, it's not quite that extreme but you get my point. Over 1000 games here, and regardless of whether Galaxy is shit or not (I wouldn't know, I've never used it), you can't be dense enough to use it one time, cast judgement, and proclaim that to be a fair assessment.

And who are you to tell people how dense they can be? This is an outrage, I say! It's DRM (Density Rights Management) in fact! If GOG was truly DRM-free we could be as dense as we please!

No, it isn't. If you go to McDonald's for the first time and order a cheeseburger and it comes with pickles then it's reasonable to expect that every cheeseburger you order from McDonald's will come with pickles. Not a correct comparison. Galaxy is one client which, as with most clients, can be expected to behave in a certain and predictable manner when installing content. What directory it will go in, whether it will leave a shortcut on the desktop, etc. Uniformity is what we can expect from an application that tends to do the same task repeatedly even when managing different data. Now if I said "All game clients suck because UPlay sucks" then you'd have a correct comparison.


It is unfortunate that The Witcher 3 was my first impression with Galaxy seeing as it is an exception to the rule.

Doesn't really apply. It's not reasonable to think that all menu items in a restaurant will have the same ingredients. That's the nature of restaurants. It is reasonable to expect that a client such as Galaxy, Steam, and other will have a uniform way to install the games unless otherwise directed by the user. And in a fashion I am right about Galaxy as it DOES have a standard way of installing its games, I just experienced the exception rather than the rule. Can you honestly say that there were absolutely no gamers here that weren't surprised (and maybe even a bit annoyed) when Witcher 3 opened the Galaxy client instead of going straight into the game?

Regardless. I can play the game without the client getting in my way.

I did enjoy the download speed though. It was about 20% faster then what I get from Steam on average.

Bravo. That's exactly what everyone has been telling you from the start.

who's the troll, exactly?

The person being completely unreasonable is the OP.
Here's his complaint in a nutshell...
He installed a game using Galaxy and it created a desktop shortcut which opens Galaxy with the game.
What do you think it should do? It SHOULD open Galaxy, because the presumption should be that anyone installing the game with Galaxy WANTS Galaxy to be running. Because they want to track their time online and track achievements, all that jazz.

If your desktop icon didn't start Galaxy, that should be a complaint, because if it didn't we'd have another person making a thread like this one, but complaining about why Galaxy didn't track his play time while playing the game.

Quite frankly, this whole topic is full of it.

A desktop icon created by installing a game through Galaxy should start Galaxy with the game. That seems the proper behavior.
As long as Galaxy isn't starting for an installation from the DRM-free downloader links, everything is working fine...

Quite frankly you're missing the whole of the complaint.

I just download Galaxy and start it up for the first time. Use it to install a game. Start the game and the Galaxy client unexpectedly opened up to the games library page. I then must click on "play" to get the game to launch.

Why is it "unexpectedly"? Because GOG throws about "DRM free" like a Catholic sinner throws about "Hail Mary" on a Sunday so it was surprising to me that product from a DRM free promising distributor pushed me through its client to get to the game. That's not DRM free if a client connected to the internet is required to play a game.

So it wasn't unreasonable for me to think that use of the client was required by games installed through the client as that is a standard practice. There really is no reason to think other games would not act like this game did after installing them (that is having to be pushed through the client to run). It was quite disturbing to think that a company that was dedicated to DRM free products would fall in line with the like of Steam and Uplay and Origin.

My reaction may have been a bit unreasonable but certainly not my conclusions even if they were a bit premature. Also, make no mistake; I don't care about DRM, but I do care about a company that promotes one thing and seemingly does another.

Either way I have been corrected, quite early on in the thread to be sure. Still, I surely won't be apologetic. I haven't been able to play The Witcher 2 since, oh, about 2012. Maybe I can now with the Galaxy installer, but that doesn't make up for the irritation of GOG not solving my problem way back when. It doesn't help that I mistakenly bought a GOG version of this game when I really wanted a Steam one.

Hell hath no fury as a dragon.

Seriously, how dense are you really?
You use a client to install a game and then you want to know why the game wants to open the CLIENT YOU INSTALLED IT WITH.
Frankly, some people would be disturbed if that client isn't opening and their game time and achievements aren't getting credited. That is a far more valid complaint than yours...
Now, for those of us using the actual DRM-free installers, it would be a thing if one of those opened up the Galaxy client.
But any reasonable person would expect, usea client then it opens a client. Don't use the client, it doesn't open the client.

Seems to be working perfectly...
Those who like clients and all that Steam achievement stuff...happy.
Those who really care about DRM-free...happy.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Several people have told me that using the shortcuts takes them directly to their game and one said that The Witcher 3 was a special case. So, supposedly, the client doesn't automatically open for other games when you start them. On top of that Steam and Origin don't push me through the client. The client is there, but clicking on the icon for my games through them doesn't force me into their clients and make me push another button to get into my game. UPlay does push you through their client though, so GOG would be like UPlay if it did that? Not a good comparison.

Anyway, since I am not going to install any other games through the client I will not know for sure if this is the case or not and I don't really care. I have come to the point of minimal acceptable satisfaction at the very least.. Why y'all just gotta keep pushing to try and tell me how wrong I am is just mind boggling.

I've said all I'm gonna say. You wanna keep trying to be right, by all means go ahead. It will fall on deaf ears from now on.

And for every new user, since the downloader is now well hidden (most newbies won't know about its existence, and, even if the do, they'll have to make a google search to find it since there is no link on the website), and the direct download is crappy.

I don't mind the existence of Galaxy. Hell, I'll probably use it when it will be stable and bug-free. But I kinda resent the way it's been shoved down our throats. :/

My apologies for the snarky reply. I was a dumbass myself for presuming your issue was not valid when I did not myself test it in Windows (I do run Windows also on my Mac).

I can understand other posters points of view about them making a shortcut fire up Galaxy for a game installed via Galaxy for its features, etc. but it ought to be consistent and it sounds like it isn't. It also ought to be a well documented thing that is obvious to a user. In fact, in the spirit of offering the choice they talk up so much, it would be cool if on installation the user was asked if they wanted the desktop and/or menu shortcuts in Windows to start the game by itself (so Galaxy is just a downloader) or start the game via Galaxy. It would not be difficult programmatically at all to provide users this clear, straightforward option and choice. I'd put in a suggestion but to be honest I am lazy and as a primarily Mac user don't care about it myself. Somebody else may want to though. They could easily add this functionality at some point.

I have my own fun problem with Galaxy on OS X I need to go mention in the beta thread. Most of the game imports that the client just overwrote with new installs are reported as damaged and will not start from the Finder (file manager) directly clicking on the app, not an icon for it but the app itself. Yet, starting that very same app in Galaxy fires it right up. I have no idea what the screwup there is but nothing else on my Mac has this problem at all, ever. Never seen it before this.

There are other games in GOG besides just The Witcher 3 with its 16 or so DLCs...

I've tried Galaxy, but for now I don't see a reason to use it. Yet, I am happily installing and playing all my GOG games. Maybe I'd sometime use Galaxy for some multiplayer game, but I am not keen on them. I'm not interested to virtual friends, or logging how long I've been playing a game.

Life is about choices. If you want maximum convenience (and good internet), the client is probably the way to go. If you want to be detached from the cloud and service as much as possible (as in, DRM-free), then you don't use the client, but the standalone offline installers. I do the latter at the moment, I have all my GOG game installers on an external USB hard drive now.

Either way, your original claim about there not being a choice was dead wrong.

To solve this you have to install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 (32 bit for Galaxy and if Witcher 3 isn't starting 64 bit for Witcher 3). Just google for it or go to Microsoft's website and search for it.

After reading more of your posts I got the feeling that you are under the impression that you need Galaxy to play Witcher 3. But this isn't right. Galaxy is optional and you can install Witcher 3 (the patches and the DLCs) the same way you can install all the other games here on GOG.