First off, my sincere apologies for creating a dupe thread.

Judging by the fact that our threads are nearly identical, I would assume your reason for creating this one is the same as mine: You're deeply conflicted over the direction the site is taking. On the one hand, they have been releasing awesome stuff on a much more regular basis. Their business is growing,getting bigger and better. But with that success came changes. Pretty much any trace of gog being the cool underdog is gone. They do things the Steam way now (and personally, I'd say the reason why Witcher 3 made Galaxy big is the same reason HL2 made Steam big: If you bought a retail or OEM copy, you need the bloody thing to pay the game. Nothing to get terribly excited about, quite the contrary)

On top of that, I've recently been privy to that crushing feeling of emailing some dev whose work you admire to ask them about any plans for a gog release, only to be told that they got rejected. In a moment like this, you get that feeling that the very website you want to help is also its own worst enemy.

Bottom line is that I'm not much of a fan any more. A year ago, I'd buy tons of shit during the summer sale if it was cheap enough, partly because I wanted to support this site. This summer sale I bought nothing.

The only things this site has going for it at this point compared to other digital distributors/gaming sites is most games being DRM-free and the largely unmoderated though surprisingly civil forums. But the days I saw this site as the saviour of PC gaming are pretty much over.

It's a Steam analog. Basically, they're trying to build a client similar to Steam (with the same types of functionality and features), but one that is completely optional to use.

No I meant the default gaming broadcasts. I hadn't heard of that.

Just want to point out that this is mistaken. You don't need Galaxy at all to play Witcher 3.
Ah, apologies. I didn't read fully, I guess. :)

Are you sure about this? I seem to remember that a bunch of people complained that they needed Galaxy for their OEM copy. The OGDB website also lists the German retail copy as requiring "online activation".

I don't own a retail copy myself, so I might be talking out of my ass here.

It's an honest mistake though. I don't have TW3 myself, so this is second-hand information, but from what I've read, the retail version not only installs Galaxy, but the shortcut to TW3 it places on the desktop starts Galaxy as well. Sure, you can go to the folder you installed the game in and run the game executable itself, or manually make a shortcut to it, but you have to know that in order to do it. Under the circumstances, and given how games from other publishers usually deal with these things, it's a fair assumption that the game requires the client. It's not true, but it's easy to see how the assumption was made.
The initial batch of retail copies were intentionally missing some key files, intended as an insurance that the game would not run until the release day. Hence, those retail copies need to download a day-one patch in order to work at all.

Oh, naw that's fine. :) I didn't know you created that.

I agree with this. This is why I merely use Galaxy as a game management, it's very convenient to download a game (I still keep back ups) but I don't use it when I play as the only reason to do it seems to be playtime stats, achievements or social features and I don't care about the last 2 and I've got the first one covered with GBM.

Changelogs are Galaxy exclusive. :(
GOG stopped even posting them in the forums.

Oh, point well taken. Although I was unaware that the retail version installs Galaxy by default, I do know just from reading some of the confusion on these boards (especially with regards to people that got the game with a video card purchase) that they do everything in their power to get the consumer to 'try' Galaxy, and obscure the fact that it's not actually required, no question.

I recently became a hardcore 'GOGer.' I knew about it for a long time, but I didn't realize how great it really was until recently with the DRM-free content. Personally, I love where things are heading from what I can tell. The website is great! Has a nice 'oldschool-ish' feel to it. Easy to browse, easy to search, easy to get to where you want to go. Chat feature is nice, loving the forums. The allowing of gamesharing is really cool, though some people kind of go overboard with the "yes give me free stuff dammit!" and I was guilty of that at first lol. But I bought a few of the games I wanted and settled down. I like GOG MUCH better than Steam or Origin.

I haven't tried out the Galaxy client yet, personally I feel as though I could do without. The only thing I could see making GOG any better is for them to focus on bringing more games to the table and possibly an actual chatroom? It'd be cool to chat in realtime with a group of gamers.

There's a whole host of games I know of and have been finding out about that I'd love to buy through GOG.

They aren't Galaxy-exclusive.

Ah I didn't know that. xD
It's hard to find stuff when update flags don't seem to work. :P
A bit less helpful of a statement. :P

No worries, my comment wasn't really clear.