It could be a lot worse. At least the advertisements ARE for games.

Imagine how much it would suck if they were coming at us with Hair Club For Men or Anthro Plex, that vitamin supplement that ummmm....well...evidently...turns you red.

I'd be more worried about it being an invasion of privacy where your computer is identified since it's phoning home... and potentially a bug in the installer could execute unwanted code.

True enough... last thing i need is ads for hairspray, dog food, beer, cars, or tickets for the NFL...

Although if the games are similar/related would be better. You installing Farcry 2? Then other shooters like Fear, Farcry, DOOM, and others. Installing Pillars of Eternity? Other RPG games. Zacktronics game? Advertise the other Zacktronics games too... or puzzle/programming games (Human resource machine comes to mind), hell even advertise freeware sometimes. Like rogue-likes? How about DoomRL or ADOM, or others that are free?

Running the installer in command prompt with a /? at the end gives you different options.

C:\Install\temp>"setup_a_bird_story_1.0_(12441).exe" /?

It mentions e.g. /silent and /verysilent options, which I presume should do what you are looking for. However, when I just tried it with that game, it didn't seem to do anything, the game didn't seem to install if I used the silent or verysilent options. I am unsure if those options just don't work, or do they have to be used with some other options at the same time, like /sp- or /suppressmsgboxes.

If you can't get the listed options to work, I suggest you contact GOG support to clarify whether those options listed by /? are still valid and supported.

I was sure those were for error messages and the like...

I have no idea, the description just says "Instruct the setup to be silent or very silent.". There are also the other options but when I tried them (like /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES), I didn't really see how they changed anything, the setup seemed to run normally, with ads. This lead me to believe that maybe these options aren't supported anymore in the newest installer versions?

The /SILENT and /VERYSILENT options did make the installer silent, but then the installer didn't seem to even launch at all, like exiting without any message. I waited for some time whether it is installing something in the background, but nothing seemed to happen, the game didn't appear at least in the default location etc.

I seem to recall seeing discussion about this before, how to install GOG games from a command prompt without needing further clicks and selections from the user. Jmich maybe?
...
Ok, I did some more testing, with an older installer (setup_7th_legion_2.0.0.5.exe). With it, /SILENT option disabled all the other prompts etc., BUT shows the ads. /VERYSILENT doesn't even show the ads, so it does what the OP wants (it seems to show absolutely nothing, the game just gets installed in the background).

So, to me it seems the options like /SILENT and /VERYSILENT may work with older GOG game installers, but maybe not the newest ones (which have the new versioning scheme etc., like A Bird's Story). It could be these options are now disabled as the new installers (non-classic) have also an extra option whether or not to install GOG Galaxy, and maybe they didn't feel like adding yet another extra option for that for the command prompt installation etc.?

Or then I simply didn't know how to use them properly with a new installer, as it needs those "" around the installer filename etc...?

No it isnt. Not guaranteed anyway.
You always initiate traffic with a request.
If they want to, they can log your IP.

If the advertisement/url is unique to your game,
they can log who installed what game from what IP.

Linking an IP to an account and an account to a person
is not that hard either. So they could in theory find out
who installed games they dont own.

Not saying they do this, I suspect they dont, but technically,
its possible.

Yes, the feed is anonymous. No log in is required with a basic feed to pull it.

Yes, the IP address is noticed and may or may not be logged but that's up to the RSS provider.

Plus there's enough court cases now to say an IP address may or may not be attached to a specific person.

(Pretend I'm giving a link to such an article over at torrentfreak. I'm trying to eat breakfast and I really should be sweeping.)

My point at the end of all this is if the RSS feed was what was providing the new game adverts, it would be a simple matter of blocking that access to disable the adverts with a simple hosts file edit. That's why I was asking again.

Why are you staring at the installer anyway? Minimise its window and continue doing what you were doing.

Seems like that's what most mmos players do.

"No one ever told me about the event!"

Been plastered front page of the launcher for the last three weeks.....

But how will they know if the installers show some ads they could be offended by? Hm? Think, man, think!

minimize the window?

Woah, I gave almost the exact same reply to the same suggestion in a different thread.

Lol nailed it. I always find this line of thinking to be a head scratcher... so GOG does something you don't like and your immediate reaction is going to Steam, which by all regards to still going to be way worse in doing the thing you are complaining about?

GOG may not be perfect, but they still come out far ahead of Steam in many regards... I mean if one wants to keep tally.

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