You'll turn to the Dank Side.

looking at my shelf that seems to be the exception, rather than the rule:

battle isle bundle 1,1G -> unbundled: 1,1G
commandos ammo pack 0,6G -> 0,6G
commandos2+3 2,7G -> 2,7G
tropico 1,9G -> 1,9G

There are some curious differences, like 50-100M sometimes. But that is nothing i am going to loose sleep over.
Aside from a few games where it is really questionable if the unbundling makes sense (and I would include the episodic games there), i don't see how my backing up gets more difficult. I very much like this change, in principle.

That's speaking only of the game installers, of course. The whole mess with the duplicated extras needs to be fixed. No argument there.

I'd like to click on a game's download (or extras), and point it to a directory just like you do with any download. At a later time, I would like to click on that game again, and as long as I point it to the same directory I downloaded it to previously, instead of downloading I would like it to check if the files have changed FIRST, and only download if they have.

What would be PERFECT would be an app that remembered what I used it to download, and where I downloaded it to. So in a month when I open the app, it would still show the previous download. I could then click on that same download and it would repeat the exact same action, but instead of downloading it again it would first check to see if the file to be downloaded matches the previous download, and only download again if there is a change.

Hope that makes sense now. I don't know how to put it any clearer, sorry.

I can't use linux, so that is not an option for me.

That doesn't look so bad.

This makes a mess of my library (added 72 games by my count), and it is much harder to organize the game backups on your hard drive. Terrible move GOG.

In all fairness, I have to say that with game unbundling, although it can be inconvenient for some, if a game gets updated, at least the entire bundle doesn't have to be downloaded again -- although, I still realize that some games can be inconveniently big, all by themselves :-)

Yes, I do backup my games. I prefer to do it that way because it's more convenient *for me* -- I'm not suggesting that everyone do it, especially if you've got used to the download/play/erase culture and have a fast internet connection.

It's more convenient for me to backup my games, since it allows me to install them much more quickly should I wish to play a particular game, than if I had to wait for the download first, and I have more control over how they're catalogued/titled/displayed/sorted (whichever fits the bill!) without any website bugs to accidentally muck things up.

I posted about retitling earlier -- if I've already downloaded the games, I don't need to actually ask or wait for GOG to do anything. I can simply do it myself, if I so wish.

EDIT: By the way, if anyone runs into the wrong ordering sequence for games, just simply switch the Roman numerals into standard numbering -- sorts everything out. As for bonuses, I just put them in a separate folder, under the name of the game or game series, considering all of the bonus duplication that GOG has going on.

So the typical GOG user doesn't back up their games? That would really surprise me given the DRM free nature of GOG games, seeing you don't have to be hooked up to the internet to install your games, like you would with Steam etc. Where do you get your information about typical users of GOG, or is that just a guess?

Actually if you use gog downloader you don't need to download the whole bundle again. When you activate download of the bundle installation files gog downloader does an integrity check on the game installer on your pc and just replaces the files that it sees as wrong or in error (basically updates to the new version of files). This was pointed out in a few posts in this thread.

I'd be curious to know the whole spectrum of statistics on users here. But it wouldn't surprise me if the vast majority don't even know what DRM is, and if they do, they don't care about it and use Steam or other sites equally.

Ah, thank you for correcting me then! I didn't see that.

I tend to use my Linux machine as my main machine, but play games that don't like Linux on my Windows machine, so I've never had cause to use the GOG downloader.

Guess I just got used to the old methods, before GOG downloader even existed. :-)

As a separate statement... I wanted to explain this.

First off, GOG has grown to the point where bandwidth is no longer a priority; and internet technologies are at a state where bandwidth is dirt cheap.


Second, the size of the installer is, at most, 5MB (or MiB for the anal); the size of the data "tacked on to the end" is somewhat independent of the new mechanism; similar files (i.e. dosbox, shared libraries) can be linked pre-compression to reduce the overall size of the download; but RAR's compression is file-independent unlike schemes like LZMA, and (excluding aspects of the RAR file such as the word list) doesn't create significant increases in compression when compressing in batches rather than everything at once.

What this means is creating a new installer only increases the total bandwidth usage by 5MB * (n * (1 - p) * N + p * N) where n is the number of unpacked games and N is the number of people downloading stuff and p are the percent people who download one game at a time.

The "argument" is that "some people" don't download every game they buy, or if they do they do so in "stages." (Beat one game, play another) So while "n" may have increased, p has the potential to increase.

Eitherway, the point about reduced bandwidth vs increased bandwidth isn't really that interesting; the amount it increases by in absolute worst case is negligible while the amount it can potentially decrease by is significant.




Third, and MOST IMPORTANT: GOG is, and has always been, based off of the steam model. Remember point 1, bandwidth is cheap. Dirt cheap. INFRASTRUCTURE is different, but once there, and you're capable of handling the load, bandwidth IS CHEAP!

So knowing bandwidth is cheap, you can do some math and figure out that it is actually PROFITABLE to encourage people to redownload games from your site rather than back them up.

Remember, the steam model is not to be a game distribution network... it is to be a game MARKETING network, with distribution capabilities. There-in lies reason and rationale, to get people to come back multiple times; to encourage them to buy more games.

Just spend some time reorganizing my library.
Though I find some of the 'unbundlings' rather pointless (say, Ultima 1-3), I'm rather neutral about it.
The fact that the store links for every unbundled product don't work seems like a sloppy oversight.

Atypical GOGuser = 16 characters

Perhaps I should adopt this as my forum tag.


So, basically support GOG even more.

Did your changes stick? I cannot see to get any manual changes in my library to save. At some point, download links stop appearing and images for game covers disappear. When I leave the page and make my way back, it is back to the same disorganized mess that I had when this unbundling fiasco started. I wasted hours trying to get the shelves back to order I recognize only for it to fail.