Dark_art_: Maybe a niche in the grand world of games, but not irrelevant. It made GOG what is now after all.
StingingVelvet: Well the majority of people who buy on GOG use Galaxy, so... considering GOG is a small part of the market compared to Steam, and then you've got Origin and the rest... I do think those of us trying to avoid clients are an incredibly small niche. That's why I tend to take the perspective of being thankful for GOG doing their best, rather than angry and always looking to attack them.
Before GOG even announced Galaxy I felt for a year or two that they would be seen by the global gaming market to be ever more and more obscure by having the only download method being a 1990s style download + patches etc. with a clunky downloader, and that they would invariably need to create a gaming client in order to remain relevant at some point. I remember mentioning something to that effect in the forums long before they announced Galaxy. I myself do like to use gaming clients for convenience, however I also greatly prefer to be able to download all of the files and manually install them for the flexibility it provides not having to rely on a client or backend service.
I've always though the overwhelming majority of gamers out there prefer a gaming client and think it is truer now than it ever was. While I download the games myself manually too, I haven't actually done a big download session for a couple of years out of laziness rather than not using the feature though. I hope this feature never goes away but at the same time I too agree that the number of people out there that actually care and/or actually use this feature in 2020 is almost certainly negligible and niche compared to their overall userbase. Humans are creatures of convenience and while some of us are stubborn and like to do things "the old way" and have our reasons, we can all be honest in saying that most people likely just don't care.
Sure, there are always people that will hear that and get triggered because THEY DO CARE, and be quick to say things perhaps like "that's not true I care and I know another person that cares, so that means tonnes of people care and you're wrong", but I highly doubt it. GOG knows what the statistics are for people downloading files versus installing via Galaxy and they've even spoken in vague terms about it in the past indicating almost everyone uses Galaxy now for years.
How many people out there care about all of the other "niche" things some of us care about though? We can all speculate from one extreme to another of course, but how many people genuinely only buy DRM-free or care about it so strongly they wont buy anything else anywhere else?
I strongly prefer DRM-free and buying on GOG, but I'm not DRM-free exclusive either. I buy games on Steam and its resellers over the same period of time I've shopped here too.
But while I accept certain forms of non-draconian DRM in some games, GOG was a safe haven from that and seen as a pathway to the future, a pathway no others ever achieved a similar level of success with. GOG did and grew things to where they are now.
I remarked to a friend a few days ago about GOG having Control which is only a few months old and how surprised i was to see it here and dozens of other AAA titles in recent times, and thought it was a marker of success for GOG going completely mainstream with DRM-free and dragging more publishers into the fold along the way, swimming in money.
Not sure whether to file that thought under "Delusions of 2020" or what though. Did COVID screw up their revenue this year that bad or something? That's the only thing that would seem to make any sense to me at least - if this is actually happening and not a gimmick like I speculated previously.
