I really don't see this happening as things stand right now, but down the line if GOG starts losing native releases and things go exactly the way everyone except GOG is expecting, I could see them turning to Epic for a buyout to save them from their own stupidity.

Maybe they can ban him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In that case he could just create a new account. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But I am not sure what would happen with his library in the old account. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe he could ask support to transfer the games to his new account. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Or the account is not affected, he simply cannot post in the forums anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you, this was news for me.

Seems I was lucky with my support person as they told me that they were keeping the ticket open until the offline update was here and that they would update me when it was available for download. I've not heard anything so far and like you say no update either but I will ask again at the end of the week.

No. Old builds are officially gone. The only way to maybe get them is through Support. But good luck getting support to reply on that topic. They WANT to push Galaxy, you see?

Sure! If you google it out (free gog games), you can end up with at least 2 webpages, offering older builds of GOG games for free. If you OWN the game in question here legit and since they do this anyway (promoting Galaxy at all costs, at the inconvenience of offline installers proponents), then making one or two self-arrangements such as this wouldn't hurt, right? Especially since they already started allowing retroactive removal of purchased content, such as those witcher 3 music track(s). If it's no longer "you buy it, you keep it", then you may as well keep it from elsewhere without mishaps, or "optional" clients.

Lolwut. DRM-free is healthy. What a strange, fatalistic post. We have itch.io which is (exclusively to my knowledge) DRM-free and has a plethora of indie games on it (including many well-known titles like Fez, Untitled Goose Game, and others which occasionally find their way onto GOG), Humble Store (a mix but sometimes sees DRM-free games published there before GOG or elsewhere), publisher's own sites (eg: Playism, which is exclusively DRM-free) and GOG.com of course which is still healthy from a choice PoV.

Even Steam and Epic Games Store have quite a number of titles that are known to be DRM-free (don't require a client post-purchase and can be launched directly without restrictions, which is why I'm interested in follow-up posts from GOG.com about their comments since they suggest their EGS integration always requires the Epic client to launch games).

What stores have gone that you're referring to with 'most stores'? Most devs have never sold from their own sites except perhaps back in the 90s or the occasional Japanese indie dev.

As for physical with keys only it's an issue exclusive to PC titles, in part since optical drives have gone away from the majority of builds (unlike on consoles) and even most modern case designs don't account for them. With the increasing file sizes and publisher's unwillingness to print on Blu-Ray discs instead of archaic and filesize-limited DVDs we've come to this.

The last physical PC I bought with discs was CDPR's own The Witcher 3 but that was already pushing several discs and they could have put it on a single Blu-Ray and saved on cost. Those that care about physical discs on PC should have put more energy into being vocal about support for higher capacity disc formats and encouraging users to buy cheap external disc drives. Regardless, it's not as though back when PC games came on discs there wasn't DRM to worry about, either.

Yeah give Support a chance (can take a while so be paitent). I wanted a specific version of No Man's Sky (Synthesis 2.27) as that is the last version you can play fully offline (issues came in with the Living Ships update and void eggs). Support eventually understood and provided an ftp link to download that older version. Excellent service for a problem GOG did not create :)

While it is good that they (as of now) still provide the DRM-free version upon request and it's true that they didn't create the problem, they are also not willing to solve it. The online requirement could be easily removed from the game, but they willingly host the DRM-ed version, without forcing the dev to fix it. Support even ignores requests to fix the game. The blues don't even comment on the problem. So GOG is now content to sell games where part of the Singleplayer game has an online requirement through Galaxy.

There is no significant Blu-ray adoption on PC, it would be pointless. It would make more sense to sell games on USB drives.

If they make GOG Galaxy separate from GOG "Legacy" - well, "Legacy" could wind-up like GOG Downloader: pretty much dead and eventually phased out.

I think they really need to be clear from GOG's Own Games are DRM-FREE for when you're accessing GGO's Game via Galaxy (and also on the GOG website); and that other stores (like Epic) may have DRM in them (or not) - since GOG themselves are going down this path.

At least there's....Zoom?

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PART 7/?
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Right. Since rules here are unclear at best I guess not much people know what EXACTLY happens after a ban.
They could be like Steam and just restrict his ability to (there are separare ban types): use store / use community features / use multiplayer.
Because Steam doesn't take away your products no matter what ban you get (unless they remove your entire account but this is astronomically rare and normal ban offenders don't apply to this, you have to go pretty extremely far to get there).

Or they could be like HumbleBundle and their petty BS they started pulling some time ago.
To be clear they have been doing this for years, just in MUCH MUCH smaller numbers.
Now they do that massively so people "started" "noticing" it.
What am I talking about?

They have "giftlink" functionality that they themselves encourage users to use.
Then they have this ambiguous TOS / support text of "you can only give to friends". With NO definition of friends WHATSOEVER anywhere on their page.

So they started banning MANY people based on implication that those people sold / traded / gave away for free (YES, the HumbleBundle is against even giveaways).
It is notable that most banned people never got a reason given. To my knowledge close to nobody ever got a warning first.
Also the ban there is basically TOTAL account lock, and ALL ways of communication cut, with no right to file a complaint.
They literally lock you out of:
A.Your revealed unused keys (so basically stealing your legally obtained purchases)
B.Your entire DRM-free library (for example books) that you have purchased there
C.ANY access to your account
D.Some people say that in some cases they also deactivated already activated Steam keys. Which is basically a literal theft. I find it amusing that this sh*t still flies within Europe where such sh*t is just stright out illegal.
E.Your unrevealed keys (that could be seen as unfullfilling purchase contract btw, as in taking the money and not delivering a product, which would totally warrant a legit chargeback imo)
F.They void any of your generated giftlinks

Now here is the funny c**p:
They usually have no proof WHATSOEVER to present to you upon ban.
It's enough for them to just "suspect" somebody to do that.

The thing is, they cannot legally do that, at least in Europe:
1.In Europe you can do whatever the F you want with software key once you legally obtain it.
It is no longer up to ANY jurisdiction of a seller once the key gets delivered after payment.
It's mandated by LAW. (so you can for example legally resell it)
2.Steam TOS doesn't disallow having multiple accounts. Valve is TOTALLY ok with it to not say they encourage it.
HumbleBundle cannot possibly prohibit a HumbleBundle user from having more than 1 Steam account and spreading his legally acquired keys among them.
3.HumbleBundle cannot possibly tell somebody who their friends are or are not. They cannot even prove it, let alone DECIDE and judge it.
4.Some petty TOS doesn't override law. Reality is that HumbleBundle cannot legally do this because in Europe their TOS wasn't lawful in the first place.
It's only a matter of time until somebody reports them to authorities high enough to bring them down.

For the record: I didn't get banned on HumbleBundle. But should they ever try for whatever reason then they are not going to get away with it.

We really live in weird times.
When we have to escape likes of HumbleBundle, and now possibly also GOG :/

The moment when they make Galaxy mandatory with no way of getting offline installers is the moment when I refund my past purchases here.
How?
Well when I purchased those products the TOS from that point in time applies to my purchases and that TOS clearly stated at the moment that Galaxy is optional.
The moment when they change it and REFUSE my access to offline files is the moment they void their contract and I have a right to 100% guaranteed refund - remember - TOS just like law doesn't work aback (new TOS cannot override rules on past purchase).

Also, I thought there USED TO BE a method for obtaining past versions?
So essentially now it's basically not only not possible for me to get historic builds (say for speedruns), this now makes it that if I am interested in historic builds I should not bother buying here just go to Steam (where I am officially-unofficially allowed to use console commands to obtain WHATEVER version of manifest as long as it was uploaded to branch I have access to).

Haha, very funny.
It really doesn't solve the problem. It empowers it. There is nobody to prove that these files are unchanged.

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PART 8/?
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The thing is GOG sells eternal license for usage of the product.
NOT "valid license for download and once you do that then you have valid license ONLY for the downloaded copy and no guarantee to be able to download it again".
This sh*t just shouldn't fly.

Their only legal loophole is that they CLAIM that "extras are only a bonus and not part of a product".
Right, but from legal standpoint if it is advertised on product page it is technically "part of the product".
So this sh*t still shouldn't fly.

Or I can just do what I have been doing since essentially I owned my first PC game.
Get a legal copy and then a crack for it (obviously that doesn't apply to GOG, but read what I say next).
I have been doing that in the past to box games to not risk damaging the disc in the long run.
(as an example it is pretty clear that my Call of Duty 2 original disk has oxidation and / or disk rot by now, these things don't last even if unused, let alone with "always spinning" run with no crack)
And I am planning to do that to at least part of my Steam games to ensure I can access eternally what I legally obtained.
My point is that at this point it could be a better idea for me to just obtain them in the place which will not "suddenly sh*t on their core values" / shift direction (Steam) and "make them" DRM-free while still retaining legality of it.

I appreciate the try, but you lost it few dozen years ago, and I am laugh-grinning too intensively to battle your nonsense statement :P

Right... Because that would definitely work in this case...
"Dear support, please give me eternally working personalized links to past versions of ALL content I paid for".

An ftp link of all things? Did you fiddle around ftp to check if you can get other versions of the same software?

Give me a break.
It's not excellent service. It's mandatory and they are obligated to do that. One could even argue that they should at least give you access to the version that was live when you originally purchased the product, by default, and without you having to ask for it.

And yes, it is GOG who created this problem, who else?
It is their service, they control the servers, they DO and WILL hold ALL past builds of content uploaded by developers.
That's what you get when you sign a contract with any sane digital distribution platform. No sane developer would WANT to HAVE TO keep separate copy of their past builds on their own storage for replication purposes.
Development builds look nothing like RTM distribution builds and so keeping them is no brainer and has nothing to do with ones stored say on Steam servers as past versions.

It would not only not be pointless, it would:
A.Have higher longetivity and reliability to distribute on BD as mass produced USB are almost only TLC based and have crappy controllers that tend to die (have you never had to reflash USB drive controller? I did. It randomly corrupted itself. I reflashed it and now there is no sign the drive is going to die for MEMORY CELL reasons for at least several more years) with no way to recover the data (without usage of a stash of high end tools comparable with impromptu hard drive recovery lab) whereas BD disks can be LOCKED to read only PERMANENTLY and use physical differences on the surface to store data (there is a literal burned in trace) - they last longer - because they are not magnetic (so there is also no risk of demagnetising over time).
B.It is easier to DRM. Let's face it. You can do whole lot of things to USB stick and sooner or later even complete casual on Linux using old tools could break the DRM. While on disk you at least protect it for SOME time and to SOME degree (disk has no inbuilt controller to manipulate).

Also once USB is someday made legacy would you then say "it's pointless, they should distribute it on X instead"?
Also what about USB versions?
We now have C version that isn't on most existing computers. Should then distributor choose A and risk someday making it impossible (without adapters usage) to use it? Or use C and make it IMMEDIATELLY impossible to use for larger amount of people NOW (without usage of adapters).