*sigh* As others kept saying, even if it adds a few hundred kb, why add them to every game for those who specifically want nothing to do with a client?
But, far more importantly, if the box is selected by default (as it was at one point), MANY WILL NOT UNCHECK IT. Even if there is a prompt, plenty will just click Yes/Agree out of reflex. And you'll have more people pissed that they ended up with Galaxy without wanting it, as was the case before.
And, as AB2012 said, if the installer stub would just download the actual Galaxy installer if the user agrees, it won't work if a firewall gets in the way, and you'll have some who do want Galaxy and are less tech-savvy wondering what's going on and getting pissed.
And in general, for those losing faith in GOG for (among other things) falling behind on offline installers, the solution is NOT more Galaxy, but LESS. Or none at all if you ask me. Have Galaxy, if it must exist, just download the same offline installers, and have previous versions / rollbacks and incremental patches available as offline installers as well, not just in Galaxy. And have all installers work like normal installers again, whether running separately or through Galaxy, not with Galaxy's weird roundabout way that requires space on the system partition and slowly puts together fragments.
So don't add (any trace of) Galaxy back to offline installers but, as pds41 said, more like remove it even from download pages, just leaving it as a separate download for those who want it and possibly a plain link in installers, which will just open the Galaxy download page in browser.

No worries, thanks for the info.

Great, but don't feel you have to.
If GOG can do it for those you have seen, then doing it for all should be easy enough I reckon.

I want an entity that stands for something and strives to change this rotten industry to survive. GOG rather gave up on that with the 2014 "Good News", and is shedding more and more of its one remaining value on the altar of growth and profits and targetting the mass market every day. This is NOT an acceptable price of survival.

I enjoy participating in thigs when I can. And this is something I can do.

I understand why it exists too. What gets tedious is the equivalent of piling on more of this as you seem to be recommending:-

"Are you sure you don't want Galaxy?"
"Are you sure that you're sure you don't want Galaxy?"
"Are you sure that you're sure that you're sure you don't want Galaxy?"
"Are you sure that you're sure that you're sure that you're sure you don't want Galaxy?"
etc.

With half those tickboxes already existing pre-download with things like "DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL NOW" being 3-6x bigger on each game download than the actual installers or that offline installers were previously hidden behind a sub-menu, etc. When people download offline installers we certainly are "sure that they're sure" they want them without having to further beg to use them directly post download due to defaulting to Galaxy (even in OFFLINE installers).

Steam are successful mostly simply because "they were first" for 3rd party digital downloads. That's it. When they forced a client as a DRM wrapper for Half Life 2 back in 2004, they were widely disliked during the early days, and only hated less over time when 1. Gamers eventually had no choice when physical discs dried up, and 2. More insidious DRM (eg, SecuROM PA activation limits, had to be online to save) was the "alternative" for AAA's during the late 2000's. "All we need to do is build a game client and we'll be just like Steam" is the biggest fallacy there is. uPlay / Origin clients have enormous financial backing but their only real value is the 1st party Ubisoft / EA titles behind them, not simply being "not Steam".

Well you can only do the smart thing, and then it is up to users after that. Some will be unhappy no matter what you do.
So my belief is, you err on the smart side, so that at least one thing is always right.

I say that as someone who doesn't like Microsoft or Apple or Mozilla or Adobe or Google or Facebook etc etc second guessing me. I am the user, and I am in charge. If I fuck up, that's my business, not theirs. I don't want them being my nanny.

If people need to learn the hard way, so be it.

You are not really engaging in any way with Galaxy. At the most you are de-selecting a checkbox for it.

My suggestion doesn't really change anything in that regard. That's what currently happens now for those who download the Galaxy stub file for a game.

My suggestion, does not really mean more Galaxy. It does however stop the issue where Galaxy Installers are more up-to-date than Offline Installers.

In all reality, you are downloading the same Offline Installer files as you have been, they only have a quite minuscule difference.

As for my checkbox suggestion. It is nothing to get concerned about. Most software on install requires you to make a decision about this and that. It's par for the course for most computer users.

The checkbox suggestion only works if it's deselected by default, otherwise it's pushing Galaxy and will result in many ending up with unwanted installs. Has before, which is why they changed it to how it is now. Also, if they just include a Galaxy stub in installers, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be the same installers. For that matter, it'll make it entirely pointless to download the same installers through Galaxy, since if Galaxy is used, it's clear it doesn't need to be installed. And it'd still leave the different patching model between the two methods.

If GOG want more new users the first place to start would be to address the many "My friend got a refund for Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam in 4 hours. It's been 6 weeks and I'm still waiting for mine on GOG. Last time I ever buy anything there" comments that was flooding Reddit, Youtube, etc, recently. This comment isn't aimed at you but some seem to have an almost child-like view of the world where the only thing that people want to believe counts is some shiny sparkly launcher and no-one will notice other stuff like customer service somehow going from the best to the worst of all stores in a single year. Trust me, a sour experience counts far more than Yet Another Launcher does.

Many people do buy large HDD's (and +2TB SSD's are getting bigger & cheaper too) precisely to put a lot on at once and have them "on tap". The main point is though it's a false equivalence. The "solution" to GOG offering some weird Galaxy stub isn't to include same stub inside offline installers (and even default to it as you seem to want). It's simply scrapping all stubs altogether and just downloading only one set of proper offline installers. If the issue there is concern over multi-part installers, implementing some simple lightweight download manager inside Galaxy (ultimately a web browser at its core) that will queue up multi-part files will instantly solve this (and there are open-source ones plus browser extensions on the net, ie, the coding work is already done). If you have to download stubs through clients that requires a secondary Galaxy-specific pseudo offline "installer" as an intermediate step just to get a simple .exe you get through a web browser, that's just bad design that needs simplifying, not doubling down on by messing the real installers up.

A checkbox with Galaxy automatically selected as "yes" is preferential treatment.

This is assuming that GOG wants users to choose freely. I do not personally believe that to be the case; I think they want to funnel as many users into Galaxy as possible which includes inadvertent users who otherwise would not pick to use it, via bloatware-like tactics of checkboxes automatically selected to "yes". Others in this topic have already mentioned how GOG promotes Galaxy compared to the offline installers, so to assume in your hypothetical exampl that the box to "not install Galaxy, offline only please" wouldn't be hidden away behind an Advanced Options tab, at the minimum, strikes me as unrealistic given GOG's previous behavior.

Very true, and disappointing. Though I would also say DRM on GOG has increased over the last few years too (despite the marketing); as one example, Cyberpunk "My Rewards" which needlessly requires Galaxy for users to access offline singleplayer content. To say nothing of unambigiously DRMed Epic games being sold through "the new app on the optional GOG Galaxy 2.0 client" (or whatever the phrasing is).

Well it's probably a good idea then to not further force it on people who equally don't want it via offline installers that default to going online to getting Galaxy unless you manually untick a checkbox each time. ;-)

They have never tried what I suggest, and I already said bad luck for people who can't use their brain for that single moment. How they are still breathing beats me. Life is always full of choices. Don't make the wrong one or you are stuffed.

You cannot please everybody, so what you focus on, what GOG should be focused on, is doing the right thing. If some are unhappy with that, too bad.

I have already explained this. There is no logic to what you are suggesting.

I gave the examples of current installers. They are mostly 99% the same content once installed, and if what paladin181 says is true across the board, they are more like 99.9% the same.

When an update to a game occurs, it would in 99.9% of cases be for one of two things - (1) The game itself, so for everyone. Or (2) Some aspect related to Galaxy, so only for Galaxy users. That .1% exception, would be for bonus stuff like No Man Sky so badly provided, which we don't want.

It makes great sense for GOG to not waste time doing (1) twice, especially as we have been suffering the problem of that for a few months now. That will never go away while they have two different types of installers, separate files. It will always be subject to GOG's ability to cope with their workload etc.

I don't want it to be selected by default, I was just being realistic about what GOG and Galaxy users (the greater number) would want.

It's an extremely small price to pay for not having Offline Installers fall behind. And in the general scheme of software, it is a negligible issue.

Only people who are pedantic to a fault would be bothered about it.
I dislike Galaxy very much, but having to deselect one checkbox once every few days or a week or longer doesn't bother me at all.

And like anything, once you get used to doing so, it will be second nature.

The probable gains far outweigh the insignificant issue.

Adding that stub based code, is likely to add less than a few hundred kilobytes to the installer, perhaps under 100 Kilobytes, and it would only be to the EXE file, the BIN files wouldn't have it at all. It is simply not an issue even worth considering when it comes to file size.

I am far more concerned with all the unnecessary language files that are often included in games, that can take up a huge amount of space. They really should be a separate download ... maybe a small BIN file etc.

This, ideally any Windows/Mac/Linux specific data should be in their respective tiny installers and any shared data would be in the bin files.

Honestly I'm struggling to understand why you think having offline installers that have a tickbox that downloads Galaxy instead of installing its own included content has anything to do with keeping a game updated:-

1. Developer sends game to GOG. It will usually be compiled based on GOG's guidelines for Galaxy integration (ie, it will come with galaxy.dll files as the achievements are done by devs not GOG).

2. GOG "installs" that game onto their test-bed then incorporates GOG stuff like EULA.txt, custom made GOG icon, any "internal" registry entries (required by the game itself) GOG's own "external" registry entries (used by Galaxy but not the game and usually stored under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\GOG.com\Games subkeys, eg, GameID / ProductID for Galaxy "recognising" them) as part of the installation script.

3. GOG has a pre-made InnoSetup template that will take that same game install folder, custom icon, registry entries, etc, metadata above and just compile a self extracting installer. This can be automated fairly easily, as all that changes each time is the source folder, default destination folder (usually same as game name), icon, .exe name that the shortcut link points to, registry keys, etc.

Only one .exe "proper" offline installer is needed, "stubs" certainly aren't needed anywhere, not for downloading the game or Galaxy. I simply cannot see how forcing "Please use Galaxy" advertising stubs inside offline installers will make those offline installers update quicker when whether you can download Galaxy via a link in an offline installer has nothing to do with how InnoSetup based offline installers are created. Exactly how do you think it works?