They've stated that galaxy will be included in every installer of all of those games listed earlier in this thread.
When you go to install the game, you have to do an additional click to cancel it from installing galaxy at the same time as it installs the game.
Yes, it does take up more DL time & storage space, constantly.
As it's part of the installer, you can't remove it.

On the contrary, I think a lot of people like rep... they just don't like that it can be easily abused so they would rather just not have it. :P

Thank you for the prompt reply. So it appears my misunderstanding was that I thought the opt out was at download time, in fact it will be at installation time?

A piece of serious bad news for those with limited download size per month, and of course for space used with every download.

I suppose that's fair, but my point unfortunately still stands. I think they're going to need to see a backlash in sales rather than from just the forum before they do anything.

Calling it now, I predict that GOG is going to keep it, just make the box unticked by default.

Edit:
Y'know, that brings up another point:
What's the benefit in forcing more people to use Galaxy? Assuming this bit of skullduggery succeeds somehow, how does GOG profit? Is this some sort of Machiavellian gimmick whereby they get more publishers to sign on because Galaxy is "popular" or something...?

Re-edit:
And while I'm here, I may as well make another quick quip:
This thread should probably be renamed to "Offline installers with an option to NOT install GOG Galaxy".

1. See my post about pirates above.
2. Some people do miss the obvious stuff, so yea putting it right in front of them may illicit an install.
3. Galaxy is likely the most popular way games are currently downloaded on GOG, based on the stats we do have, so I doubt doing this will give them any huge increase from site users that prefer the old way. Having said that, GOG probably does feel they can get more publishers signed on by giving them a similar experience they are accustomed to with Steam.

Ugh. Triple-facepalm. <dumfounded facial expression>

GOG sure makes it increasingly difficult for those of us who actually like Galaxy to continue to defend some of the choices that GOG is making with regards to the product, that's for sure.

While I believe GOG's intent was always to make the client so good that people will decide for themselves to opt into using it. That language is very specific in that it implies the user is making a conscious choice to decide to use Galaxy, which is how I think it should be, and I do consciously decide to use Galaxy.

When it becomes the case where GOG is making the decision to shove Galaxy at everyone by default at every possible opportunity and make that decision for everyone unilaterally, and make it INCONVENIENT for people to AVOID Galaxy and require them to "opt out" instead, perhaps hundreds of times, then it at a bare minimum gives the consumer the illusion that GOG does not want them to not use Galaxy nor for it to be optional.

If Galaxy is truly optional and that is still GOG's intention, then by all means make it convenient to use, but do not forcibly make a unilateral decision for all users to force Galaxy upon everyone by default. Either make it an option in the installers that people have to OPT IN to in order to get it, or at a BARE MINIMUM make it so the person is presented with a popup dialogue the first time they install ANY one of the affected games that asks if they would prefer to try Galaxy or not, and a checkbox as to whether or not they ever want to see this question asked again during the install of ANY game. The customer's choice should then be stored inside the Windows registry and if they chose "I do not want to install Galaxy ever nor be asked again." then all of the installers check the registry for the existence of this key, and avoid defaulting to installing Galaxy or even asking the user again if they've already clearly told GOG their preference.

If GOG does this as I stated it in the paragraph above, then I would consider it to be the consumer friendly way to do it for all consumers and not just "the majority" while kicking everyone else under the carpet. The other question remains though as to whether the installation of Galaxy includes the entire Galaxy installer and bloats out the size of every single game installation with dozens or hundreds of megabytes of duplicated data that then greatly increases the disk footprint and network download bandwidth of everyone's game backups, or if it includes only a very minimalistic stub installer that is very small in size to the nature of a few hundred kilobytes or few megabytes, which then downloads the full blown installer only when someone actually wants to use it?

It seems that GOG clearly did not fully think this through, and unilaterally decided one approach without even considering it might be a good idea to query the community about it first. Not that GOG should have to run everything they do past the community first, but if they don't include us in the conversation and then unilaterally make a decision that is controversial or is seen as hostile or anti-consumer, then they're going to have to deal with the post-release fallout from that every time they do it.

As it stands I am an enthusiastic user and supporter of GOG Galaxy, but I cannot support GOG's decision on this as it currently exists, and I'm rather disappointed at the approach taken and apparent complete disregard for long term customers regardless of how small of a percentage they make up in the customer base, when there are clearly other options that could have been considered that are easy to do and which would be much more balanced and well received by a wider number of customers including those currently negatively effected.

Thumbs down on this one GOG. Thumbs down.

This better be the case.
The idea that they went this route after actually thinking about it is just too horrifying to comprehend. :P

Are we sure it's not a late April Fools' Day joke? Because that sound like the only reasonable explanation to me.

Right. Because it is so hard to check a box, if you want Galaxy...

*facepalm*

I think if they want to get people to try/use Galaxy, then perhaps a livestream would be in order to show it off.
Because there's already an advertisement on the front page, in the games library, and under your mother's kettle. I think people are aware of it, it just needs some features to make it worthwhile.
What those features are, I wouldn't know.

I already have it, for example, but aside from a place to launch GOG games, what else does it have?

Protip: Cloud saves are useless if you only have one computer.

My guess is that this is pressure from an unscrupulous publisher, like the arseholes at EA, saying something like, "Oh, I know you're interested in X, but we won't let you sell X unless you have n% of users on your client so we can force features none of you users are interested in!"

Edit: I'm guessing someone at GOG's marketing team is losing their job today. The soviet idea of "optional" does not work in the nonsoviet world.

As an avid user of Galaxy this is so incredibly stupid, I just recently said in the weekly sale thread that GOG are pro-consumer but this just reeks of a dubious nature.

All the GOGlins who are constantly vocal in these here forums always unequivocally speak up about their disdain for the Galaxy client, why in thee hell would you sneak it into the installers? That is so damn shady.

I love GOG for being DRM-Free and without a client (I only use it as a means of keeping my games updated, for downloading installers, plus I'm kinda weird and like to know how long I've played a game for) but not even asking users beforehand and forcing this in is a bad move, how could you honestly think this would go down well?

I love you GOG but seriously listen to the vocal users a bit more, please.

I sincerely hope you do a 180 turn on this, it's not a good route, please don't be like Steam.

The funny part is that they could easily push Galaxy with Gwent since the game is probably going to be pretty popular. But instead of just going that route, they decide to take a detour to piss on everyone's lawn for no apparent reason.

As for future game purchases -- after careful consideration I've decided to discontinue them, because I believe you'll be more likely to appreciate my displeasure with this choice than if I were to appeal to your human sensibilities.

Because they (i.e. GOG) are hugely incompetent and do not know about dynamic loading of libraries!

I seriously do not understand why the company tries so hard to become completely irrelevant. Why do they want to become a crappy Steam copy?