Fortunately, GOG uses Innosetup which is free software, and there are 3rd party free utilities that can be used to decompose the GOG installers, modify the contents and repackage them up as custom installer packages. If Galaxy is forced on everyone via the standalone installers, it wont be a huge surprise when GOG installer modifications start to show up here in the forums in the near future.

I'm just saying.

What about new users wanting to turn that shit off? "Help, my game installed some kind of bloatware/malware called galaxy? Why?"

I use Galaxy. I like it. But this is total bullshit and you (not fables22 but GOG as a whole) know it. All pretense of listening to any of your customers is gone. Broken website that you partially fix only by breaking working features, implementing shit that a small group of people asked for, but not things that are complained about daily here, pushing a garbage client for two years that wasn't fit for human consumption, and slowly marching toward "well, it's very unobtrusive DRM, like Steam" ....

Just no. I've invested well over $2000 here. I like the atmosphere that you seem to be so desperate to destroy in favor of God knows what.

I'm close to done with this site. At least Steam and VALVe are upfront about their shit and don't pretend to give a damn about what the majority of their customers think. Or at least don't pretend to care what the vocal minority thinks. Either way, they serve up a good site that is competent and well designed, and many good games (among multitudes of absolute pure grade shit) as well as customer service that at least responds even when they can't help instead of passing it to the tech experts that promptly close your support ticket without so much as a message.

I really am about finished here. You can only piss on my leg so long before I realize it's not raining. Don't push away your customers who are generally intelligent in favor of morons who may or may not have the disposable income to buy your games, but will be smart enough to torrent them when they want one they can't afford. /rant

Exactly.

Actually, having Galaxy as an option at the download page is a far better ide-- WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S ALREADY PLASTERED OVER THE DOWNLOAD PAGE??? WTF is this even necessary for then? Do you think that your users are so fucking stupid that they can't see the "TRY GOG GALAXY" and download it if they want?! Dafuq man?!

Don't have the time to dig through the whole thread but I wonder: how has GOG handled merging XP compatible game (let's say Witcher) with non-XP compatible Galaxy. I assume that game installs first and then it fails to install Galaxy and that's about it?

Back in the day I remember GOG installers offered to install Foxit Reader. After some time GOG gave up on this and I think it was a good move...Why they dig out this idea is beyond me...

Obviously they want to push everyone into using Galaxy as a first step to phase out the offline installers.

Or they are stupid.

I too would like an answer to this. It is quite possible for someone like me on XP (I know I know, but I have my reasons...) to miss the opt out and try to install the whole damn thing. What happens to my installer, game, PC, life?

That's my suspicion as well, and of course it would never be admitted publicly.

The way it's being done is still Adobe-grade obnoxious stupidity, though. There are basically two kinds of customer: those who don't want to install Galaxy, and those who don't want to install Galaxy more than once per machine. This approach is bad for both.

Wondering if the staff is all back at the office right now thinking, "Just a few people upset. I'm sure everyone else is thrilled."

Makes total sense. Kind of reminds me of when I had a friend whose kid was potty training and I helped by bolting the kid's legs to the toilet. Sure, the blood and crying and litigation had me questioning whether it was really the best course of action, but what was the alternative? Teaching the kid how to use the thing and leaving it to them to become comfortable with it over time? Hippie poppycock!

Point being, this is surely the most elegant solution to newbie confusion, and not at all overkill destined to haunt the company for years to come. The people behind the scenes here are on a roll! Possibly in the Sisyphean sense.

Can't agree more.
I'll even go as far as say that this official narrative doesn't have a hint of good faith.
'Why ask someone to chose what they want when we can first and foremost trick them into opting for what we want ?"
- The Good Old Guess

Oh what a lovely decision.....(and I thought GOG was in favour of unbundling...oh well)

It's a job well done if you manage to snub even those even those who have a positive attitude towards Galaxy. Even if we keep in mind that the forum only is a minority of the GOG customers. At leat you told us in advance....

I actually see only kind of games where this would make somewhat sense. Games who need Galaxy for multiplayer. However the implementation you're planning is less than stellar to say the least.

First of all OPT-OUT is never a good idea and should never come into question no matter how many other companies are doing it. It always feels shady and malware-y and it can lead most likely will lead to unwanted results regardless of the original intention.

In this case someone could end up with a broken Galaxy install if they inadvertently miss to OPT-OUT because of installing an older version of Galaxy over a newer one (I return to that below).

What exactly makes OPT-IN harder? It's not like Galaxy is hidden here anywhere - if someone misses to tick a checkbox - so what? They can easily download it here - there is a button for it on every gamepage and in multiple locations elsewhere on the website. No harm is done that way - other way round and the results are very different. Getting rid of unwanted software is annoying.

The whole notion of bundling Galaxy with the offline installers just feels like an unnecessary amount of additional work because you'd have to make sure that you'll keep the Galaxy version bundled up-to-date with the unbundled one otherwise the aforementioned problems can happen. Good luck with that - there are already delays in keeping the offline installers in line with the Galaxy without Galaxy on top of it which is frankly not reassuring.

I agree with others here that many who download the offline installers instead of downloading games directly via Galaxy do that for a reason - these people might still use Galaxy too but it's entirely their free decision to do so. Sneaking Galaxy into the offline installers feels like a low blow - I don't mind Galaxy. I don't use it to intially download my games but I like the convenience of having them patched that way (plus it's usually the way to go to have the most up-to-date versions) - but I very much dislike the basic idea of having Galaxy shoved into the installer just because you think inexperienced users are not able to get Galaxy otherwise.

One last thing. Why on earth should Galaxy be bundled in a backup installer I might download through an existing Galaxy install - that's beyond me.

Well, GOG are in the business of nostalgia. I'm sure somebody misses those 'Do you want to install Gamespy?' prompts that were plastered all over the installation process of games from the early 2000s.

Now find that person and shoot him.

Awful decision. I hope that GOG will reconsider this move. Didn't we already have enough Good News™?