SERIOUSLY ?

that game is released here ?
after all the crap that their devs spokeperson once dropped on gog customers in an interview ?
despite all the online drm stuff and such ?

ok, i'm done with this hyppocrisy now... gog clearly (mis)takes us for dumb retards instead of adult customers !

now to get back on the galaxy topic:
i realise i will have to activate/apply the harshest setting of my IS, the one i usually turn on when obviously dealing with suspicious and potentialy infected or very user-unfriendly, adware/bloarware/virus loaded applications... when i'l have to deal with a DRM-free offline installer from a store i shop in since ages

if you had told me, when i joined gog on 2008, that i would have to treat the games installers here as the least scrook trojan suspicious threat appication like virus, by using IS with exe sandboxing, outgoing traffic firewalled shutdown and such... i ould have laughed at you in disbelief !

but.. it seems it is true now

I've already decided against buying any of the games on sale this week that I was planning to get gift keys of for future giveaways, and I'm seriously reconsidering buying anything more from GOG from now on as a result of the decision to bundle Galaxy with installers :/

I've been a member here for about 8 years. GOG have made many missteps in that time but in the past they've always listened to the customer base and made things right. But this change feels like GOG just doesn't care any more, being outright disrespectful towards us with both this change and their insulting excuses for it, wasting our bandwidth and disk space and using scumware tactics in an attempt to force something on us that many of us do not want.

There have been many alternatives suggested, from modifying the site design to having the installers use a small stub installer (without "install Galaxy" being the default option) or offer a link to the Galaxy download page instead, but despite our concerns it looks like GOG still intend to go forth with this.

With all the little "breakages" on the site, games starting to become at least partially crippled if used without Galaxy now (and that's not counting online/multiplayer features), and now such disrespectful moves such as this being made, Galaxy is increasingly becoming less & less optional as time goes on :/

I'm very disappointed in you, GOG.

And before Galaxy the multiplayer feature was simply disabled/removed for those games.

Again, before Galaxy you either had the old patch version downloaded and you could "rollback" yourself by installing a previous version and then the patches you wanted or if it was a game where the installer was updated and if you didn't download the previous version you were out of luck.

Before Galaxy there wasn't any InDev titles, and patch release for newer releases were few and far between. You can still go back to the way things were before Galaxy simply by waiting for the game to be released and fully patched before buying it.

Everybody who has been on Gog for sometime knows that breaking half the existing features with a new upgrade of the site/forum software is one of Gog specialties, Galaxy or not, nothing really new here.

The only valid complaint of the whole list, at least for the bloat part, but then again before Galaxy you also had Foxit PDF reader, VC runtimes and other third parties application that were bundled into the installers and some of them were also in "opt out" mode like Foxit reader.

Well you can still play GoG games without Galaxy exactly the same way you were able to play them before Galaxy existed (which mean for some being unable to play multiplayer, having to handle rollback yourself, not having InDev games, etc...); don't know what dictionary you are using but it still definitely fits the definition.

and for games which had multiplayer feature working completely fine without galaxy BEFORe,they removed the feature in order to make it "galaxy-only" compliant

already saw one game like that, and i have a coupld other in mind i now fear for !

Which one ?

There are plenty of "Galaxy" games that have multiplayer features working without Galaxy, Original Sin, Val Helsing, etc...

it's Grim Dawn

but gladfully, this is also one of the very very few game of the past years that ALSO do have a REAL multiplayer LAN mode. so, if you can read between the lines, LAN mode can easily be turned into online MP mode too (but, preferably, only with trusted friends/players, i'd say) And the game is awesome as single player, and honestly, it is mainly a single player game with mp possibilities, instead of the opposite.

two other games that did have online mp feature without the whole mandatory galaxy crap are Titan quest (mostly same devs than grimdawn, as it is GD ancestor, strictly speaking) and windward (that was clearly designed for mp gaming mostly from the very start, with dedicated servers and such)

i now FEAR for those two to soon get eheaded by galaxy multiplayer mode axe !definitly those are the kind of games i am glad i kept EVERY single installers and patches offline, because i'd certainly wouldnt trust any update to them from now on
well, and then we can expect this to soon change and be "corrected"/rectified" or adressed as a severe issue (what ?multiplayer without galaxy ? quick, we need to fix this game !)

i wouldnt bet those games (original sin, van helsing, etc) to not soon get an update which changelog would say "added gog galaxy compliance and multiplayer support" (in wich "adding galaxy multiplayer mode" would also mean "removed non galaxy multiplayer abilitis" as well)

call me paranoid, but that is the kind of behavior i can safely expect from GOG now

The customer friendly - something GOG praised itself on in the past - way to do that is to produce a program people WANT to use, and want to install. Rather than bundling it by default.

GOG isn't just trying to promote Galaxy, they are investing money to actively attempt to increase install base. That extra 150 MB is a nuissance for people downloading - but it is actual costs for GOG. Each download costs them money in server space and download bandwith. And all else withstanding that is another spot on why this is a business decision. There's a reason they are willing to eat those costs - and that frankly doesn't square well with Galaxy will remain optional stance.

Grim Dawn had tons of issues with it's multiplayer implementation, be it on Gog or on Steam, I had to play the game using Hamachi and the LAN options (but from what I heard Crate broke the LAN feature in the recent updates) because even using Galaxy it often disconnected / lag.

Are you sure they actually "removed" anything and that it's not simply buggy / not working ?

Wow, I'm glad I have the older version of the GD installer still! The bugfixes looked good but I'm not going to update.

Here's another thing for you to think about, GOG: When you force something like this on people it's going to create a bad first impression & associations with other kinds of unwanted software, driving more people away from it.

Well, they do include a version of the game as well that can be played off-line when you purchase the game, so I don't know if I'd say it's not playable off-line. We're getting into pretty grey territory now though, because if all you're interested in is single player, you end up buying a version you don't want included. No big deal, until this practice becomes commonplace and the price goes up because you're getting two versions with the purchase (similar to what happened with the Infinity Engine games).

as i told you, for random/strangers mp mode online, yes, it's sad

now if you have a bunch of irl / online trustee friends ? no problem, lan mode works perfectly with personal vpn you can set up right out of windows in a few clicks of a wizard setup... so...
i am not sure 100% but i think i recall having a galaxy.dll missing error alert when i tried the built in mp browser since i updated from 1.0.0.4 to 1.0.0.9 yes

could doucle check though

strange enough, i played online titan quest anniversary a couple of month ago without problem :)

People who pirated the game won't see it anyway. Pirates already distribute repacks. I'd post a screenshot but I'm wary of the TOS. Everything this is going to accomplish with respect to piracy is (1) giving release groups an incentive to repack the GOG version for scene cred (because it's kinda lame putting "cracked by XxXDarkLord666XxX" into a DRM-free installer) and (2) giving people less reason to buy a superior copy (because it's no longer superior). And potential pirates who can be enticed by achievements and shit will have bought the game on a platform where achievements and shit matter way more (*cough* you know where *cough*).

Well, GOG does, it seems, they desperately want to be Steam.