We will never know. They could have used ressources and manpower to improve the website (and implement stuff like Rollback).

Yes, maybe we should debate what "optional" means. Because when you hide basic features that are needed to use the site in a convenient way (like notifications) in Galaxy, it's hardly "optional" any longer.

Have you forgotten we are talking about GOG here? I mean how often did we get changes before Galaxy? We would be lucky if they didn't just make things even more worse than they are now.

The notification thing how blown up into some giant conspiracy theory... ie GOG wants you to use Galaxy. The truth of the matter is far less glamours, they didn't replace anything dealing with the notification and menu in Galaxy and the notifications features isn't exactly using the same system on there as on the site. So there is no reasons it would not work.

Now GOG made a bad choice in messing with the site notifications without a replacement being done or at-least enabling the old ones, but that is a separate matter.... GOG regularly makes bad choices when it comes to stuff like this, even in Galaxy, I assure you it's not all roses over there either.

The DRM-Free version is on Steam as well. It's an executable for offline single player. The always online version single player uses item drops determined by the server so it needs to be online. It's completely integrated into the online version which is why they had to go with a separate executable for offline play.

The item drops are cosmetic only and I guess a status symbol for multiplayer - never saw the appeal personally. The offline version is exactly the same without that pesky nonsense.

I'm hoping this means we'll see Don't Starve Together here. Once again separate executables because the single player version is not at all balanced for multiplayer.

GOG could at least provide separate installers, without GOG Galaxy bundled in, if said installers are downloaded from within Galaxy itself. But they won't, I'm sure.

If I have to use up storage space on MY pc for copies of a program that I have tried and decided I don't want, in any shape or form, then it is not optional. I'm being forced to house a terrible idea that was executed even more terribly, where is the "optional" part of that?

I feel like the relation between GOG and its customers right now looks like this (except that Galaxy is free.. and isn't a monkey :-P).

I don't agree with doing this but if that's the case then nearly every game on GOG has stuff you don't want and that isn't optional... because A) GOG has bundled stuff with installers in the past and B) games themselves come bundled with a butch of unneeded stuff.

Well, actually that was sarcasm. ;)

From the other thread: Johny, it's great that someone is finally replying about this, but honestly: 'not the most optimized solution' is a massive understatement here. Have you actually read any of the comments in this thread, and if so, how are you unaware of the 35+ pages of pure rage that this decision has generated? People with 1,000+ games threatening to quit the site? People who've supported you for nearly 10 years saying that they're ready to give up and go elsewhere? Numerous people (myself included) saying that they will not buy any more games from GOG until these issues are fixed?

Because if you're not, you need to be made aware of it, and your bosses need to be made aware of it - and if anyone cares at all then they need to do something about it now, today, before your new installers go live. Make no mistake, your customers - including many of the ones who already use Galaxy - are absolutely furious about this. They think, quite reasonably, that this is the first step towards making the client mandatory. It's not just the bundling of unnecessary and unwanted Galaxy files with offline installers, it's the pre-ticked checkbox (which non-Galaxy users now have to untick every time they install a game), the disappearance of update notifications from the website - all sorts of things which are suddenly pointing in that direction.

And now you come here and joke about getting rid of installers, and say it would be 'nice' if these things could be fixed. Someday. I'm sure you don't mean to give this impression, but it's honestly the most insulting response to a mass customer revolt that I've ever seen from any company. It's like we don't even exist as far as you're concerned. I was pissed off about the original decision, but the utter indifference of everyone at GOG is just making things a thousand times worse, and I've personally gone from 'annoyed, but willing to give you a chance' to 'just about ready to give up on GOG altogether'.

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2016/04/strategy-en-v2.pdf

Bye bye dreams ;)

They actually explained before how Galaxy updates are working and why it makes it easier to provide features like rollback with it (as opposed to with offline installer).

With Galaxy different version of the installed game is hosted on Gog servers, Galaxy auto-update works by comparing the server version with the locally installed version and downloading the differences. As a result it's very easy to have multiple version in parallel and go from one to another.

With offline installer they would need to create an installer for every intermediate versions versions, possible but a huge amount of work on top of the usual offline installer.

Because again that's the same issue than before, the same reason why before we had one patch while Steam had five or six patches.

When a devs wanted to release a patch on Steam he simple upload it and Steam distributed it directly to its users; with Gog they had to provide a stand alone patch, which then had to be packaged by Gog, tested, etc... it was a lot of extra work for both the devs and Gog.

It was doable for patches that are released every couple of weeks/months but for InDev games that are updated every couple of day it was way too much work for everybody to be possible. Especially for a marketshare that is magnitude smaller than Steam one.

One of Galaxy reason to exists was to make it easier for Devs and faster for Gog users to have patches without having to wait for the offline installer to be updates or for a patch to be packaged.

Correlation doesn't imply causation, there are plenty of bug/issues with Gog forum/web site that exists for years (broken quotes, etc.. ) that are not yet corrected, it doesn't mean it's Galaxy fault.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/why_the_foxit_adwarebloatware
https://www.gog.com/forum/legend_of_grimrock_series/foxit_tried_to_install
https://www.gog.com/forum/guilty_gear_series/foxit_pdf_reader_adware_bloatware
etc...

No, if you read my previous post you would have noticed that I think it is a pretty bad idea.

You need Galaxy for Galaxy specific features (Achievements, cloud save, etc...); if you don't use Galaxy then the games works exactly as they did before Galaxy existed... so yes that's the very definition of "optional".

It looks more like this to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E4xXiqyEb0

That's kind of sad, GOG tries so hard to be Steam it's worrisome.
On that document there's plenty of talk about AAA releases, about Galaxy, big companies, early access, but there's not a single mention of DRM-free, not even in the whole chapter about GOG.com.

But gog is the one that keeps saying galaxy is optional, now they are not giving me an option.
A) Did they ever say that (the stuff in the past) would be optional? No they did not.
B) No one ever told me any of the unneeded stuff that those games came with was optional either.

BK I think you're a good guy and I have no problem with you personally, but by you trying to defend gog's crappy actions you're just enabling them.