Sometimes ago, at least for the bigger ones, Gog installers were basically just renamed RAR files with just a small EXE to decompress/install them.

IF it's still the case then making a "unofficial" tool that remove the Galaxy files from the installers should be quite easy to do.

If that's this easy, there could even be an unofficial tool then, made by the community.

It wouldn't solve the bitterness around GOG's intentions and policies, but it would still be good news.

Although I strongly dislike client-ware, I have nothing against it if its optional as in "optional", because the reason I buy games on GOG and since ages have no torrent client running or installed - and also do not purchase from Steam, is due to GOG's adherence to its mission - the fairness towards its customers and request for payback with fairness. I have nothing against Galaxy itself and its users if it keeps this way.

However recently Galaxy became more and more "premium" features, which are making it exclusive whilst not being hard to implement via HTML/network API (which gogrepo/lgogdownloader etc use) - like downloads of previous versions/rollbacks or availability of betas - which are on GOG fileserver, but made accessible only via Galaxy. You know that on Steam - the client is required for most actions, one can't communicate or purchase games on the website, and yet Steam client is nothing more than a network API+browser library+package manager with DRM.

While Galaxy refuses DRM, it has slowly accumulated everything else so far that Steam client has. I don't think that my phobia on Galaxy becoming "optional" on the paper is irrational. If the non-Galaxy customer area would be maintained as good as area within Galaxy, that doubt would not exist. But its not maintained, people have to use third party browser extensions, scripts and search engines to get it full experience. And recently Galaxy is planned to become an opt-in embedded payload. A windows binary that has Galaxy embedded and running within Wine is a very strange way to provide GOG Galaxy for Linux... It feels like GOG is slowly becoming a thumbed-down version of Steam.

You have been providing Galaxy links and ads within GOG installers since ages, doesn't it actually suffice?
I wasn't actually joking about the issue... but that, instead of cold corporate response, I see you making fun of my doubts, Johny. - and it makes me happy. I hope I am wrong. I hope this very much.

Miljac +1

What I'm concerned about is will Galaxy stay optional? Five years ago we all would've laughed if someone mentioned gog having a client, now they're trying to cram it down our throats. How long until "Good News everybody you don't need to download those complicated offline installers anymore because we're getting rid of them so you can have the convenience of having Galaxy download and install your games for you."?

Well first it was removed after a couple of day. (and IIRC the password was a hash of the game ID or something like that)

second, it was an uninstall bug of the close beta version, but that was corrected by removing a key in the registry or by reinstalling the latest version of Galaxy and uninstalling it again and it impacted two or three games that detected by error Galaxy even thought it wasn't present.

I know that at least some of the installers still have password-protected archives... GOG just stopped doing it for newer installers

Probably those who never updated since they stopped using password; but even for those the "algorithm" to obtain the password was posted on the thread; also the Galaxy removal tool would only be needed for new installers and not for old ones. (Granted they are still using the RAR format for their installer which I don't know)

2/3 of my GOG library are games I have bought more for collection purposes than for actual playing purposes. I didn't feel too bad about it.
But I'm certainly not going to support a company that tries to smuggle bloatware onto my computer. I might still grudgingly buy a game or two I absolutely want per year (not having a Steam account). Then I'll have to act as I just download some crappy freeware that tries to install three browser toolbars onto my system.
But I certainly won't spend as freely as I did in the past, leading to a 300+ game collection.

Only happy customers are impulse buyers, but if GOG doesn't understand this after all these years, they never will.

Also my question about "why catching tech-challenged galaxy users at install level instead of download level" has not been answered.

I still don't see any benefit to it, compared to the other option which would not have triggered this outrage, and would not have required to tweak and bloat all the installer exes.

Well, no benefit apart from fishing amongst the pirates (the only ones who'd skip the website's download button).

So, still asking. Why this choice, between the two ways of achieving the same (explicit) goal ?

Ok, maybe because I was typing or maybe because I was using a small smartphone, I hadn't seen the post and link above mine.

I'm still not convinced that the same streamlined steps (as the installer's galaxy option) couldn't be implemented on the website's own download query, but this point is now moot. Destro claims that "classic installers" will remain available somewhere on the website, which, as far as I'm concerned, completely solves the whole issue.

Thank you.

I posted this in the other thread in reply to Destro's post, but I'll post it here as well: Wouldn't something like this be a lot better as well as a lot less work to implement?