Quite easily. You simply create an installer with the bulk of game assets but minus the game's .exe and make that available 3 days before launch. Then you release the .exe on launch day in the form of a very small minor patch. There's your pre-load capable offline installers. No different to how Galaxy does it...

Ok, so withholding one part of the archive is bad, but the same files distributed by Galaxy can't possibly be leaked?

Go put your programmer socks in the laundry.

Have fun making the masses aware of that in a day and age of rampant cancel culture.

We could also go over the option of password protecting the installer and encrypting the containers, which is also not as secure as it sounds and just needs a little bit of dedication to get past. Especially given that it is unfeasible to encrypt it via OTP.

Or the means of chainloading a launchday bin to the tail end of the container archives which has to be manually downloaded at streetday and we end up at the outcry scenario from point 1.

Are there means to enable it? Yes.
Are those means possible with their toolchain? Probably.
Are they in any way consumerfriendly? Hell no.

And I doubt that CDP is going to start toying around with their toolchain to that effect for a 3 days gain and risk likely their biggest release in company history, and arguably one of the most anticipated games in the past 5-6 years.

I don't own either of these games on GOG therefor can't compare or look at what actually is inside of the installers :/

Galaxy automatically deploys updates to games was my comparison, as to: With Offline Installers having to make customers aware of it, notify customers of the patch and having no control over people actually downloading the patch.

I don't see why CP2077 shouldn't be included on that list considering that GOG themselves were/are insisting that "GOG" and "GOG Galaxy" are two separate entities in order to excuse the sale of DRM'ed EGS games via Galaxy. If you're a Galaxy customer you get the full experience, but if you're only a GOG customer? Either become a Galaxy customer or put up with second-class status.
The DRM concerns relate to extra content that is only offered if you activate it online via Galaxy: https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/goodies As for the complaints about lack of pre-loading for non-Galaxy users, GOG used to do this for offline installers for their previous games:

https://www.gog.com/news/purchase_and_pre_download_the_witcher_2_assassins_of_kings_digital_premium_only
https://www.gog.com/news/preload_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_now

The pre-load installers provided the bulk of the game files but excluded the game binaries. At launch, "patches" were released to add the missing files to allow the games to be played.

Of course you can control the patch by simply releasing it 3 days later than the pre-load file. This is literally how Galaxy / Steam preload stuff, they just "hide it better" behind the scenes. It's not only entirely doable for GOG to achieve with offline installers, if you read adamhm's post above and you'll see GOG already has done it with previous Witcher Games : "Of course, you can also preload manually by downloading the available files off your shelf on the website."

You can try to make that argument in the second-class thread if you want to.

Ahem, I don't want to be controlled. I want to choose WHEN and HOW to update MY game that I PAID full retail price for. We keep on forgetting who is the customer and who is the supplier. The key advantage of GOG (maybe you don't see this as an advantage and want a "press single button" experience) is that it puts control in your hands in installation and subsequent management process. If you are using the offline installers that is.

Now perhaps you are in the opposite camp and want the most simplified and behind the scenes process for installation and patching - in this case perhaps Steam is a better option for you? They genuinely care about this, to the degree that you cannot start a game unless you patched it, so you spend the hour you set aside for playing waiting for the quick 8-12GB patch to come through.

I would suggest that you read the Baldurs Gate 3 threads where people using Galaxy (hehehe) had to download 62GB of data (which is the entire game) quite a few times as 5-6GB patches were rolled in and out. For some reason on GOG it did not quite work.

Because creating game files with an offline installer and providing keys that allow the installation of DLC or other keys that don't allow it is totally impossible???
Or do you mean that someone could actually use a computer OFFLINE to look for the DLC content, decrypt it and install it anyway by some convoluted way? Yeah, this scenario seems completely reasonable.

The price yesterday was $34 and today is $38... I wonder tomorrow...

gog.com updates its price matrix for converting between currencies a couple of times a year, usually right ahead of major sales. An update just happened today. The price in your local currency should be stable again for a couple of months from now on.

How is it that people have been able to play it since YESTERDAY the 7th of December, Yet the rest of us still have to wait?

Aww Look who rears it's head up here, Dunno how it's still alive?

I remember you, Disgusting individual.

Easy. Just turn the clock forward and play the dream...

Yeah Right . JPG