I'm sort of in the same situation.

Maximum speed used not to be the main issue but the amount of contention (i.e. people who would share the same connection)

I've always paid for internet (in the days of dialup, far far too much at times)

Part of me thinks that discounted internet is the precursor to the non-free internet.

If it's cheap and no limits then that's ok.

The weird slow down downloading had been for a few years. I was able to finish downloading nwn1/nwn2/
toee/dao around 2 years ago, now downloading a 4g game would require 3 days or more.

It's not just galaxy either, the off line download installer is about the same speed.

I'm in Jakarta, Indonesia.

My home internet connection speed is 100Mbps. On average, I get 92-95mbps.

Downloading games through GOG Galaxy, the fastest download speed I've seen is around 17. It would drop to as low as 1.7 Mbps, with an average speed of around...oh, 5.5 Mbps.

It's infuriating as I don't have the same problem with Steam. I like GOG, I really do, but man installing games from these guys are painful.

Why is GOG loading games so slowly? In Steam, Epic, Battle.net or Uplay my games are downloaded at a speed corresponding to the maximum from the provider, 40MB/s. In GOG, the maximum is 15MB/s. I've been downloading cyberpunk for 2 hours. Seriously? Games of this volume are downloaded in 20 minutes in other launchers.

It is a server issue, where GOG is economizing, either with their own bargain-basement server, or farming out their downloads to a theird-party server service, again at bargain-basement prices. The other main platform we use is Epic, and their server is more robust, giving us far faster, quicker dowloads. Now that GOG is trying to treat us as an EU resident, think VAT, that we refuse to be ripped off for, the only downloads we deal with are updates. GOG can kiss our future business Sayonara, as a resuly of being desperate, greedy, and shortsighted. "Stupid is as stupid does." ~ Forrest Gump

Its a joke. Today - Cyberpunk update (about 80 Gb) - GOG speed - 5-10Mb/s, it takes 3h in XXI century! :DDD LOL
And look this, the same computer - XBox - download speed 250 Mb/s. Normally on the Steam I have 60-80 Mb/s, the same Epic (not less thean 40 Mb/s as well but not 5-10Mb/s.

They thinking about Witcher 4.... but it will be the new issue like it was with CP77 - SPEED like in 1999 :D.

This is the reason why Im not buying on GOG.

That's very interesting, and is just further support for what I have been saying ... there is a deliberate element.

If one can change their download speed a lot by simply pretending to be from another country, what does that indicate?

Surely at the very least, it indicates some limiting is going on. And it also means a deliberate route is being enforced to do that limiting.

While I can agree it isn't good to get such a speed from your type of connection, there can be factors that make the situation different when compared to Steam or Epic etc. Factors based on where you live and the route the downloading takes.

And 5 to 10 Megabytes a second is still a decent speed. Many dream of getting that much. I myself can only get about 7 Megabytes a second at most, and only by using a multiple stream downloader.

You could try such a program yourself. Free Download Manager 5 is the one I use.

Without FDM5 my speed for a single thread, is at best 1.4 Megabytes a second. It used to be 5 Megabytes a second.

GOG had a CDN crash in mid 2023, and since then, many of us have continued to experience very slow download speeds.

5 Megabytes a second used to be the top speed for my ISP connection, but several months ago I paid a bit more to double that. That made no change to my download speed from GOG. So definitely some limiting going on, and not based on percentage.

If GOG don't restore our speeds soon, I am going to have to start prophesying their demise ... which only stands to reason. If things don't start to improve soon, I think they will only have a few years left at best.

P.S. If I'd only just come to GOG now as a customer, I wouldn't be any longer. My first download and its speed would have ensured that ... DRM-Free or not. They are lucky I only hang in here due to the size of my library (investment) and because I am sufficiently cluey enough to improve my download speed.

That doesn't make any sense. If it was deliberate, wouldn't they simply limit in all the download servers, regardless of from where you connect? Why make it that complicated that it would affect you only if you download from your nearest server?

Also, in my case I do get ok download speeds (20-34 MBytes/sec even with one file) from my nearest download server which is in the same country as me (quite close to me in fact). So if they are slowing down the download speeds to those who connect from nearby or the same country, why isn't it affecting me as well?

It would also sound quite odd that GOG would deliberately slow the downloads down (on some servers, mind you; not all, like my nearest server) so much that it takes 14 hours to download a 600MB file. You really think that is deliberate from GOG? That is about as likely as they would prevent all downloads altogether.

To me it sounds much more convincing that different download servers just behave differently, regardless of where you connect to them. Some may be overloaded, some clearly seem to have some hard limit per file/thread download (e.g. 5 MBytes/sec per file, and it multiplies if you download several files at the same time), etc.

That was my point with the thread about mapping the GOG Fastly servers (by asking other GOG users to which servers they connect when downloading GOG games with a browser) and then test how fast they are, but that thread kinda fizzled as I didn't get much of any input there. Only a handful of servers are known.

What may be "deliberate" is that GOG is not eager to pay the CDN providers more to offer better download speeds, if that is what they are demanding: "Sure, we can offer you a faster plan with more servers around the world, but it will cost you extra.". We can only guess what kind of deal and agreement they have.

GOG (or rather their CDN provider Fastly) are indeed slowing down downloads deliberatly.

But you've got it the wrong way around. They aren't slowing you down when you connect to the nearest server but when you are NOT connecting to the neearest server. So basically, if your DNS server gives you the correct IP for the nearest Fastly server you've got luck, if not you get fcked.

And Australians seem to get fcked quite often because they usually get IPs from Fastly servers in the US.

I have summarized my findings on that topic in a different thread. See here.

That is possible, but for some reason I couldn't replicate that when I used the hosts file to download from e.g. the same US server that OldFatGuy normally downloads from. I didn't get that slow speeds like 200kB/s, but around the same 4MB/sec per file that OFG reported getting (my understanding was he lives in the same US state as that server, so it is his closest and local server).

So if there is that kind of "we will give you 200kB/s if you download from a foreign IP-address", it doesn't seem to be universal on all Fastly servers. Which is why I suggested different servers may be configured and act differently.

I am unsure why Fastly would even make such a scheme deliberately. If they don't want people to download from foreign IP addresses, they could even block such downloads.

I still think, rather than deliberate, it may be some kind of configuration issue, possibly to achieve something different that goes awry in different situations. Network configurations can be quite tricky, I myself saw not long ago how a corporate customer was complaining that from one of their servers he could upload a very big file to an external internet IP-address within minutes, while from another server (in a different subnet, but the same country) it would take 7 hours.

Later it turned out to be some very weird routing from the other server/subnet, and as a quick dirty solution a permanent route from that server to the external IP-address was created, but to really fix the issue, a bigger networking change would be needed (the network guy who explained the issue to me... I got lost in his explanation halfway through).

I think you are over simplifying what I mean by deliberate.

The root cause is likely the CDN, but it was GOG's choice to change to that CDN.

So the CDN is likely deliberately slowing my download speed, and GOG are letting them.

I have tried many different servers via my Hosts file, and most give me a worse speed, none give a better one.

The fact that someone can change their seeming location via VPN and not get a limited download speed, speaks volumes.

Why GOG are doing it, who knows really. But you and I have both speculated it could be due to finances. It could also be targeting those who don't use Galaxy (or don't use a similar multi-thread program).

We still don't have any clarity on what happened with the CDN crash in mid 2023, and what was changed afterward that has kept impacting many of us with a slow download speed.

And while you appear to mostly focus on those of us in AUS with this issue, plenty of other folks around the world, even in parts of America, not far from servers where other folks get good speeds, are also being impacted.

There has to be a logical reason for it. I am guessing it is deliberate for some reason, due to something.

I've always downloaded from GOG in the past using a single thread, and I got what I expected based on my ISP bandwidth (approx. 5 Megabytes a second). Since that CDN crash, it has been limited to almost a fifth of that speed (1.3 Megabytes a second).

It's definitely not due to something I did, and I even doubled my ISP bandwidth about 6 months ago, with no benefit to my GOG download speeds, no change at all. That's says it is a specific speed limit, not percentage based. So it is without a doubt, deliberate ... for reasons unknown at this stage. The only fluctuation is between that slow speed and even slower, sometimes much slower.

I have the same issue. Trying to download 126GB for BG3 and the speed sits between 2 and 6 mb/s. This is ridiculous.

Changing the country via VPN doesn't change anything for me

Did not try VPN here nor can i try via Galaxy as i have the Game currently installed myself but ya apparently there seems to be some throttling of the CDN.
Tried a single BG3 file Offline Download which downloaded at ~7MB/s (out of 15 MB/s possible).
Adding a second file throttled both files to ~3 MB/s each and my ISP usually has excellent routing to GOG CDN (like literally 9 out of 10 times i checked download speeds reading a post like yours i always got my full bandwidth).
So ya seems to be a pretty disappointing CDN bottleneck currently happening - good luck on getting the game at least with the 6 MB/s and its a great game.


EDIT:
Meanwhile actually updated Songs of Conquest via Galaxy - this executed at 15 MB/s.
So might be game related to BG3 as well (like high demand on the files and CDN throttling it)