A skiddy can modify a project overnight without prior knowledge of a given programming language. Everything is available for them to play with. If no one understands the code, that's their fault, but they still have it and it's under their control. Some people are better at guessing than others, but how many people are able to guess accurately over 50% of the time? Plus, you can tell when a company is doing well or failing based on how they present themselves, what they do, etc. They give themselves away in ways that they themselves don't realize. Feedback gathering is a whole other beast.

I am using Galaxy because it's easier to update games that way. I keep an offline storage of ALL my games, except the ones I refunded.

No. They cannot.
A skiddy will use a tool someone else wrote to mess with a specific program (or suite of programs). A skiddie will not be able to modify a whitespace program, unless he can find a tool to help him do so.
Edit: Unless by modify you mean make a change, not make a specific change. The program may no longer run, but it will have been modified.

Same way someone that owns a car has total control over that car. They may not be able to understand how to modify it, but they can modify it. So anyone can add anything they want to their car.

Some. Not none. Those some would make exceptional analysts.

Yes. A good analyst would also be able to see that. A bad analyst would jump to conclusions too fast.

As is feedback analyzing.

We do seem to have gone way off topic though. We started this discussion between us with a claim that Galaxy is universally hated, and that most gog users are playing without using Galaxy. We continued that we don't have enough data to make an estimate, and we're currently at the "No one can possibly have enough data to make a proper estimate, not even those with all the numbers". Feel free to continue the discussion, and I'll gladly continue answering you, but it might be time to take a step back and read through the discussion again.

Heavy-handed, or clueless? I'd say clueless, because anyone who isn't would have built a site that isn't a nightmare to manage. And they're still pouring money into this albatross, which is truly mind-boggling. o.O

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Honestly, i think gog has good intentions. I don't think gog wants to force galaxy on us, and i don't think gog wants DRM at all. I think gog is willing to compromise, however, in what gog thinks is best for us, even if we don't agree.

I think gog's dealing with internal management issues. It seems the website dev team is constantly working on the next sale, rather than anything else. Is it February? Easter sale in march? Who knows. They seem understaffed. Galaxy devs, what are they working on? Galaxy or the next game? Or have they too been moved to the webdev team?

For seeing so little changes, i would imagine that they're doing something. But, what? I honestly don't think they're lazy or anything, or gog would've hired new ones. I think they're just being diverted to other tasks. I don't think GOG's eye is on the prize, I don't think they're looking at their next long term goal and are settling for short term goals, which slowly ends up being galaxy pushed more and more into us.

I personally never down vote anyone, its good to hear everyone's opinions, but I am curious to know why every single one of your posts in this thread have been down voted, it seem's a little extreme.

GOG finally beat me into submission. They've made it so gogdamn difficult to not use it, so I gave up and installed it.

So far, I don't mind it. It keeps my games updated, lets me stalk my friends, and hasn't broke yet.

Pointless question really. the hipsters in this forum will hate it regardless of how useless it actually is. Though coming to read new comments is nice just as a reminder how open my mind is compared to others.

Yep, useless, precisely. Extra unnecessary ram grabbing.

I'd lay off the mushrooms a bit then.

I fire up Galaxy once, maybe twice a week to comb through my GOG game list and auto update anything that needs updated. I do not generally use it to play my GOG games, since the main reason to use the client is to be in contact with my friends.

Of all the people on my friends list on GOG, one or two talk to me regularly, the rest are just kind of.... there. So yes and no, I run Galaxy to update my installers, and keep it off when I'm just playing my games from GOG.

I've seen people say running the shortcuts of their games opens Galaxy when it's installed on your system - personally, this has never happened to me other than with one or two games out of a great many. It's fixed by launching the shortcut from the game's directory instead of the one that Galaxy pastes to the desktop, in case you have one of the handful of games that still does this.

Different word, same thing. A script kiddie (aka skiddie or skiddy) will use a script someone else made to "hack". They won't make a tool themselves.

Who said it's not legal? You may have to file some paperwork for the changes you do (depending on jurisdiction), but you should be able to modify a car you own just fine. So, what modifications can you do to your car, assuming their legality is met?

I'd say it depends on the stone. A stone used to bash a skull in will certainly have blood on it that a skillful analyst could extract and use to identify the victim for example.
But let's agree to disagree on whether or not GOG has enough data to do a decent analysis of trends.

I'm sorry, do GOG have enough data to see there's an obvious backlash or do they not have enough data to see if there is an obvious backlash? Their actions so far show that either there is enough data to show lack of an obvious backlash or there isn't enough data to show obvious backlash.

You're really not good at math, are you? 100 MLN PLN is roughly 30 MLN USD not 300 thousand.

You're also not good at understanding how a major business is run. GOG has all the numbers they need to make decisions and judge their results. It's called Monthly Active (uniqe) Users.

They know:
- how many people each month buy and download via website
- how many people each month buy and download and play via GOG Galaxy
- how many of the above participate in forums

Than you analize the trends month-to-month. If the sum(website+galaxy) is going up, then it's going well. And if there is a shift from website to galaxy or otherwise it will also be visible. There are also many more business metrics you run you company by.

The feedback from forums, tweeter, facebook and support tickets if just supplemental to tracking basic business metrics.

Also, remember that without galaxy many games wouldn't make it gog at all. They used multiplayer, or other online features from Steam, and devs didn't want to release them without those features on gog.

So thanks to galaxy being optional you can now play those games in single player offline and DRM-Free.

And each sale of those games is a pure profit thanks to galaxy.

Right. Your average script kiddy can't make anything from scratch, but can make changes, especially small ones. They're generally pretty good at injecting a feature into something. Assuming legality is met, anything i have the money to do. If i don't have a tool, i need to buy it. If i don't have the knowledge on how to make or install something, i learn it. They don't have enough to see whose opinion is the majority. They do, however, know that there's backlash. Funny, it was actually mentioned in one of your own posts, last edited october 6th: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/6_community_members_went_to_gog_hq/post1