True that!

Brief and to the point, exactly what I'm thinking.

No, however it does seem to be placating the steam fanboys somewhat. Next step gog ceg and gog workshop.

I‘m pretty sure you can remove the „possibly“. How should GOG possibly create something that is not totally buggy when they never managed that on their webpage and their forum?

Try to install one of your games on a freshly installed PC without internet then. Games with offline installers are DRM free. All other things are DRM, and no kind of lobbying or cool aid drinking will change that.
To be given a version nobody physically MANAGES their DIGITAL RIGHTS of. Thus giving trust to the consumer he won't abuse that power.
The fact that we having this discussion is proof that half of you are already brainwashed.

GOG told us that the installer of the client is bundled into game standalone installers because people are not tech savvy enough to figure out that they needed to install the client separately from the games to make use of its features.

GOG also told us that the reason for keeping only the latest patch in one's library is because people get confused as to which one(s) they need to download and install.

Yet the client has a roll back feature, that goes back up to five (5) patch versions, and people seem to have no problem finding their way around them.

It'd appear that the use of GOG Galaxy makes people smarter and/or more competent, eh?

Technically this is possible with the downloaded Galaxy copy of a game too. Again, this argument is so silly... you are arguing convenience NOT DRM. I fully concede standalone installers are more convenient but this "it is DRM argument" is so stupid.

I can download a game on PC "A" with Galaxy, copy the game folder, the dependencies folder and copy them to an offline PC "B". Then install the dependencies, and run the game exe from the folder. If the game needs some registry entries that is a little more work but not impossible to do. But the majority should work just by having the game folder. Why can I do this? Because there NO dang difference between the files installed with an standalone installers and files downloaded with Galaxy, therefor neither has DRM. All the installers are doing it taking care of that convenience factor for you buy installing the dependencies and relevant registry entries, etc.

What will be your excuse if GOG adds a backup feature to Galaxy that automates all of this and allows you to re-install your game identically to standalone installers independent of Galaxy? Still going to be arguing it's DRM?

And even if we ignored all of that for sake of argument... Galaxy can't be DRM because you have access to standalone installers directly within Galaxy which you claim are DRM Free. So by that very nature you always have access to DRM Free builds.

If Galaxy is DRM it's doing a really shitty job at it... just sayin.

I wouldn't say that it makes people smarter and/or competent... no. I would say it's better manages it more so than what the website could, and as a result makes more complicated processes more straightforward.

You don't even see rollback patches unless updates are disabled. And even then Galaxy defaults to the latest and newest version, all the versions are clearly labeled with version numbers and how old they are. Galaxy also does all this automatically which can't be said if such a feature existed on the site.

If the user is required to log in to a client and/or website more than one time in order to re-install a game, then that's DRM. Unless I am misunderstanding something, then what you are saying seems to be a non-sequitur, because what you are proposing would not be identical to a standalone installer, seeing as they do not require a second (or third, etc.) logon to use.

And as for the stuff you said about messing with dependencies and manipulating regkeys to make the game work, 99% of end users will have no clue how to do that stuff. That requires a high degree of technical expertise. If a user has to practically reverse engineer the game in order to make the backup copy work, then it's DRM.

You are misunderstanding... what I mean is GOG will possibly add some kind of (hopefully) independent backup feature to Galaxy in the future [that is seperate from the backup (or really download) standalone installer feature]. So you would for example, download your game with Galaxy, run the backup tool which will package all your game files for the selected game. If they do it the right way... this would essentially allow you to copy those backed up files to another PC (such as an offline PC) and run possibly an exe installer, etc (depending on how it is packaged) like you do now with standalone installers. Essentially instead of GOG creating the installer you would create your own via Galaxy's backup tool using the files already downloaded by Galaxy that work pretty much the same way standalone installers do.

GOG has talked about doing something like that already (at-least a far as adding a real backup feature) or even including install scripts where you just copy the game folder and run a script which will set the game up for you (another idea that was floated). So GOG is aware of the need in having a way to re-install games downloaded with Galaxy but without Galaxy being needed for the re-install. This would allow even a strict Galaxy downloaded copy of the game to be fully preservable.

So what I am saying is this is a problem that will likley be solved with time... but this of course is all hypothetical on my part. I was just wondering what his answer would be then if Galaxy had an easy to use solution for putting your files downloaded by Galaxy on a totally offline and Galaxy free PC.

Most games will work just by copying the folder and intalling the dependencies. The dependencies themselves are just exe installers, so that isn't that hard. These are things like Direct X, etc. Galaxy has a folder where it stores all of them, so it's as simple as copying the folder and hitting install on each one. Most computers will probally already have them installed unless it's a fresh copy of Windows.

This is nowhere close to reverse engineering... at all, and if the game really had DRM it would not be possible to do hence why saying Galaxy is DRM is complete nonesence. Just because it's slightly more difficult doesn't make it impossible.

I just for instance took a number of small games I had downloaded with Galaxy and copied their folder to another PC that has never had Galaxy installed. All of them loaded up just fine by simply copying the game folder, that was all that was needed.

So I can zip up those game folders, and either zip the dependencies up too or just grab them from online later when I need them. Either way I have a DRM free copy (without a standalone installer) that will work on any Windows PC I put it on.

But if GOG includes the type of backup solution I am referring to above, then even the non technical person could do this using the files downloaded by Galaxy (not the website standalone installer).

Yeah I have it, and I primarily use it to download games and for listing the GOG games I have installed on my computer. I am aware that it can also offer cloud saves—which I generally like—as well as achievements—which I am vaguely positive to—but neither tend for be available to the games I usually play. Oh, it can also list playtime, which for me tends to be a cause of guilt, so I'm not much fond of that.

I can't say that it taxes my computers resources much, so I often have it on without actually using it.

No, not using it, and don't intend to.

I do that all the time, a lot of my backups are just 7z archives of the game folder now.

And if you happen to use Galaxy on that other computer too you can just import those folders, it'll take care of the dependencies and verify it.

Exactly which is the point I'm trying to get across. Downloading the game via Galaxy or the standalone installer really doesn't matter, you can preserve them either way to be used offline on pretty much any PC you want.

So for someone to call Galaxy DRM is beyound idiotic...

Back-up is already a feature. Go to the game in your library, click more, and backup and goodies.