We would probably all wake up to tomorrow with all of our games missing from our accounts and then learn GOG "forgot to do daily backups". :P

Ah but at least they wouldn't have Galaxy in them then! ;)

I think this is what the vast majority of us want, and if they did this, the whole shitstorm would probably die off immediately. Why they've decided to go for the opt-in as default is... disturbing in its implications.

I disagree, on both points. Some people just want to complain. They don't care what's actually going on or why as long as they can rant about it and assume some kind of ridiculous moral superiority. Whatever Gog do there will be a shitstorm.

I also don't think there is any implication in having opt in as default. It is very literally appealing to the lowest common denominator, the people who will install things without reading anything the installer says and ticking or unticking any boxes. I don't think it's strictly necessary but I can see why they would do it.

Here's an example. I sell pizza for a living. I have a van, with the word Pizza literally written all over it. There are at least two separate menus listing the pizzas we sell. We get asked at least once a week what we sell. We get asked at least once a week whether we sell chips. I always refrain from screaming at them that if we sold chips it would be on the f*cking menu. I wish I didn't have to.

People are stupid. Just because the people who use this forum are by and large tech savy computer nerds doesn't mean that we are at all representative of Gog's customer base any more.
Gog are doing what they need to do to sell more games, which is make the process of getting what you want as easy as possible for as many people as possible.

On the other hand...you could probably make a killing if you started selling chips.

That isn't the case here, though. Look at the number of people complaining, and the fact that almost nobody is defending it - people are more or less unanimously against this. It's not just opt-out; it's opt-out every time you use one of the new installers, and there's no opt-out of actually downloading the Galaxy installer unless you opt-out of using GOG altogether because it's going to be bundled with the game installer. Which means wasted bandwidth and wasted disk space.

There are better ways that GOG can do this, ways that respect all of their users and don't unnecessarily inconvenience them, but it's looking like GOG doesn't care.

I can't talk about everyone, but personally, I would be OK with that. All I want from GOG are clean offline installers, all the rest is fluff. Sometimes welcome fluff, sometimes unwanted fluff, but it's all irrelevant so long as my installers stay safe on my atomic bunker's HD. If you put region locks or regional pricing, I may have trouble buying the game; but once I do buy it I have my offline installer and I'm good. If the direct downloads were hidden were the downloader's are now, I'm still fine, because once I do download the installers I'm ok. But now that they start fucking with the installers themselves, they've touched my bottom line.

Well, yes, as you can see this happen every time GOG announces something new or even when they announce the release of a new game. There will always be complainers. But I wasn't talking in general. I still think this particular shitstorm would die down very quickly if they just made the simple change of not opting in by default. Obviously there are going to be the few tenacious complainers that will keep complaining. But they'll be just the white noise you get from every GOG announcement. *shrug*

I'll agree to disagree on this point. I feel this particular practice to be extremely shady, underhanded, and anti-consumer in general. And I personally think if GOG is willing to stoop to this, then they'll stoop further (yeah, I realize this is just a 'slippery slope' argument, but it's the way I feel. And I'm not generally given to reactive outbursts or conspiracy theories. In fact, I generally tend to give GOG the benefit of the doubt and see how things play out before complaining).

I have no idea how you can possibly call that DRM. And the "necessary for the sake of being necessary" part is not true either. There are very good reasons why they may want to restrict access to their downloads in this manner. It could help improve account security, it reduces GOG's website's traffic (which should be particularly meaningful during sales when people use the GOG website en masse both to buy and download their newly-bought games) and there's probably a number of other reasons that software engineers might list.

I have no idea how you can see it as anything else. But I am way to tired of all this to have this discussion. At this point anyone who wants it can choke on their totally not DRM clients for all I care.

A web browser (Firefox, IE, Chrome etc.) is also a client. Is it DRM if you need to use a web browser to download your games from GOG?

For me it goes like this:

1. If an online client is required only for downloading the game (installers) = not DRM.

2. If an online client is required also for installing and/or playing the game you have downloaded = yes DRM.

Actually fables said as far as she knows, they are planning to save the setting so if you stay on the same PC you may only have to uncheck it once.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/offline_installers_with_an_option_to_install_gog_galaxy/post422/?staff=yes
I actually think that is an acceptable solution too, but this is GOG... next the argument will be they moved/hid them to faze them out soon like the downloader.

I know that it's "planned". However: "Just so we don't have a misunderstanding here - the setting won't be saved to start with."

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/offline_installers_with_an_option_to_install_gog_galaxy/post431/

Sorry but I really don't care dude, I don't have some issue with proprietary platforms... that's your issue. :P