It’s discussed here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_galaxy_required_in_certain_games

There are components of galaxy in all installers, be that as simple as a folder for saves, to dll’s which can link to galaxy. These things have been sneaked into updates over the last few years following on from the major galaxy loaded offline installer debacle from back when. It was only due to public outcry back then that this was revoked, and now it is being added in silently - I.e nothing in change log, no notifications. Most will not notice.

The move towards client only is simply a matter of time. The whole industry has moved on from client based gaming to the next big shift which will be cloud gaming. The aim being to have everyone fully reliant on their owned products, with no ownership. It may takes some years, but it will come. Thankfully GOG is pretty inept and so is way behind the curve, and they do still have to stick to drm free, at least for the foreseeable future. But the client is their next logical step to catch-up, and you only have to briefly glance down the general forum page to see that there is a new demographic here, one who knows nothing about drm, only wants clients/achievements/online only/steam features, so again, that has to drive business decisions.

For now just be thankful we can get offline installers.

I'm not going into panic mode here. GOG will never abandon the offline installers, because it's their only selling point in comparison to the competition.

As far as nuking gogmixes is concerned, there are two things that came out of that which are net positives for me:

1) It gave me an easy, convenient excuse to bail out of the second class mix, which - while it was some fun while it lasted - was eating up waaay too much of my free time. These days, I wouldn't lift a finger unless I get paid for it.
2) (And this is a net positive for the community) A team of very dedicated users took over from me. Not only are they doing amazing work, not having me in the way as a sort of "gatekeeper" to decide what goes and what stays on the list made sure that the list is now both more up to date and much more comprehensive than it ever was during my tenure.

Apart from that, yes, absolutely baffling decision, since the mixes had crucial features that make them stand head and shoulders above the abysmal review system. You know, stuff like being able to make edits on the fly - I don't know how many reviews are out there bemoaning things (broken games, lack of updates, etc) that aren't even accurate any more - haven't been for some years in some cases.

then why are you on the interwebs?

This however has nothing to do with the Galaxy client being integrated into offline installers which was what Timboli took from the other thread. These DLLs are just there so that Galaxy can offer some additional features. The Galaxy client itself is not included in the offline installers and that is what it important to me. I personally don't mind some DLLs which will only be used for Galaxy features when staring in Galaxy - I could as well be worried about the countless games which still have steam dlls in them but I am not.

Well, i guess it's time to say goodbuy to GOG.
Direct download speed for "back up installers" without Downloader is slow AF with no error correction.

No more purchases here. It was alternative to steam - it is not anymore.

You're jumping the gun mate. There could be other reasons why they removed the downloader. Such as security breaches or something. I never really thought much of it. When bulk downloading games it would often forget games that I had queued.


Furthermore there are alternatives such as gogrepo, and I sincerely doubt that'll remove the ability to download games from the browser. This is just nit picking.

I know I have mentioned it before but Xtreme Download Manager (https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdman/) gives you the features GOG Downloader had (bandwidth limiting, pause/resume etc) and plugs into your browser. It is one of the few tools I have found that is open source and doesn't have a lot of malware or other garbage in them.

One slight problem I DID find though, make sure you click the cog wheel/settings and put BIN as one of the extensions it monitors for if you use the browser addons. If you don't it will download the file fine, but as the wrong name and you will have to rename it (it will name it to installer5 or such). Not a huge deal to rename it, but it is better if you don't have to :).

I'm using the 2018 version (the main one linked on source forge), the newer one sometimes doesn't start a download for a while. The GOG Downloader is missed, but at least this makes it so I can download large games without issues.

Yes they don't do anything, except add the game automatically to Galaxy without asking. If Galaxy is installed, the game will be added, and by extension updated automatically unless you have that feature turned off. Even if Galaxy is NOT running, it will add the game its list when installed. The only way I have found (so far) to avoid this is to not have Galaxy installed. For some that is fine, for others we don't want it connecting/adding without asking us first. If I wanted to add it, I have a button to ADD it with ease, it shouldn't do it without asking.

I don't mind that they are there to have Galaxy features (for those that want them), just would prefer if it asked first.

Likely why we're all here(humanity as a whole, I mean)....memes and, gossip, and cat pics.

Oh and maybe that thing called social interaction.

Getting rid of the GOG downloader is a bad decision.

However, if relatively few people used it (I don't know), I could understand from a developer's point of view why they wouldn't want to support specifically the GOG downloader. However, simply dropping it is a huge PR mistake. A lot of people relied on the GOG downloader as a kind of security that downloading in such a way would be supported, even if they were actually using a third party (community maintained) download script like gogrepo.

Obvious solution: provide an API, document the API and let others worry about the details of putting together a download manager. Edit: I see I'm not the first, I'll upvote this:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/document_the_api_so_third_parties_can_use_it

well, start working ;)
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/unofficial_gog_api_documentation

it was announced years(!) in advance that the old download api and as a result the GOG downloader was going away at some point. You may disagree with the decision itself, but I would hardly describe it as "simply dropping".
A year long phase-out which starts with first dropping official support before eventually dropping the functionality is like the best-case scenario for cutting away old, obsolete interfaces.

Hmm, I don't recall that "GOG downloader was going away at some point" part being part of the announcement. Being unsupported is not the same as a guarantee it will go away. By your logic, the third party tools that people have made for the forums are also "guaranteed to go away" because they were never officially supported.

Can we instead use language that means something from a consumer perspective? It wasn't obsolete to the consumer who was still using it. It actually appears more people used it, or at least liked having the option to use it, than we thought...currently at 569 wishlist votes and a very good chance of getting over 600 today if the pace continues.

Galaxy will add EVERY GOG game it finds in the folder specified in Galaxy setting automatically WHEN IT IS LAUNCHED - that is normal behavior. In earlier stages of Galaxy you needed to scan the folder manually and they changed it to autoscan once it is started because people asked for it. Sorry, but this is a problem that is none imo and it has nothing to do with the mentioned Galaxy DLLs. If I dislike Galaxy so much I would not install Galaxy in the first place and even if I had installed it I would not want to start it. If you want to prevent Galaxy from adding the game you only need to install the offline installer in a different foder than the folder that have been specified in Galaxy to be automatically scanned for GOG games.

It was announced that it would be phased out at some point. But it was abstract, most people were just happy that it was still there, Galaxy was not yet perceived as the new alpha-and-omega of GOG (there was a general trust in GOG before they started shoving it down our throats with invasive banners, buttons, embedded installers, and all the pragmatic signals that have been triggering outrage between then and now), it all felt friendly enough. A lot happened inbetween, including obligatory public profiles (again, triggering a public outrage forcing GOG to adjust their plan), plus most customer libraries (and file update frequency) grew to awkward manual managability.

So yes, it was warned about. And not taken seriously enough, because of some misplaced faith in what GOG and Galaxy would be. Now that the machinery is naked to all but the most religiously fanatical GOG supporters, it takes a whole other meaning. Pleasing only those (everything always will), and the new growing core of customers who couldn't live without a social gaming client anyway.

In hindsight it's weird how "the downloader will be phased out" wasn't immediately understood as "we intend to make galaxy obligatory (in all but name and deliberately cumbersome, symbolic, alternative features)". But the atmosphere was really quite different, and the players who detested the Steam norms of computer gaming felt wrongfully safe in a place seemingly designed around similar rejections. The perception of general intents and values (redefined by many anti-consumer decisions on the way, kept or reluctantly discarded under the pressure) legitimately determines interpretations and reactions.

[Modded by Bookwyrm627: Please refrain from political commentary.]

Lucky for you someone did that years ago and it's pretty great.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogrepopy_python_script_for_regularly_backing_up_your_purchased_gog_collection_for_full_offline_e
If you consider this to have made Galaxy obligatory, then by your standards the downloader was obligatory before Galaxy was around.