I like that idea. It sounds not entirely unlike how profiles are on here (though they should never have been public by default but I digress); you can choose to effectively switch off large swathes of content. Btw thanks for the reasoned discussion.

Thanks. :)

My program is really just a companion program, so not sure how you could combine them really. And mine is probably better to use as stand-alone so you can check several downloads at once.

What I am hoping, failing the return of the GOG Downloader, is that someone with more skill than me will develop a full program based on the GOG API, that makes my program unnecessary. Something simple like the GOG Downloader was and not a complex bloated beast like Galaxy that uses too many resources.

If you are happy using Galaxy, then please ignore the following.

If you have any genuine queries or doubts about the validity of this thread, that relate to the GOG Downloader, then please check out prior posts here, as they have comprehensively dealt with ALL issues.

Please ignore and don't contribute to the negative behavior here.

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I have developed a program, GOGDownload Checker, that is a partial replacement for the GOG Downloader.

It is NOT a full replacement, because it doesn't do any downloading.

It is meant to be used after you have downloaded via the browser links GOG provide.

You can have your browser do those downloads, or I would recommend using a program like Free Download Manager 5 to do so, which supports Pause and Resume, plus queuing and throttling, and some level of integrity checking.

GOG use InnoSetup to create their EXE and BIN files, which provides embedded Checksums, that the free third party program InnoExtract can use to check the integrity of your GOG downloads.

InnoExtract has specific support for GOG downloads built-in. My program uses InnoExtract etc.

Primarily, my program is for using where you archive you GOG game purchases, and so integrity is vitally important.

If you just download your GOG game via browser links and install immediately, then you probably don't need my program, as I believe integrity checking is built into the installer.

See my project here - https://github.com/Twombs/GOGDownload-Checker

Latest release here - https://github.com/Twombs/GOGDownload-Checker/releases

At best, my program is just a slow stop-gap measure, but needed right now (if you don't use Galaxy), because file integrity for archiving is vitally important.

My program is not a 100% guarantee, no program is, but it is far better than nothing.

It is all we can do for now, until the GOG Downloader comes back or a suitable replacement comes along.

LET GOG KNOW HOW YOU FEEL BY VOTING
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/keep_the_gog_downloader_and_keep_it_up_to_date

We are up to 870 votes now .... still steadily climbing.

THANK YOU for stating this! And for your program (though I don't use it myself, I appreciate that you made it).

The gog downloader was small and simple. Gogs website is massive trash. They can't develope a good website. When I go on my phone to browse for new games, some javascript freezes the view for up to 10 seconds to load probably some kind of angualar garbage to display the games. When scrolling the games list on my mobile phone over 50% of the time I then visit a games page, I didn't intent to go to and I have to go through the whole angular garbage again just to see what new games have been released on the go.

My point is, I don't trust gog into developement. I can immagine what a dumpster fire the galaxy client is. Steam are the most advanced in the field on that kind of software and even their client is massive trash and a waste of memory.

And don't get me started on the blizzard client. Those fucking idiots got the worst client on this planet. I just want to play broodwar. and this fucking piece of trash client, that not even boots the game, it just loads one of the worst chat browser ever, loads up to 3 minutes. If I decide to play a 20 year old game that would boot on my machine in 1 second if I would use a classic installer takes 3 retarded minutes because blizzard are the biggest clowns on the planet.

Anyway, every stupid company wants it's own client. I think a big part of gogs userbase are from a better time when clients didn't exist. Sure there were server clients and I do understand that.
But single player games don't need clients ever. Anyone who thinks that is a stone-age ape.

I make games and I would never offer my games with idiotic things like clients. It's obvious jackassery from idiots for idiots, simple as that.

Another problem is that gog isn't communicating very well why they think they need to do stupid things. They problably don't have the time or money. But it looks like the galaxy thing can download standalone installers. This is cool. Now I just need to get over my pain from garbage software like the steam and blizzard clients... I htink that will take a while... those wounds don't heal ez. More scar than person

I agree this site is slow.
These companies racing who makes the worst client. Nearly all of them are slow and buggy.
Some stores are so cluttered it is hard to find what you want like Uplay.
Btw use the gogrepoc script, it is the best to download your games from here and keep them updated.

Indeed, we don't. Now that GOG Galaxy dropped support for Windows 7 (which BTW, you can still get security updates for through a corporate account or "other" means) I would've liked to go back to GOG Downloader. Now I find that it's gone too.

I guess they're trying to promote purchasing on Steam instead.

Of course we don't, some peoples don't want to use Galaxy.

Officially over 900 votes on the entry to bring Downloader back. 903 and counting, steadily growing still every day. Come on GOG, please reconsider bringing back the Downloader. Galaxy is not a suitable replacement for those of us that don't want a Galaxy-type client.

To be fair once Microsoft stops support I don't think it's weird for another company to do the same. Also according to Steam surveys and the like, Windows 7 is down to 6% of users (and a ton of them are probably old users not currently gaming).

However yes, I agree in general that clients which stop supporting older Windows versions are a big reason to want DRM free, for future legacy PCs. Since Galaxy can just be used as a downloader for offline installers though, I don't think this particular issue applies.

No worries, thanks for the thanks. :)

There has to be some irony over a company that supports old games as much as they do, for GOG to give up supporting an older OS to the degree they do.

Just look at the situation with Galaxy for instance. It is no longer easy, as I found yesterday, to find v1.2 downloads, which is what you need for Win 7. In fact, I had to use the Wayback Machine to get clues on the likely links.

See here - https://www.gog.com/forum/general_beta_gog_galaxy_2.0/gog_galaxy_12/post5

I like to be fair in my judgments, and not tough without good reason.

So tonight, I decided to give Galaxy another go, as I had 68 Gb of game downloads to do (Deus Ex etc), and that would take a lot of time to check using my program and InnoExtract etc.

To be fair as possible, I decided to update Galaxy to the final 1.2 version (which took a bit of searching to find at GOG). I wasn't quite using that, but almost.

Why 1.2 and not a 2.x variant?
I need the latest version that supports Win 7, my downloading machine. Some of course will criticize me for not using Win 10. I'd like to thank them for offering to pay for that upgrade, not only to my Windows OS, but also my hardware. In reality, just upgrading the OS, would not achieve anything positive, and likely just make things worse for me. Sure security would in theory be better, but if my PC runs much slower, then one could argue that the newer security shows aspects of being a virus.

Anyway, OS and hardware issues aside ... as to a point they really shouldn't matter, if GOG is sticking by its mantra. My gaming machine and downloading machine, are two very different PCs, especially as I don't engage in Multiplayer, and that should be ok.

To make some of you happy, so you can criticize me even more, I will declare I use a Netbook for web browsing and downloading and it only has 2 Gb of RAM. In reality, my PC is no worse than many devices out there, and generally works fine for its regular web use, and I even write code on it, do some video conversion, etc ... but nothing too demanding. It is clearly not a powerful PC though, far from it.

So lets look at the two main (for this article) different types of GOG users. You have one who downloads and installs a game on demand, and one who downloads and archives immediately after they purchase. Some of course do a bit of both, but lets stick to the main two. Basically you could say that GOG provides games to archivists and non archivists.

The non archivist, is not that interested in storing local copies of games, and is just happy using what I call the GOG Cloud. Once a game is downloaded and installed, they usually wipe the download, and once the game has been played, they uninstall.

Another division of GOG users, is those who play Multiplayer and those who don't.

Those who don't play Multiplayer, don't need an Internet connection for their games, other than to download them in the first place. So using something like Galaxy is a bit of overkill, especially as it is quite demanding on system resources. This is where the GOG Downloader was quite good in that regard.

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Now at this point, some negative person or one who has not seen or paid attention to past posts, will likely mention that you don't need Galaxy, and can just download with your browser, as it works fine for them etc. Well, yes you can use the browser links and do that, but that alone is not good enough if you are an archiver. You need some way of knowing your files downloaded okay, before you store them away, do multiple backups etc.

Even GOG have a support question and answer, about what to do in the case of corrupted browser downloads. They suggest using Galaxy of course. So yes, corrupted browser downloads are a thing, and even more common with large downloads.

So that is why so many of us archivers, loved the GOG Downloader so much, and it had a much smaller memory usage footprint than Galaxy. In short, our best friend, and GOG have removed it.

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I don't see it as wrong or unfair that GOG treat us all equally. Sure, maybe the majority of customers at GOG are non-archivists and multiplayers, but that shouldn't change anything. One of the promotions by and for GOG, is the notion of getting a game you can store for the future and install anywhere and any when. So surely GOG supports such customers, even if they aren't the majority?

If you have to rely on the GOG Cloud, then how is that much different to relying on the Steam Cloud or any of the other DRM ones? The whole notion of a DRM-Free GOG download, is total independence.

Some of you will have the wit, to take all I've written and follow it to the logical conclusions, so I will let you do that, and now return to discussing Galaxy.

I was smart of course, setting up my downloads in Galaxy. I started the first one (15 Gb) and then PAUSED ALL while browsing for and setting up all the others. If I don't do that, then it is agonizing changing between menu screens and browsing ... just gets slower and slower, at times seeming frozen.

Once I had all loaded, I started the downloading (RESUME ALL).

Before doing that, I made sure my browser was running, as I did not want to wait forever for it, due to Galaxy hogging all the memory. I also had HexChat with freenode running, so I could chat with my buddy TheDcoder. That is about the limit of what I could have running and do while Galaxy is running and busy downloading. Oh, and I also had Notepad open while writing this, for later posting. I did do a few posts at another forum I belong to, only because I knew they weren't too demanding those web pages. However, they were very slow loading and posting those web pages, and every time I returned to HexChat, I had to wait a few seconds before I could use it.

The longer Galaxy is running too, the slower my system gets. I just minimized everything, then restored the Galaxy window, and it took about 10 seconds or so to repaint itself ... a completely white and featureless window until then ... no access to anything, except minimize and exit, which would be just as slow to respond in any case.

So I cannot say I noticed any improvement with the Galaxy update.

Doing anything on my PC while Galaxy is running and downloading, is very painful, and frankly I would be better off not using it if I have other stuff to do on my PC, or just go and game, watch TV or read etc while I do. And for 68 Gb, that means a few hours.

All I can say now, is that I really pine for the GOG Downloader, and it feels to me like I have been forced into a real huge backward step.

Perhaps Galaxy 2.x is better with system resources? I seriously doubt it, but you never know.

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LET GOG KNOW HOW YOU FEEL BY VOTING
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/keep_the_gog_downloader_and_keep_it_up_to_date

We are up to 917 votes now .... still steadily climbing.

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Please see the following post if you want to know about my program etc.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_do_not_want_say_goodbye_to_gog_downloader/post454

I really wish you get what you want, i just wanted to point something out.
The difference is, Steam always has to run so you can play and Steam is resource hungry too. With Galaxy the user can start the game directly from the original game exe (not the one Galaxy creates) and Galaxy will not start up. No resource hog while playing. If that changes, GOG has nothing left going for them.

Good health to you all and stay save

Edit: Well, there is one point more that speaks for GOG. You own the games you buy here.

TL;HDWTDLTPTPITTIWTTRYP (Too Long; Had Dinner, Walked The Dog, Learned To Play The Piano In The Time It Would Take To Read Your Post).

not at all, since gOg's mission is to make old games run on modern systems. so if there is any irony here....