*burning effigies of GOGbear's & mass riots by the bulk of the GOG customer base when its found out there will be no way to download standalone base installers + DLC's*

This to me won't be a huge issue if they provide a back up feature in Galaxy for game content (including DLC / Patches) and create a standalone installer from that that doesn't require Galaxy to be re-installed. Perfect solution in my opinion if they don't want to have standalone installers downloaded with Galaxy.

Doing it the Steam way would actually be better it a lot of ways, because then they can cut down patch sizes by only having what is changed downloaded from the servers. The same way Steam does.

Just give us a way to back that up and it would be okay to me.

People naturally don't like change, but that goes 10-fold for people who have been using GOG for years. The reason why we aren't getting any solid info on the client is simple though; the specifications have not been finalized. When companies announce what they would like to do ahead of a product launch, more often than not, there is a lot of negative feedback/virtual-rioting.

I know this affects other people much more than it does me (I only buy game titles on GOG that are no longer being published via traditional methods and/or need extra support to run on modern systems... anything else is a Playstation or Steam purchase) but I do believe GOG will end up doing what it necessary to make most people happy in the end. I've honestly never used the downloader, so having a client that organized my games for me as well as keep them updated sounds nice I'm sure the client will use similar update abilities as Steam (aka "differ byte delta patching") as there is really no reason not to (however if there are huge changes to a game and/or if you wait months between updating it may result in having to fully redownload).

I'm not sure what else to say; the almighty dollar/euro/pound/etc speaks volumes and it does not seem like GOG is getting rid of the old way to download stand-alone patches. I do understand that for some people (mostly those using mods) that you sometimes need to be on a certain version that isn't the latest, therefor your only remaining method may be to have the base download + incremental patches stored locally (at least at first). While this is an unwelcomed change, the focus on keeping the majority up to date and compatible with one another is a feature that you see (sometimes forced) on most every other system. Once the major work has been done, then GOG can re-implement a feature in Galaxy where you can say "I want v.1.xx of this game installed" - which would for all intensive purposes likely be just automating the method I described before.

I know it's frustrating not having answers to your questions, but I think we can all agree that it is best for official statements only when they are representative of what the final product will look like (in which case I don't think any GOG staffer can speak on issues aside from the most basic/common of features at this point). We'll beat this solid block of clay into something we all enjoy in time, until then, I'll be blasting you guys from above in AVP2K :p.

I really hope that this will not be that case, as being free from the mandatory client/updates/social features/etc bullshit steam and other similar distribution platforms have was the main reason for me to having GOG as my primary way of getting games. But better safe than sorry so it seems that I will be better off not spending any more cash here until core specs of the GOG Galaxy will be published. And I will definitely be downloading most of the games I own to store them offline just in case. Call me paranoid, but some of them are impossible to get otherwise(at least legally) and I'm not gonna risk losing access to DRM-free installers of my all-time favourites.

They've already said the GOG Galaxy client will be optional, rather than mandatory (Unless you want multiplayer).

Though I have no doubt that, in time, use of the client will be heavily encouraged.

So, we still did not hear anything about gog galaxy yet? : (

Hopefully before the year is done, with XWing Vs. Tie Fighter.

Would you mind explaining why you want it to be open source *exactly*? Is your main concern privacy or security?

Any software that manages installation on my system better be open source, otherwise I'm very reluctant to use it, especially when that software pulls and pushes stuff over the network.

It's explained quite at length here:

* http://www.gog.com/forum/general/future_gog_updater_client_as_open_source_and_the_issue_of_turst/page1
* http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/release_the_future_gog_updater_client_as_open_source

Sorry, this period is reserved for Fall Insomnia Sale :-)

Any official word on whether this project still happening, dead in the water or otherwise?

Any word on the progress of Galaxy? I am looking forward this.

Still ongoing, Guillaume Rambourg talked about it on French TV today. It will offer :
- optional client for auto-updating/auto-patching
- multiplayer support for old and new games, and multiplayer crossplay between games purchased on Steam and GOG.

This will be interesting to see if it turns out to be the case. The way they talk tends to make things sound a certain way when it doesn't have to be the case. Surely it'll support old games, if they're redone to work with Galaxy for instance. If that's the case it'll be of lesser value. If on the other hand they have made some kind of network (LAN?) or direct connection thing between Galaxy players that even older games can easily make use of, that would be of good value.