I find the split downloads very helpful as when I download anything large, it really does take over the entire Internet and television service as it all comes in through the same gateway modem. What ends up happening with these big downloads is that if someone else in the house changes the tv channel when I'm downloading, they find themselves staring at a black screen until I'm done. The Internet connection becomes such that you cannot browse pages. GOG's split downloads are easier on our connection than some of the free games that I got off Epic that took thirty minutes or longer to download.

Because GOG splits things up into smaller chunks, I'm able to do my downloads without being nearly as disruptive.

I have heard this is the reason why Zoom Platform uses 2 GB. As you say, GOG have made a modified version of InnoSetup to allow larger file sizes. Right now, Zoom doesn't have many very big games, so 2 GB is ok. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for them to do something similar in future, if they needed bigger file sizes (Inno is open source after all).

Maybe but doubtful.

The natural word size is quite common to be used as types in entries of filesystems, including filesize. Fat16/32 have a 4 byte field for how many bytes it is, regardless you can link more sectors than 4Gb. As such files for a 32bit field has to be under 4Gb, be it 1 byte or 1 sector (which can be 4k or 64k).

I wonder more if it isn't a limit in the installer being potentially 32bit still even for 64bit games. It's much easier to split files by 4Gb than to redo an entire library/installer or have two installer types, undoubtedly internal API for Windows is going to be unsigned ints.

And as they say 'if it isn't broke, don't fix it'.

Yep, and I have a few of the bigger ones from them and you have the same EXE and BIN files arrangement like GOG does, just smaller sized.

A great point.

In fact it means you don't need to download in one sitting, when it can be inconvenient to do so.
I'm always busy with my PC, and I don't like it running less than optimum because it is doing a big download.
In fact, I often do my GOG downloads, while I am taking a break ... making a cuppa, having a meal, toilet break, read something. I use those moments to download in stages ... one file or a few at a time.

With the free games that Epic gives, I try to download them in the early morning when the television is going to be on one morning news channel for a few hours and nobody is really using the Internet. It's the only time I can really download those games and is just another reason to never buy anything from Epic. Steam would be same except that they're not giving away free games.

Because most think that everyone has broadband, or at least access to it. Thankfully Gog doesn't seem to think so, mostly. Try downloading a larger file than 4GB over a crappy/spotty 2 mb/s (max, on a good day) 4G data connection...

Windows XP supports and uses NTFS, but I think the issue with FAT32 was that it was widely used by default on USB hard drives, flash drives etc. where GOG users might copy their installers.

In the XP times, I recall investing to some home NAS drive which was quite big at the time. I was miffed to find out at home that it was formatted to FAT32, and apparently it required to stay that way too in order to operate properly (ie. I didn't have an option to format it to NTFS and still use it).

However, NOWADAYS I don't think FAT32 compliance (for GOG game installers specifically) is a real issue to anyone, really. If someone wants to use FAT with an USB flash drive, exFAT is the version they should use and it doesn't have the 4GB file size limitation.

EDIT: Anyway, someone pointed out that InnoSetup splits big installers by default. If that is the case, that sounds the most believable theory why GOG is doing so, even today. The Mac and Linux versions don't use InnoSetup, so there is no default way to split the files.

1. I think it's easier on the server.

2. It's better than splitting it into 14 parts.

Ouch. My 4G connection can usually tap out at 6. But it's highly variable and it's capped.
Definitely worse when everyone in the street comes home in the afternoon.

I remember when using XP that i used FAT32 still, and only upgraded on some drives to NTFS when trying to work with 4Gb files (like mastering a DVD ISO before burning it). Generally i never had drives large enough that the overhead of NTFS to make it worth it.

Truthfully i still prefer FAT32 to NTFS, and will only use NTFS if i have to. There's many times in my music/anime folder that i get a 'need admin privileges' for stuff like recoding and moving files around, when it's nothing that requires security.

I do hope the server is sharing from a filesystem and not decoding from a huge SQL database... that's a terrible way to store it.

Yeah, it can be a right nightmare, depending on the time of day, and which way the wind is blowing. But it does me, as it's fast enough for what I mainly need it for, surfing and streaming (TV/Video), it's just testing it's limits (and my patience) when downloading my games (for back-up) from Gog.

I forgot many users have datacaps. They certainly are one good reason to have split files.

As long as you download all the parts before GOG updates the installer... :(

Yes it does, but it also allows you to use FAT32 if you want, and many did back then. Back then I did my data drives or partitions as FAT32, so I could avoid the NTFS security issues etc.

I guess some might be using old USB drives, but it isn't that hard to update them to NTFS. All except flash (thumb) drives of course, but painful to install or copy huge files to such a slow medium, and not cost effective, and as you say you can format them to exFAT anyway. I seriously doubt GOG would bother worrying about supporting such drives, especially as they can also be quite volatile. I wouldn't leave anything I cared about on such a drive.

Fair enough, but how common would that be? I doubt GOG would care for a minority group, going by their behavior.

I agree.

Yes, as I stated earlier I had read somewhere about that, and how the split was 2 GB by default, and GOG had modified or got it modified to support 4 GB files instead.

I'm pretty sure both Epic and Steam both offer the "limit bandwidth" option and there must be any download manager for your browser with that option too.
That way, if your internet supports, say 10MB/s, you can cap the bandwidth at 5MB/s and leave the other 5 for the toaster and fridge.