I'm not a big PC gamer, so maybe there is some obvious reason for this that I'm missing here, but I've never really come across on other sites and it seems really odd and like an unnecessary pain in the ass to me. I'm currently trying to download DOS2 and it's a 50 gig download split into 13 parts, mostly at 4 gigs.

Now, if this was just one big download, I could simply do it overnight, but split into 13 parts like this I have to constantly babysit the download for hours on end, not to mention having to keep track of everything and it all ending up being totally convoluted.

What's the point of this, why not just have one big download?

You can download more than one file at a time. ;)

1. If the download gets damaged, you only need to redownload one part and not the whole size.
2. There are formats for drives, where the max file size is 4GB (FAT 32).
3. You can download several files at once.
4. Afaik you can download offline installers with Galaxy and in one go.
5. If you got a slower connection, you don't need to block it for several days but you can download single parts when you want. While downloading a big file might not work anyway on slower connections, because many people still got a technical automatic disconnect and reconnect every 24h, that would kill all ongoing downloads. So overnight might not work for you at all.

I guess that makes sense, thanks. Still annoying though :p.

Be glad we're not still using FAT-12. :)

It's one of those interesting things where some users have to suffer a minor annoyance, but for other users, having smaller files is a genuine life-saver. Plus, 4GB files are quite good for archiving.

If you have a single 50GB file, it's a bit of a nightmare if the download corrupts - say hello to downloading everything again. At least with 4GB chunks, you only need to re-download the individual file if it corrupts. For users who find it too annoying or stressful to download the individual files, you can always use Galaxy/

To add to randomuser833's list, 4GB is the perfect size for physically backing up the file by burning it to a DVD. (Yeah, data blurays are the current hotness, but for years it was dvds.)

I was just listing all possible things.
But in reality, WIndows is the main user of Fat 32.
Even more if you want to go for a "classic machine".

When GOG was starting, pretty much all of their game installers were probably less than 4GB, and games which went over that were a rare occurance. Not sure which was the first GOG game that went over the limit, maybe the first Witcher game?

I guess at that point someone at GOG realized they might be a problem for many users if they tried to save the game installer to a FAT32 formatted hard drive or USB drive or whatever. So they figured it makes sense to divide it to 4GB chunks, which I guess was quite commonplace back then overall, splitting to even smaller chunks.

Time has passed and maybe nowadays it is less of a problem (I actually don't know if USB flash drives still come FAT32 formatted, or is it always exFAT which I think doesn't have that limitation; I usually reformat all my USB flash drives to NTFS anyway). And now probably most GOG games go over that limit nowadays, some very much, so I guess it makes less sense nowadays... but I guess they haven't really thought whether they should change it.

For all we know, they consider it as an extra incentive for people to use Galaxy, so that they can download all the split files in one swoop. :)

Yes, that was my thought as well, to be honest...

The point is to coerce everyone, via creating deliberate frustration, into using the Galaxy client, which requires much less babysitting, and also much less aggravating micro-management in order to start the downloads of all of the files in the first place, to manage the downloads.

That's also the same reason for why the "offline installers" have an extremely aggravating numbering scheme, wherein "part 1" as listed on the GOG website is actually not part 1 as listed in the actual file that you download, which just adds to the frustration and makes using the "offline installers" function of the website not worth bothering with.

A reduced FAT for floppy disks... wouldn't that be fun.... And still heavily in use today. Actually maybe less so for computers, but USB and flash drives tend to be pre-formatted as FAT32. But you can also subdivide a hard drive to smaller chunks and do FAT32 on each off them. (But why would you want to? Less overhead and simpler filesystem structure for recovery, great for things that don't need special permissions)

Though on x64 only they could probably push them at a larger size, maybe 10Gb... But seems unlikely.

Maybe. Certainly it's annoying, and decoding the installation files doesn't work....

Actually no, it doesn't make sense at all.

Just because some users have ancient obsolete systems that use FAT32, or crappy ISPs that automatically disconnect them every 24 hours, or crappy slow internet connections, or whatever other excuses are put on the table...in any case, none of that is ever reasonable justification to punish all users just because some users can't handle one-piece files.

If GOG wants to pander to customers with obsolete systems and bad ISPs and bad internet connections or whatnot, then it should make a special option for them to use the sucky multi-part file downloads.

But what GOG should not be doing (but yet they do!) is forcing everyone to use the sucky multi-part file downloads just because some people can't handle one-piece files.

Well bully for you with your amazing Internet connection within the area which you live. FYI, not all of us are as lucky. Just use Gog Galaxy if it's that big of a deal to you.