The consolation prize to GOG? Maybe Larian felt a little guilty about the whole deal? Maybe GOG felt stupid for letting the wool get pulled over their eyes (the video that, in all likelihood, assumed that the release would be without bumps shows a bit of naivety on GOG's part)?

Since I've never had any part in this industry other than that of a consumer, I'm not quite sure how shady occurrences like this go down, but I can easily see a big group casually stepping on competitors/potential competition in terms of undercutting key releases here and there.

The "best" part is that we'll probably never know the specifics, save for a collective bad taste in our mouths with no clear causative reason why.

Unless GOG really did genuinely bungle everything and for some reason thought that announcing June 30th as the release date then pushing it back to the end of August ON said release date was a great idea. Somehow, I doubt that possibility.

Is ANYONE playing a GOG version yet? They said it's ready now but I can't download it. Have they even commented on this?

Great news! I can't wait for that sexy Galaxy icon to be on my desktop screen! :)

DELETED (in place of actually deleting my post)

Yeah. Backed it from day one. It says it's available to download for me, but it doesn't actually work. F-ing awesome.

Downloaded with the GOG Downloader (manual link still not working), installed and player about an hour or so.
It's fucken' glorious!

Not rubbing it in, honestly so far seems fantastic... Nonetheless I'd like to add my voice with the rest, the way they (both?) handled the release it's disappointing and frankly doesn't make sense. I couldn't believe it when I read the confirmation from G-Doc about the end of August release.

That's putting nicely. One would think after their last fiasco they'd have learned communication is best done sooner rather than later. They've said precious little about the details and what little they did say was confusing. Glad you got the game running at any rate.

The lack of communication is indeed troubling and really against the usual GOG spirit. TBH the whole incident left a sour taste, even though I have the game up and running. I hope they will offer a satisfactory explanation soon, for backers and non-backers alike.

...What? I was so looking forward to this game and now it looks like I won't even get to play it for another two months because of a supposedly 'optional' client? I can't believe this. I'm so sad right now :(.

And while we're on the topic, isn't one of GOG's main selling points that you get to play games without having to launch extra clients you don't want? Is this what we have to look forward to from now on? Great.

Agreed. Never planned on playing Divinity in co-op. Forcing non-backers to wait for a client (or to get it from Steam), just beats the purpose of the entire site. So sad.

Ah. Thank you. Doing it with the downloader does seem to be working for me.

Except they officially said the game would be ready to download now, to play single player or through LAN. It's just that only some people are having success in downloading. I assume in a day or so they'll have it worked out.

But, everyone wanted a client

NOT me

When did they say that? In the posts here by the GOG team, they clearly say that NON-backers will have to wait until August 31st (see the very first post here). It's only kickstarter backers that are getting to download it now, and they are the ones reporting problems, etc.