Does GOG have plans to mark which games on your site are using the new password protected windows installer? I don't want to buy games with password protection on the installer and so I wish to avoid these.

Currently, I have some MS Windows games in my account and would like to know which (if any) use the new installer and if any of them will be 'upgraded' to use the new installer.

If any are (or will be), how do I request a refund for those games or, in the alternative, request to have the old installer available?

I don't recall any of GOG's installers requiring a "password." Are you sure you're not thinking of UAC from Windows? Because that will usually be invoked when you install something on Windows Vista or higher.

Hmm, so this is a Linux/Wine issue? If I understand correctly, some people want to manually extract the installer from the package, but for some reason the installer forbids this? Where exactly is the "password" entered?

Yes, part of the issue is Linux/Wine and I would guess some Mac as well (since they can run Wine and DosBox).

The installer has a hard-coded password that is used to unencrypt the files so you don't have to do this. One of my personal gripes with this: There shouldn't be anything in the way of me getting to the games files. If GOG goes away (which of course I hope it doesn't), then what happens with the installers? They may not work after awhile (OS/other software ugrades causing issues, etc).

With encryption present, GOG can no longer guarantee that I can access the files I paid for. They can't guarantee the old installer either, but my access to the needed files (in the old insaller) is guaranteed since the archive can be opened via other utilities not governed by GOG.

It's an unnecessary layer that does absolutely nothing for either GOG or their customers. It only causes (at the least) an inconvience for their customers.

That's really weird they would put encryption in the installer. Was there a specific explanation for this?

Or alternatively you can use the script provided in the thread in question that allows to extract those installer with just an extra command line . http://www.gog.com/forum/general/on_gnulinux_has_anyone_be_able_to_extract_the_rar_innosetup_installers/post116

Thanks for the link. But I'm still not sure why GOG chose to use RAR and encryption like that. They said they don't want people "tampering" with the installer, but what happens if the original installer doesn't work on Linux?

Well it's the Windows installer it was never supposed to "work" on Linux, at least not officially. There was an option with the old ones to make them work on Wine that no longer work with the new installers but the dev has said that he will work on repairing than when he has the time.

That's the thing - if he'd remove the uncessary encryption, then it wouldn't be necessary to fix the installer to work in WINE (since it's not supported).

The encryption offers zero benefit to paying customers and alienates another portion that's pretty self-sufficient.

Judging by the response linked-to above, it does provide some usability advantages when the installer is used as intended; specifically, it makes it harder to erroneously attempt to treat the installer as an ordinary archive, which, judging by the description, could lead to broken installations with the cause potentially unclear to the user.

For example, to quote from that post:

TBH, that's an installer bug (if the user run's the installer w/o the other files). The installer should verify the presence of needed files (and possibly md5sum them) *prior* to installation.

But how can the installer run at all when it's been taken apart? My understanding is that such users were simply extracting the contents of the installer, rather than actually running it; as a result, the installer doesn't get a chance to check for the appropriate files.