Honestly, GOG. This is the third or fourth playthrough I'm doing of Witcher 3, and the issue of the desktop .exe file launching your program files STILL persists, at least five years after it was reported on your very forum, here: link. It is YOUR GAME. Could you please just add an .exe file to the installer that actually launches the game?

Strange, I didn’t have any shortcut issues with W3 when I played last, was a while back. I don’t have access to my drives so can’t recheck (think I have the complete package from later on). It’s a pretty easy one off fix though. GOG will not update it, they are working on an “enhanced” version which should be released this year, I think free to current owners. So it’s highly unlikely they will fix anything with the old version.

you're still assuming that gog would fix something after they already got your money? if such things happen, then they're rare exceptions. welcome to the gog experience!

You genuinely can't differentiate a shortcut from an executable? GOG has intentionally placed shortcuts that launch games via Galaxy for years. Modify the shortcut yourself or run the game directly from the directory, problem solved.

Does your Windows account folder contain non-ASCII characters by any chance? How about the folder where you installed The Witcher 3? Some applications can get confused when folders contain accented characters and such (by default, the desktop folder lies under the user folder).

If you haven't already, open a new support ticket. You may have to wait weeks only to be told the report has been passed on to the relevant team. But staff don't monitor the forum to fix support issues, so that's all you can do. That's not the issue being reported here. See post 3 of the aforementioned thread. It shows the offline installer created an invalid shortcut that doesn't point to an executable or even a folder.

I already do that, by creating a shortcut from the .exe file in the game's root folder, but it shouldn't be necessary. The default desktop shortcut should launch the game, NOT open my Program Files folder. If you're going to be patronizing you could at least try to understand the issue I'm reporting. I don't use Galaxy, so no idea where you got that from at all, but it doesn't apply here. I'm currently on a different computer and unable to check, but I KNOW the answer is no when it comes to the Witcher 3 folder. The Winows account folder I'm not certain about, but if that were the case, wouldn't I have similar issues with other games as well? Witcher 3 is the only game that opens Program Files instead of launching when clicking the default desktop icon, all my other GOG purchases work correctly.