Good eeeveniiing,

I'm downloading all my games to backup on an external hard drive.

My problem is, I've been using Galaxy (don't hurt me, I'm very delicate) to download, play & uninstall games quickly, but I hear that GOG now bundles Galaxy on the old installers.

Well, I don't want that. I want Galaxy-free installers. How do I find those?

I'm using the old GOG downloader to backup the games. Do those links contain Galaxy, or are they clean? How can I tell?

Downloader links - from what I've seen, anyway - are the "Classic" (Galaxy-free) versions.

If you want to find the "Classic" installers, access your library by hovering over your username on the top bar and selecting Games from the pull-down. Choose a game. If game has both Galaxy and Classic installers, then click the MORE tab to get access to both the Downloader links and the Classic installers.

Installers downloaded via Galaxy contain no Galaxy (and yes, I'm aware of how strange that sentence sounds).

Thank you for your help. I was only seeing games that didn't have Galaxy installers, so I was confused. I now found one that contains Galaxy, so now I get it. That... makes some kind of sense, yes.

Is there a way to download the installers through Galaxy without installing the game? I hear GOG downloader has compatibility issues with some games, so if I could get clean downloads through Galaxy, it would be great.

Backups and Goodies. If you DL through that section of Galaxy, you get the Classic installers.

Of course! Thank you, all 3 of you! This was extremely helpful!

Just a point of note: the Galaxy installers have a (g) at the end of their file names. So if the ones you DL don't have that, then that's a way to make sure you've got the unladen ones.

I assume you mean the installers that contain Galaxy, not the installers downloaded through Galaxy, right?

By the way, this isn't really an issue, but downloading stuff through Galaxy creates a !Temp folder in the game folder. Is there a way to avoid this, by any chance? If not, it's fine. At least the folder is empty, so no real space wasted.

If you are interested, check out this thread:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogrepopy_python_script_for_regularly_backing_up_your_purchased_gog_collection_for_full_offline_e

Correct. Sorry for the confusion. Not that I know of, no.

One suggestion not mentioned that I would make is to wait for the "final" version of a game before bothering to do this. That way you don't have to deal with the endless patch files and processes. For example I won't be saving my Pillars of Eternity 2 download next week, I'll just wait for the game to be completely done with updates and DLC before backing it up. GOG ain't going nowhere short term.

Avoiding galaxy in the installers...

I'd wish they also dropped the dependencies and put those as a separate installer. Every time a game needs DirectX 9, you have 100Mb of data that isn't needed.

Would having 1 installer with all dependencies be too hard? Possibly including Microsoft patches/fixes if applicable...

I am interested. This will be very helpful to run once in a while & check if everything is updated. For now, even though it's extremely dull work, I'll have to download stuff manually because:

a) I still have to figure out how to run that, but most importantly
2) A thousand games take a lot of space & time to download, and I have to do it in small batches.

Ah, no problem. I've been on GOG for a couple of years, I'm used to their confusing (baffling) way of doing things. :D
I ain't betting money on that horse.

Final version is the one two patches behind Steam. Easy!

That sounds like way too much trouble for most, who just want to mash play button. It's easier to push out one set of files out with all the necessary so it runs correctly than trying to explain how to install various components. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, but the vast majority of GOGs target audience nowadays want a console experience on pc, just press play.

That happens everywhere, not just on GOG. Probably licensing issues, or something.

Q: What do you call 100 lawyers drowning in high seas?
A: A good start, haw haw haw!