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PART 9/?
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Are you nuts, biased or just deluded and / or uninformed? /s
This ship never sailed.
Remind me, how long has BD been available on GENERAL (non archival) market? Less than 20 years.
How about DVD? Or CD?
Heck, how old are Vinyls? But you do still have new releases on Vinyls now without sane justification for it.

It may be slightly unknown fact but BD disks cost about as much as DVD to produce.
Even more, most DVD pressing machines are either just stright out compatible or can be cheaply made to be able to press BD.

BD is right now actually cheaper for the industry than DVD, especially per GiB.
While there are reasons to keep CD around the DVD should already die.
The only real reason why BD are not so popular on CONSUMER MARKET is because some responsible people have retarded approach about it.
And don't even get me started on arbitrary price gouging.
If BD films would be sold for as much as DVD ones it would spread really fast.
The price gouging alone is one of the main reasons why this storage media is not so popular among film enthusiasts for example (to be clear, TRUE ones will go for QUALITY so they WILL buy them over DVD, but casual average-joe ones will NOT due to cost).

That is the commercial market AKA "disks sold with data on them".

But in archival industry BD are booming. Do you really think somebody would sanely choose stack of 25 DVDs over 1 BDXL ?
ESPECIALLY since BD use different technology than DVD (DVD have organic layers, suspectible to oxidation, disk rot, chemical reactions with air, as well as reacting with plasticiser from DVD cases, BD use non organic layers so they are not suspectible to most problems) and thus have better longetivity.

There are already 1 TiB prototype BD disks in research labs.
Do you really think archival industry would just drop the technology and downgrade to DVD?
For longterm storage you just cannot use hard drives. It's just too darn inconvenient (drives die, controllers die, write heads can randomly get stuck on platters after years of failless usage, platters demagnetise even when connected to power, random neutrino can make a bit flip, one powerful solar [the kind that is once few dozen years] flare could be enough to destroy a backup [or at least damage it enough to be useless]).
Tapes are another kind of pain that could warrant writing entire books about it.
The optical media is the only way to go if you want to have longterm cold storage backup.
At least until somebody invents something better, like Blade Runner like 3d data orbs or some sort of nonmagnetic nonorganic high density physically durable storage media.
The optical media right now has about as much longetivity as metal punch in cards. It's not magnetic so apart from physical damage and reflective layer deterioration there isn't really any way to loose it other time.

Do you really think with increased storage needs (thus increased longterm COLD STORAGE needs) the industry would not make BD more popular over time? (they do push high volumes of those disks you know)

After somebody brought Playism into this thread I researched it (honestly, I knew about it before but either didn't research it before or forgot about it).
It isn't (but generally is):

(note that this includes bundles [afaik], separate soundtracks and few other "non game" things on this list)
https://playism.com/products?&filter%5Bsort%5D=priceLow
(without this sorting it just doesn't show the number)

https://playism.com/products?&filter%5BtermFilter%5D%5B%5D=46

Total of 228 positions out of which there is 204 positions with DRM-free builds.
Example of Steam key only one:
https://playism.com/product/will-a-wonderful-world
https://playism.com/product/angels-of-death
(random games, right off the front page from bestsellers category, I don't know these ones)

I didn't make a complete research and / or page crawl yet but I haven't seen ANYWHERE on Playism site any kind of claims that 1.It is "all" DRM-free 2.That developer HAS TO provide DRM-free build to them.
It's entirely up to the developer to choose on that platform. Most provide DRM-free builds but there ARE some oddballs that stand out and don't do that.
Of course it doesn't undermine the whole Playism.
I am thankful somebody brought it to this thread and reminded me about it.
It is both the kind of store I would genuinely want to buy from.
As well as the kind of digital distribution platform I would personally choose should I ever decide to get my game projects out of infinite project freezer.

If they would make it open source then it wouldn't matter if they would even abandon it.
That's the beauty of open source. Should there anybody want one could just fork it and continue development.
If GOG would merely "just" make API documentation public and expose a function to json checksums it would ALREADY make a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE and very likely result in SOMEBODY private from community cooking up software for file obtainment (AKA new, better than ever, OPEN SOURCE GOG downloader alternative).

I think what I described would work (at least from software perspective).
Because if they continue with their CURRENT way then they are going to eventually have a meet-up at a PR graveyard.

The final pillar is collapsing.
Oh gog gog...
Disappointed.

I don't know enough about editing installer files to directly edit them.

So what I do is install the game, copy the entire game folder to where I install my games. Then go into the game's folder and delete files that are not needed such as Galaxy files, document files etc.

Then I'll uninstall the game and try launching it. It usually works fine but if the game doesn't work because it needs registry entries then ill load up regedit and find those entries, save them then put them in the game's folder then all I need to do is to run the registry file should I have to re-install it.

Finally I'll zip up the folder and put it somewhere safe for backup.

So essentially you could as well unpack the installer, check the file / dir / registry creation rules and create your own installer.
If you would know how to that is.
That is easily done with Linux scripting (you could even make Linux script to install you Windows game for Windows usage [along with creating proper registry entries], no joke) minus the unpack part (installers vary, some GOG ones are actually encrypted, ergo GRID [at least it used to be, I didn't check in a while]).

They've finally updated it today (to 1.8.1). One down, 30+ to go.

Just downloading now, lets hope the promised 1.9.2 is not so long in coming :)

That's a problem with kickstarter or the other companies themselves. Buying out or undercutting is something steam's done too. Ironically games pulled away from steam have a better chance to show up here.
So it's not anymore anticonsumer than steam on that aspect. Which is why I said they have done done worse but have better features but is it for our benefit our theirs. Are they the nice guys but still being good at business or are they just doing enough to stay on the right side of popular opinion.
The start of Steam wasn't anywhere near as good. You would probably remember if you were there for it.

Linux benefits steam against M$ but they bought out github. Was that for the benefit of githubs cattle or M$?
Where are the tech details for their hardware anyway?

Epic Fail Store and Scheme are both awful for DRM-free gaming. The "lesser of two evils" is still an "evil". I don't even know what GOG (referring to the company that runs BOTH the website and the "optional" client with new DRMed game webstore app) could say at this point to reassure our worries about their future as a DRM-free gaming platform.

"That was a stupid idea, and we sent the people responsible to the mines."?

"They returned with a huge pile of gold and bought us out and consequently continued their idea" /s

My question is why would GOG work with such an Anti-Consumer company like Epic knowing thanks to their PC exclusives prevented sales of games to them not just Steam at the game's launch? It must have been a very good contract for both companies especially GOG to even negotiate such a contract.

What is Epic doing to destroy it from the inside out?
How did they spy on this information?

Most other stores are doing it too from gog to steam and those that are in its games to the game engines like Unity grabbing what they think they can get away with.

Epic offers these deals knowing it'll screw people such as Kickstarter backers; they just don't care. The other companies are at fault too for being so greedy & lacking in integrity to accept such deals, but that doesn't excuse Epic.
Epic offers these deals knowing it'll screw the other platforms that helped promote the games in question prior to release; but that's what they're counting on.

Oh I remember all too well. I remember when Steam came about I wanted nothing to do with it, or any other DRM for that matter (I had already resisted Windows XP & held on to Win98SE until about 2003 due to its DRM, but eventually I was forced to use it due to hardware compatibility issues with a laptop). I remember texting my brother during a free period in college when I found out that Half-Life 2 would require activation via Steam and his initial disbelief at it (he subsequently cancelled his pre-order). I remember the shenanigans Valve pulled back then, how terrible Steam was and how everyone hated both them and Steam, and the repeated disappointment as more and more games started becoming Steam-only. As bad as they were they were not quite as bad as Epic has been, aside from being pioneers of the current state of affairs regarding DRM and client-bound everything.

GOG and others have benefitted from a lot of the work Valve have done. GitHub seems to have been going downhill since they decided that meritocracy is a bad thing anyway, and there are alternatives. Don't know where the hardware specs are posted as I've not needed them for anything myself.

This is all besides the point anyway - GOG partnering with any DRM'ed store to sell games for them is a terrible idea and goes against what GOG used to stand for.
"In hindsight, encouraging our senior management staff to do hard drugs during important meetings wasn't such a good idea after all..."

Is the enemy of the enemy my friend or my enemy?

Can you please elaborate a bit on this, even though it's off topic? I know what GitHub is, but otherwise I have no idea what you're referring to and I'm curious.