Ah, so that's the "second installer" stub you've been referring to. People here aren't being negative, there's just no connection with GOG adding their 475kb giant blue "DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL NOW" button Galaxy installer stub on the game page download section (hosted on public facing servers) vs whether the offline installer is out of date (built on internal development servers). The "DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL NOW" Galaxy stub is more there due to the insistence of their Galaxy marketing dept as one giant "Please Use Galaxy not offline installer" advert than any technical reason related to updates. Removing it won't speed the updates of any proper installer, and most "negative people" here always only ever wanted the stub-less download links direct to the proper installers without the BS.

Keeping older installers is literally a zero effort "when creating a new offline installer version, don't delete the old one" (a one-off 5min job for one person to change in their build script), plus "and just move the old URL to an "Archive" or "Rollback" sub-menu under More on the game page in your library" (a 30 min one-man job to add another sub-menu under "More" the same way they had zero issue previously adding that "Forum" link a while back). Their last unpopular web redesign that put the "news" at the bottom of the page (LOL) was 100x more involved than what it would take to add a simple plain-text "Rollback" sub-menu underneath "More" on the game page.

No I am not "getting it" because that makes no sense whatsoever. You are clearly misunderstanding something now, how it all works currently.

Adding a Galaxy-client installer query/stub to the offline installers would not guarantee version parity with the non-installer versions of the games, anymore than currently. There is simply no logic claiming it would.

What could guarantee better version parity would be that the "offline installers" would be exactly (I mean 100% exactly, not 90% or 99%) the same files in a self-extracting exe file, than what Galaxy downloads when you download/install a game with it (and they would include some separate scripts or whatever to put registry entries and dependencies in place, and also removing them when you want to get rid of the game). And then GOG would let people, who don't use Galaxy, to download those executables from the web pages, instead of the current innosetup-based(?) installers. Something I and some others have suggested in the past as well.

That would also have the extra benefit that the "offline installer" download sizes would probably become smaller, like in the case of Cyberpunk 2077 where that self-extracting executable would only contain one language version, not all of them at the same time like with the current offline installer.

Another benefit would be that the installation process would need less (temporary) hard drive space than currently, as you would directly decompress the compressed installation to your hard drive. What I've learned from others that currently the offline installers first uncompress the installer files to some temporary directory in your system hard drive, and after that installs the game from those files.

That still has nothing to do whether those self-extracing executables (offline installers) would have a Galaxy-installer query/stub, or not. Those two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

The Steam client (usually) uses DRM. Galaxy does not, outside of arguments you could make in a few rare instances. That's the difference. I know many here equate a client with DRM, but I do not. That's the difference between us.

So all games would require the third-party client. Some would include extra layers of DRM, some would not.
To me, it seems to describe as well Steam current system, and the hypothetical Galaxy-mandatory GOG.

I personally draw the line to what would happen if the following two scenarios happened:
- Whatever provider enables your gaming (in this case, gog.com) is wiped out from the face of the internet
- The computer that you run your games on will burn in 30 days, you need to backup the whole thing (vms and snapshots don't count) and install your games on another computer

If you can't keep your games when the above occurs, then its unacceptable restrictions and you'll need to re-purchase your games again from another store at a later point in time.

I personally don't believe in double-dipping unless the business model is explicit that its rental and some additional allowances are made for that (ex: great selection at an affordable monthly price). You give me value, I give you money. Unless you actively work to provide continued or additional value, don't expect me to give you money again.

I find it sad that people don't strive to protect their rights more, but I guess a lot of people just don't care. I give you money and you do whatever the heck you want, you don't owe me anything, is the norm now I guess.

This really isn't complicated man. If they allowed DRM then obviously, you know, it would have DRM. However Galaxy on its own isn't DRM. Steam on its own isn't either really, it's just a delivery method, but since 99% of games on there mandate the client be used then it is DRM in the vast majority of cases. GOG doesn't do that, outside of a few rare things like the dumb Cyberpunk T-shirts (which I agree set a bad precedent). If that ever changes substantially I'll be the first to say so.

You guys can try and convince me until you're blue in the face that a client itself as a delivery method is DRM, and I'm never going to agree with you. There's really no point in the discussion.

DRM is already allowed and used by games sold on GOG.

DRM is about games delivery.

And if you don’t like people (rightfully) calling that "DRM", you just have to replace it by "vendor lock-in" each time you read one of these messages. But then you would have to assume that you are defending vendor lock-in…

If Galaxy just downloads the game, and you never need it again to install or play, then it is not DRM no matter how much you want to pretend it is. I've already mentioned the poor precedent with the dumb t-shirts, but that's not the same as a sudden Galaxy requirement to actually install and play games. If that happens, I'll be right there with you complaining.

As I've said before, the "DRM is coming any day now!!!" crusaders have been saying this stuff for 13 years, and yet here we are and GOG are still the only store with a DRM free focus that sells anything approaching AAA games. People are so quick to attack them for any perceived issue, but they're the only friends we've got.

*nods* Your right to block out arguments, but should also understand that you'll never convince us either, no matter how much you repeat this without any.

I mean that's fine, I'll never understand your thinking either. I probably shouldn't post in these topics but I feel a need to defend GOG to some degree I guess. Either way, I'm cool agreeing to disagree. No malice is ever meant.

I think the real issue you are misreading is falsely assuming DRM is the sole reason people dislike clients. It isn't. It's certainly the biggest one, but many just do not want any client installed. The concept of locking games installation process to stores proprietary transient middle-ware & back-end servers is also completely at odds with what game-preservation has been about - minimising / reducing the number of unnecessary layers between game and gamer, not adding more dependencies years later, DRM or not.

Eg, that Steam & Galaxy don't work under XP but the Win9x / DOS games they install do, or that one of the Fallout games stopped working (even offline installers) under XP due to galaxy.dll integration are completely fake restrictions. That not many use XP or "it's old" is an irrelevant argument to someone building a retro gaming rig, etc. It also isn't just "screw 'too niche' Linux users" that has to deal with the BS of "Why shouldn't I force Galaxy on everyone because It's Not DRM (tm)" you seem to constantly push. I've been putting ScummVM games on memory cards on an Android tablet years before I started dual-booting with Linux (utterly priceless for the kids on long car journeys). A quick look on the play store shows +500,000 downloads for ScummVM for Android. One hell of a "niche" to lose out on when download client, install client, download, uninstall client, manually extract & copy over, etc, ends up 4x the effort than just grabbing the "clean" Abandonware versions directly from a zip file.

Likewise, if anything happened to GOG and they went out of business Galaxy would become abandoned and all those galaxy.dll's (that are the only thing that stops Galaxy integrated games from crashing if there's no client running) would become gradually outdated as time goes by. Now if any security issues were then discovered a few years down the line in those galaxy.dll files, there would be no-one to fix them and it's entirely possible GOG games would end up like Flash - deprecated and blocked on an OS level. Imagine starting a game and seeing the same "The program can't start because Galaxy.dll is missing from your computer" - quarantined by Windows Defender 2028 in half your game collection as you can see now by moving a galaxy.dll file out of a game folder, whilst the original disk / Abandonware versions still work. Imagine how much more awkward it would be to support DOS / early Windows games today if a late 1990's store called Awesome Old Games had created a DOS client called "Nebula" that insisted half the 90's game's .exe's sold there had to be recompiled to directly call a tightly integrated nebula.dll, then went out of business and by early 2010's those nebula.dll became as deprecated as Starforce disk checks are under W10.

This stuff is not what real game preservation is about and I find it absurd the "Abandonware" groups are far more clued into the obvious long-term implications of locking enduring games to impermanent store's proprietary middle-ware & ever-changing backend infrastructure than half the people here who falsely think that if a client is not DRM that it can't still pose a separate long-term abandoned dependency problem with almost identical implications & outcomes to abandoned DRM (and both of which are caused entirely by forcing the use of a client...)

That's fine, but I'm arguing against this idea that GOG making galaxy mandatory would violate their DRM free promise and principles no matter how it was done. That's the argument many make, they don't just say "oh bummer I'd rather not use a client but oh well."

If the game ever requires Galaxy again in any way after download then it's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Galaxy being used as a simple delivery mechanism for the files which then live independently without it, either via the offline installers or some backup function that includes the necessary files for a re-installation process of some kind without Galaxy being involved.

Galaxy being required to run a game or install it on a new machine would absolutely be something I would oppose strongly.

I wasn't going to bother coming back to my topic anymore ... he says as he steps into the hornet's nest.

I think I have said all I really need to say, and that the rest is just people putting things together and being logical.

But to make things perfectly clear to those who need it, my proposition for a single installer, doesn't mean Galaxy doing business as usual, though it should seem that way still to Galaxy users.

So we are not talking about downloading individual game files to the user's PC, as Galaxy currently does for the Galaxy user, wasting bandwidth and download time (an abuse really of Steam proportions). Instead we are talking about downloading the same game file packages as an Offline installer user does ... one EXE and any accompanying BIN file(s) and extras.

Galaxy would download and automatically extract/install and setup things for Galaxy use with the game, much as it does now ... almost invisible to the Galaxy user.

Sure, overall it might take a little longer (not actually sure about that), to download and extract, but at least your game has been downloaded sooner, and you don't need a web connection after that. No doubt of great benefit with huge games, like Cyberpunk 2077. Once the game itself has been downloaded, it doesn't require the web for any resuming to extract etc.

Of course, one potential issue with my method, is drive space usage until the game has been extracted and installed, due to the size of downloaded files + extracted ones.

Aside from drive space usage, the only other possible benefit that I can see from the current Galaxy behavior, is where a download is interrupted and Galaxy only needs to continue on from the last successful file download. But honestly, in this day and age of resuming, that is a mute point, and something would have to seriously go wrong with the integrity of a download for it to become a factor.

All of the above is of course related to the Galaxy user, not us Offline Installer users. Of course, if there is only a one installer arrangement, the benefit with updates should be obvious ... one source one update.

Now if you don't mind, I have a train, plane, bus, taxi, hovercraft, rocket to catch ... likely one of them buggers ... or maybe a camel, horse or cart. :P

I don't know why he is not explaining this well. It would guarantee parity because they would be the same files. The installers for the game would use the exact same files, whether you choose to have Galaxy installed or not. If you've installed Galaxy, it would download and install the game files from the exact same source as people downloading through the website. It's one installer, one set of files. Period. Galaxy isn't downloading a different set of files from a different source than the game page downloads through the website.

Essentially exactly what you stated, except the installer would have an option to install galaxy if you chose. That's is. That's what he meant by stub.

I also suspected that might be what he wanted to say...

...but it still doesn't explain why there would have to be the option to install the Galaxy client among those game files (installer, whatever you call it). What does it have to do with anything? Why would it be needed for this to work? That is the part that didn't make any sense.

EDIT: Although, after reading the OP's last message, it actually seems he is suggesting the opposite that i was: he is apparently suggesting that the Galaxy client would not download and install the games the way it does currently, but instead it would download those same offline installers that you can currently download with the web browser, and the Galaxy would apparently install the game by running that offline installer.

I was suggesting the opposite, that the "installer" that non-Galaxy users would download from the web page, is merely the exact same files that Galaxy downloads nowadays, and on top of that some mechanism to install dependencies and setting registry entries etc. (it could be an install script the user has to run manually, or it is run automatically the first time the user runs the game... and then there would have to be some uninstall script too to get rid of the game (registry entries etc.) afterwards.

I see many drawbacks with his (apparent) suggestion as then the Galaxy would not be able to download mere changed delta files when auto-updating installed games (but instead it would have to re-download an updated game installer all over again and install it over the old installation, or at best a separate update installer, if available).

Also the downloads would be bigger with Galaxy, like if you compare how CP2077 offline installers are over 100GB compressed, while the installation (that Galaxy currently also downloads) is 69GB or so, uncompressed.

And a third thing, the current offline installers are more wasteful in that they apparently first uncompress the installer files to the system directory, and after that install the game from those temporary files.

And also in this case, I have no idea why those installers that Galaxy would download too, would have to have the optional Galaxy client installation query/stub/whatever. Again, what does it have to do with anything? What would be its purpose and benefit?