GOOD NEWS:
GALAXY IS STILL OPTIONAL. IF YOU GOT THE DEFAULT INSTALLER (WITH GALAXY) AND JUST INSTALLED YOUR GAMES (WITHOUT CLICKING OPTIONS AND OPTIN OUT) YOU STILL CAN JUST UNINSTALL GALAXY AFTERWARDS.

GALAXY THE TOTALY (AND FULLY) OPTIONAL GAMECLIENT.
WE KNOW WHATS BEST FOR YOU AS YOU'RE PROBABLY TOO DUMB TO FIND THE GALAXY INSTALLER ON OUR SHITTY WEBSITE ANYWAY.

No, it doesn't mean you are not a core customer. It means you are something else, but let's leave it out of this thread. Others have already tried to derail it.

What a mess.

Listen, I've nothing against Galaxy (still not interested in it though), but I absolutely despise these shady tactics.
All these complaints fall on deaf ears.

What the fuck?! Okay, NOW I'm pissed. That is beyond unacceptable. In future, I'm going to look for other locations I can get a game DRM-free before buying it here. I had no idea they would go for something half as shady as THAT!

...Good grief, this is getting ridiculous. I know the download window mentions that the files include Galaxy, but they should still be asking the user's permission during the install process, not just installing it secretly alongside the game. What if someone downloaded the wrong installer by accident, or missed the note about Galaxy on the download page?

After all the fuss in this thread, we're right back at the start with the thing people were originally complaining about: adware tactics. Which are both unethical and completely unnecessary, given that most new users would probably be happy to go with the default install. I don't get it, I just don't.

Yeah, that said it's only meant to be downloaded once. As once galaxy is installed, it downloads "classic" versions. And those who do not want galaxy are supposed to download the "classic" versions right from the start (from one of the two links in the menu).

Those who don't want galaxy should really not download the bundled package ever. Well, unless they just install and erase the installers, instead of hoarding backups (which would be the point of a drm-free site, but which not many people seem to do). But again, if their bandwidth is limited, that's the same kind of loss (would have been around 250 Gb in my case).

But the this is one more thing showing that, in those installers, galaxy is really not meant to be optional. They are meant for a one-time download before being bypassed -by galaxy- because "it's done". Their size drawback only impacts the users who, inexplicably, would find the opt-out parameter and select it. These users are not meant to exist.

At this point, they could, just as well, remove that weird opt-out option altogether. It hardly helps. The choice can, and should, be made earlier than at that point. A mere little redesign of the download page would be way more efficient instead, and avoid the unwanted, unplanned, awkwardness of some people potentially accumulating bloated installers.

But again, this is in conflict with another goal of galaxy.com : increasing the number of galaxy users, in order to reach the critical mass required for galaxy to be 'a thing' in videogaming culture. Making it 'common sense' like steam is in gamer's mind, even if as an alternative. A matter of visibility.

Even if it's an oxymoron to many of us, the idea of gog is "drm-free client" instead of "drm-free gaming". Because, from now on, for the incoming generation of customers, "gaming = client". So, this new form of drm-free crusade requires to carve out a significant share of the client-gaming territory, and, frankly, we (including me) are not helping at all.

We fuel its economy, but we are, culturally, useless to gog. We don't represent galaxy.

Unless we fall in the galaxy fishnet, and start speaking galaxy and thinking galaxy and playing galaxy. And culturally spreading galaxy.

So, that's the situation. Doesn't bother me that much. There are shops that we use for side products (garden shops for tools, even when we don't garden, boating shops used for clothes and furniture even by people who don't sail, etc). That's a bit how I use galaxy.com. It sells client-free games on the side. Makes me happy.

But you've got to know what you're looking for, and to know where to look. Yeah just one more indication would be a tad more friendly for the newcomers. Who, I admit, will more and more seldom care.

Remember when we didn't have to keep our guard up not to get unwanted programs installed when playing games that we bought?

I miss the good old Good Old Games.

I really really really really look forward for the next blue post.

I doubt there will be one and if there is, it will probably be some PR BS. Don't get your hopes up.

I don't have hopes... at this point i only want to be entertained.

You know, I mentioned earlier how similar GOG practices pushing Galaxy are to Microsoft pushing Windows 10. The more I think about it, the more that feels about right. To the point where I am thinking, Galaxy must be a HUGE success for them to try to install it like this. Let's face it, if the client was not a success, they would just leave it as is till sooner or later everyone would have it installed. BUT the fact they are installing it like malware/bundleware, can only mean that most people want it...

Nothing says software that everybody wants than installing it secretly.

I fully understand GOG's reasons for pushing Galaxy as the default, but that's no excuse for outright tricking people into installing it. What gets me is that they could so easily please both groups - the majority who want Galaxy and the minority who don't - with a few minor changes, but instead they seem determined to piss off the latter group, even though it includes many of their largest customers. I'm honestly unable to work out whether it's deliberate or whether they're just really, really bad at communication in general (given the recent furore over the changes to chat settings, where there's no obvious benefit to GOG from not informing people, I'm inclining towards the latter).

Are you sure about these two groups? If the vast majority of people choose to use Galaxy, why trick people into installing it? Since the client is so good that most people want it, wouldn't it make more sense to just let the time pass, months?, till everyone is using the client?
I don't buy it that most people use and want to use the Galaxy client.
I have no doubt that their number increased (people who installed the client) after getting tricked to install it, but that's about it. IMO.

To be true, idiotic policies are usually emerging from a sum of factors and processes without much of a coherent deliberate planning. I doubt that anyone on gog has enough of a global vision to avert it, and the fantastically hilarious "have you noticed" announcement was illustrating this pretty well.

But also, the fact that the opt-out setting is hidden under a button gives a different flavor to the original blue statement about it being "easier for an experienced user to uncheck the box than it would be for a new user to figure out how to turn the feature on". It was even more absurd when we imagined it to be a visible tick on the install window. It almost makes sense for a buried option. Which can be deliberately buried to that effect, or could have been designed like that just because it looks cool and streamlined and orderly, by a team that only had this concern in mind. Chains of events, chains of decisions, dumb group consensuses, can have grotesque results (leading to grotesque adjustements, rationalizations, or just giving up because re-doing it from scrap would be annoying practically and psychologically), without one motivation explaining it alone. But then you have the layers of retrospective interpretations, and all the available conspiracies.

I would say that if you want to understand the real intent behind the form of galaxy's downloads, a good source would be Christian Morel's works on self-reinforcing "Absurd Decisions" ("a sociology of radical and persisting mistakes"). I'm not sure these (french) books have been translated, but you can easily find reviews, summaries or linked studies in english online.

GOG could have its own chapter in that. But so could many things.

Honestly, outside of all crazy conspiracy theories, I think the main reason why the opt-out check is in option instead of being visible directly during install is because...... drum roll..... that's where the "options" are located in the installers.

I mean the Gog installers have not really evolved that much since the beginning, IMO they simply didn't bother to create a whole new installers/GUI for the Galaxy opt-out option and just reused the one they already had.

Also the "opt-out installing Foxit reader" was in the "options" section too and not directly visible; so it's not anything new.