Check them as you go to play them? Isn't it difficult to play more than 1 at once?...

After thinking about it for roughly 7 seconds, I place this at the feet of The Witcher 3.

If you're thinking to yourself, "What's this clown talking about?", consider many of the threads started in General Discussion from new TW3 owners who became members with the purchase of that game. If you were here at that time then you likely know what I'm referring to.

The implementation, however, I place at the feet of a natural gas leak in gOg headquarters. Because nobody in their right mind would have come up with the idea of saddling installers with an extra 150MB or so of software that amounted to a Catch-22.

This thread might be all a ruse. Remember, the notifications system is being overhauled and in the mean time is unavailable. That could partially explain why GOG staff are not responding very often since notifications are not available. (Though, there's also been too many posts…) On the other hand, this thread likely has created a steady stream for testing their new notifications system on their end. So, perhaps this is just for purposes of testing the new notifications system?

It just seems archaeologically unsound to provide anything in an installer that is going to fail, become an obstacle, or create confusion, which is one of the main reasons to not include DRM. Having installers that by default will try to install Galaxy from online when it won't be available (in the future) will at the very least be an obstacle (t.i. try to figure out the effective combination of checkboxes…) and at the most result an error preventing install of the game, too.

Having Galaxy bundled with a game could similarly be an obstacle or confusing if it requires an online connection before presenting the local storage of games (hence the newly installed game). Consider that many of the features offered by Galaxy require access to GOG's servers, and that Galaxy is not required for the games to work (with rare exceptions currently). To me that doesn't seem helpful to people in the future, who very well might be the people who are installing the games today.

I thought there were GOG developers actually working on making games from the past work in the present? If so, then I'd rather not believe they don't care that people in the future will have to go through this archaeological annoyance (and perhaps fail). Unless GOG developers are spiteful having had gone through it themselves, or maybe just don't believe it's worthwhile keeping things simple (which is quite often a lot of work and decision making in order to accomplish).

Though, it seems to me like the only thing necessary is changing "Try GOG Galaxy" to a more proactive phrase, on the game card in the account library. It could be nice for that button to be more functional by automatically detecting whether Galaxy is already installed so it can open Galaxy and begin installation of the game with one click in the web browser. If the game is actually supported by any of the features of Galaxy then list those features for it on the game card, otherwise don't insist so much. Just a few words. Simple to understand. Under the hood functionality for the "Manage with Galaxy" button. Simply works.

I like top keep my library up to date in case GOG gets shut down tomorrow or the next day. Not likely, but not impossible.

Are the game installers similar download stubs or can you still install the game with them without network, just without the option to install Galaxy? Because I'm not sure what purpose would be served by an installer that included the game but couldn't actually be installed without network and the service in the other end.

Roughly speaking, how much extra space does this 'smaller installer' of galaxy take per game installer? Is it still a throwaway amount of disk space by todays standards if you multiply it by a thousand?

Second this.
And I just bought a new hard drive for my 3rd GOG backup, since I no longer trust GOG any more.

He pretty much answered this:

If it's a true web installer, as it sounds, it should be a very minimal increase... like 1 or 2 MB per installer as the Galaxy components will be downloaded online and not bundled with the installer.

Absolutely. Let's not forget other stores closed the last few years. D2Drive, DotEmu shop, Impulse.

https://smile.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Portable-External-STDR4000100/dp/B00ZTRXFBA/
USB 3.0, doesn't require a separate power source, I use these to backup & transfer MAME/MESS ROM, CHD & Art EXTRAs sets.

I can live with a stub/downloader for Galaxy, I understand it would be convenient for those rare cases when a new customer downloads a game for the first time and finds out about your client. But please make it opt-in. It makes much more sense, as I suspect offline downloaders are mainly used by people who are not interested in using your client. And those who want it, have it already installed.

Much better solution what I use.
I did an unboxing video recently.
https://youtu.be/T1j8OisTmmE
Fantastic drive.

Yea I don't quite get that... they are already going half way and agreeing to do what we asked for by providing a stub/web installer for Galaxy, so no large file increases. I don't see why they just don't go the other 50% of the way and allow us to opt-in instead like we asked for as-well.

If they did that then they could probably completely replace the "classic installers" like originally planned with 90-95% of the users in this thread being okay with it.

Obviously some would be mad no matter how GOG tries to compromise, but I think most of us would be fine with it. I still have my doubts about this whole two installers thing... wasn't the point of this to cause less confusion?

My impression is that by this you marginalize futher the statement that GOG Galaxy is forever optional (by requiring users to do more and more to actually get that option).

You will have to support two times the amount of installers which might be a lot of work (even if you automatize it) with providing the two kind of installers and supporting them including keeping them synchronized. Will that really work out?

Also, for these classic installers you will not have a default way resulting in an installed Galaxy. Wasn't this what you wanted?

From a technical perspective this sounds a bit odd. If a certain feature is not used than it certainly shouldn't stand in the way of using the rest of the product.

Without all the people buying GOG games already before Galaxy existed, there wouldn't be any Galaxy at all. It would be nice not to forget that and to really show care and commitment to the "Galaxy remains optional" statement.

I still think you assume that users are stupid, offering them by default a opt-out install of additional software.

Leaning back and waiting for next year, when classic installers maybe get faded out for some reason.

It would probably look a bit silly to have two download options which just differ in the default state of a single installation option.

I imagine a big download button for downloading installers and above it a check box for choosing the opt-in or opt-out installable. The question is which way the check box is marked by default but we could maybe get another check box in the settings for that but then the question is which way....

They got cocky. That's the problem. I hope someone at GOG has the capacity to realize what they are doing, but I doubt it. They are in their own little business world, out of touch with reality.

Just to state how easy it could be:

For 95% of all my GOG games the workflow is really simple. It is.

Step 1: Buy, download and install the game
Step 2: Play the game

Somehow Galaxy is not required for any of these steps and for me is also not improving any of these steps significantly. The reason is mostly that I'm already satisfied with how things are. They are already good and I simply don't need Galaxy. It may be nice to have, but nothing essential really.

Maybe that describes well the importance of Galaxy for me. Your experience may be different though.