Hey there! I bought Kingbreaker (Witcher Story) and had some problems installing it with the GoG client (meaning the installation could never finish no matter what I did). I finally noticed that I - thank god! - can install the game in some sort of "offline mode". That's actually very cool since I only plan to play singleplayer anyway.
My only question now is how updates work with the offline versions? Since the GoG normally keeps games up to date, do I have to check and download later patches manually? (because I can see no "check for updates" option ingame).

Thanks, I'd really appriciate the help!

Yes. They will either come in the form of small iterative patches, or completely new installers, or both.

The offline installers are just the game installers, there is usually no difference between them and what you get when installing a game via GOG Galaxy. You can actually import an "offline" installation into Galaxy and then use it as you would normally with a Galaxy installation. This means you will have the option to update the game via Galaxy. The standalone installers do come with one major drawback, though: they don't get delta patches and sometimes, rather than making a small patch available for download, GOG just updates the entire installer. However, if you've imported the game into Galaxy and you're using it to update your game, that wont be an issue.

If you are using Galaxy then you can use the offline installers and Galaxy should still pick up the installation and you can keep it auto updated with the client.

Failing that you can keep it up to date with normal patches downloaded from the website.

I still get most of the patch notifications and downloads from the gog downloader. It's not really officially supported anymore, but they have been adding gog downloader links for new games added to the catalog. I will continue using that till they break it with an update.

Just curious, but does GOG actually update their gog downloader links with new patches on updated games? I actually always download my games from GOG via gog downloader and has already given up from long ago on the thought that these games that I downloaded not via GOG Galaxy will never receive proper patches for me to download.

Honestly, even the GOG library itself that I always open through my Chrome browser doesn't explicitly inform me whether one of my games has even received a new update/patch apart from the small blue circle that appears next to the game's title. Even that small indication isn't really that helpful in my opinion, knowing that the blue circle immediately disappears as I click on the game box that basically doesn't tell me whatsoever with what kind of update has actually taken place.

Therefore, if your answer is yes, then probably I would have to head over to my GOG library and immediately update some of my games which as far as my memory could remember, has actually had a blue circle appearing next to their titles.

Yeah, I almost always get the notification flag for updates in the gog downloader. I get them in my game shelf too. It seems a little flaky occasionally and takes time to update with the new number of updates available, but it does work.

Wait, so gog downloader actually informs you of any updates that your games have?

Yeah, it gets a little red numbered flag in the top corner when updates are available.

I see. Thank you so much! I had never bothered to use gog downloader for any other purposes other than to download a game for the first time. After the download had already finished, that'd be the time where I would close the program.

"can install the game in some sort of "offline mode"" - ha, if there was one sentance to describe the reliance people have the net that is it. Can you imagine a computer that works when not connected to the web,, I mean how does it send all your details directly to the big companies?

Jesus Christ ! They already released a sequel to Thronebreaker ?