My understanding is that at one time the "offline" downloaders had galaxy built-in. Now on the download page there is a big green button labeled, "Download Now", which downloads galaxy. It's best to choose the files lower on the page, unless one likes galaxy. The last thing I want is yet another game manager.

Not as such, as above at one point it was the whole of galaxy, but after a lot of outcry they finally rescinded that. Now games can come with some elements. So most will have galaxy.dll, which is hard linked to the game ie won’t run without. Others will have cloud save folders. All offline installers are galaxified - they are not simple archives, there was another thread about this. So if you download an offline installer and have galaxy installed it will fire up for at least a fair few games. F you don’t have galaxy installed it shouldn’t (no one is testing as far as I am aware) do anything, but compatability may or be there for old OS, or in future I’d say M$ dislikes the galaxy.dll. You will note in some games they are lousy with all these plugins, titan quest has (had, I haven’t checked) steam, epic, galaxy, discord, and some others, a game that had none of them before.
Oh, and as a bonus when they went back and “improved” the offline installers to add all this, some games stopped working and some content got removed (wizadry 8 for example):
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/provide_a_full_and_complete_changelogged_download_system

So all those death matches i played on LAN/IP on Doom didn't actually exist. Those long nights of HALO LAN parties on board our ship didn't really happen, we all imagined it. This is so full of crap. Anonymous LAN has been a thing since remote multilayer was a feature. But sure. Games can't be made with it.

The vast, vaaaaast majority of consumers want client based multiplayer. There is no money in ignoring that to cater to an infinitesimally small group that want something else. That's why GOG has been singleplayer focused for their DRM pledge from the beginning.

Doom? You know damn well that's not what I'm talking about.

THIS is why the forum is so easy to write off. You know damn well I'm talking about the actual network, not LAN. Or perhaps you'd rather they just take out the multiplayer like they used to here.

Direct IP has always been a thing since multiplayer inception though. To say it can't be done when it's been done since the 80's is ludicrous. It's disingenuous to argue that multiplayer has to be tied to some form of account verification when there was none of that for years in functioning multiplayer. LAN is an actual network (I'm not 100% certain what you mean by the "actual network" but LAN stands for Local Area Network, vs WAN which is Wide Area Network), as is WAN/IP. Just because companies refuse to make something DRM-Free isn't because it can't be done. If there is enough demand, it will happen. You said we'll never get multiplayer without online activation, and I argue it's been done before, and could easily be done again.