Hold on, now: Am I to understand that games downloaded via Galaxy are "Galaxy installations", similar to the way Steam games are tied to the Steam client, and that using Galaxy to acquire an earlier version of an "offline installer" is thus impossible?

Im honestly not sure if you're being ironic. Pardon me if you were and I couldn't grasp the inherent joke present in your post. :P

In any way, explaining this might help Galaxy users only reading this thread to understand our unsatisfaction with how GOG is handling offline installers currently:

We currently have two official ways of downloading our bought products here:
- Using a browser to access the "Games" tab and downloading them directly
- Using Galaxy to install them directly

When downloading games through the browser, you will download a packaged setup containing your game.
This package is created using InnoSetup, a tool that can be used to create setups easily using scripts to automate the process of future installation. What GOG does is package the game files using it with compression methods through scripting using this tool. Said 'Offline Installers' are also divided into packs of 4gb for those of us still using old drives for easy of management and those of us with slow internets for easy of download continuation if something happens during download and they also contain the necessary dependencies for each game to work like Directx, Redist, .NET, PhyX, and so on.

When the download is complete, you can then install it using the main installation executable, which then creates the necessary registry entries, install the dependencies... or extract the installers using tools like InnoExtract, which just do the process of InnoSetup on reverse, basically, without creating the Registry Entries or installing the dependencies, if you are a more advanced user and want only the game files for backup.

Galaxy installations are different. In that sense, yes, they're just like Steam. Galaxy connects to GOG servers and download file by file directly to the defined installation folder, creating the registry entries later and installing the dependencies on top of it.

When we ask for Offline Installers Rollback in this thread, I think we collectively mean we want a way to download the Offline Installers Pre-Preservation Program builds that we had access before they were force updated to the Preservation Program builds.

Why Galaxy users can, indeed, rollback their installation to a previous build while Offline Installers users can't?
That's of course not the only problem, but then the forum is full of threads about all the disparities between them and they're easy to find.

If anyone finds any information wrong in this post, please, feel free to correct me. I'd be thankful.

You forgot to mention that those same offline installers can also be downloaded with the client for later use and with less clicks whenever an installer is split to multiple parts.

Apologies OP, wasn't trying to get the thread closed. That said, I think the thread has run it's course and everything has been said.

Made a guide to those in Linux which can't use Galaxy to rollback:

[Guide] How to download Pre Preservation Program game versions on Linux
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/guide_how_to_download_pre_preservation_program_game_versions_on_linux

Thanks for the information. I didn't know that it is only possible to install games via Galaxy, and that it's not possible to download installers, either current or past versions.

(I have never tried using Galaxy myself, but according to others) My understanding is:

-the most current offline installer is able to be selected as an option downloadable through Galaxy (this is why people talk about using Galaxy to "download offline installers"; they mean that Galaxy is a quick way for them to download multiple current installers of their games, using Galaxy not unlike a download manager of sorts). It should be an offline installer just like the one you download using the browser.

-any offline installer for a game other than the current offline installer isn't available, regardless of if you're using browser or Galaxy

-however, Galaxy does have "Galaxy installations" different from downloading an offline installer, and, only with Galaxy, you can "roll back" to a previous Galaxy installation


Edit: typo

Here's a free L for GOG to catch: https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/issues/23443
The devs of OpenRCT2 fixed this but not a great look to need to fix in the first place.

Actually, the only cases where there should be any difference between a game's latest offline installed version and the latest Galaxy installed version, is when their version numbers don't match, because especially from GOG's support's perspective it is important that only in that case the offline installer using customers and the client using customers wouldn't all have identical contents in their installation folders for the same game right after the installation.

Sorry if I was unclear in my explanation; I don't disagree with that but was just trying to add clarity.

Using Galaxy to download a Galaxy installation [should]= The installed folder of a game that was produced from using an offline installer (whether the offline installer was downloaded through browser or through Galaxy).

What Galaxy does not have is older versions of the offline installers themselves, which is part of the bone of contention people have and what makes GOG's "pro-preservation" stance seem hypocritical to some.

In other words, and as I had pointed out originally, if you want to go back to a previous version of a game, your only* recourse is to use Galaxy, and you're getting a Galaxy installation of the game, not an offline installer itself.

*technically, there are a very small number of exceptions, in a sense. Some games have a newer edition and in the extras tab will include an offline installer for a "classic" version of the game, for instance. However, that is not really an equivalent example of what we are talking about with wanting to go back to, say, the previous offline installer for Dragon Age: Origins.

Technically, speaking of offline installers that are available, I should also mention there are some patches available in their own section of the offline installers in our libraries. However, for these patches to be useful as a way to revert to a certain point, you already have to have an old version of the game offline installer, but it must also be new enough that it's compatible with the patches. For instance, say I have a game that when I downloaded it months ago was version 1.5, and I never updated. I learn via other users on the forums that the game has been updated a few times to greatly improve bugs/functioning/even adding content, but in the 1.8 update, now everyone is having problems with it, though they report the 1.7 version was working great. Luckily for me, I see in my library that I can access offline installers for a "1.5 to 1.6" patch and a "1.6 to 1.7" patch. There would also be a "1.7 to 1.8" patch, but I know I would skip that. However, to modify the hypothetical, if my old version had been "1.0" or "1.1", none of these patches would have been able to work so I would either be "stuck" with my old version or waiting for another update to fix the 1.8 update. Some games get updated very quickly, and I believe it is only the five (at most) recent patches that will have their installers remain available for download. Thus, this isn't really a reliable way of accessing different versions of games, as you have to buy the game early in its release on GOG, and then download updated versions of the main installer constantly, or else you will likely get too out of sync with what patch installers are available.

It all goes to show that things would be so much easier if we could just have access to an older offline installer of a game.

Edit: typo

Ideally any relevant older versions should be made available in a new unsupported installers section with each game for all customers who at any point in time have bought those games, as that way everyone who didn't entirely miss a game would have the same opportunity to download any of those older, but still one way or another relevant versions for it, in fact that would make it possible to just run the download script once to fill one set of backup drives and then repeat that process the next year with another set of backup drives, after which we would only need some easy way refresh first set of backup drives without leaving any longer latest versions to it unless they have ended up becoming unsupported installers, in which case it would be nice if the download script would be able to locally move them to each game's unsupported installers folder rather than downloading again.

But I guess GOG can't see any reason why it might be in their own best interest to make it really easy for their customers to be able to maintain efficient backups with little as possible bandwidth use rather than forcing them to waste their valuable gaming time and budget on backing up every update if they wish to be sure that they don't miss any actually important older version for any of their games.

Thank you for the reply.

No problemo. Didn't mean for it to seem like I was ignoring your original comment to me, either; I felt others had answered your question before I had gotten back here to post. Cheers.