Yup that would be their aim. But mostly mods just can't stop overuse their powers.

Fe if someone writes something which could be considered against the rules it is instantly 1-2 weeks ban, and you won't even get which comment of yours is against which rule. It would be way better if they would just tell you you should change the comment cause atm it is against this rule.

Stay on topic, please.

Agreed, let us all get back on topic.

I voted for bringing the Gog downloader back, and wish everyone well, tho I don't see it happening. I will still support such causes tho.

As we wait to see what happens, some music for us little ants to dance to.

So, as has been discussed across these Downloader topics, this is in effect providing negative value to those of us who don't use Galaxy (new or old). On a visible level, the customer is not benefiting from new API. In fact, I could argue generally that newer has consistently been proven to be worse just based on the span I have been on this site. All the upgrading resulted in slower pages, more loading, herky-jerky-ness etc for me. I used to be able to go to a gamepage and instantly click through screenshots; I used to be able to go to the front page (which loaded faster) and click to news right away. Profile less privacy by default originally. I'm sure there are other examples too.

Also for what it's worth, even after GOG announced Downloader was going away, the links still worked and even a new release at the time got a Downloader link (it was some adventure game, name escaping me). I admit I can't say if it would no longer be possible to do that (though I don't see why not). I do think you are on to something that it is hard to come up with a 1:1 analogy with other site changes. Maybe GOGmixes is a closer example, which of course never got restored. Perhaps the better solution would be to poll users instead of just making these sweeping changes. At the end of the day a business should serve all of its existing customers, not just the customers that it might really really want.
Probably the best we can hope for is a sort of "Galaxy lite" that sticks to the functions of Downloader without the rest of the bloat. Unfortunately it would still be hard for some of us like me to trust that and use it. As I have stated in this topic and others, I have trust in the GOG brand, but not in the Galaxy brand. Despite GOG's attempts to consolidate them, they are distinct. To me, the GOG brand represents great highly desired (by me) games in DRM-free form, whereas the Galaxy brand represents at best an unnecessary and bloated extra step to access those games as well as prioritizing a different audience than me.

No, I'm not interested in all that stuff.

That's one step from calling people "tOxIc" for not having the right opinion. Please pay and be happy, or shut it! Thank you for your collaboration.

I'd like to dedicate this post to Breja, who loves a good read ... ha ha ha ha ... May the 4th be with him. ;)

Now that we are on the cusp of reaching a thousand votes or pleas for the return of the GOG Downloader, I think it a good time to do a few surmises.

One such surmise of my own, if I were a gambling man, which I'm not, is that most of the voting would have dwindled significantly weeks ago, and yet it is still steadily rising.

That said, the voting could still markedly peter off at any time. In reality, I have no idea about how many people were still using the GOG Downloader at the time of its demise. I could certainly not have put a number to it, but I would have hazarded a guess that it was a lot more than the votes so far.

So why haven't more voted already? Well, an educated guess would be that many have just accepted and moved on ... or are trying to, and are either now using Galaxy or their browser to do the game downloading. They are not happy about it, but can't be bothered to make a fuss about it ... it's a common phenomenon, and something no doubt, that GOG have been counting on.

That said, I suspect some of the late voters may be those getting frustrated with the new state of affairs.

We all suspect, that GOG know exactly how many were using the GOG Downloader. But what if that were not the case ... not like we think anyway? What if, they based the number of users on the number of downloads using the GOG Downloader, during a set period?

It seems to me, that the steady increase of votes, tell us a few things. One of which, is that unlike me, who used to visit at least once a day, other customers may do so far less often. So that would mean, that some are still just finding out about the demise of their precious GOG Downloader.

So perhaps there are a lot more customers that prefer the GOG Downloader, than GOG realize.

But certainly a thousand customers is not to be sneezed at anyway.

Lets look at the number with a bit more examination. We are talking about customers that used to have something that was very useful, even necessary depending on your point of view, that are now unhappy, even angry in many cases. How many sales might have been lost due to that and other related issues, I have no idea. I certainly come to GOG less, have bought less than I usually do in my normal given period. I haven't stopped totally from buying games at GOG, just gotten tougher with prices and minimized my access to promotions. Some have declared a much harsher response.

Now it would be remiss of me, to not mention the votes for other things at GOG, that some here are so fond of using for nay-saying. Take the votes for various games or an official Linux downloader or various features, etc. They in most cases, number vastly greater than the number of those pleading for the return of the GOG Downloader. There is no denying that. What I do however deny, is that it is the same situation, and that they should be compared on equal merit.

Most if not all of those things, have never existed here at GOG, and would take a lot of effort to produce or even setup. And something like a Linux tool, which is far from mainstream, a niche really, would hardly be on the radar, and just the usual token effort at best, that so many do, just to gain a few sales or feel they are less under the yoke of Microsoft or Apple.

The GOG Downloader on the other hand, does exist and was provided, and being a programmer myself, I know would take very little effort to update to any changed protocols ... if indeed there are any.

Knowing all that, I can only surmise, that the demise of the GOG Downloader was deliberate. That the real aim was the further promotion of Galaxy. GOG have an agenda, have claimed as much, and they seem to want to force us to it.

Any person who is at least partially tech savvy, knows that browser downloads of large files without integrity checks is a bad idea. Sure, if you download and install right away, the installer has an integrity check, so no problem. But if you are like me and many others, and want to archive your game downloads and backup to multiple drives, you want to be sure the files are ok ... and having to go through the install process first for each game, is very onerous to say the least.

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Now for a little related diversion ... especially as I may have unintentionally incensed a few Linux lovers, with one of my earlier comments.

Let me start, by admitting that I don't mind Linux, and always download the Linux variants of the games I get from GOG. Primarily though, I am a Windows user. I never bother with the MAC downloads.

One thing I am not sure of but bears pondering over as a comparison, for profit from niche, is the number of Linux customers here at GOG, and why GOG cater to them ... I am glad they do.

If the number is high, then yes GOG would be foolish to ignore the probable profit. That said, there is a cost involved, and clearly we don't have an official downloader for Linux, so one could surmise that the number of Linux customers is not really that great, or we would have one.

Are GOG providing Linux variants of games for altruistic reasons, for principles etc? Or is there indeed enough profit in it? I have no idea really.

Using the GOG Downloader, according to GOG themselves, appears to be niche.

Those of you with the wit, can see what I am suggesting as a consideration. In simplistic terms though ... profit from niche ... is it worth it? Can GOG sensibly ignore a sizable group of customers?

I think GOG are taking a gamble, and a battle is going on.

May the 4th be with you!

P.S. As of May the 1st, I have been at GOG for 3 years, and acquired 933 games from them in that time.

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LET GOG KNOW HOW YOU FEEL BY VOTING
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/keep_the_gog_downloader_and_keep_it_up_to_date

We are up to 951 votes now .... still steadily climbing.

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Please see the following post if you want to know about my program etc.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_do_not_want_say_goodbye_to_gog_downloader/post454

I wonder how effective the wishlist is for stuff like this. Separate topics have discussed how some desired games racked up a bunch of wishlist votes, yet still didn't come here or only came after a long time. While by contrast there have been some smaller indie games arrive here despite only having wishlist votes in the single and low-double digits.

Easy to explain. The wishlist is just a part of the whole package. The one part that shows or tries to show GOG that there is a certain feature/game people are interested in. That's what's the case here. The wishlist entry tries to signal GOG that there are still quite a few people that would love to have their decision to kill the downloader for good reconsidered - nothing more and nothing less.

Whenever GOG watches the wishlist they have to weight the interest of the community against the costs or time involved to fulfill those wishes. Not every wish will be fulfilled and some with an extremely high number of votes might still never be fulfilled at all. You said it yourself: some much wishlisted games did arrive but very late ... the reason for this might simply be that it was not easy to get the game here or to make it runnable without DRM so it can be sold on GOG at all. So yes, the wishlist is only a part of the package but it is that part that tells GOG how the community sees things - the other part (licenses, technical problems, contact problems ect.) unfortunately are not in the hands of the community and GOG will probably never tell you or anyone in the community when they started to try to fulfill a wish from the wishhlist. Who knows, maybe they are working on another request right now. Just remember how often people here were surprised that GOG actually was able to get a certain game. Those things mostly don't happen overnight and often they can take really long. Usually you don't have such problems with small indie games. Licenses are clear, contacts are clear and those games are developed for modern systems anyway. So it will be easy for GOG to release such games here (yes, in case of many indie games the "curation" part also is important but that's another story).

Good points, well-articulated. If it were possible I would trade all the indie games to have Downloader back functioning like it always did. Anyway, I don't think you meant it this way but I would dispute the implication that they can only work on one request at a time, particularly when this one is basically of their own doing. In other words, they chose to take away this option, it isn't like making "Galaxy for Linux" from scratch (others have articulated this point numerous times in these Downloader topics).

No, like you said, that's not what I meant. Of course they will be able to adress multiple wishes at the same time but some wishes might take longer than others. However that was only my explanation for the question why some games are still not on GOG even though they have many votes on the wishlist and vice versa. In the case of the missing downloader (sounds like a movie title) it's only GOG considering the costs of maintaining a so called "obsolete" software against the voice of most of those here in the thread and on the list. Like I said - it's just a signal. we can give and - depending on the costs that were never specified - GOG might listen. No matter if they do or don't, I am glad that I at least am able to show here and on the list that I disagree with their decision.

They really don't.

There is a wide array of games that are available for Linux, but that aren't present here on GOG. They dragged their feet into officially supporting Linux to start with, and even now, years later, not much has changed. It's well down on their priority list.

Naturally I don't know the numbers of Linux users here on GOG, and it's hard to be accurate anyway given that many games that don't have Linux releases still work perfectly fine on Linux by using Wine (and DXVK). But I would suspect that it's around the 1-2% mark, like most other places on the PC platform. Not much in others words, but that is no reason to offer Linux customers a worse product.

Make no mistake, I am glad they offer Linux games here, because this is the only shop I can defend spending money on games -- basically due to the only principle GOG has left from their earlier days: DRM Free games. I just wish they put up Linux versions of games here too when they are available elsewhere.

1001 votes now! Keep it up people :D

Vote FOR player CHOICE!

Vote AGAINST corporate GREED!

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/keep_the_gog_downloader_and_keep_it_up_to_date

"Just use Galaxy!", "Galaxy does the same thing as Downloader!" "I don't see the big deal with just using Galaxy!"

To over 1,000 of us on this site, it is different and it is a big deal. We want this alternative to Galaxy back. It sure would've come in handy when re-downloading a large games like Deus Ex Mankind Divided + DLC to get the fully working offline installers.

Now that the downloader is gone, I'm back to resorting to downloading the large individual file downloads that are slower and fail in the browser persistently.

GOG Downloader was a simple, lightweight and pleasant tool for queuing the download of several games that could be left without breaking. I don't want to install and depend on GOG Galaxy for the same reason I come to GOG to avoid the dependancy on Steam's control over my game library. Once Galaxy is installed, it launches when games are run and I don't want it to touch them or take up any resources in the background, especially the newer version that takes more resources to manage a cross launcher catalogue.

I want my GOG Downloader back!!!