I might be a bit slow, but that never occurred to me before now. especially if it not used as an diagreement with a poster, but as a way of scrolling through threads faster. The affordances of technology, heh, it is not how the designer intended for something to be used, but the way the users perceive how they can use it.

This is on the gamedev, not GOG. They should be publishing their builds on the Master Branch.

Please read the open documentation on GOG Developer Docs: https://docs.gog.com/offline-installers/

The Galaxy infrastructure is the only reason why offline installers are generated automatically. Otherwise everything has to be done manually and GOG game updates would be farther behind their Steam counterparts than they already are.

Everyone here is benefiting from GOG Galaxy one way or another, even if you only use offline installers.

Gamedevs are the problem for being too lazy to keep their games updated here, not GOG (except for contract enforcement).

Yes, humans are imperfect and if all humans did their job correctly, we wouldn't need automation.

If you include documentation, odds are good people won't read it. And if you include steps that people should follow either people will end up not following them or will execute them imperfectly.

And if you expect people to do any kind of adaptation in their software, they'll do them incorrectly too which will produce bugs.

Any deviation between the Galaxy and offline installers that require human input will produce errors. You can call people lazy or stupid or incompetent for it, it still won't solve your problem.

The only solutions to your problems are:
- HR: Work only with extremely competent people (impossible with game dev given how the industry work and GOG's position in it)
- Automation: Take the human element out of the equation as much as you can

I think having automation fill in all the delta between Galaxy and offline installers is a tall order, given that it requires code manipulation in game code (I think the only sane solution for that that takes most of the solution outside the hand of devs is to provide the devs with drm-agnostic libraries which nobody did due to economical interests, GOG included)

Otherwise, for your other claims that automation wouldn't have gotten done without Galaxy... It's almost like saying that you decided to use red bricks instead of brown bricks to build a house and if you hadn't used red bricks, the house wouldn't have gotten built.

Maybe GOG would have lacked the motivation to automate without Galaxy (ie, without the dream of building their own walled garden), but it would have been feasible to do it.

You need consent to do this unless stipulated in a contract,. Otherwise, the sole responsibility lies with the gamedev to fix their game and release it on the master branch.

I don't understand what else you're saying in the last part. Galaxy is not just the client, it also includes a similar infrastructure that allows other gamedevs to update their games on Steam on their own accord and agency.

I've never liked clients, I always prefer stand alone packages, or installers.

Not entirely true. GOG's old backend system (where GOG insisted everything uploaded by developers to GOG had to be manually tested by GOG staff before being published) was more a result of GOG's older policy of wanting to do everything by hand (back when they were a store of 200 games and staff had the time to do that). It's certainly possible to have an easily updatable backend system / server that auto-builds offline installers without a client. People confuse "better upstream for devs" with "Galaxy" mostly because they introduced at roughly the same time. The former doesn't need the latter though. See how devs can rapidly directly update their itch.io builds without needing manual testing by itch.io staff the way GOG used to.

In fact the software GOG uses to create offline installers (Innosetup) is highly automated by design. Take installed game folder, compress it, add code to install it to a user changeable location, add correct shortcut links & icon, add any required registry entries, etc, can be completely automated without any client. All that changes from one game to the next are simple variables like MyAppName, MyAppExe, MyAppVer, SetupIconFile, DefaultDirName, etc, that can "pull" that data from elsewhere (eg, developer provided .ini file or web submission form). This stuff has been there all the time and would still be even if Galaxy hadn't been invented. Similarly, Galaxy has done nothing to improve Linux offline installers for obvious reasons.

I'll believe that when I see games like this (that are broken because GOG aggressively encourages inappropriate Galaxy API over-integration to the point where even basic main menu settings don't save in offline installers due to the "need" for Galaxy to 'manage' it, but then GOG doesn't bother to chase anyone up to correct it) actually get fixed instead of ignored. That's half on the developers but also half on GOG for pushing same devs into unnecessary over-Galaxification proprietary coding in offline DRM-Free installers in the first place. If there were no Galaxy API, the game settings would have been coded normally without it to save directly to registry / .ini like every other game, and nothing would have been broken in the first place. So clearly "everyone who only uses offline installers" who still owns a broken game courtesy of the Galaxy API hasn't 'benefited' from Galaxy there 15 months (and counting) later...

Same here. I don't use the steam, epic or other launchers either. I'd rather games came in a zip/7z and i extract them to play, not needing anything extra to get it up and running either. (Especially useful for a ramdrive)

Exactly and in my experience with devops, whatever statement begins with "responsability lies with the developper to..." is where shitshows start.

You can't control the human element, ever. What you want is to minimize it.

If you have to rely on it, make room for remediation, because errors will abound.

Right and you assume that similar automation would be impossible with offline installers, because...

Basically, the only way you can do continuous integration is if the artifact has hard dependencies on some centralised servers?

Everyone outside the game industry must be doing it wrong then, because we usually avoid hardcoding environment dependencies (ex: connection to the production database being hardcoded into a binary) in delivered artifacts like the plague (well, frontends still do it to a large extent, but they are a special breed).

This is precisely what game store vendors like GOG or Steam encourage developers to do right now.

Galaxy do not save my password, that's why it's crap or shitty.
so i use a text file to save my password and copy cut it.

you know i one of the few people that use a random 16 words password
so remembering it is next to impossible thanks to gog i have a security risk for nothing.

GOG Downloader: an efficient lightweight program that worked flawlessly.

GOG Galaxy: The social hub, launcher and client that nobody asked for.

Yet this player will use it as long as ut is the only real downloader supported by GOG.

Thank you, Magnitus and AB2012 for the insightful replies.

If this is indeed true, then I stand corrected. Thank you.