I got an email about a GOG sale, found a few titles on my wishlist on sale, bought them. All good so far, yeah?

Then I went to the GOG launcher, which admittedly I haven't opened in two or three months. First of all, WTF is Galaxy? Is it that drastic a departure from the previous launcher that it needed a new name?

That aside, previously the launcher just always magically knew which games I had purchased from GOG, and kept up-to-date lists of installed and owned games. The Galaxy launcher doesn't appear to recognize my recent purchase of 4 titles... none of them show up in either the "owned" or "installed" categories.

Okay, fine. I can initiate a download manually. Old hat. Except doing so on the website gets an .exe file, which, when opened, goes to Galaxy. Now Galaxy is doing a hurry up and wait routine (img attached) on a 1 MB file. I can file a tech support ticket if that's what's necessary, but this is really quite poor functionality. The first game I try to install after update doesn't work? Was this new launcher even tested before they rolled it out as a forced update?

Edit: Why can I not upload jpg, gif or png formats? What image format IS acceptable? What is this, 1995?

Second edit: Okay, after closing and restarting Galaxy twice, it has updated my "owned" list to include the recent purchases. I'm installing the same 1 MB game through the launcher, not the website, and it appears to be installing.

Game booted up just fine.

Whatever, this is the only way I can play these games, so I'll put up with some headaches to get there. I just wish I didn't have to.

You can still install games without galaxy by expanding the "download offline backup game installers" and downloading the relevant files. They are doing all they can to distract you from this option with the big blue "DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL NOW" button, but it is still possible to avoid Galaxy.

To summarise the problem for you:

GOG Galaxy is the "new" name for GOG's game launcher platform, and isn't particularly new. They've been through a series of updates, and moved into beta testing "Galaxy 2.0" which is a new all-in-one platform that allows you to launch games purchased from other stores, as well as your purchases through GOG itself. Unfortunately, about a month ago, they forced the update onto all users, in spite of openly acknowledging that it's still in beta, and in spite of allowing users to opt out of beta testing (by violating that option). They've done this during a major international crisis situation which they were already acknowledging to be having a significant impact on their ability to deliver support for customers, and are now at a point of taking multiple months to respond to support tickets while warning customers of an "up to 4 weeks" delay in handling contacts.

The older versions of Galaxy were actually stable and functional, and you can revert using files still provided on the GOG servers. Here's a link:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_beta_gog_galaxy_2.0/how_to_keep_galaxy_v12_client_and_avoid_the_forced_v20_beta_update

Hope that helps. And yes, obviously a lot of people are unhappy about it. This was my response:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_beta_gog_galaxy_2.0/open_letter_to_gog_and_message_to_support

Dude, stop spamming, stop copy-paste links to your f.. manifesto. You spam it almost in every topic not even looking at what people ask for. I have seen people in other topics asking you to stop. And there it is. Again.

You've seen ONE person in THREE topics ask me to stop. And in all cases, it WAS relevant. Because I've only posted it in topics where it IS relevant. Such as this one.

I have, in fact, posted in multiple topics where it isn't relevant, and not posted it because it wasn't relevant.

It's not spam. Calm down.