I 'm simply saying how GOG probably views it and see's it as a extra benefit to entice non legitimate users. If it's a relevant argument or not is debatable.

Because the ease of use may entice people to buy? Perhaps not the current Galaxy features but future features possibly will. Same way Steam entices people to not pirate even though they can.

If I can get something like cloud saves without having to manually track saves and manually uploading, it may entice me to buy the game or buy it on sale to get that feature for ease of use. OR even something like being able to easily roll back patches. Some people really are that lazy.

But we have no idea what will come down the road.

Possibly, but perhaps not. With Steam games they have to do some extra work, with GOG games they don't. A lot of people probably would not bother. I could be wrong though.

: 'It's a bit nutty!'

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. :/

This is amazing. It is practically the first time in history ever that GOG has done something and there is almost practically 100% universal agreement from everyone who is pro-Galaxy, anti-Galaxy and Galaxy neutral that this change as it is right now is a bad thing. How it's possible GOG could come up with such an idea to be met with practically universal dislike of it is beyond me. Are they really that detached from what people want to have or what people consider to be reasonable?

If so, it is a worrying trend. One of the things I've always found appealing about GOG which was one of their strengths as a company to me, was how their decisions tended to be pro-consumer and they tended to interact with their customers in a variety of ways and make good decisions overall that are pro-gamer because they themselves at GOG were gamers too, so they tended to know what people wanted and what was a good way to go about various things, as well as how to make compromises about things that add conveniences for some while simultaneously reducing inconvenience for others.

Other companies like EA, Ubisoft and others seem to just make decisions that maximize profit and not give 2 shits about what their customers think or want as long as they cough up money. Even if people complain to those companies they don't seem to care or even respond so long as the money train continues to come in, they just sweep public opinion under the carpet and not care about it unless something blows up majorly in their face in the online press, at which point they do the bare minimum to backtrack as little as possible and pay lip service to the issue through their internal PR folk.

I hope as GOG and CDP grow as a company and are faced with various growing pains that they NEVER forget about all of the customers that have stuck with them all along through thick and thin, and never let dollar signs alone drive their direction, nor mitigate potential PR disasters through minimalistic inhuman PR-speak/spin/fluff.

If we ever see them use the word "synergy" or "leverage" in one of their press releases, we're totally screwed.

A checklist is not a good enough solution, a checkbox means I've already been forced to waste my time, and my valuable hard drive space downloading and storing installers that come with this unwanted bloatware.

Firstly, we don't know what it looks like yet, so we don't know how visible the checkbox is, therefore to what degree this is stealthing.

That said, in what universe did you think this was going to go down well? How did you think bringing a hybrid nagscreen and stealth install would go over well with a technically experienced and somewhat obstinate userbase?

I get the sense that a lot of you at gog are not just smart, but kind of worldly guys. At least a good chunk of you know more or less what's up. So I think you knew exactly how this was gonna go. I think maybe you've been a little surprised by how far the negative reaction seems to reach in from the hardcore guys to cover the more casual space. Well, stealthware is a problem, and it's been something that's been going from bothering people to causing problems for them for a while. Maybe it's the Eastern European in you. You see stuff like this. You don't react to it as much. Whatever that's just thinking out loud. Point is, assuming you're not off-base, I think that you want Galaxy in the userbase, badly. I can understand. Lot of reasons to want that.

Problem is, you're not Steam. You work because you aren't Steam. You try to become more like Steam and you run into the hurdle that, while Steam can, in theory, be a bad thing, Valve has, in practice, practically been nothing but a good thing, for everybody. There is trust there.

Like I don't know what the skew is. You got the numbers you know these things. To what degree your hardest core is your lifeblood. But they can influence the larger userbase. You need to try to convince these people to get with the client by showing them how it's not going to be a problem for them but just help them. If that's not completely true then good luck with it. More importantly, you need to level with people and talk about how this type of framework makes things more manageable not just for users in some ways but for the platform vendors. A client is a bridge between user-facing software patching/management etc, and platform-vendor sanity.

Unlike a lot of gog hardcore guys I often find myself a little more lenient with some of these things because, like some folks in the thread have mentioned, you see them coming. I'm rooting for you you know. It's a shame that it seems like every time you do something, the hardcore guys come out to beat on you for it. That's starting to become a fashionable trend and that sucks really.

It's like I feel like you handle one of these things gracefully now and it'll pay dividends when you bring out another one later. Or the bruises will keep adding up and that later on there'll be a really harsh kneejerk from the userbase that screws up something or that maybe a competitor jumps on and takes advantage of and that screws up something.

rootin for ye.

Ironically, I'm actually glad that DOSBox and redists are included redundantly in the relevant installers, since they're needed to play the games that they're included with; Galaxy is not (and had better not become so for non-multiplayer-only games).

Pretty much sums everything up.

I think we can stop commenting now. :D

I find it extra jarring that they came up with some obviously bullshit reason to sell us this instead of being upfront with the real reason. That feeling of being thought of as an idiot is extremely uncomfortable and burns the little goodwill GOG still had in my heart.

I'm honestly tired of having to deal with the constant stream of good news™. Every time I stretch my tolerance because I want to like GOG, and every time GOG pushes further. I really don't want to deal with this anymore, I just want a place to get offline installers to keep on my precious storage hard drive. Please let me do that in peace. Pretty please?

Yes. GOG's installers are created using the open source Innosetup software, and there are additional 3rd party open source software such as Innoextract and others which can decompress and decompose GOG's installers. It's entirely possible in theory to do this with the appropriate tools and then re-create custom installers that do not have annoying crap in them. Of course it wouldn't be legal for someone to redistribute a customized installer that contains a full game - that would be piracy, however it would totally be possible in theory for someone to distribute a set of tools that would allow one to take the installers they download from GOG, run a program that converts their legal installer into a custom installer that is enhanced to respect the customer and maximize convenience.

I imagine that people will wait a while to see how GOG responds to the situation first before creating such custom tools however, as there would be no sense in spending the time and effort to resolve the problem externally if GOG decides to do the right thing and change their approach to something more consumer friendly.

I'll have to be extra attentive next time I install a game then.

God, how I hate all the unwanted software companies love to sneak into installers.

Someone admitted to me that he pirated resident evil 7 full game to demo it, but the problem resident evil 7 has in fact a demo which only takes place in the small guest house and ends before the main house.

Oh look,the favoured one can say anything and not get banned.

Figures, GOG pulls this colossal bullshit move on us and all Tauto cares about is my cursing. :P

Oo

In fact I use Galaxy, in standard basis, I find it very convenient as launcher/updater etc etc.

However I prefer GoG over Steam for the plain fact that I can download and backup my purchased games.

And now they want to include Galaxy client in every installer?

Hell no, terrible idea, whoever think of this must be fired yesterday.

Utter Nonsense.

I'm sorry but I seriously question the extent to which Steam has been able to entice pirates into using their client and paying for the games.