That's unfortunate, because I was enjoying the discussion (excepting more fallacious comments like above). I was also hoping you would clarify your position of why all downloads should be through the client...which if you have been reading the Galaxy 2.0 thread where GOG staff assures the client remains optional, seems like in turn your position is a bit extreme. I asked questions about this in my above comment already, but I guess you stopped reading before then, fair enough. I cannot force you to reasonably justify your position but it is intellectually dishonest to leave it unjustified. Maybe another user who holds a similar position to you, could walk me through the logic in your stead.

The facts so far:

Casual users, in many cases, want Steam-like clients.

Old-school-minded hardcore GOG users, in many cases, do not want Steam-like clients (GOGdownloader is ok).

Currently, GOG offers their Galaxy client as what one could call a de facto default option, in that it is constantly marketed and given vastly more screen real estate when it comes to downloading the games themselves.

However, savvy users are currently still able to download games on browser or GOGdownloader, and access them without interacting with the Galaxy client at all.

There is zero evidence anywhere, whatsoever, of casual users demanding the miniscule browser/GOGdownloader options be removed in order for these same casuals to be customers.

The question then remains:
How does it make any sense to require the client for all users, when power users demand the extra options remain available, and casuals do not seem to care about the fact the extra options are there, one way or another? In other words, what is the point of losing power users and the original audience, for literally no extra gain whatsoever?

It's more like you simply don't understand how it works and are persistently getting angry at the wrong people for the wrong reason. Downloading an offline installer through Galaxy involves Galaxy essentially "internally browsing" to the same "backup installer" page as on the website and downloading the same file via the same link. If you deleted the .exe access from the browser, it would also disappear from inside Galaxy as it's basically the same web-page that simply gets displayed / styled differently from inside Galaxy's internal browser. Offering direct downloads via the site doesn't require any extra effort at all vs Galaxy as it's the same web-page, file and meta-data. Because of that, there's literally zero advantage in not offering a direct link anyway. The reduced accessibility you seem to be pushing is not a feature, it's an anti-feature.

The cognizant dissonance is strong in that one. o.O

It's better.

Can you elaborate?

Thanks.

I'm not sure if you are deliberately invoking Poe or not, but that is quite a tar-baby. Years ago, when IBM posted the largest (annual) loss in history (a few decades ago), the new CEO audited the various department heads and was dumbfounded by the complete lack of customer focus. He was quoted as saying that, for hours and days, it seemed, he would have meetings with people where there was a distinct lack of reference to the customer.

So, Yes, directors of a company are paid for their (industry) expertise, but this is not exclusive of customer desire. If everyone wants a black car then it makes little sense to produce a blue one. Where leadership is required, as you note, is when there are conflicting desires and requirements; and Yes, this may be an exclusive proposition that will unavoidably alienate some customers. But perhaps there is a way to mitigate that? Without consultation with the customer, it is impossible to provide the solution they desire, since their desires are hypothetical; we are now in the Post-Ford manufacturing era (Ford was, briefly: "You can have any color you want, as long as it's black," referring to the Model-T; the Postford era is significant because of the variegated options available to the customers) and that requires more customer focus than the mass-production Ford used to create wealth through economies of scale.

edit: syntax & added hyperlink

How soon?

As soon as you buy my seminar, which will explain to you that "then" *is* "now", and "now" *is* "then".

You're acting as if I said throw a hyperlink in Galaxy and call it a day. That's not what I said. I'm talking about changing the client to offer new features like backup installers, directly from it, so they can move everything to it for security reasons. You're already using an "app" and singing in to access your GOG downloads, there's literally zero difference. As long as once you download them they are DRM free, there is no DRM. This entire debate is about people being triggered by the word client with no actual logical foundation.

And as I said, none of this "web browsers are clients too!" straw-man changes the fact that what you're "demanding" is an anti-feature (taking away something that's already there, automated and requires zero effort of GOG's part), not adding a feature that isn't. I think you need to reflect who the real control-freak is here, considering you're the one demanding all GOG users use "The One True Way (tm)" of being "permitted" to download offline installers only via the client whereas literally no-one else who downloads them directly is arguing for the inverse of removing your option of downloading them via the client. Despite you're highly patronizing language towards others, you're the one who's being persistently "triggered" the most of all over GOG "daring" to give people the option that you (and only you) want to take away.

As for advantages of direct downloads, these have been pointed out to you before including Linux support (there is no Galaxy for Linux) not to mention support for older Windows OS's which is naturally in-line with DRM-Free philosophy of extending lifespan of games on all OS's, not just the newest one. Even if that's only 2-3%, it's still 2-3% of customers that GOG don't want to lose to abandonware sites (who will continue to offer the same games minus being locked to a client) because some "genius" wanted people arbitrarily excluded with zero positive gain to show for it. "Security reasons" is also another straw-man as if it's suddenly "insecure" to download any .exe from signed & certified GOG.com via a browser's normal https, then guess what - it'll be equally "insecure" to download setup_galaxy.exe too...

For some reason, you can't seem to grasp that long-term game preservation is ultimately about removing obstacles between purchasing and playing the game, not just swapping one middle-man obstacle (DRM) for another (compulsory downloader client locked to specific OS versions which just causes problems later down the line (eg, today's "Galaxy (W7) blocks XP games from running on XP" affecting 2% could become tomorrow's "Galaxy (W10) blocks W7 games from running on W7") affecting 30-40%. I'm pretty sure GOG have thought it through and figured out that if they followed your "advice" and games end up needing 2-3 steps to download offline installers plus arbitrarily locking out 1/3rd of their customers the next time Microsoft update their compiler (that GOG use to build Galaxy) to be W10 only, all your "advice" is doing is re-incentivizing piracy-by-paying-customer again vs abandonware sites that don't lock downloads to clients and don't lock clients to specific OS versions.

for this reason, you should really support the DRM free games on Steam, as what you get there is just the game files, no packaging, no wrapping (as with gOg games) and list of all the dependencies. for game preservation purposes, this is ideal. so, yes, there is that as well.

I thought it was great. Showed that there is still a tiny remainder of the Old GOG inside the hardly recognisable organisation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYa0jpGFUeY

But the idea was to educate people on DRM, but instead, people had a chuckle at 'hehe fuck DRM' and that was pretty much it. not many people really covered it, not many 'new' people really became aware of the impact of DRM. Was it an easy fix hit for empty socials, sure, but that wasn't the point? The point was to educate, but it became a punchline.

It's similar to some campaigns ran year ago in some school about testicular cancer. They spent a good 30 mins telling us about the symptoms and things to be on the lookout for, but it was all pre-fixed with jokes about balls. No one remembered anything but the joke.

Also the TMZ style use of Gabe Newell quotes never sat well with me -

"As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't),"

"We really really discourage other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches."