Do you have a learning disability? Serious question. I'll stop being mean to you if you do.

Galaxy is made for a reason. The reason, like for anything else GOG does, is to make people buy more games on GOG.
Different people want to see or prioritize different features, such as:
auto-updates
cloud saves
in-game chat
sales notifications
etc.

But some of the features might be mutually exclusive, and the design of any particular feature is (tautologically) mutually exclusive with any other design of the same feature. Thus, if Design A is implemented, it will fail at its job of attracting customers and increasing sales if most people wanted specifically Design B.

For example, there's currently an option to add friends by username or email, but it's a package deal -- it's impossible to pick one or the other. So people who would love to search by username but definitely don't want to have their GOG account findable via email have to opt out of the feature.

To extrapolate, there's a playtime counter. Many people llike having their playtime tracked, which is an incentive for them to use the client, through which GOG can sell more games to them. But some of them might want to keep their playtimes private for whatever reason. If this information is ever made public without an opt-out, they won't keep the client running, and, depending on how numerous those people are, GOG might not achieve the goal of selling more games.

Thus, posting one's opinion on website and client design can assist GOG in making correct choices, based on aggregate opinions. The fact that the client is optional has no bearing on the importance of feedback. I want them to make a client that I want to use. They're trying to make a client that people want to use. If they make a bad, resource-hogging, invasive and buggy client which no one uses, everyone will be at a loss. This is exactly the situation I want to prevent and you seem to rate as a perfect outcome. Buy a brain.

Don't worry, if that sad day ever comes, there will be so many GOGers leaving the place, that there won't be anything left to break. ;-)

Forgive my ignorance but what does the level up and inventory system do on Steam? I haven't used the client in years so this is like Chinese for me.

I think people need to get over on the fact of what GoG Galaxy is. Namely as a DRM-Free alternative to the Steam client. If that means trying to get many of the Steam clients functionalities into Galaxy, so be it because that is it's intended purpose, minus the DRM. As long as any of it's functions are optional, including the client itself then I don't get what the big deal is. Don't use it, problem solved.

As you level up the maximum number of friends you're allowed to have in Steam increases. Also, at certain levels you get extra space to add widgets to your profile. Finally, every 10 levels your chance of receiving trading card booster packs increases slightly.

You level up by earning badges, which are mostly gained by collecting full sets of trading cards and "crafting" them.

The problem here is more complex than me not liking your posts. The problem is that your posts usually consist in you gratuitously insulting people and vomiting your opinion (?) without a bit of reasoning rather than explaining it, while flavoring the mix with a good amount of undeserved rudeness; this will only call forth more comments on the same level -because, strangely, people tend to get angry when insulted- and transform perfectly legit threads in burning garbage battlegrounds.
This time it is just me going deliberately off-topic (and I apologize for this, promising that this will be my last off-topic post here) to address you, but usually things like this end up like the GamerGate thread and are one of the main reasons why the community has declined so much during the last months and now is so inhospitable for pleasant folks.

That's why I bother calling this out and I don't simply ignore you like I did with hundred of posts I disagreed with: I care about the community, and I'm just trying to peacefully improving it. If you cared as well, you could simply keep on posting like any other normal user and abandon your "keyboard lion" attitude -it's easy, and it will only gain you more respect and less hostility.
In the end though, choosing between being a good member or treating this place like your own playground is your choice -just be glad for the lack of moderation, or you wouldn't have lasted a week.

I had little doubt about it, but it is always worth a shot. At least I try to be reasonable rather than spitting insults.

+1

Are you sure about that ?

Back to the topic :

Aren't people abusing the trading card / achievement system on Steam with 3rd party software ?
Aren't people abusing the system by running the game(s) ( menu?) in the background ( taskbar ) instead of actually playing them ?

^This. I'm usually fine with optional features, but I agree that some of them are quite cancerous.

Yes, that is the unfortunate future I see as well.

Yes, but that's really the point isn't it. Theoretical anything is optional, I mean you could build your own computer out of ants and other bits and pieces, so using microchips is "optional", however in reality it is not. The client is optional as there is web download, and the downloader, however the downloader is cancelled, and if they are already pushing people towards galaxy as yogsloth has mentioned, then it wont be long before the web download stops functioning - purely accidentally, and the only option will be galaxy.

Everyone swears up and down (including GoG) that the only option isn't going to be Galaxy. The day that happens I guess you can say you were right.

A fair set of questions. I apologize for the delayed reply.

Unfortunately, I am limited by the search functions of the forum. Still, every new game seems to have a post similar to this one. Not much of a big deal? Perhaps, but it's a slippery slope nonetheless.

Though I can't find it, the situation you allude to above, I believe was not about un-installing Galaxy and re-installing it. It was from a user that had installed Aliens vs. Predator. As you recall, that came bundled with an alpha-alpha version of Galaxy, and the problem was that it left some kind of remnant that caused another game to be unable to launch, because it couldn't turn off it's call for a Galaxy program it thought was installed. The only solution was for the user to install Galaxy as a complete program, rather than the version that came with AvP, even though the user had no desire to install the client.

There was another post somewhere (Fallout forum? I can't find it now.) that indicated that extras could only be accessed through Galaxy.

And none of this even mentions that with the euthanasition of the GOG Downloader, games like Witcher 3 are now, in practice, so cumbersome to download and install that it's a de-facto shove towards Galaxy. There are no fewer than 25 different download files required simply to install the complete game! And yes, I realize that if you have insider knowledge, you can still find Downloader links... but they've been hidden so effectively, it's quite effective at forcing users to install the client simply to have a hope at managing the mess.

With the extreme amount of resources GOG is pouring into the client, I simply don't see any future that doesn't eventually involve it becoming mandatory.

I can answer this. That situation has since been fixed. AvP no longer contains any traces of Galaxy client, since that has since been fixed.

I can answer this too. If you have the Bethesda Fallouts, you may be able to access the Interplay's Fallouts' extras, by using the Galaxy client. If you have Interplay's Fallouts, you should be able to access the extras through both Galaxy and the website. Seeing how Bethesda's Fallouts don't have the additional extras, Galaxy provides access to content you shouldn't have access to.