ryuken3k: Why is it so hard for GOG to have a central repository for all game installers that both GOG Galaxy and the website can both sync to? That way, there would be no need for the website to "catch up" to new updates. Both GOG Galaxy and the website would have access to all versions and patches available for a game at the same time.
With a central repository, GOG only needs to maintain one source of game installers and patches. You would no longer have the excuse of having to do extra work to maintain the offline backup installers.
Because they're 2 very different pieces of technology being used. The installers are old school static files built into an Inno archive with custom installer front end, which have to be installed by the installer, dependencies installed, and any post install preparations done.
The set of files that get installed when Galaxy installs them are not downloaded in one mononlithic archive, decompressed and installed like that. Galaxy basically has a directory hierarchy for the game in its already installed state on GOG's servers more or less, and the files just get copied as-is over from GOG's server using modern software distribution methodology, compressing on the fly and in the case of updates using deltas. This is an entirely different software distribution model for both installation and for patch management.
Even though the actual game installation is more or less the same when either process is used to install, the mechanics of how it is done are completely different, and the way the files are packaged and stored on the GOG CDN servers are completely different by design. They're not even hosted on the same servers IIRC. The process for producing deltas of patches for Galaxy would be a completely different process than the process of old fashioned patch management and manual installer creation.
We will most likely never see these two methods in 100% synchronization, and it's likely not easily possible to automate it either for a variety of technical reasons.
All this has been discussed on the forums a multitude of times over the last several years mind you so this isn't news. :)
Update: Even if we say it is technically possible for GOG to pay their engineers to make Galaxy and standalone installers share the same back end files, there is no justification for them to assign their limited finite resources for many many months to develop this type of a solution for a very small percentage of their customer base while more and more people are using Galaxy every single day. They would not really gain any amazing new feature out of it that people are desperately craving in masses. The majority of people who do actually download standalone installers aren't even asking for it. I'd suspect on the best most vocal day of any given month, maybe 20-30 people out of millions of users would ever even speak up to say they'd want this.
Even then it is all based on a premise that we would actually get some actual benefit to it which is probably unlikely, and all at the expense of the engineers working on it - not working on some feature(s) for the platform that might be used by 70-90% of people. Hard to justify assigning even a single engineer of a small team to work on a feature only a small percentage of people benefit from marginally if at all, at the expense of a feature that could actually grow the business in this highly competitive market.
I don't expect GOG to ever change the way the standalone installers are created to be honest, there is just no business justification for something that is arguably a dying thing (meaning less and less people even care about it over time).
I'd be more than thrilled pink for them to just release updated installers/patches for the existing game library within 24 hours to a week from the Galaxy builds showing up and do so on a regular basis. If they can't afford to assign the manpower to do that, then they're definitely not going to assign one or more engineers to work full time on completely redesigning a whole new way that old legacy installers are put together.
And if we're being TOTALLY honest here, even if they did create an entirely new installer build process to do what is being asked here, 50% of people would hate it and complain about it and demand that GOG provide the original standalone installers *PLUS* the new autogenereated standalone installers *PLUS* installers for floppy disks *PLUS* Galaxy separate *PLUS* a partridge in a pear tree.
It's so LOLNOTHAPPENING it isn't funny TBH. :)
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