A while? It takes but a moment to uninstall Galaxy. Your game doesn't disappear along with the uninstallation.

Steam has been around for a lot longer. Do you remember its early days, when it was buggy as all hell, resource heavy and so on? Also, it's catalog didn't just spring overnight. Steam also has itself advertised on every pc gaming website etc. Can you tell me where GOG is featured prominently over Steam? The games are only updated more frequently because it's a lot easier to do. Developers have direct access to the updating system on there. Here, it's a completely different story.

I will never buy a game with Steamworks shoved up its ass for as long as I continue to buy games. I don't care if I miss out on just about every AAA game; I'll always make the compromise and buy from someone who isn't afraid to take a DRM free approach. Hell, I don't care if the game ends up being DRM free on Steam; I'll still prefer to have a proper installer instead of splayed out files that may or may not work in the future.

Except that's not what I intend to test.

Sorry nightcrawler:

You are dead wrong, why? :

6.8 Final sale: a sale is considered final either 30 days after purchase or when you try to download the GOG content or any additional/bonus content. Once either of those happens, you no longer will have any return, exchange or refund options unless you have technical issues covered by paragraph (c) above.

And by my own experience, they check for the download date, not the sale date! SO they are rather reluctant and gamer-friendly!

EDIT:

out of http://www.gog.com/support/policies/gog_user_agreement

Excellent posts, and thanks
I totally agree with you
I've been boycotting clients since the beginning
I will not touch galaxy exactly for the reasons you wrote

But my current concern is not about galaxy but about windows 10
I only see in this forum "yes Master Microsoft" "of course Master Microsoft" "certainly Master Microsoft"
And windows 10 is basically a client OS
So I boycott steam, and boycott origin, and boycott any other client but accept windows 10?
Why? cause microsoft is so mighty powerful you simply can't fight against it?

I repeat, to anyone that has been boycotting clients, accepting windows 10 makes no sense at all cause windows 10 is a client OS with its "windows as service" and forced auto-updates

The fact that this request has not yet been marked "in progress" should give us food for thought...

My bad, forgot to read your mind after I read your post. :P

lol Nah, you just misunderstood what I wanted to test. XD

Yes, there is some leeway allowed to give you time to mull over the purchase, and also if there are techinical difficulties. This is not however a promise that the company will exist in perpetuum just to provide a download. So whilst unlikely, if GOG stopped tomorrow and you hadn't downloaded your games, then best of luck getting them.
Safest route by far is to download things as you buy them and back them up yourself, rely on no-one.

OK, that sounds better ;)

It was just that I did object a little bit your wording in your OP ;)

On the other hand, if you got some crazy people (like me) who buy a shitload of games, because you had the original and loved it, but can´t find anymore the CD or similar AND want to be sure that it runs on modern OS´s, that´s what you end up doing, not downloading too have this little bit leeway ;)

And same can happen with a dev or distributor. Can´t remember which game it was, wanted to re-install it and had a hard time finding the patch for it again......

Ok, nowadays HD´s are bloody cheap, so in most cases no problem to have a copy or 2 to be really safe ;)

Man, you guys will find conspiracy in everything.

Hah, I have:
2 external HDD's from years ago with old backups
4 * 4tb HDD's external to the machine, 2 nearby 2 far away.
1 4tb in the device for daily use
Not to mention a room full of originals, and pen drives with various installs
But then I am both mad and a collector...

I think common sense would dictate that Galaxy will in all probability remain optional.

I find it unlikely that the GOG team is completely oblivious to Desura's plight and how it got to the sorry state that it's in now. I also find it unlikely that, faced with the threat of Steam, they'd actually give up the one remaining USP that they have.

One of the main reasons that Desura failed so spectacularly is because they pissed off the DRM-free crowd and failed to attract the Steam crowd in their vain attempts to pander to the industry. Shinyloot seems to be on its way out as well for exactly the same reason.

The fact remains that unless a game distributor has a killer app of some kind or some revolutionary feature such as game resales, the only way that a distributor can stand out is through DRM-free. Origin has the EA exclusives. UPlay the Ubisoft exclusives. If they didn't have them, Origin and UPlay would have been stillborn. In fact, Origin is pretty much dead in the water anyway, and UPlay isn't faring much better. When was the last time that an EA game got any sort of decent attention on the PC? SimCity? The same game that's being peddled for $10 everywhere now? The only reason that Ubisoft still gets any attention from the PC community is because they sell their games through the Steam frontend.

The true test will lie in how GOG handles the standalones. If I'm right in my assumption, I'm guessing that they're going to bundle the game with the Galaxy Lite client that came with AvP and Witcher Adventure Game, the one that prompts you to log in upon launch but gives you a clearly marked "Offline" button that works without connecting at all.

As I mentioned above, the launcher is no more. If you want to play multiplayer with one of the aforementioned games, you'll have to launch them through the client.

Well, I always found that the statements: "Galaxy will be totally optional" and "Galaxy will allow to have games on GOG that otherwise would have never been released here" a little contradictory.