Sorry if this question has been covered already, but I did try and find a topic about it here .... gave up after the first few dead topics ... which were the most recent ones and may have covered it. I also checked in Support topics.

When using the GOG.com Downloader, does it always download the Classic Installers for a game, or does it use whatever the default is, or does it use whatever you last selected in that game's Installer options?

And has it always been that way? Or is it likely that I need to do some re-downloading to my backup drives?

P.S. I could waste some bandwidth of course and do a few experiments to find out, but they may not be definitive, so I thought it best to get the answer from the horse's mouth.

So far the downloader is grabbing the classic installers. Same as Galaxy, lgogdownloader and gogrepo.py, since they all use the same API to see what files are available. No idea if that will change in the future, but you should be able to still download the classic installers just fine.

Edit: The galaxy installers include a _(g)_ in their name from what I recall, so you can easily check whether you have any or not.

Thanks for the reply. I will check my files for the '_(g)_'.

So you are saying, that the Classic Installers are downloaded by the GOG.com Downloader by default?
Or does the following you said, mean you have to choose in the right option from the menu? Once I noted that some games show the Galaxy Installer by default, I have been going into the menu options and selecting the Classic Installers, then clicking on the GOG Downloader links option, and then downloading from the resulting page.

Recently, it occurred to me, that perhaps I don't need to do that, as the Classic Installers might always be the default for the GOG.com Downloader. Or alas, the unwanted Galaxy Installers might be the default when available.

EDIT
I did not find any '_(g)_' in my game file names.

<opens a tin of worms>

Then there are stuff like DirectX bundled with every game too. Just how many copies of DX9 can we need?

Yeah and the damn Foxit PDF reader, which isn't even needed in Windows 10 I think (doesn't MS Edge read PDFs just fine?).

But that is one point, it could be argued that since Galaxy is needed for some features of the game to function (like cloud saves, achievements, multiplayer...), it should be added to the installers so that it contains everything that is needed to play the game.

However, I see it as that many (even most) people are downloading the offline installers specifically to avoid using Galaxy, which is why it makes less sense to include it to the package. DirectX (correct version, like 9) is a prerequisite to play the game at all, and I don't think anyone is specifically trying to avoid DirectX for their Windows versions of the games.

The way I see it, is that you want everything that you need for your game, in the one place.
If that means Galaxy Installer for a game where you are going to use its features, then that seems smart to me.

But if like me, you don't care for those features, then providing you are using the GOG.com Downloader, then there should not be any issue, as it appears to download the Classic Installers by default.

The only real issue it seems, is if you manually download everything via its link, and forgot to check what the default Installer set for that game is, and therefor accidentally download the wrong one. So if you have bandwidth etc issues, then that could be very annoying.

But in the worst case scenario though, you should be able to uninstall Galaxy after installing your game, and that not impact your game install. So just a bit of lost storage space for every accidental download of the Galaxy Installers.

As for Foxit PDF reader. Does anyone really think that should be excluded, just because Win 10 doesn't need it? What about other OS users? Or is it realistic to provide a separate Win 10 version of a game. Don't think so. Foxit is not an onerous size etc, so no problem really.

DirectX has been provided with games that need it, for years, so that is pretty much standard practice, and is echoed all over the PC landscape with all sorts of software requirements for things, so no biggie either.