I only used Galaxy to download the offline installers because on GOG's website they segregate the installers into parts.

But when I launched the game, it turned on GOG Galaxy. Implying to even play the game I need Galaxy on at all times.

Fortunately I can launch Witcher 3 directly from the exe without Galaxy, but still don't like the implication here with Galaxy connection, in a situation where I have no internet at all can I still play this game normally without Galaxy?

Yes.
Cloud saves and achievements (if you care for such things) aren't going to work offline, of course.

I think it only does that if you choose to launch the game after the installer has finished installing the game. The desktop icon shouldn't start galaxy.

Can't comment on how Galaxy installations work or affect things, since I've never used Galaxy.

But you can play the Witcher 3 and CP2077 for that matter without being online using the offline installers. I expect you to be able even with Galaxy, just that the default shortcut will launch the client.

New quest received: find the right .exe file.

Not really sure what you are talking about, you said it yourself that you can start the game from the EXE without Galaxy, so how do you need Galaxy on at all times ?

If you install the game from Galaxy it will create a shortcut that will automatically start Galaxy and then launch the game, that's probably what happen to you, but you can easily change the shortcut to directly launch the EXE and therefore not start Galaxy at all.

Downloading GOG knows how many parts can be a tad annoying I guess but I hear you can download the offline installers through Galaxy.

Most offline installers have now been galaxified. This means that the installer is not a straight zip, but has streams within like how galaxy downloads. Also, the installed files now contain various components of galaxy, so of which are not optional, galaxy.dll for instance will stop games working if not present. This has many benefits such as risking future compatability, but hey at least galaxy is totally non optional. It’s part of the reason I stopped buying anything from here, games are now crippled compared to original game and some tweaking.

A few weeks ago, I bought and downloaded Wolfenstein The New Order using the internet browser (firefox). 12 parts and 42 GB in total. The most massive game I have, and I ever downloaded and installed. And to be honest, it didn´t take me much effort to click in those 12 archives, and let the internet browser download everything while I was visiting webpages the way I usually do. It took more than an hour, but, I don´t know, I had no problems at all.

I can´t understand the need of a downloader, much less the need for Galaxy.


I understand if GOG uses the same archives for Galaxy and the offline installers, so long as it is less time and resource consuming for them. If it is easier to manage everything for GOG, and the games themeselves are not negatively affected (being 100% offline, OS requirements, etc), I don´t see the problem.


Does anybody know what that Galaxy64.dll does?

I'd assume it's something for the Galaxy client to "hook in" (for time tracking, achievements, the whole social experience and other such pointless crap) should you, for whatever reason decide to install and run Galaxy at one point in the future.

The cumulative size of these Galaxy-related files within the offline installer packages is negligible, especially if you consider the average capacity of storage media these days. It's still messy and people go to lengths and actively remove these dlls from the installation folders (which has broken things for a few games in the past, but has been fixed/resolved in the meantime) or even the installer packages themselves - me personally I'm fine with having every- and anything Galaxy-related on the firewall's blacklist. Does the trick just as well.

It's just the shortcut pointing to Galaxy, this is done that that less technical users are aware that Galaxy has to be running for cloud saves, achievements, etc. The game will still launch fine offline just without those features. Galaxy itself works offline as well.

You can create a new shortcut to the exe and play without Galaxy just fine, you already launched the game without Galaxy so I'm not sure why this question needed to be asked.

I really don't get why everyone (I will not name names to avoid a ban, but for instance a certain guy beginning with B) complains about GOG Galaxy.

Like, it takes very little hard drive space, and if you don't want to launch the games THROUGH GOG Galaxy, you can just use the Non-Galaxy .exe that almost every game includes.

Literally 0 need to MANUALLY download the installer.

Personally, I've a 500 GB SSD and a 1TB HDD (450 and 931 after formatting) of which most is taken by games from Steam and GOG. It would be a pain in the rectum to manually look where a certain game's folder is, when I can just search for it through Galaxy and click "show folder"

Nevermind, misread that I think... LOL. Since my name is the only name starting with B here, I'm not sure if you are saying I complain about Galaxy or not? I never complain about Galaxy though, love it and use it everyday.