Don't get your hopes up. In time it will become mandatory to use galaxy client and other forms of DRM.
They are slowly going that way like with Regional Discriminating Pricing "Because everyone else is doing it" (not a direct quote) and so it will be DRM starting with their crappy client "Because everyone else is doing it" (again, not a direct quote).

GOGs actions the past few years speaks for themselves (personal opinion) and they are no longer the "Good Guys" they are simply the "Lesser of Evils"

And yet, no matter how many examples of the way GOG is changing we are faced with, there are still people dense enough to refuse to notice, and call everyone who isn't blind, deaf and stupid "paranoid" (and that's of course a polite translation). Seems nothing GOG has already done, nor even this whole debacle right here, can convince some people, and eventually those willfully ignorant "rational" loyal to a fault customers will be what will allow GOG to succesfully go full Steam.

You're crazy.

It saddens me to say that it's been a matter of time for quite some time now; some of us just started the countdown sooner than others.

Ok I am confused now, why is the new solution just as bad if not worse?
Ok I checked the solution and I honestly don't see the problem.

It clearly shows Classic Installers, and GOG Galaxy Installer.

What is the fucking problem?

It's not worse than the initial plan, no one is saying that. But it's a nonsensical solution to a problem that didn't even exist until GOG created it. The many ways in which the whole thing makes no sens and numerous simpler and more convenient solutions (other than abandoning the whole terrible idea that is) have already been extensively described in this thread.

And what are the simpler solutions?

Because my most blunt solution is don't have any GOG Galaxy related things on the Website Store at all.

Anyway I have a question, how does this affect GOG Downloader links?

Allow us to set classic installers as default for one thing. For another, instead of the galaxy-infested installers, just have a message about Galaxy with a link to it appear during the instalation process. There were others, I'm not going to thorugh the whole thread now.

But, just for fun, let's dive head first into the madness that is the current solution.

We have the big, blue "try Galaxy" button. So you can choose to use Galaxy.

And below, as an alternative, we have the installers. With Galaxy inside them, and installing by default.

Below that, in fine print, we have the message that those include Galaxy, and how awesome it is.

However, there is no information that other installers exist, not to mention where can they be found.

They can be found under "more" as "classic installers" which of course doesn't mean jack shit to anyone who has not seen this thread, and if they have not, they will never find that option anyway unless they are clairvoyant.

This includes new users, and any present/old users who don't frequent the forum or missed this thread, as it isn't even stickied, nor was there any announcement about this made outside of it.

There are only two possible explanations for this:

a) the people responsible for all this are the most incompetent team on the planet, so dense time must noticably slow down around them

or

b) this whole thing is still, as it has been from the start, in every way a blatant attempt to push Galaxy onto users by underhanded means lacking in any sort of honesty, clarity or simple respect for the client

They are thinking of the "slippery slope" argument. First GOG offers both sets of installers. Then they drop the classic installers. Then they drop the option not to install Galaxy when you install a game (with the offline installer), ie. it will be always installed if it isn't already installed. And then GOG will come to our homes and ram Galaxy down our throats or something.

I give them a benefit of doubt and judge them by their actions, not by what could happen in the future.

I personally would be fine with Galaxy embedded into the installers (optional to install it)... as long as.it wouldn't take extra 119MB per installer. I have almost 1400 GOG games, if they all had an extra 119MB, you do the math how much extra hard drive space that consumes. It they took only extra 2MB or so, then I would care as little as some GOG installers having the optional FoxIt PDF reader embedded.

And the other issue is that the Galaxy installer in those game installers will be out of date in no time. Will GOG really keep updating all those game installers all the time in order to keep the Galaxy installers in them up to date, or do they trust that the current Galaxy installers are fine for years to come (e.g. if you install the 2017 July Galaxy version five years from now, there will be no issues whatsoever running it and getting updated to the latest version on the first run, and no security issues either?).

To me it appears that such upgrade paths tend to break at some point. For instance, I had some half a year old Tor browser installed on my system and ran it yesterday. Usually it can autoupdate itself, but this time it couldn't for some reason, but told me to go download the latest version from their homepage and install it manually instead. So the autoupdate didn't work anymore for my ½ year old browser version, and I am quite sure similar upgrade imcompatibilties will come to Galaxy as well. At that point the extra 119MB on those installers is completely useless extra overhead, you need to reinstall Galaxy with a separate installer anyway.

I'm surprised GOG was in a such a hurry with implementing this that they couldn't first wait to get the smaller stub installer working. So are they going to update all those hundred (and more) game installers later again, to replace the full Galaxy installer with the stub installer?

Anyway, at least the Galaxy-free installers are still available... Mainly I can't understand the hurry, did some higher manager at CDP give GOG staff an ultimatum, they need to embed Galaxy to certain number of GOG game installers by the end of June 2017, or else...?

I personally do not care so much about this decision, though it isn't exactly an optimal solution for sure.
The installers always were nothing but a nuisance for me. They serve no real purpose as far as playing the actual games is concerned for me, they had the stupid optional PDF reader built-in, add those weird round icons, actually uselessly password-protected the game data not too long ago...

The real problem, as I see it, is the presentation and indication of the change, as usual. Even when regional pricing was introduced all the while back, I mostly wasn't bothered by the introduction itself, but rather the fact that GOG chose to abandon one of their core principles. This here is similar, with the "optional" client becoming less and less optional. It points to the eventual end of it all: getting rid of the DRM-free principle. When that happens, GOG will truly die. It is now dying, but, as someone else mentioned, still the least evil.

I won't bother dogpiling with the hate, but I do have to point out this part that really bothers me:
What in the WORLD is with all those upside-down quotation marks?! Did you use commas instead? o_O

That's what quotation marks look like in Poland. The first one is put "upside down" by your standards.

A few things I've tested, not sure if they've been mentioned here yet or not:

1. Installers that include Galaxy do allow you to opt-out of it, and like with desktop shortcuts the option seems to save and work across all installers. That being said, I know at least one game has the issue of making desktop shortcuts even when told not to, so it's unknown if the Galaxy checkbox will always be reliable.

2. GOG Downloader links seem to download the Classic installers. I say "seem to" because this is just based on the ones I tested.This is important, since there's no option between Galaxy and Classic installers for GOG Downloader.

3. Installers that include Galaxy include "(g)" at the end to indicate that they are the Galaxy version. Otherwise, the file names are identical.

Since "GOG-Galaxy-enhanced" installers got announced, I've begun downloading all my games. Bought another drive to have enough room now. While I am glad that it seems I can finish backing up the whole of my library with Galaxy-free installers, I sure hope that these, now called classic ones, are all problem-free (i.e. none contain the "Galaxy-blessing" by bugccident, for example).

I too would wish for a global setting you could make in one's account, to either see classic or Galaxy installers by default when accessing a game's files window. Also, I suspect that the whole thing shows a trend towards a GOG.com with less commitment to DRM along the way. I'm gonna be glad when I have all - hopefully still untainted - installers downloaded.

Personally I am fine with the installers if they had an option to install galaxy client as a check box but eh still fine with options. as long as you stay DRM Free then my wallet will fell home. if not then STEAM I GO lol

You people scare me.
Although it admittedly feels kinda weird for the staff to start using Polish quotation marks out of the blue when everywhere else they use them normally.