This is similar to the point I made in an earlier post too. GOG, please do not waste time on what pirates are doing. Pirates are not your customers, we are. What's even more strange here is that this change is not about trying to stop pirating. Instead it seems this change is about protecting pirates. What?!

It's not about protecting pirates, it's about protecting themselves. They don't want somebody downloading a pirated (and tampered) GoG games, install it using the official installer, and then start complaining everywhere that GoG installed malware on its computer (forgetting of course in the process to mention how he obtained the malware ridden game).

I guess that's a reasonable possibility. Unfortunately if the password can be figured out, it's not really a deterrent.

Thanks for your efforts to help. Can you at least clarify if that password decision was your own solution, or something handed to you by your superiors? Since you aren't a PR person can you please direct this thread to some of your community managers who can handle this properly? In the past TeT was such person, but I have no idea who does this now here.

I think the general tone of this thread came out to be that we don't want this to blow over as bad PR for GOG, but on the other hand we want GOG to clarify what is going on with the DRM-free stance in this context.

IMO it wasn't made to prevent any professional "cracker" from finding the password (and usually crackers don't care about DRM-free games for obvious reasons), but more to prevent the basic "script kiddy"-level guy from adding some Bitcoin miner into the installer; usually those have neither the patience nor the talent to bypass even such a basic "protection".

Did you see how quickly it got broken here? That's script kiddy level.

Except besides support they also have their core values they vouched for. Such as being DRM-free. And this decision goes against it. That's the matter at hand.
I think he meant community manager, not PR team. Good community manager connects the community and the management / technical teams of the company to establish a dialog. Bad community manager serves as a messenger in one direction (from the company to the community) and ignores the other way. I admit, good community managers are a minority, but I hope GOG can afford having one and can afford to function in dialog rather than monolog mode.

Afaik JudasIscariot is the community manager and he is on vacation.

He already answered that above, directing us to support. It doesn't seem like a well directed handling to me. I assumed he is more forum support person rather than community manager like TeT was. May be I'm wrong. TeT was explaining GOG policies, company direction, values and so on. As well as key reasoning behind some decisions taken.

Why ? You can install the Windows version on Windows and then do everything you want with it (including copying the files to Linux or Android), you can do the same with the Mac version and, if there is one, do the same with the Linux version, there is no restriction and all those version are DRM-free no change in any core values there.

They never said anywhere that extracting the Windows installer with innoextract was part of their core values or did I miss that ? If they decided to move to another installer would you also have considered that would have betrayed their core values ?

Yes the new installer causes inconvenience to Linux users (i.e. having to download a script once and run an extra command), I understand that, and there is nothing wrong for Linux users to ask GoG, if it's possible, to have a version more "Linux" friendly (and that's exactly Gowor said he would do when he said he would repair the nogui feature), but saying that it's a "betrayal/abandonment" of their core values is in my opinion pretty silly.

Not to repeat this many times, but DRM-free doesn't go "install on Windows because there is a RAR password and then do anything you want", it goes "do anything you want, we didn't put artificial roadblocks for you". And in this case the password is such roadblock. The intention might be not to introduce DRM, but the outcome is that it does in some way. That was already explained to you above a few times, I'm not sure what isn't clear about it.

As others said, let's concentrate on how this can be fixed rather than debating whether it's DRM or not.

I like I said multiple times and was never addressed, how exactly is it different than if they were using another setup program for which there is no available extractor ? It would also be a road block, would you also call that a DRM ?

Well Gowor proposed to repair the nogui switch so that the installer would work again on Wine, but apparently nearly nobody cared about that. And now I doubt he, or any other dev, will post on this thread before quite some time, at least not going first through the PR filter.

Pay attention please. Using another setup program is not an artificial restriction. It's just a choice of method. Using password on the RAR here is not a choice of method. It's a completely artificial addition which doesn't serve any purpose besides intentionally restricting the user. That's the definition of DRM.

That's not a solution. It's just making this a bit less annoying. Fixing it means removing that nonsensical password and using other methods to address Gowor's concerns. And everyone cared about fixing /nogui. It's just not related to this issue really.

It's like if you have a road with broken surface and malfunctioning street lights, you come to the mayor or whoever and ask to fix it because it's just too bad. They tell you - "we'll fix the lights, don't worry". Yeah, thanks but that doesn't fix the road, still good of course.

My previous posts show that I'm for not causing users inconvenience, but I have to disagree with something here. I don't believe GOG or Gowor are intentionally trying to restrict the user. I believe him when he says it's to prevent unsupported install methods to prevent installation problems, and to protect people from getting potentially infected installers. I still think it's unnecessary since it won't really prevent those problems, and it should be undone.

Ultimately I just want my downloads to work forever. 20 years from now I want to be able to load my games into my Windows emulator and enjoy them, much like my Amiga emulator now.

Gowor said the password is intended for stopping anyone from adding malware and uploading it to torrents. Besides the fact that it doesn't really stop them, that's some intent to restrict the user. Of course in practice it restricts other users - us, who want to unpack the game with innoextract without messing with any passwords to play with other engines / on other systems. Unintentional? Only to some degree, since it started from intention to restrict, except that it affected not those who were expected to be affected.