Good info to know, so thanks for posting it/correcting my mistakes. :)

As I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread, IF you have Galaxy installed it will auto-add to Galaxy any GOG game installed though offline installers. Even if you have installed said game to a separate install location than all other GOG games, it will still be added to Galaxy, and often (usually but not every game) it will open Galaxy when you go to load the game.

I found this out with another game I have, and I also thought at the time it required Galaxy. BUT if you uninstall Galaxy the game works fine. And if you reinstall Galaxy, Galaxy won't open again automatically when you go to run that game.

The only way it seems to keep Galaxy from "taking over" when you install a GOG game, is to not have Galaxy installed at all. This is certainly not behavior one would have expected considering Galaxy has a option to "add" games, why put that in if they are always added? Although, I suppose if you want to add them AFTER you install Galaxy, that option would be handy. Still, it leads one to assume games won't be auto added and load Galaxy by default when you install a offline installer. An assumption that has proven to be incorrect.

Also as I have said before, I'm not saying there is anything malicious going on, but it is a little spooky when a program does something like this behind your back. Especially for people that like to know everything their machine is doing and watch closely.

I tink that that behavior fr wrong and certainly something that will get 'old school' GOG users in a rage....

GOG should add some option to make it optionally if Galaxy starts when you start a non-Galaxy installed game !!!

Maybe the Monks will bring it back:)

It's just the shortcut that is different, if you install a game when Galaxy is installed then the shortcut will point to Galaxy and ask it to start the game, otherwise it will point directly to the game exe.

If you change the shortcut to point to the exe or double click on the exe directly the game will start normally without Galaxy.

I think that that is very backwards of GOG. After all if you choose to start the game by using it's own (should have been) non-GOG-Galaxy shortcut then that sort of implies that user does not want to use the GOG Galaxy client. If user wanted to use the GOG Galaxy client then the user would have started the GOG Galaxy client and started the game using the client - and not the other way around...
IMO then it is extremely stupid done by a company that makes it's living selling DRM-Free games which people supposedly should be able to download a DRM.Free copy of and run just as that. Having the Galaxy client start per auto/default for non-GOG-Galaxy installed game IMO is unacceptable despite that user can tinker it's way around.
It's not made better by the fact that GOG now is starting to try to force users to use the GOG-Galaxy client for downloads after they decided to remove the GOG.com Downloader !! (meaning that users sort of is forced to have the client on the system if they have to use it as GOG bulk dowloader - which is being suggested all the way around here !)

The one good part is there are browser extensions that make restarting/bandwidth control possible. The one I am using is Xtreme download manager (https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdman/). It is one of the few ones I have found that work well and don't have a ton of adware/spyware included. While I would MUCH better to have GOG downloader back, this extension makes downloading big offline installers possible for me. Otherwise I would be forced to install Galaxy just to download a game, then delete Galaxy after. A situation that would likely me stop buying games here.

That's not the way it should be as I pointed out here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_say_goodbye_to_gog_downloader/post772
Just (again) for clarification. Normally an offline installer should always create a direct shortcut without Galaxy being involved. When you download the game using Galaxy (non offline installer of course) it should create a shortcut that is starting Galaxy because they assume that you want to use Galaxy when you used the Galaxy download. Unfortunately a few games stilll have a shortcut creation routine that is not working correctly - even in offline installers but those can be considered as being buggy ... even more unfortunate though GOG did not fix those, maybe because they think that it is not worth the additional workload.

Thank you for the 'clarification' ,
If it is as you say then I am unable to understand how GOG or anyone at all at this forum can even begin to suggest that we use GOG Galaxy as a substitute for downloading our DRM-Free off-line installers !!!

The DRM-free Downloaders in Galaxy should also create just the regular direct shortcut. Only if you download the already extracted files in Galaxy you should get the Galaxy-Shortcut created.

Thanks , I suddenly realized how everything in this whole discussion over multiple threads reeks of how GOG had this 'screw you' attitude towards their old/original customer group when they decided to retire the GOG.com Downloader.
Because had they cared they would have taken steps like what I have asked for / suggested here :
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_say_goodbye_to_gog_downloader/post717
and / or here :
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/we_do_not_want_say_goodbye_to_gog_downloader/post629
and / or here :
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/easier_download_of_new_purchases_and_updates

*AND THEN*

send a mail to all users telling all the users how GOG in order to retire the Downloader suddenly has made it become even easier and better to download all the DRM-Free files through their changes to Galaxy *AND THEN* present all the changes and tell everyone how stuff works rather than all these endless discussions over missing features and misunderstandings over how stuff works !!!

Bump:)

Thanks, that was really needed.

I believe GOG's reasoning for the shortcuts pointing to Galaxy was to cut down on support request from people who had Galaxy installed but did not realize Galaxy had to be running and that the game had to be played via Galaxy to get access to features like cloud saves, achievements, etc. It that sense, I can understand GOG's reasoning here.

Hi Breja

Glad you thought so.

the vote is 1486 now and rising.

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/keep_the_gog_downloader_and_keep_it_up_to_date