I agree that if they dropped the offline installers, they'd lose a good chunk of what sets them apart but I'd hardly say that Steam does everything else better.

That's true but I thought the general consensus was that the majority of GOG users are already using Galaxy anyway. I guess they could be downloading the installers through Galaxy as backups.

Hey, may I add you as a friend on GOG?

Exactly and that is the reason why I have such a hard time to follow the idea that this is their ulimate goal.

Yeah, that would be as stupid as ruining years of good relations with gamers by lying about important features in your next long awaited game that the future of your company may well depend on and then releasing it completely unfinished and broken. Obviously, no one would ever do such a thing. Just makes you laugh even trying to imagine it.

I don't think that you can compate these two. One is a game development that completely went wrong on several occations (which at least still sold pretty well - no matter the image damage of course) amd the other would be a decision that might lead to their demise.

I'm just saying - releasing a game so broken it outright does not work on most consoles (and let's be honest, they knew it) seems like an obviously bad decision. And yet they did it. So even if turning GOG into an inferior clone of Steam (and let's be honest, in many ways they've been doing that for a while now) seems like an obviously bad decision to us, they can still do it.

Or if you want another example, take Dark Universe. You know, the dead-on-arrival idea by Universal to copy Marvel Cinematic Universe's success by creating their own movie universe, only much worse, hype the hell out of it although no one wanted it and everyone told them it's a bad idea and then it all fell apart after they made one movie and it tanked wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and the time of everyone involved in multiple cancelled projects.

What I'm trying to say, in case it's not clear - Important People in Business Suits tend to demand their business emulate whatever the most popular, profitable thing in their industry is. It never occurs to them that if that thing already exists it's a better business move to be different. They always believe they'll get the same piles of money by just playing copycat. It may sound stupid, but it's true to the point where Disney tried to copy itself, by trying to have Star Wars work like MCU, untill that too collapsed.

I'm not saying I'm sure giving up on offline installers is anyone's "end goal". I'm just saying we shouldn't find any sense of security about it in our certainty that it would be a stupid course of action.

Understood - sometimes people - especially those higher up - make stupid decisions. Well, let me just hold on to the hope that GOG won't be THAT stupid, okay? :)

Is there still a reason why Galaxy is a client and not an API? I mean, other than "we don't want it to"?

There was some talk about "stabilizing" the code. Is it stable already?

There are tons of companies and products that have copied others' business models. And it's less riskier to copy an established player than to try to break into a new market or try something new. The more players, the more innovative the main players have to be to stay ahead of their competition. Case examples:

- Android phone manufacturers copying Apple
- Marvel and DC copying each other
- Final Fantasy copying Dragon's Quest
- TikTok copied Snapchat, which copied Instagram, which copied Facebook
- Kickstarter copied Indiegogo
- Oreo copied Hydrox
- Sega's Sonic, Naughty Dog's Crash, etc. copied Nintendo's Mario
- Pepsi copied Coca-Cola
- Google copied Amazon for smart home devices
- FedEx copied UPS
- Seiko copied luxurious Swiss watch companies, which copied luxurious German watch companies
- Playstation and Xbox controllers copied Nintendo's D-pad designs

Absolutely, I accepted your request. Thanks for asking in advance, though! :)

Very interesting and entertaining list!

Glad to see that now everyone can choose what they like best

With all the ways GOG has tried to push Galaxy on its users, I don't think they will abandon it any time soon.

That said, GOG offers a decent selection of games without need for a client, which is why I stuck around. Otherwise, I'll move on to another store with offline installers. Even if I cave in and use a client-based storefront, I might as well migrate to a larger storefront like Steam, which offers a larger selection of games and generally better developer/publisher support. Either way, I won't do business with GOG anymore if they decide to remove offline installers.