Neither of those things are true. Even if you used the Galaxy installer and didn't opt out of installing Galaxy you're still not required to use Galaxy.

Most GOG games have two installers - first one (often selected by default) contains Galaxy client and the other one (hidden under "classic installer" menu option) installs just the game.

Don't make it too complicated. Even if a software installer informed you in giant letters "DO YOU ALSO WANT TO INSTALL THIS MALWARE BROWSER TOOLBAR BANK ACCOUNT EMPTIER" YES/no, a lot of people will still click YES. ;)

The problem here is it's not obvious how you can run games without Galaxy. If he installed the game and got Galaxy unintentionally, then Galaxy will launch when he tries to start the game. If he's not logged into Galaxy, it will tell him he has to do so. The impression anyone that's not familiar with it would be just like Steam: they'd assume you have to log in to play the game.

So sure, Galaxy's optional and it's easy to run your games without it. But GOG's done their best to not make that obvious. Someone that doesn't hang out on these forums much will likely be completely oblivious to the fact you can run your games without the client.

All they need to do is make a shortcut to the game's actual .exe instead of the "GalaxyClient.exe /command=runGame /gameId=xxxx /path="C:\etc" shortcut that was placed by default, right?
I'd say it's pretty uncommon for someone to know what DRM is but be unable to diagnose what's going on there.

Actually you install a game from your account on a friend's PC. Their Galaxy will recognise it (and tell them, they can't "connect" the game. But you can still play the game (from their Galaxy!) and even see game time and achievements.

That's what I did showing a friend Dying Light when I was at his place (using classic installer from me, but launching with his Galaxy). Convinced him to buy the game :-) Win-Win - DRM-free FTW, even with Galaxy.

Some people here seem to think that proprietary clients don't constitute DRM, which is incorrect. They don't *necessarilly* constitute DRM, but they can, and sometimes do.

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The offline installer of Divinity Original Sin.
You can install the game without internet on as many PCs you want without restrictions. You can play the single player portion of the game without internet without any restrictions. You can play the multiplayer portion of the game without restrictions by choosing "Connect Via IP" which is also called "LAN" Mode.
This is true DRM free and at the same time a trust to the customer that he will not misuse his license.
But today only garbo peeps so trust belly up X in the eyes kthxbye

Except Gwent...oh and Absolver if you want anything more than a demo. There are probably others out there, battletech apparently you need to login to paradox to get certain items.
Argue all you like, galaxy will lead to online only effectively enabling full drm. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but soon, bit by bit eroding the edges until no one notices anymore. Or do you think it is by accident that classic installers are hidden?

"Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die!"...?

it depends. Technically, GoG games remain drm-free, since, as people above said, galaxy is still optional dependency. Practically - some newcomers require galaxy for multiplayer (even LAN!) and galaxy.dll is included in all games with galaxy features (and it send information to GoG even if you dont have galaxy installed on your machine).

I'd say that new GoG games are a bit less DRM-free, but completely not spyware-free

Alright, Thanks all. Forgot about that - running the .exe directly from the installation folder instead of the automatically created shortcut. I was thinking WTF after double-clicking the default shortcut and it just opened my file exploer. I am not a newcomer, just a bit of a noob again :/ after having not touched GoG for some time and not sure how GoG has progressed.

Good post, and true. However as stated above, requiring Galaxy would still not be the same as DRM.

No, and I wasn't trying to imply itwas. I was just pointing out how someone could easily make the mistake of thinking Galaxy was required and therefore DRM.