Hi all. Before a few days ago, Galaxy never opened automatically when I started a game, but for the past few days (after an update, if that matters), it now runs before I can play a game (Grim Dawn, in this case).

Not only do I not want it to open unless I open it manually, but it takes a long time to open, so now I've gone from instantly opening Grim Dawn to having to wait for Galaxy to launch first. This can take a full minute or more before the game even runs!

Does anyone know why Galaxy has starting running with the game lately? How can I stop it?

Thanks!

Try deleting the old shortcut you used to open the game and replacing it with a new shortcut to the games .exe.

Deinstall Galaxy.

It's a recent change made by the Galaxy devs, as more and more games utilize Galaxy for certain features (like Grim Dawn for online play)... they decided to have Galaxy launch when a game is played if downloaded via Galaxy. This is a change to the shortcut themselves, the game has remained as it was.

Like mentioned above, deleting the Galaxy created shortcut and creating your own via directly to the exe will allow you to launch without Galaxy and bypass the change.

Galaxy has to launch first eg. to check if there are any new saves in the cloud, then download and finally swap them before launching the actual game.
In my case (TW3), it's the cloud sync that takes most of the time.
You can launch the game directly, but it skips the sync.

This happens because GOG decided to make a complete mess of everything and forced Galaxy upon users - despite the OUTRIGHT LIE that Galaxy would be "optional". Maybe it's because they are Polish and don't know the English language and what the word "optional" means, .

GOG claims they are going to bring back the ability to download games Galaxy/DRM/Client free in the future, but this has not happened yet, even though it is ridiculously easy to do and should have been done weeks ago. This claim also remains to be seen if GOG/CDPR keep their word and have any integrity left and bring back the DRM-free downloads. Considering they claimed this would be a DRM-free store and that Galaxy would always be optional - both of which turned out be complete bald-face lies - I am not holding my breath.

Thanks guys. I did try to turn off the cloud sync feature and see if that solved the problem, but Galaxy still launched despite that option being disabled. I'm not sure what else would cause it, unless it is simply built into the shortcut itself like you said. But the shortcut hasn't changed since I originally installed the game, so why would it all of a sudden do this? Or did the recent Galaxy update somehow change the shortcut? Or, I also recently installed the Crucible DLC. Maybe that did something?

At any rate, I will change out the shortcut and try that when I get the chance. Should I use the "Grim Dawn.exe" file directly, or the one called "Launch Grim Dawn"? The path of the latter seems to be the file name of the former, so maybe they are the same thing.

Thanks!

Way to hyperbole, clearly optional means you can play without Galaxy. Seeing as standalone installers still work as they always have, then Galaxy is clearly still optional. This is a change for Galaxy users only, and can be easily bypassed if needed. If you have already chosen to use Galaxy, then you can hardly claim you are being forced to do anything.... by the very nature of gaming clients, it is understood they will be under constant development and things change for both better and worse.

I'm not sure GOG is the one that doesn't understand English... Most likely this is what did it. They seem to be making the change in newer updates. Grim Dawn.exe should work fine, Though it shouldn't really matter. You could also probably just modify the original. All GOG is doing is invoking Galaxy.

Easiest solution though it to simply create a new manual shortcut.

What do0es CDPR have to do with ANYTHING? This is GOG. CDPR is a sister company that isn't directly involved with GOG.

Thanks guys. The new shortcut worked! It's too bad I'll have to do this manually from now on, but I still like using Galaxy as a download manager. Maybe not every game will do this. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't take Galaxy a century to open up when I launch a game!

CDP is giving CDPR every freedom around here and their games are always the precedents of negative change.

First region locked game on GOG? Witcher 2 by CDPR
First regionally priced game on GOG? Witcher 2 by CDPR
First game that came with Galaxy? Witcher 3 by CDPR
First completely online and Galaxy dependent game? GWENT by CDPR
(Actually it was an older version of "The Witcher Adventure Game", also by CDPR, but they changed it)
First microtransactions? GWENT by CDPR

By now, region locks are common, regional pricing is the rule instead of the exception as was promised, online multiplayer becomes mostly Galaxy only with new games by now (most likely including Cyberpunk by CDPR), they plan to add Galaxy to everything (see the last shitstorm) and you can bet that this isn't the last we've seen of microtransactions.

Saying that CDPR has no influence on GOG is all kinds of wrong.

Isn't it possible to edit the existing shortcut (to remove any entries there launching the Galaxy client), instead of deleting the whole shortcut and creating a new one?

The shortcut is in the format of "Galaxy /rungame #id", not in the format of "game /usegalaxy", so you would need to change the executable either way.

Quite depressing to see how GOG gradually deteriorated and more and more deviated from their previous core values over the past few years. All under the pretext of "bringing more games to GOG". Yet we still haven't got a big flood of big AAA titles, rather a big flood of Indie crap, pre-orders, DLC and in-dev games. Let's just hope that your list will not continue like that: "First Denuvo game, offline installer not available? Cyberpunk by CDPR" ;-)