FordR: Another small aside: Because of my usage of only manual downloads, it's not as if I was ever particulary up to date unless I had just downloaded the installer, I certainly never re-downloaded an installer when it was updated. GoG's releases have been stable enough for me and atm I don't see much in the way of patches in the games I do own on GoG in their forums, atm there's only one in Baldurs gate and that's a recent one which has to do with the languages it installs with. Is there some large existence of patch notes that list off all updates they've done to installers over the years? I'm asking because you seem to place some level of importance on an up to date game.
Older games don't really get many updates at all very often so it isn't a huge problem with them. The problem is more with regards to much newer games that might get frequent updates. GOG's current update mechanism does not work too well with this and it will vary from game to game what works best. The approach taken by more modern update mechanisms is superior technically, and in the case of GOG just need to be implemented in a way that allows people to have their desired functionality without any big tradeoffs. I believe that it's not only doable, but that GOG has the engineering talent to give everyone their cake and let them eat it too. I've personally had to implement a modern updater that handled binary deltas between arbitrary versions of software while doing caching and allowing the local files to be reused without Internet connectivity and it's really not that difficult. Most of the functionality exists in off the shelf tools that just need to be glued together. I use libcurl for that sort of thing myself and the rest of it is child's play. From a technical perspective,
Personally, I could easily write a downloader client in C which would both have the ability to duplicate the functionality of the existing GOG downloader exactly while at the same time keeping network traffic as low as possible whenever possible for backward compatibility with what people seem to want to stay the same, while also having a more modern method which sounds like what the Galaxy client will provide that will work better for cases the current downloader doesn't. I have faith that if I can think of how to go about doing that, GOG totally can do something like that too. ;)
FordR: I'm actually rather curious though, to what exactly is your skepticism actually in regards to? That the existence of a client might somehow alter the way GoG does business entirely? That the convenience you enjoy with the GoG downloader will not carry over into Galaxy? It all seems a bit muddled with the focus on the client itself and if the actual concern was underscored it'd be easier to get a response from GoG proper.
In my observation of the GOG community threads it seems to be broken into two camps for the most part. One is people who dislike or fear Steam/Origin/Uplay and similar clients/services for whatever their own reasons are and just fear GOG is going to do the same thing and they'll be forced to swallow it up and they don't want to see that happen so they need to make their voices heard loudly so that GOG knows they're here and they wont stand for that. That's ok too because it is important for everyone to express what they want and don't want so that it is documented and known. The other group seems to mainly be concerned with worrying about losing features/functionality either from the existing GOG Downloader and/or the GOG website and/or otherwise losing control over their experience as a GOG customer somehow, and they want strong assurances that they will be able to have their individual needs and expectations met in the future when Galaxy arrives, but since the information on Galaxy is a bit scarce and not too detailed yet people fear that it may not meet their expectations, some making assumptions that they will be disenfranchised and feel there is nothing that will prevent them from being dissatisfied in the end.
With the lack of information details we have there's no way to get the answers everyone seeks just yet other than to wait for more information to come along. People certainly have a right to feel however they might feel and to have their personal concerns. I'd like to see everyone end up having any important concerns met in the end and I think GOG can do this, but at the same time you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs too. :)
GOG has stated that they are indeed watching the forums closely and discussing people's concerns in their meetings and trying to ensure that what they are doing will be able to meet the needs of the community without leaving people behind (my own paraphrasing). No matter what they do there WILL be some people angry about it however, even if they gave every customer $10,000 each, there will be people pissed off about it, that's human nature. :) They shouldn't try to please everyone though (when you try to please everyone you usually end up pleasing no one), but rather they should do the best job they can, and then make improvements based on feedback of what can be improved until hopefully the majority of people think they hit the nail on the head.
I have faith they have all of our interests at heart and will try to provide all of us with a better experience in the end though even if there are any bumps along the way, and they will definitely have my patience and understanding even if I end up being negatively affected in any way. I trust them to fix anything that they might break or mess up, and if I don't like something I'll try to tell them about it professionally and hope to see them address it. ;)
