For the GOG peeps - offline installers will be updated shortly.
Greedily and giddily updating to patch 5, now downloading through Galaxy as we speak!...;) I would estimate that the bulk of people using GOG today use it with Galaxy as opposed to always waiting on the offline installer files to compile before installing their games/or patches...!
I always feel it is incumbent upon me to reiterate the following, although it may come as a shock to some..;) But waiting on the Gog Offline Installers to be made ready is not a requirement for using GOG to update your game(s)...;) You will always get the game updates faster through Galaxy, without the necessity of waiting on Offline Installer files to be compiled every time there's an update. There seems to be some enduring confusion about that, for some reason...;) In fact, I would very much advise against it, and instead advise use of the
ordinary Galaxy updater for updating games through GOG, and I would reserve the offline installer for use at some future date when Larian has
finalized the BG3 version builds (so that you aren't constantly downloading updated offline installer files, one after another after another.)
The purpose of the offline installer files from GOG, provided at no extra charge, is to provide each GOG customer with his very own executable, installable
copy of his purchased games, as he is legally entitled to as a paying customer. This is a service provided only by GOG at this date (remarkable as it seems) as I am unaware of any other service that provides it. When installing your game copy from the offline installer files, no other GOG software is required to be present and/or running in the system.
OTOH, running GOG Galaxy is exactly like running Steamworks. Steam handles the downloads and the patch installations & updates automatically when prompted by the developer to do so, as does Gog Galaxy. Galaxy updates are ready for installation faster than the offline installer files are compiled, because there is more work for the game dev and even GOG when compiling the offline installer files compared to simply using Galaxy to deliver and install the game patch. Of course, there's "no delay" for Steam game files provided to the customer because Steam
does not provide stand-alone, installable copies of the games its customer's buy. This is true even for those Steam games that do not require that Steamworks be running in order to run the game--Steam still does not provide the user with a stand-alone self-installable game copy.
Without belaboring the issue, I use Galaxy to install and update my GOG games, and use the GOG offline installer files to save my stand-alone, installable game copies to my game library. Since its inception, GOG has always gone this extra mile for the customer. For me, it's not a big deal--it's the principle of the thing as much as anything else...;)
