Famously so. The main method of deployment was an offline installer before they made Galaxy, and AFAIK Galaxy just downloads and runs the installer.

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gamesieve 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not quite. You can use Galaxy to download the offline installers (or just do that through the website), but when you install a game through Galaxy, it downloads a special build which it just copies to the right location, without running a separate installer.

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KptMarchewa 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, it doesn't use offline installers. Source: worked on that in the past.

https://content-system.gog.com/

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thaumasiotes 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The running game can also call out to Galaxy and unlock, or not unlock, ingame content based on what it hears back. It's pretty difficult to imagine a definition of "digital rights management" that doesn't include this.

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CopperWing 4 hours ago | parent [-]

As far as I remember, the only games which optionally need Galaxy running are those will online multiplayer, and only if you want to play online. This is because the original developers shutdown their own servers for matchmaking or originally used Steam servers for that. GOG servers are only replacing those.

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gamesieve 4 hours ago | parent [-]

There are also a handful of games which put some additional purely cosmetic content behind an online check. That could be the start of a slippery slope, which people are justly upset about, but they then do an injustice to their cause by generalizing from those cases.

	▲	account42 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not a slippery slope but already full blown DRM plain and simple. Both online functionality limited to GOG-run servers and checks for cosmetic content.