True, huge patches are a pain in the butt, the 'good' thing is we can delete the old huge files from our archives or archive them to a dvd or multiple dvd's.

The problem is that bugs or glitches are inside code , that means the .exe file, and the exe files are the ones usually loaded with DRM so i guess you can;t use your small Steam patches.

The best thing would be to forbid any form of DRM by law :D
Stallone had his movie Cobra and said crime is a disease and i'm the cure:
DRM is also a disease but unfortunately there is no cure .

So for now i will just delete all the old archived gigabytes of old game data from my usb backup drive.

GOG does offer smaller patches for some of the games. For instance, Transistor has a small hotfix. Darksiders II has the controller update as a separate 50MBs download. Trails in the Sky offers two patches to bring you from version GOG-8 to GOG-9 and then from GOG-9 to GOG-10 along with a full installer.

I really wonder how their update procedure goes along. But with Humble Bundle DRM-free downloads it's the same woes.

Well then you've been given a good reason to use Galaxy!

Yup...

Galaxy isn't "That" evil, you can use it as a simple downloader / patcher as it's nowhere as draconian as the Steam / Origin / UPlay launchers. Simply install, point Galaxy to where your current game(s) are installed, let it download or patch (it'll check the current files first) and then once it's done it's stuff exit Galaxy and launch the game via your traditional desktop launcher / start menu / however you like to start your games.

Of course Linux users are stuck at the moment as the client hasn't been ported / created for that yet :(

Yes.

This is another point entirely though? You may not get standalone patches but I'm fairly sure in Steam's case (and I assume Origin as well) you generally only download the files that have been changed, not the entire game again. I assume even Galaxy works this way?

Granted, I can see your point if you assume if you ever uninstall the game then later your only option is to redownload the whole thing (unless you backed up the folder/manifest file)

And that was kinda my point: as long the the GOG client (that is, Galaxy) allows downloading of patches (instead of redownloading the whole game over and over again whenever it receives even a tiny update), then the GOG service can be considered to be on the same level with its rivals. If Galaxy still doesn't support it, then bad bad Galaxy.

I presume now we were talking about the standalone offline installers (at least the OP talked about "install files"). Steam or Origin don't do it better because they don't even offer an option for offline installers to begin with; Humble Bundle offers standalone installers for many of its games, but as said I don't think they offer patches for them. If a HB game gets updated, they provide a whole new installer, ie. the very same problem that is being discussed here.

Hence my question: does any other store do it any better (or even in the same level as GOG), ie. offer patches for their offline installers?

Nothing wrong with wishing GOG to provide smaller offline patches for all their games, but just a reality check to those who imply this is specifically a problem with GOG. It isn't, in fact I'd claim GOG does much more there than any other store (ie. while not all of their installers get separate patches, a lot of them do).

Ps. At least the wishlist item addresses the fact that providing separate offline patches is not necessarily an easy task, e.g. should one go with one incrememental patch that updates any older version to the latest one, or several smaller patches which one has to run one by one? I recall complaints earlier that a patch would not work with some ancient installation, but you had to reinstall it to the new "base version" anyway, and on top of that apply the new update.

Draconian is hardly a word I'd use for Steam/Origin. Their patching process is a lot more practical than GOG's. But I'm not a fussy tin hatter who turns their updates off and then complains about it. Ha.

And several reasons not to use it.

1: Beta. (when/if it gets full release, I may give it a shot).
2: Supposed to be optional. (it stopped being optional when I can only patch the game via galaxy or get lumbered with several gig of DLs...)
3: It is not optional when the only way to get the latest DLC is via galaxy or completely DLing the entire thing again.
4: If I DL patches for games lately, a pop up states it won't work with galaxy installed games. So if I install this so called "patch", it will then not allow me to install via standalone/offline installers when newer ones are released.

This also happened with Grim Dawn, where it wouldn't patch by normal means, so had to resort to galaxy & any time after that, can only be updated via galaxy or it just fails.

P.S. If I wanted to have to use a client to update/install games, then what reason should I not use steam/origin/uplay etc in the first place when they're full released & been tested over years...

Yup. For the same DRM-free titles, this is pretty much the case. It may not matter to those with slammin' net connections, but us poor limited slobs who also respect and support DRM-free are sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place:

- download 145MB of "optional", beta Galaxy in order to get your much smaller update.
- go with a mature client from another store, a store that gets updates sooner and sometimes gets updates that don't show up here at all. See 3rd Class Citizens thread.

"Download Galaxy, run it to get the updates, and then shut it off again." In that case, may as well go with the Steam client, since one can do the exact same thing there with the DRM-free titles AND get the updates sooner. AND not run a beta client.

Looks, updates aren't the end of the world for me. They're just games, and I can play something else until I can get the updates. And yet, why does a small change that might be along the lines of 10MB when using a client require a multi-gigabyte download if one isn't comfortable using / doesn't want to use a beta client?

gOg? Hello? Anyone there? Got an explanation?

I'll also add that if I had a full game installer and I patch it through Galaxy, I simply don't get the installer for the new version of the game, which is an absolutely necessary requirement for me, as I want the game to be backed up to an offline medium and installable later and offline. Even with Galaxy present, I don't use it to 'install' my games through it, rather I let it download installers which I then hook up later with Galaxy, if I want to.

Or to just use Steam instead. :P

As a downloader, it's inferior to the previous GOG Downloader though. :(

Depends on the engine a game uses, and how it packages the assets.
Let's assume our game uses a single file for all the texture, so that's a 700MB .asset file. A few weeks after release, we notice that the police cars used in the graphics are Green, but the real life ones are Blue, so a single texture has to be recolored. Unpack the file, switch the texture, repack the file. A single texture results in a 700MB file being changed.
That's where you get the need for delta patching. Check what the file the user currently has is, check what bytes need to be changed to get the new file, do the patching. If the user could have any of 5 possible older versions, it might be better to provide the full new .asset file instead of delta patching it.

No idea about the games currently being discussed, and no idea if GOG uses delta patching (though I think they did at some point. Patch took longer to run than downloading a new installer did, at least for me). But it is an explanation as to why new installers may be used instead of incremental patches.

As I posted earlier on, it appears like they're (GOG) are just doing full patches & not smaller ones for no reason in particular.

"We've done some internal installer changes with this update and consolidated the previous patches into the new installer. Next update will have a proper patch along with an updated installer."

So, they managed to combine all of the previous patches into the full DL files (which still means anyone wanting to just patch has to do a full DL), yet not to make an installer for everyone that needs it just to up date to the current increment.

Worse, we have to wait until "next update will have a proper patch along with an updated installer."

The game is new & stable, there may not be an update for weeks/months/ever or perhaps at least until FWH release some more goodies/DLC for this game & there's no guarantee that the same won't just happen all over again.

*shifty eyes*