I too wish GOG would automatically at least notify us in the downloader or in some website side mechanism that a game was updated, and indicate if any bugs were actually fixed, whether it is just adding language support or some other issue and do it in as user friendly a manner as possible (which is why I prefer in the downloader). This way people can make an informed decision about what they would like to have downloaded. That would be optimal for many of us anyway, while I'm sure there are also folks that don't care.

Currently it is quite a chore to keep track of this forum thread and do one's own homework to seek game updates and installer updates, etc. I just updated about 30 games I had no idea had been updated simply by perusing this forum and then going through my entire catalogue and comparing the version on-disk locally to the version in my bookshelf. It took hours altogether to do.

I probably wont do that again though as it is too much work. Instead, I have a humongous amount of residential bandwidth cap in a month and my entire GOG game collection is approximately 300GB. It's easier and least effort for me to just periodically re-download the entire GOG game catalogue of 300GB "just in case" rather than to spend hours figuring out what changed, then discard my prior backups once the new bits have successfully downloaded. That would waste a lot of bandwidth on both ends but I guess there's a lot of bandwidth to go around so it doesn't matter that much. Just seems like there has to be a better way though. Even something like "rsync" would be ideal. (That'd work for gearheads like me but wouldn't be so hot for the average customer of course.)

chris_sawyers_locomotion is setup_locomotion_2.0.0.8.exe and it's 469mb

and I have another setup_locomotion_2.0.0.8.exe but it's 436mb (just as on gamecard).

what's up with that?

Report from my weekly collection re-check:

Simon the Sorcerer 3D got a v2 installer, was v1 before.

And after a year they "updated" the Witcher 1 calendar. No real update, it is still May 2012 till April 2013. They just threw out some thumbnails that got packaged in by accident.

This is what I get: 469 MB (492,425,920 bytes)

I mean, I have two versions, 469 mb and 436 mb, both 2.0.0.8

The short one could be an interrupted download that never completed properly perhaps, or a silent update done without changing the version number (which is an irritating no-no in the software field if you ask me).

Check their digital signatures. If both have a valid one, newer one is newer installer (silent update etc). If any don't have a valid signature, it's an incomplete download, feel free to delete it.

Nope, it's perfectly fine. If you check gamecard on your shelf, you'll see it says 437mb, and also it matches the md5 hash from http://www.gogwiki.com/wiki/Chris_Sawyer%27s_Locomotion

That means GOG updated the file without changing its version.

I guess that's another good reason to download all 300+GB once every 3 months or so instead of just what changed due to lack of info. ;oP

I saw this post and re-downloaded Locomotion. The version I got was setup_locomotion_2.0.0.8.exe and it was 469MB in size (the same as the one I already had >_< ). So not only have GOG not made us aware of the change, but they haven't even updated the download size in the My Account page or the gamecard page.

For reference, the digital signature (which is okay) is dated 10 April 2013 11:11:33. The installer has an md5 hash of 359D5549A81A144BA693C1D65EA1DB85

So the GOG Wiki is out of date too.

Yeah, it looks like the only reliable way to ensure your local game backups are current is to sync the entire catalogue at some interval, then discard the prior backup.

Not everyone can do that. I can only get around 2.5Mbps download, and I have quite a fair few games from GOG. I also have a 100GB/month fair use policy (I've only ever reached about 42GB in any one month mind, most of the time it is between 20-30GB I use) after which I'd get slowed down and probably an email from my ISP.

Indeed, one would need a more capable connection to entertain it for this volume of data, but I imagine most GOG folk don't have 200+ games so it'd likely be far less than that. I just upgraded from 10Mbps/512kbps/150GB to 25Mbps/2.5Mbps/300GB for $5 extra per month yesterday to give myself some breathing room. I get that for $60/month now and my ISP doesn't actually enforce caps except on the most severe abusers. So I could mirror a handful of games each month and spread it out without putting a dent in my overall cap. I had 50Mbps/5Mbps/400GB for a year up until last December and I gotta say... that was sweet as hell. It was a free promo so I couldn't pass it up but I let it go after the promo ended. I could have sync'd gog monthly with that. :)

Well, at present I have 116 games on GOG, if you count the free ones too. That is still a lot of downloading if I were to try and sync regularly.