GOG.com

[Narushima]

the grunt intern answering customer e-mails might not know the ins and outs [...]
I have to wonder how hard it could be

Oh the irony.

 

[Melcar]

... USB optical reader...

That's a court martial right there.

 

[Ravielsk]

Sometimes I honestly wonder if GOG is run by idiots.

I have a theory about this. I suspect that the problems began when GoG started hiring new managers, either young people or types from the west(it does not matter they represent both the same cancer). Because you see I have a fair bit of experience with what is taught in management faculties and on various courses that concern themselves with management. The one thing that all of these have in common is that they teach less about leadership and more about dictatorship, meaning that a core idea in all of them is that the employees are either some form of Untermensch or a straight up enemy you just have to put up with. The direct consequence of this is that most managers believe that all employs are 100% interchangeable and that they are to be only tolerated only as long as they do not step out of the line, the second they do the meta strategy is to go "FUCK'EM".

I will not get into how this is insane for anything more complex than a packaging plant but I have noticed how this attitude has bled through into how they approach their customers. Who have now also become another form of Untermenschen and enemies you just have to tolerate. This then translates into managers ignoring their core customer base because in their mind they can always just get a new one. Ignoring feedback even just out of sheer spite(remember Blizzard's "You think you do, but you don't") and will in fact often go out of their way to get as much distance from the community as possible(a.k.a removing community features, refusing to develop them any further, that sort of stuff). I suspect that this is exactly what happened internally at CDProjekt and what is currently harming GoG.

Hot new managers who are so high of their own supply that they cannot even consider the possibility of being wrong on anything.

Spoiler

Pardon the boomer reference, but this is basically the majority of what Kitchen Nightmares show is about. Gordon coming in and telling the owner/manager that they are the ones in the wrong, not the customers or the staff(or some made up hate mob).

 

[Denim Destroyer]

A problem I have with GOG is how they take fixes from the community but will never update a game when the fixes they borrowed receive an update. Thief on GOG uses an old version of Newdark which won't work with some new fan missions. There is also the fact they use an outdated version of DOSbox but every digital storefront seems to be guilty of that.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I wouldn't even think of buying a game that didn't include an offline installer. I got Steam a hundred years ago to play CS 1.6 and to me it was just a necessary hurdle to enjoy multiplayer. As my interest in multiplayer waned, I don't see what could ever motivate me to get something like Steam. About "exclusive" titles, well... they're not so "exclusive" if I can find them on the high seas... particularly if they come with with added value in the form of no DRM or third party apps. Why would you ever do that to yourself? That's like having to give the librarian a blowjob to borrow books from the library. No thanks.

Besides, I'm the kind of weirdo to have a computer just for games/working and another for internet stuff. The gaming computer is disconnected, as that makes life a lot easier in many ways. I wonder if I'm the only one.

GOG is not perfect, but I've basically got hundred of games for an average of about 2 euros, most of them running out of the box and containing extras. Never had any problems with payment or servers. I realize I'm far from the average gamer, but FWIW I'm very glad for GOG. As long as there's at least one company catering to boomers like me, I'm sure to keep away from drugs and delinquency.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

WHAT!? I have to worry about checking out books now? So that hot librarian with the big rack is a he? Bloody hell? And now she.. er he wants bjs for books?

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Azdul]

I reached out to them several times over the years and they told me it's not about obtaining the files, but securing the rights. Admittedly, the grunt intern answering customer e-mails might not know the ins and outs, but I have to wonder how hard it could be to offer a Big Mac and a coffee to whoever holds the rights to the Afrikaans audio for a 90s RTS.

For the games from 90's securing rights to different language versions is much harder than you think.

Publishers were not international conglomerates as they are now - they've usually operated in one country. And they knew that selling English version for equivalent of 50$ in most countries is a foolish endeavour. Doing a professional translation to sell less than 1000 copies also would be stupid.

They usually sold rights to the game to some local company - like a electronic shop or even supermarket chain, on condition that game will be translated to local language, and local company will take care of marketing. Flat fee, sometimes as low as 10 000 $ - was better than nothing for the publisher.

Because there was no per-copy license fee - local companies sometimes went out of their way to get as much as possible from the deal. Professional traslation, wide marketing campaign, deep discounts - making sure that anyone even remotely interested in the title will buy it. All agreements were signed under a local law - which varies greatly between the countries.

Publisher kept the rights for English version - but rights to national versions ended up in really strange places. I wouldn't be suprised if in some cases translating a game again would be easier than securing the rights to original translation.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

don't rly understand the worship of GOG for taking games that were already available everywhere and repackaging them with dosbox

 

[Gaznak]

I wonder if I'm the only one

You are not alone. I too have two different PCs, one for everyday online purposes, and another (WinXP!) - to play good old games. This latter one doesn't have an Internet connection at all, of course.

And I too was a big fan of GOG, that old GOG, but became more and more disappointed with their 'curated selection of games'(c) and overall marketing strategy. Moreover as for now I think I already have almost every game I want to have and play (more than 1200), so I can play 'em to death, and there's no need to buy/download any more. And new games are shit all the same.

 

[Removal]

rights.

it's beyond messy from what I understand, especially the further you go back as individual rights holders die and the rights get transferred to family members who have to be hunted down and may not even realize they own the legal rights to some of these games/franchises. Or you have cases like Dune II, where the Herbert Estate refuses to allow anyone to touch it because they think it degrades the overall value of the "Dune" franchise and want people to not know about it.

Also sounds like a lot of the rights hunting was undertaken at an individual level at GoG rather than at a organization level

 

[no-return]

The Galaxy client particularly has been a disaster and remains on my system solely as a background service for http://playnite.link to open and close as needed because it's still crashing constantly a year and a half later.

Why the fuck would you be using Galaxy to begin with? GOG's whole selling point was a simple, no-bullshit videogame distribution platform - no local client, no DRM, no auto/mandatory patches, you buy and then actually own a copy of your game. If you want Steam, just use Steam and put up with the consequences. CD Projekt should've never gone down the Galaxy rabbit hole.

I use GOG galaxy only to install and auto update. I make links to exe files manually and run them without GOG client.

 

[Elwro]

The Colony Ship betas are delivered straight to me via the Galaxy Client. It's the only use for it honestly for me.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

An old-school grognard isn't going to play G-Police or Dark Reign in English, that would defeat the point. You don't buy nostalgia products just to disregard what makes it a nostalgic experience in the first place.

Wat. I personally know precisely one classic game which has hands down better potato localization than the original version (which is also made even more impressive by the fact that the original is actually very good). Your country either has the best loc providers in the world or you're highly overvaluing this.

don't rly understand the worship of GOG for taking games that were already available everywhere and repackaging them with dosbox

I'm usually the first to criticize gog for shitiness and/or laziness of their releases, but they did make some good and classic games that were p much impossible to run properly available and functional. Chaos Gate and Wizards&Warriors, for example.

 

[Narushima]

don't rly understand the worship of GOG for taking games that were already available everywhere and repackaging them with dosbox

You know, I used to disagree with that, but I changed my mind recently.
Most of the time the rights to these old games have been transfered 15 times during fire sales and are now owned by a company that had nothing to do with its creation in the first place. There's no reason they should profit from it.
"Games preservation" is not a valid argument, since those games used to be more widely available before, now you can only purchase them from one source.

 

[Catacombs]

Another example of gog's decline: Their customer service used to be second to none. Ever since Cyberpunk happened, it has been abysmal.

Staffers and executives took all that sweet money from CP2077 presales and ran.

 

[Gaznak]

Wizards&Warriors

It was not GOG.

http://www.jeffludwig.com/wizardswarriors/download.php

plus link to Russian old games forum, sorry. The solution(s) has been found in 2005 already.

https://www.old-games.ru/forum/threads/wizards-and-warriors.12971/

Chaos Gate

It was not GOG either. The solution(s) has been found in 2005 already-2. Link to Russian old games forum, sorry-2.

https://www.old-games.ru/forum/threads/warhammer-40-000-chaos-gate.10119/


GOG just makes (sells) repacks including (free) old fan fixes and (free) DOSBox.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

So did you run those games from start to finish and can verify that they worked perfectly on win7 and above? Cause I would assume no and you're just quoting internets at face value.

I've spent a lot of time trying to run both using different solutions and workarounds found in different places. I was able to go past the cultist bug in the first CG mission, but the game would still bug out not long after. With WW, best I could do was to get it running p smoothly, but with fugly graphical artefacts. The gog releases work well with no issues out of the box.

 

[Gaznak]

The gog releases work well with no issues out of the box

All that GOG had to do is to adapt already existing free fan fixes to newer OSs. It's much easier a task than making fixes from scratch.

BTW, I still wonder why people that love and play mainly old games install new OSs. If one doesn't like dual-boot systems (I don't) it could be an even better solution to buy not the 'next-generation' smartphone but old desktop that could be top-notch in, say, 2005-2010. And it would be cheaper as well. And NO Win7 and newer, of course.

 

[ADL]

Frostpunk free on GOG for Twitch Prime users
https://gaming.amazon.com/loot/frostpunk?ingress=amzn&ref_=SM_F01F_P1_CRWN

 

[racofer]

Frostpunk free on GOG for Twitch Prime users
https://gaming.amazon.com/loot/frostpunk?ingress=amzn&ref_=SM_F01F_P1_CRWN

Why did it have to be a game I already own?

 

[lightbane]

The decline of GOG is a shame indeed, as well as their bizarre curation selection. You won't see the niche mecha dungeon-delves games from say zwanzig_zwoelf here, but weird visual novels no-one cares about make the cut.
It would be glorious if somehow Rance games made it into GOG but not Steam, as the latter already had statements made that no Rance game would get to Steam, ever.

 

[Ravielsk]

It would be glorious if somehow Rance games made it into GOG but not Steam, as the latter already had statements made that no Rance game would get to Steam, ever.

It would be hilarious if GoG just became a dumping ground for all the verboten sex games from steam. Highly profitable too but somehow I doubt anyone at CDprojekt has enough foresight to see it as a viable business move. From what I read around 4chin they are still under the delusion that they can fix everything by crunching out another Witcher but this time with extra Skyrim in it. So I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Twitch prime? Wtf is that?

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Prime Gaming

So, like the amazon books, music, etc etc; even if you have a PRIME account already they want to bilk more of your $$$$$ go figure.

 

[Villagkouras]

Thanks for the heads up, I don't know if I'll ever play it but for 29 cents I can't miss out on this. I bought Ion fury for 6 bucks there last week, I don't remember it ever being that cheap (sadly it appears IsThereAnyDeal doesn't have CDKeys listed on its list of sites it searches).

Try allkeyshop.com for that, it's a grey market ITAD. Also gg.deals has both normal shops and grey market sites.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So, like the amazon books, music, etc etc; even if you have a PRIME account already they want to bilk more of your $$$$$ go figure.

It's included, the trial is for the entire amazon prime package, which the gaming section is a part of.