GOG.com

[rusty_shackleford]

if you have twitch prime let me know so I can add you to my 'gullible idiot' list

 

[El Presidente]

I 100% completely doubt GOG will ever shut down for good, as in, "Dear users, please download all your shit before [date of death] as you won't be able to anymore after that, sorry for the inconvenience but alas we had a good ride, byebye". Worse that can happen is that they'll get eaten up by one of the bigger ones like Epic or Tencent. Depending on how that goes it'll be a fate worse than death, but at least you'll still be able to reach your acquired library.

As for the ongoing discussion, I think GOG's biggest problem is that it cannot decide what it wants to be. Remember when GOG used to stand for "Good Old Games"? Well they very unabashedly swept that under the rug at some point a few years back, now GOG stands for "it-doesn't-really-mean-anything-actually,-move-along-sirs-nothing-to-see-here!". Sure enough it still is a pretty decent store to grab hundreds of oldies but they don't seem to even try to market themselves as that kind of place, in fact I have the slight impression they're ashamed of having this label, it's almost as if they feel being a retro store isn't COOL enough.

Then you have the second leg of GOG's tripod, providing a "curated selection of games". As many have already pointed out that's just bullshit, they let in lots of shit and let out many good stuff. This is currently the Page 1 of GOG's newly released games:

Someone forgot to tell Ò.ó_KrzysztofChan_xD that his personal weaboo faggotry should not be a part of their curation standards.

Finally, there's the DRM-free side. I personally like it a lot, as probably most of you here but make no mistake, the absolute majority doesn't really care about it, swing the COME CONSOOM shiny plate in their faces and they'll create their accounts on the 79th client, just like they're already doing with the streaming services. A few years ago you'd think people would be super pissed off if Netflix gets stripped off many of their best shows and each goes to a different (paid) streaming platform. Fast forward to present day and the hordes of retards are happily paying their subscriptions on 3-8 different ones. If anything the last 10 years have showed us that yes, companies can get away with lots of shit, people might complain in the beginning but they get used to eating the shit eventually. That's not to mention the whole pandemic situation.

So, to conclude, what is GOG? Is it a retro store but too shy to admit, or too cool to be the store for the old gamer? Is it the most competently curated store, except it really isn't? Is it the ultimate lair of DRM-free games, in a world where the majority doesn't really care about that? At the end of the day it feels as if GOG's somewhat the vegan, hipster version of Steam. Don't get me wrong, I like GOG, but perhaps I just like my "interpretation" of it: it's the place that provides me with stuff that's not readily available anywhere else, like half of Sierra's catalogue for instance, or SMAC, the Gold Box games, Elvira, Blood Omen, etc. That's the slice of GOG that I like a lot, it's the slice that I made myself as its consumer. When it comes to the image that GOG provides you though, there's hardly anything to appreciate other than the DRM-free stuff, which is a weak selling point for the larger masses.

 

[RNGsus]

 

[Boleskine]

it's the place that provides me with stuff that's not readily available anywhere else, like half of Sierra's catalogue for instance, or SMAC, the Gold Box games, Elvira, Blood Omen, etc. That's the slice of GOG that I like a lot, it's the slice that I made myself as its consumer.

And it's such a damn shame they lost discarded their identity so quickly in pursuit of a silly idea that they'd somehow be able to compete with Steam's client.

It is completely understandable that GOG had to expand their catalog to accommodate the inevitable slowdown in classic releases. Their curation since then left something to be desired, though. Instead of distancing themselves from the "Good Old Games" title they should have doubled down on it.

Their marketing focus should have been "play the old games without any hassle, plus discover some newer good ol' games". That's kind of what they were trying to do but in true GOG fashion they fucked it up. Instead they told the customers who gave their business life that they weren't that important anymore. Cue the hentai visual novels.

 

[OSK]

I think GOG should consider raising funds by selling CDPR to Bethesda. And then maybe they can use the money to provide better Linux support.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Remember this the next time someone defends GOG's curation.

 

[Endemic]

Remember this the next time someone defends GOG's curation.

GOG was pretty late to getting Idea Factory onboard, they've been all over Steam and key reseller sites for several years (Fairy Fencer and the like are common bundle fodder).

If you're going to complain that cheap anime-styled games with recycled assets are an offense, Steam hosts dozens of times more "weebshit". Literally hundreds of low-effort RPGMaker knockoffs in the list every time a discount happens.

Agreed that rejecting Wizardry-likes is stupid. I don't do as much business with GOG as I used to largely because they've lost their original focus, and QA has indeed gone to shit recently. I don't hold loyalty to any particular store.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Remember this the next time someone defends GOG's curation.

GOG was pretty late to getting Idea Factory onboard, they've been all over Steam and key reseller sites for several years (Fairy Fencer and the like are common bundle fodder).

If you're going to complain that cheap anime-styled games with recycled assets are an offense, Steam hosts dozens of times more "weebshit". Literally hundreds of low-effort RPGMaker knockoffs in the list every time a discount happens.

Agreed that rejecting Wizardry-likes is stupid. I don't do as much business with GOG as I used to largely because they've lost their original focus, and QA has indeed gone to shit recently. I don't hold loyalty to any particular store.

I'm complaining because those are on there despite curation. They're on steam because they don't have curation .

 

[Endemic]

Is there something factually incorrect about what I stated?

I'm complaining because those are on there despite curation. They're on steam because they don't have curation .

I've agreed their curation isn't up to par because they rejected good games, not because some weeb stuff is there. What matters is the classics being released. If they do that I can ignore the other crap on the store, just like with Steam or whoever else.

GOG's always had some odd practices. At the start they literally only had two price points: $5.99 and $9.99. That was about as arbitrary as the curation process.

 

[jebsmoker]

i've been waiting three months for gog to fix up and publish star trek armada 1 + 2

wtf is taking them so long

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I see a completely different new release list.

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

Is the game added to you gog library? I don't recall the service being offered to me when I joined prime years ago but... if i joined now I could get the game then DC the service (leaving me with the free month I believe. Not that I'm that hungry for Frostpunk).

 

[Bad Sector]

Someone forgot to tell Ò.ó_KrzysztofChan_xD that his personal weaboo faggotry should not be a part of their curation standards.

On the contrary, GOG needs more weeb games. There is a lot of stuff on Steam that should be on GOG, including stuff that are from publishers who are already on GOG.

In fact take the "weeb" bit out.

Personally i'd be perfectly fine if they let most things in, though not to the point of accepting stuff like this.

One thing they could do is to have a minimal curation to ensure that something is functionally a game and isn't malware (requiring actual business info, etc will filter the vast majority of that stuff out anyway) but otherwise put everything in the store. However put the new games in an "unchecked" status which has them hidden by default unless someone either enables a "show unchecked games" or visits the game or developer's page directly (with a notice that the game hasn't been officially checked by the GOG staff). Then use the sales statistics (not page hits as that can be easily gamed) to prioritize which unchecked games to put through their proper verification/checking like they'd do normally so they appear on the store properly - and if they feel like it, they still can not officially approve a meme game regardless of sales (it isn't like this can't be gamed anyway).

This will let them to be the place for DRM-free games, let people have a human curated view of the store by default, avoid human mistakes in judgement over games that may not sell and have games available for sale as soon as they are released from their developers instead of being clogged in the curation process and giving Steam an advantage over availability that they could have avoided.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Personally i'd be perfectly fine if they let most things in, though not to the point of accepting stuff like this.

90 people left a review, that's far more than the average Steam game. You just don't want it on there because you don't like it, AKA censorship.

 

[Bad Sector]

90 people left a review, that's far more than the average Steam game.

It is just a meme game that costs less than a euro, of course it'd have a lot of reviews. But the game is made on the Raycasting Game Maker and games made with it all have the same awful gameplay no matter how good the art or the levels there are. This game is made on the same engine and despite clearly having way more effort go into it and being there for years before "Putin Kills Coronavirus", it has less reviews.

You just don't want it on there because you don't like it.

Yes.

AKA censorship

Curation for quality isn't censorship - if a hobo shits in a box presenting it as a form of art and an art store refuses to sell it, it isn't censoring an artist's view, it is saving its customers from having to smell the shit and its reputation of being a store where shit is sold.

Regardless, what i suggested as an alternative to full-on manual curation would work with having the meme games there too.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

90 people left a review, that's far more than the average Steam game.

It is just a meme game that costs less than a euro, of course it'd have a lot of reviews. But the game is made on the Raycasting Game Maker and games made with it all have the same awful gameplay no matter how good the art or the levels there are. This game is made on the same engine and despite clearly having way more effort go into it and being there for years before "Putin Kills Coronavirus", it has less reviews.

You just don't want it on there because you don't like it.

Yes.

AKA censorship

Curation for quality isn't censorship - if a hobo shits in a box presenting it as a form of art and an art store refuses to sell it, it isn't censoring an artist's view, it is saving its customers from having to smell the shit and its reputation of being a store where shit is sold.

Regardless, what i suggested as an alternative to full-on manual curation would work with having the meme games there too.

physical stores have limited shelf space and therefore must prioritize certain products, your analogy is inherently fallacious.

 

[Bad Sector]

physical stores have limited shelf space and therefore must prioritize certain products, your analogy is inherently fallacious.

The analogy was about quality control not being censorship, not about physical space limitations.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

physical stores have limited shelf space and therefore must prioritize certain products, your analogy is inherently fallacious.

The analogy was about censorship not being quality control, not about physical space limitations.

And what you consider quality is probably not the same as what I consider quality, which is why GOG is now full of weeb trash.

 

[Bad Sector]

And what you consider quality is probably not the same as what I consider quality

Which is the same as all store owners, physical or not, with the difference that since - as you wrote - there are no physical space limitations they can - as i already wrote in the comment you replied to previously - let everything in that functions as a game to avoid losing otherwise good games due to mistakes in their judgement.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

And what you consider quality is probably not the same as what I consider quality

Which is the same as all store owners, physical or not, with the difference that since - as you wrote - there are no physical space limitations they can - as i already wrote in the comment you replied to previously - let everything in that functions as a game to avoid losing otherwise good games due to mistakes in their judgement.

and yet you immediately said "b-b-but not the games I dislike!"
I dislike all weeb trash, they should exclude it

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

GOG is losing money and refocusing on ‘handpicked selection of games’

GoG's biggest problem is that they are just not competitive in any way that matters. When they started out every game came with a bunch of extras by default(soundtrack, artwork, avatar etc.) but so even if the DRMfree angle did not matter to you it was still a more complete version of the game than any other out there. However modern releases usually have nothing and those extras are being sold separately as a "deluxe edition upgrade" which usually is not worth it if it costs even a single dollar. Their pricing also has this problem where they are still more expensive than steam despite technically doing less. Simply put I am not rebuying Demonicon for 10 bucks when I bought it on steam for one dollar 4 year ago. And this goes for most of their releases, Kingdom under Fire is cool but I am not paying 20 for a 16 year old Xbox port.

The only way their current approach could work would be if their curated selection of games was not available everywhere else or was at least somehow significantly distinctive from all the other versions out there. Like with the whole Hitman fiasco, if they at least provided a save with everything unlocked to at least make the DRM-free claim somewhat true. Funny thing it that this is exactly how they started. When GoG was new they were the only place where you could buy Gothic or Arx Fatalis or Silver and have it run out of the box. I would like them to go down that route but... well lets just wait and see.

A famous billionaire once said that to beat your competition you have to either be better than them or different than them. I'm not sure at this point GOG is doing either against its competition. Every step it has taken over the last couple of years has undone the original path it was on. And for some reason, they must think that all the old chad gamers are dead or something, because the only genre they seem interested in any more are pixel fart, lgtbbq adventure-rama horse shit.

The last few new features over the years has been Connect, Galaxy, and early access; things that A: no one really asked for or wanted and B: are done better on Steam.

GOG, get better or get different. You don't want to know what the other option is.

 

[Bad Sector]

and yet you immediately said "b-b-but not the games I dislike!"

I wrote that i'd personally wouldn't be fine to have games like the one i mentioned, but that is my personal preference. The rest of my comment is about how GOG could be made as to not have the issue of losing games due to the personal preferences and judgement of the people reviewing them.

 

[Lacrymas]

Even though GOG is my platform of choice and I have 95+% of my games on there, they can't compete with the pricing on Steam. I can get Steam games ridiculously cheap from legit sources and bundles. GOG remains king for older games though.

 

[Elwro]

GoG should've kept picking up games like Knights of the Chalice, S&S: Underworld, Solium Infernum... newer games made in the old-school style. They should've kept the old ones and be able to suggest newer proposals in the same vein. This would make them unique and they could also stay small. The decision to expand by effectively losing their identity was ridiculous.

edit: I don't think you can even buy Solium Infernum anymore. What a shame! Such a gem! This is what GoG should be for...

 

[Gaznak]

You know, due to my job biography I had and still have much contact with modern 'corporative culture'. Its main flaw is that no participant ever has at least minimal connection to corporative business, safe money-grabbing. People do not feel themselves as a part of a familly (despite the tenets of corporative religions) or as collaborators or whatever. They just suck blood like fleas and jump over to the next host organism (corporation). They don't care a muck about the future of their previous host organism. There's no real work there, only window-dressing, ultra-fashionable high-technology hyperlaser presentation and the similar shit. There's no strategy, and I fear no tactics even.

GOG isn't different. Upper staff now finally stole a solid lump of money via Cyberpunk swindle, lower staff just doesn't care as ever. Everybody is content. When the curtain finally falls they will just emerge in any other gaming business corporation where nobody doesn't care as well about their GOG story and their role in GOG's crash.

 

[Gaznak]

I don't think you can even buy Solium Infernum anymore

BTW, anyone interested might PM me to get a licensed final version of this gem.