GOG hoax: “we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz” | Hacker News Reader

GOG hoax: “we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz”

pcgamer.com

28 pointse1ven19 comments

Genius, you guys are seriously underestimating how good this will be for them in the long run.

Everyone here has now heard of them, most of you probably felt a lost opportunity when you found out what they offered and now you couldn't have it anymore. Well surprise!

Robert Cialdini would be proud.

I would love to hear the discussion that took place when they decided how to announce the upgrades to their site. Not a fancy splash page like Blizzard or CCP, not a traditional marketing e-mail, but closing their doors and telling their customers to get lost. And then, psyche!

At least they understand what people want from gaming products (no DRM). Another example of what not to do in marketing.

For a digital distribution service that depends so much on consumer trust that their purchased content will still be available well into the future, this is even more puzzling...

Why even hint at the idea that you may one day shut down and remove access to purchased content? Surely there are ways to build hype without eroding trust in your brand and angering your audience.

The entire selling point for this site is that they sell DRM free games.

Since the games are DRM free, you never have to worry about the publisher, or anyone else, pulling servers offline and making the games unplayable.

GOG can go out of business the day after you purchase and you still have the games you already bought and downloaded.

They're not a game backup service. They're a game store. Once you've bought and downloaded your games, you can make your own backups; you don't rely on them to keep anything available forever.

That is true, but I think many people still use GOG as a backup service simply because it is convenient. In my opinion this is a big selling point for digital distribution, DRM or not.

I personally own a few games on GOG but currently don't have local copies of any. When I saw the notice on their website and assumed they were gone I briefly thought I would never be able to get a legimate copy of the games I bought. One could argue that it's my own fault for not backing them up myself, but still...

I love the end of the article, where they say that they don't like GOG for doing this for buzz alone, and then announce the interview coming up.

I had not heard of them before.

And in 8 hours time, I will have forgotten them, instead of picking up an old classic that caught my eye right now.

Honestly? I'll still buy from them.

The nice thing about no DRM is that I'm not buying a relationship, I'm buying a product. I can just archive the bucket o' bits I receive and they can turn full-on evil in the future for all I care.

There's some rumor that the "no DRM" thing may be going away, or at least modified; the original announcement left the door open to that possibility. That does change the calculus a bit.

I will be disappointed if DRM comes in (and by "disappointed" I mean "not a customer"). Some people were claiming that if you poke around the torrent sites you can't easily find torrents of these games. I didn't verify that, but an enterprising journalist or blogger looking for a good post may consider verifying that before they come back with DRM. "Publishers stupidly insist on DRM even when the game is demonstrably not being pirated" would be a great post. (But I'd definitely verify first.)

And relaunching with BG1 + TOTSC for $10 -- Sold. I always meant to play Sword Coast -- and have no idea where my BG1 CD's have gone..

Preventing users from downloading the games they paid for, and bringing down all the user-generated content in the forums, was not good buzz. Seriously, you should never take down other people's content (the forums) without warning.

They're taking a page from T-Shirt Hell PR book - those guys even made it to the Techcrunch post.

Good move in any case. Will attract new people who would never known about them before.

Faking your own death for fun and profit. Classy.

I don't think looking dishonest and irresponsible is a good marketing strategy in the long run.

Any publicity != good publicity

A little early to make that judgment, no?

In this case it most certainly WAS good for them.

what... why? how?

they got a bunch of negative publicity that proves they are immature and untrustworthy

Before this I had never heard of them, and now I'm a paying customer. And I am not alone.

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