GOG asks you to please not abuse its expansive new 30-day refund policy | Hacker News Reader

GOG asks you to please not abuse its expansive new 30-day refund policy

arstechnica.com

171 pointsTomte119 comments

This is an inspiring, bold move. Of course there will be abusers, but it seems GOG is betting that:

- the abusers are people who wouldn't buy anyway

- the positive PR will help GOG to increase the sales, as this is a niche platform compared to Steam. Increased sales will compensate the losses

- some people will buy more, knowing that they can try and return. It is likely that they will keep their game, that they wouldn't try otherwise

- the owner of GOG sells their own games on the platform: The Witcher series, Cyberpunk 2077. These games have higher margins than the games licensed from 3rd parties

- I think they want to increase the awareness of the platform before Cyperpunk 2077 ships later this year

Agreed. I love their stance on DRM and the fact that they put money behind their words.

I go out of my way to support them instead of Steam especially if both games are on the same platform (Atom, Divinity ).

I am sure there will be some abusers. I just hope their numbers are not high enough to merit policy change.

i don't think there will be significant abuse, actually. every game on GOG is all over bitorrent already, since there's no DRM. anyone unwilling to pay is more likely to pirate than to go through the effort of gaming the returns.

It is way safer and quicker to do the return than to mess with shady sites.

So your assertion is likely false.

You would need a GOG account and a paypal/credit card where with a torrent you just go to your favorite site and download the game.

I expect it'll work like Audible, where the first two or three returns can be done yourself and take effect immediately, but after that you need to call Audible support and ask them to return it.

Having both pirated GOG games and then later bought the same games because I liked them so much, I can confirm it is easier to pirate games. GOG is DRM-free, which is excellent when playing the games because it doesn't suck up megabytes or even gigabytes of memory (for DOS-era games), but when it comes to piracy you can just download the installer executable and run it without any problem whatsoever. No torrents are even required, you can just download the EXE through HTTP(S) on most sites.

I've had less problems pirating GOG games than I've had playing legitimately purchased Steam games.

Their general consumer friendliness has also been why I've gone out of my way to buy games on GOG when it's an option. I think the interesting question will be how well that strategy generalizes beyond people who care on principle.

TIL that CDPR owns GoG. Thanks for pointing that out! I have until now made it a habit to almost exclusively buy on Steam (convenience), but this might make me support them more directly.

>Steam (convenience),

There are some downsides with Steam, most annoying is I can't have Steam open on my machine and play or install something while my son is laying some game on a different PC(same home/IP)

If one of those games is offline, you could disconnect that machine front the internet and start Steam in offline mode.

This is what I do with Skyrim, but sometimes I needed to install or update something. It sucks you can't create a family account and transfer/gift games to that account(they can limit to 2 family accounts), the family support they have is very limited , last time I checked a family member can't play one of your games while you want to play something else.

You mean when he is using your account (or family sharing) on the other machine?

When using my account. I research family sharing and it won't help in this case either, it would let you "transfer" the game but unless you go online. This was 1 year back and I did not research again but I think they did not fixed it to I can permanently transfer games to a family member.

Just a nitpick - CD Project Red is the development studio, while GOG.com (aka CD Projekt Blue) is a separate company, both of which are subsidiaries of CD Project.

I'm definitely going to be buying more. Steam's buy-try-refund cycle has only served to grow my library.

I assume letting people return games also inflates reviews. People who can return the game can just do that instead of striking back. If they can return the game, you didn't hurt them.

I know after I got scammed on a "game" whose only gameplay feature was waiting, step one was trying to return it and, when that wasn't allowed, step two was leaving as negative of a review as I could. (Currently listed as "Overall Most Helpful Review" ;D )

I this this is a good move. I stopped buying games on sales long time ago. I only buy something when I want to play it right now, regardless of how much it costs.

So, you can't entice me with sales. However, a return policy makes me much more like to try something on a whim, because I know I will not get stuck with expensive crap.

There are only 2 games in my GOG library that I would have returned.

I've sort of figured out the same thing with kindle books.

That said, 75% off a game you know you'll get around to playing, just not this minute... hmm...

> I this this is a good move. I stopped buying games on sales long time ago. I only buy something when I want to play it right now, regardless of how much it costs.

Amazing. I came to the exact same conclusion/rule after feeling the familiar pang of guilt looking at my Steam library filled with games I've never played, for the jillionth time. I'm certain I'm saving a great deal of money but I'm concerned with what Valve's next move will be if the returns from sales diminish too much.

Alternatively they could add a simple $1 service fee to games that is part of the pricing (so they give a discount on MSRP or something or just add the fee period) that becomes non-refundable. I could care less about losing out on a dollar. It would certainly add up over time, course if you have a user returning > 95% of the games they buy, it might be really obvious who is abusing the system.

HumbleBundle does take a % from bundles.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind a discount for waiving my ability to refund, which applies to 90% of the things I purchase.

You cannot lawfully do that for remote purchases in the EU.

The difference between “freely gave up right for slightly better price” and “coerced into giving up right by extreme surcharge or mandatory agreement” is unfortunately extremely hard to make, which is why laws often explicitly exclude the possibility. GDPR or two-year guarantees are European examples, but US law definitely has lots of them, as well. I’m pretty sure you cannot exclude product liability via contract, for example.

But having worked in online retail of physical goods, I’m getting the impression that most people believe there are many abusing these rights and it having a large impact on prices. In that case, you’ll be happy to learn that very few people fit that description, in my experience, and companies can usually just ban them.

The difference is more along product categories than customers: clothing gets returned, sex toys or batteries don’t.

> I’m pretty sure you cannot exclude product liability via contract, for example.

You mean like so many EULAs do?

EULA’s can say anything, they are still bound by contract law. That’s generally minimal protection, but it’s still useful.

If that were not regulated (which thankfully it is in many countries, making such offers impossible) then that could lead to terrible business practices.

Imagine a world in which a company advertises a pre-order for a product and says "Why pay full price when you can get it for 10% off!" and putting some tiny writing which says you revoke your right to refund in some long purchase agreement.

After that initial purchase, the company has no obligation to you to deliver something of quality. The recent WarCraft III Reforged scandal[0] is a great case study for this.

[0] https://www.warcraft3refunded.com/

Since they have many very cheap games, they'd have to exclude them from this fee. I think the 30 day return is better because it's simple and easy to understand.

The 30-day window is better because if your refund policy is designed to not give refunds, and the law says your customers are entitled to refunds you are possibly committing fraud yourself. Steam was fined a couple million dollars for this.

Steam rolled out their own no-questions refund policy during that trial and it didn't end up disastrous - all that happened was game developers stopped being able to count on money from people who don't like their games. Bad, buggy and incomplete titles won't be buyer-beware. A massive discount will affect recent full-price purchases. This is not unreasonable.

https://www.ibtimes.com/steam-vs-australia-valve-fined-3-mil...

Here is the thing: you don't get to return a movie ticket if you don't like the film. There are countless videos, playthroughs, reviews, streamers, curators and what not to see if you like a game or not.

Returns for digital goods are OK as long as there is some time limit on maximum play time and at least a minimal form of DRM, like Steam does it (2 hours). Without DRM plus this policy, GOG will suffer rampant abuse.

You actually can refund movie tickets. You can take physical movies and games back to retailers even if you loved them. You can send them back to Amazon even if you copied them. Digital purchases are required to be refundable too in many jurisdictions just like physical purchases have been for decades. Refunds are your right in many places. Someone else fraudulently refunding stuff doesn't affect your right to a refund.

If your account activity deviates a lot from normal usage it will be obvious. GOG are still in a position to evaluate refunds on a case-by-case basis and can prevent fraud by looking at account activity and can prevent fraud more efficiently as they identify common behaviors.

Citation needed. Where do they allow to get the money back after you watched the film in the cinema?

About returning physical copies of digital goods: that is not what I was referring to. But yes, I believe that is a bad policy too. When I was young I had friends that did exactly that: buy the game, copy it and return it. Sorry, but that is simply not good, and I won't support that behavior, regardless of my "rights".

You can see options individually for each chain, or just look up consumer protection laws in your location to know your rights because the movie chains near you will be operating within those parameters.

Here's one with a 30 minute window for refunds, I don't know about watching the whole movie that is not strictly required to decide you don't like the movie:

https://cineplex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/235232068-How...

I think that could backfire in some ways. If someone buys a $3 game, enjoys it, and beats it in 20 days, they may feel justified in returning it for a partial refund since they're still paying $1 for it.

Kinda like the study where a daycare added a fee for parents who were late picking their kids up, then found that this led to MORE late pickups. Most likely because when parents were paying the service fee they felt less guilty about being late.

I feel like I got the wrong moral from the daycare story. If there were so many late parents willing to pay, wasn’t the day car missing out on an untapped revenue stream by making the pick up time too early?

They are probably bound by the local market to adhere to certain standards on these things or parents will get up in arms about it. Just a guess. But to your point, I also wondered if they'd see more success raising the rates and offering a credit or small refund if the child is picked up before a certain time. People may be more motivated by getting a bonus thing vs. paying an extra thing. Maybe not though.

I think that would be even worse. It'd be like you pre-paid your late pickup for the entire month and then get it refunded when you pick up on time. If you're trying to prevent late pickups, I don't think that will help.

There’s a limit on how many hours staff can work per day. Extending hours would require more staff, so that might not be economically viable. Also, kids are pretty attached to their caretakers, young ones even more so. So you can’t just go and swap them mid-day. In our day-care, late pickup means that some caretaker that the kid knows and trusts needs to extend their hours. And they’re rightfully pissed at you if you’re late.

> I could care less...

So you do care?

Apparently yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

> For technical reasons, we cannot divide a game pack (for instance, a season pass, a pack containing the base game and its DLCs, or a pack containing a whole series of games). As a result, you would get a refund for the full pack and, as a consequence, the full pack will be removed from your account. If you apply for a refund for a DLC, and it was not purchased as a pack (bundled with the base game), we can issue a refund for the DLC itself. If you refund the base game, but also purchased DLCs separately, we would also refund the DLCs linked to that base game.

(from the FAQ page for the new policy, https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006129837?produ... )

I'm intrigued by the internals here. GOG does indeed sell some things both bundled and individually, like the "Hollow Knight + Soundtracks" bundle compared to "Hollow Knight (no soundtracks)" / "Hollow Knight Official Soundtrack" / "Hollow Knight Gods & Nightmares DLC Soundtrack".

It is not obvious to me why an account that purchased the bundle should be treated differently from an account that purchased the three individual offerings. (Well, in this case, the bundle is cheaper, but that's not always true.)

Amazon has this problem too. If you buy an mp3 from them, they'll discount the cost of the digital album that mp3 was technically offered from. If that album exists as multiple SKUs, only one SKU will see the discount. Be careful! And Kindle MatchBook will likewise only match if the editions of the ebook currently offered and the physical book you purchased coincide. Was a new edition released with a new foreword? You need to buy another paper copy if you want to be re-eligible for MatchBook. Even if there's only one ebook offering, for the current edition -- even if the old version of the ebook is automatically updated to the new version -- your old purchase stops qualifying you for MatchBook when the new edition comes out.

> It is not obvious to me why an account that purchased the bundle should be treated differently from an account that purchased the three individual offerings

Let's say 3 SKUs exist: one for $10 and 2 for $15

Now add a bundle that offers all three for $30.

If someone with the bundle wants a refund on the item that is normally $10, what do you do that ISN'T different from someone that bought them each individually?

Or am I misunderstanding your confusion?

GOG already offers this exact functionality, two different ways:

1. Add a fourth SKU. There are no files associated with this new SKU, but if you own it, you can download the files associated with the first three SKUs.

2. When you pay for the products, if all three SKUs are in your shopping cart[1], you get a 25% discount. Otherwise you pay full price.

If I'm reading you right, you're saying that if you bought bundle #2, then refunding the $10 item should obviously get you $7.50 -- because that's what you paid for it when you bought it -- but there's just no way of determining how to refund the same $10 item from bundle #1, even though bundle #1 and bundle #2 do not differ in any way at all.

(In fact, GOG bundles usually price the last item negatively -- it is cheaper to buy the whole bundle than it would be to buy all-but-one of the bundled items. These are still all formally individual purchases covered by the return policy, and I feel pretty confident they're not going to refund you a negative amount if you return an item you bought in one of these individual-purchases-with-discount bundles.)

[1] Technical note that doesn't affect the discussion: if you already own an item, it counts as being in your shopping cart for purposes of bundle discounts.

> If I'm reading you right

No - I was saying the same thing you are: the items of the bundle CANNOT be mapped individually, which is why GOG has this policy. The poster I was replying to was saying they didn't understand why a bundle was treated differently, and I was trying to say why. (apparently, poorly)

> I was saying the same thing you are: the items of the bundle CANNOT be mapped individually

I wasn't saying this, because it isn't true. Bundled items are usually processed as a set of simultaneous individual purchases, with a discount applied to each of them.

What do you think of bundle #1 and bundle #2? How would you expect refunds to be processed in either case?

> It is not obvious to me why an account that purchased the bundle should be treated differently from an account that purchased the three individual offerings. (Well, in this case, the bundle is cheaper, but that's not always true.)

It sounds like they've just chosen not to deal with the complexity of refunding parts of bundles. It's not a question of whether they should, just a question of whether they wanted to spend the time and energy.

The part where it's not obvious how to price individual offerings in a discounted bundle for refund purposes is precisely the problem, and simply saying "we're not breaking up bundles" is one valid way to get around the problem, whether or not it's the consumer's most preferred way.

> The part where it's not obvious how to price individual offerings in a discounted bundle for refund purposes is precisely the problem

Well, GOG also does regular bundles. "Hollow Knight and Soundtracks" is a single SKU that just so happens to entitle you to the same content as three other SKUs (while making search results more confusing). But more normal bundles are common. It's very frequent for them to offer a significant discount when you buy several different SKUs simultaneously. Those show up as individual purchases -- the bundling is just that they were in your cart at the same time, and you got a discount -- and I feel pretty safe assuming that GOG will actually treat them as individual purchases when refunding them.

But obviously, the same algorithm that calculates the individual price of a single-SKU-included-in-a-multi-SKU-bundle will work just as well on part-of-an-SKU-that-just-so-happens-to-match-some-other-SKU.

I had an issue on Steam during their Lunar New Year sale, where I accidentally purchased the wrong "bundle" (there were two, one was missing one or two items).

Unfortunately, I couldn't refund the bundle; I had to go through the process of submitting for a refund of every item in the bundle (I think eight or ten items), with an explanation of "oops, wrong bundle").

Unfortunately, while both bundles were on sale, the items missing from the bundle I'd purchased were more expensive to buy individually than the entire bundle cost, and there was no 'upgrade" from one bundle to the next with discount for already purchased items.

I get that this is all a complicated dance between Steam, users, and publishers, but it seems as though this kind of situation is worse for everyone involved, and discourages spending more on that $30 DLC, when the bundle that it comes in is $5 more than the bundle you purchased.

Could easily be contractual with game publiasher. "You can sell this bundle for X dollars. You can not split the bundle up for individual sale".

I'm sure they don't want to argue over in court whether refunding half of a 2 part bundle counts as individual sale. Or, the bundle contract could easily out law partial refunds.

It may also be a limitation of what's easy to do with their payment processor.

As someone who accepts purchases online, my payment provider gives me a lovely dashboard of all transactions, and on each transaction there's a nice and easy "refund this transaction" button for me to click. I'm happy to click this button for you, in particular because it also refunds me of the transaction fee so refunding you is essentially "free" (with the exception that I don't get the money from the sale, of course).

Refunding partial transactions is a whole can of worms. A small list of questions that you would need to answer are:

* How much do I refund you? How do fees and taxes figure into this?

* If I sell you a bundle that includes the thing you want to return, but that thing was also on sale separately (possibly at different rates in different bundles), what do I do?

* How much of the transaction fees will my payment processor refund to me?

Not to say that these questions don't have answers, and possibly favorable ones. Just that it's a lot more complicated than just saying "either I click the refund button or I don't".

I have a feeling a few bad actors will force them to rescind this policy. Something similar happened with REI: They used to offer a lifetime no questions asked guarantee. I knew people that would return hiking boots they used for 5 years, and claim they were faulty because a shoelace broke or the tread wore too far.

REI was in a much worse position though, as they first had to pay for the physical product from the manufacturer. Digital goods have little to no upfront overhead (provided the network for distributing and payment already exists), making this kind of return policy less unfavorable.

I don't think so, because they reserved the right to reject refunds on a case by case basis. They can reject a few bad actors.

Admittedly I'm a bit concerned about botting new accounts, buying one game, downloading it, and then asking for refund.. I'm afraid they might cancel the policy instead of figuring out a restriction that (perhaps unfairly) would prevent new users from getting full refunds.

There'd have to be some kinds of checks in place to keep automated accounts from bulk buying and refunding games. Say, an account that's been open for several years and has already made several purchases without issue, or accounts who are active on the forums.

(Even though GOG's entire catalog has been posted on the torrent sites for years now)

A physical goods company pays a significant cost for every item sold, so each return always turns into a loss. While I don't exactly know the arrangements GOG, I suspect that they have insignificant costs for creating copies of many of their games (certainly the ones they made), so a refund eats only bandwidth costs.

Additional publicity will cover those bandwidth costs as long as there are some customers who buy and don't return.

The costs associated with this policy seem much more likely to be based on decreased sales if folks buy a game, play it as much as they want (within 30 days), and return for a full refund.

Less that they spend bandwidth/compute costs they can't recoup with the return.

This presumes that those who buy a game and then return it wouldn't have returned it without the new policy, and that there's more of them than those who come because of the extra publicity and buy without returning.

Considering the rampant piracy of GOG games I think the first group is rather small.

All GOG games are easily available on the pirate bay and other free sites. Anyone who just wants to get a game without paying already has an easier path than buying and requesting a refund.

This is in line with GOG's anti-DRM policy: No matter how restrictive your systems, people who don't want to pay won't. So why have systems which punish and inconvenience the people who do want to pay?

Sort of off topic: A lot of their older games rely on DosBox to run on Mac. Their version of DosBox is 32 bit and doesn't run on the latest MacOs.

There is a 64-bit version of DosBox. Does anyone know either how to switch out their version of DosBox for the 64 bit, or know when they might do it?

I don't know how Mac works, sorry. There is a community guide for Windows, though - so maybe this might help you in terms of direction, but again, I don't know how Mac applications are packaged, and how much you can tinker with them:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/beginners_guide_sw...

Thanks! That did help. The info on the page didn't really help much, but it gave me the idea to look inside the package and see what I could find.

I ended up installing a 64bit DOSBox and then finding the original game files in the package to point it at.

Sadly, after the intro, it crashes. But we'll see if I can get it to work!

macOS is not for gaming: Apple is making sure of that.

Your best bet is to use bootcamp to Windows or even to Linux.

Edit: downvoters, please justify. This is a statement of facts (OpenGL deprecated, 64-bit removal), on-topic, and I have given the parent a tip from my experience gaming on Mac hardware.

> macOS is not for gaming: Apple is making sure of that.

I use it for gaming all the time. To play 20+ year old games. Hence the need for DosBox.

I used a cooking pot to iron my shirts. There is still a reasonable sense in which one might say that cooking pots are not for ironing clothes. They were not designed with that consideration in mind. They're inferior to a proper iron. Getting it to work is a cumbersome process.

Surely you must realize that there are many different kinds of gaming. When people talk about gaming, they are referring to all of them in general, which require 32-bit support and OpenGL support at the minimum. They are not talking only about your niche use case.

In other words, if I only play Nethack on the terminal, do you think it is proper that I tell you I can game on macOS, and that you shouldn't be complaining about 64-bit DOSBox?

I'm an amateur (i.e. it's not my day job) indie game developer. I consider having attempted to support macOS to be the biggest mistake I ever made in game development. I owned Mac laptops when they were the best, and naturally expected to be able to develop my cross platform game engine on it. Apple constantly made things hard for me with every OS update. It was a drain on my motivation and resources, and I always had the background suspicion (due to things such as the deprecation of OpenGL) that at any moment Apple make a change that would render all of my work moot.

Indeed. They are killing cross-platform engine development for indies.

I don't even get mad now if an indie dev like you decides to ditch OpenGL, macOS and Linux and go for D3D. Steam Proton and DXVK can probably take care of the rest unless the code does something too fancy.

I agree that macOS is bad for gaming, especially considering how many good old games are 32-bit and the fact that Apple refuses to support Vulkan, so something like dxvk can't work there without even an extra layer of translation (like MoltenVK), which becomes too much.

Basically, if you don't want to use Windows, for good gaming experience use Linux. Apple doesn't care about gamers.

On Linux I just run using distro packaged DosBox and the game itself. You need to familiarize yourself with DosBox configs. I use GOG configs with some tweaks.

I like GoG. They seem quite decent and not just wanting to capture you in their universe. Mind you, I I'm not a huge customer, but then again, maybe they're not agressively going for Whales... which is another point in their book to me.

I wonder if long tail can beat out whale.

GOG games are DRM free and typically show up on torrent sites immediately after release, so anybody who wants to pirate the game won't bother to go through the buy->download->refund flow with them.

Almost all Steam games can be found on torrent sites. It doesn't stop people from buying and refunding Steam games.

The difference being that GOG games do not need a crack, a client, or use any DRM.

The last part is the reason I buy from GOG instead of Steam. Also because I like oldies and GOG does a great job at making them work on modern systems (with notable exceptions) while Steam is more than happy to sell you a game that only works on Windows 98.

One particular case I remember was the Commandos series that Steam advertised at the time as Windows 7 compatible even if it was absolutely unplayable. I returned it and bought GOG's version that worked just fine.

Gog has a tiny fraction of all games on the market, much less the AAA ones that people are playing. Steam has ~all games on the market, and ~all of them can be pirated.

So it's not very convincing that Gog somehow has it worse or that there's some unique obstacle with Gog. Steam DRM clearly isn't the challenge people think it is.

Yet people still buy and refund on Steam.

It's probably called Good Old Games because it caters mostly for that market.

> It's probably called Good Old Games because it caters mostly for that market.

The name was changed to just "GOG" in 2012 because they didn't want to only be associated with old games.

Steam DRM stops casual pirates that do not want to go to shady sites.

GOG having no DRM and a big window for returning means people will abuse it.

The question is how many will do that.

I doubt it will be many (from ones that are buying games right now). If you expect quality entertainment you should be willing to pay for it. (as with anything).

It's kinda copy of Windows strategy. I was using pirated version od Windows as kid but as I got more affluent I can totally justify to pay for it and turned into customer.

I don't know exact numbers but entertainment/games market should grow a lot as more of the world catches up, so it's worth to invest in capturing them. With current prices the big markets are basically US, Germany and China.

> I doubt it will be many (from ones that are buying games right now). If you expect quality entertainment you should be willing to pay for it.

There's no question that video game piracy is huge.

Given making an account is free, expect way more new "customers" now.

This is not theoretical. There is a lot of people that enjoys not paying for anything, if they can get away with it.

And no, I don't like entertainment industries that claim a lot of losses in the press and ask for subsidies or lobby for laws. But it is certainly real that there is a lot of software piracy.

But GOG doesn't do as good as steam does with region specific prices, and ensure that gamers from poorer countries pay less for games than from richer countries.

Eh.. it's much safer and convenient to get it right from GOG instead of rolling the dice on a torrent site though.

Pirating a game introduces concerns over malware, in some cases it might be low risk however buying and refunding would eliminate those concerns.

I also consider DRM to be malware so GOG is the better choice in my opinion.

The game is distributed as an archive accompanied by an executable unpacker. The unpacker is signed by GOG, and it can verify the hash of the archive, meaning no malware concern.

Inexpensive, downloadable, and DRM free games are what I always wanted. In addition, GOG keeps a store of all the games I own and I can download them multiple times.

This is exactly the service that I would imagine other gamers would want, as well. It seems almost petty to torrent when this is available.

Not to mention that the copy of the game you get from GOG is more likely safe to run, than something pirated from a torrent.

I think you're supporting the parent poster's point: Given that there are a number of petty people out there, GOG may be hoping those kinds of folks will just torrent instead of buy+refund.

Inexpensive, why?

I really do not want a world like mobile gaming where every game is free and designed to make you addicted to buy virtual coins.

Games cost a lot of money to make.

I think games cost a lot of money to make profitable (i.e. appeal to the standards of most people).

Even if all professional game designers/programmers/artists stopped getting paid and quit, people would still make and enjoy free games, and they would probably much better than whatever generic crap is greenlight by publishers.

So I don't believe that the artistic value nor the quality of video games depends on the success video game industry, In fact I would say they are orthagonal to each other.

I do believe the best indie games are way better than the best AAA games (gameplay wise). But all of them are commercial. In other words, there is no non-commercial game that I would consider the best at anything.

There are mods that are better than the games themselves, but making the base game is what costs money and nobody does for free.

OK, I won't. I've spent a great deal of money at GOG over the years, and I haven't yet felt a desire to seek a refund for anything. I don't expect the future will be any different.

Exactly. They have nothing to lose from this... (or almost nothing). Just the no-DRM stance saves them from soooo much random trouble due to connectivity, etc. etc.

There was one occasion when I was a little bit confused and couldn't download my purchase... but it was really just a UI problem -- and I figured it out. (Never reached out to support, but I'm sure they would have instantly pointed me to the download link.)

EDIT: I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?

Nice, poor support and lack of refunds really discouraged me from buying from GOG.. maybe I'll consider browsing their catalog again some day.

Have you interacted with both GOG support and other digital gaming sites and those interactions were poor in comparison? In my experience GOG support has been miles above Steam support, it was timely, on the subject and ended with a satisfactory conclusion for both sides.

Why do I need to interact with another store before I can say my experience with GOG has been bad?

But yes, I have been in direct contact with a publisher (who also has their own storefront) after GOG support, expectedly (based on prior experience), refused to support me on the grounds that they do not .. support .. my system (even though I pointed out the issue was not system specific). The publisher had no issues supporting me, and indeed they were comparatively quick to respond and easier to deal with than GOG.

Here's how it goes with GOG:

* Have a problem with your game? Sorry, we don't support your system (and we also release buggy games that would be easy to fix but that's the users' responsibility).

* Want refund? Sorry, refunds are for technical issues only and "we do not support your system" is not a technical issue.

* Want your forum posts deleted? Sorry, we can't do that because we'd have to delete your account and besides, it'd break threading (nevermind that moderators are already breaking threading and removing posts without deleting accounts; and threading breaks only because their software is so crap).

I haven't got a single success story to share about GOG's support. And up til now, the lack of refunds has become a major pain point because you're not entitled to either support or refunds if you can't get your game working on a system GOG does not want to support.

This got worse when Judas' wine thread become a ghost town after the Linko90 fiasco, where GOG decided to side with social media outrage mob and fire their own people and presumably make a policy change that disallows their employees (who in the past had given unofficial but first class support on forums) from being active members of the community. Around the same time linuxvangog started looking for a new job; I believe GOG either fired him or pissed him off enough to have him look for a better place.

GOG really doesn't care about Linux, which really sucks, because a lot of Linux users do care about DRM-free games.

But hey, I've been enjoying STALKER lately thanks to you & GOG.

I think this new policy would make it simpler for your case because it would probably just turn into an automated refund vs talking to multiple parties and support tickets.

> GOG really doesn't care about Linux, which really sucks, because a lot of Linux users do care about DRM-free games.

I think Linux users are just a slight bit entitled where it concerns gaming. Just two examples:

1. They want anti-cheat stripped out of games so they can play games via Steam Proton, conveniently ignoring the fact that any multiplayer game that does that will be flooded and destroyed by hackers

2. They demand full support from game devs, despite only making up an absolutely tiny fraction of the customer base. They routinely make up less then 0.1% of sales (!), but cause 20%+ of support tickets[0]. No sane business in the world would sink 20% of their support budget into 0.1% of their revenue.

[0]https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760

> 1. They want anti-cheat stripped out of games so they can play games via Steam Proton, conveniently ignoring the fact that any multiplayer game that does that will be flooded and destroyed by hackers

Yes, I want them stripped out or made optional. I've had good times playing multiplayer games without built-in anti-cheat systems. These are a lazy concept in any case. Self-moderating communities are much nicer, and in any case required to save the day when anti-cheat inevitably fails to detect (let alone prevent) cheating.

> 2. They demand full support from game devs, despite only making up an absolutely tiny fraction of the customer base. They routinely make up less then 0.1% of sales (!), but cause 20%+ of support tickets[0]. No sane business in the world would sink 20% of their support budget into 0.1% of their revenue.

There are games that are rock solid on Linux. There are games that I've offered to people on a USB stick running Linux and Wine because it works better than Windows.

So here we have an anecdote from one company and one game, and automated crash reports are conflated with support requests so you can't even tell what's what. Yeah, maybe their game actually crashes a lot on Linux. Sucks for them?

This is not data.

But yeah, they'll continue to make up less than 0.1% of sales when they're not being supported.

> Self-moderating communities are much nicer

Curious how you think a game like PUBG could self-moderate cheaters out of existence.

Given all the cheating videos I've seen, evidently they haven't been able to come up with any automated system that does better.

It should work the way it works anywhere else: people report users that are obviously cheating or suspected of cheating. Server flags players with suspicious behavior. Community moderators keep watch. Replays are saved, and anyone can watch them and report cheating. People who are detected cheating get banned, people who play without obviously cheating gain reputation. Given enough rep, you can access servers with more skilled players & fewer randoms that have no rep yet. You can also have friends with enough rep vouch for you, but there are consequences if they invite cheaters.

A lot of obvious cheating can be detected server side anyway, without installing drm malware on clients. I've seen videos of such obvious cheating in pubg.

Any system that involves verifying reports is a non-starter IMO. That solution doesn't scale to a game that has millions of players.

Server-side detection really should be easy, but developers tend to write code that gives the client too much authority so that the server code can be faster and they can run more game instances per server. It's kind of shit, really. You can't do anything server-side to prevent aim bots, but you can absolutely prevent people from shooting through walls and terrain.

There's also the opposite story told by some indie devs, where linux user actually make up a significant portion of sales and also provide very technical support requests/bug fixes. I'll see if I can find the article where I read this somewhere.

It was pretty clear that once they’ll become more and more popular things would have to change.

Especially since as you grow you get into a weird point where you can start losing a lot of money for swallowing these refunds but you don’t have enough weight to force publishers to share the costs like Steam does.

Also since GoG has no DRM and no user activity monitoring almost no publisher would agree to participate in refunds.

They have "removed a requirement" for refunding your game, making it more liberal, and you're telling us that this is a change for the worse, that clearly had to happen?

I wonder if a type of 'restocking' fee can be applied to games.

It happens where you get a game try it and it doesn't work on your hardware or it just wasn't what you expected.

I'd gladly pay a 10-20% restocking fee for whatever process they need to do to recycle that key and issue a refund rather than be stuck with a game that will never be played again in my library.

After playing a game more than 2 hours good luck getting a refund on steam, and good luck finding out how much you really enjoy a game in 2 hours.

30 days seems a bit extreme and I do see it ripe for abuse.

It cannot be applied even for physical products in the EU lawfully. At least for normal refunds.

For extended ones, sure, why not.

I love GOG but unfortunately popularity does not translate to profitability. GOG had reported ~8000 USD profit for 2018.

I wish I'm proved wrong but I doubt this move is going to help the situation.

What exactly is the issue, operational costs are too high for the current user base?

Note that GOG is owned by CD Projekt, the studio behind The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077. So while they may not make much on GOG itself, they make a lot more money selling their games there then on other platforms like Steam.

Actually in the past GOG brought them more money than their own games, so the fact that it's not profitable isn't good.

Maybe that was true in the past, but CD Projekt Red made $28 million profit compared to GOG's $8000 in 2018. The company as a whole is not exactly in financial peril even if GOG is barely breaking even.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65367/gog-com-barely-making-p...

That TW3 is profitable is good, but the store itself shouldn't be struggling, unless something is wrong.

I'd be interested to know how much margin they reclaim by owning their own distribution channel. Presumably Steam takes a huge commission, so if GOG is profitable (even if only by $8000), then it costs them nothing to run, so that additional margin might add up to a significant amount.

How much profit should they report? Millions? Aren't they viable already?

8000? Is that a typo?

How about revenue? I don't think they should be judged on profit but on market capture. CDPR has > 250 P/E ratio. I'm thinking about shorting them but maybe they could use this money to compete with Steam and Blizzard (MMO). That's only way to justify such investment IMO (not an expert).

GOG is CDP product and I don't know how it relates to CDPR(game studio).

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