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Comment by warpech | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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.

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 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 )

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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

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