Has this actually been solved yet?

The changelog for Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures still lists the adding of cloudsave functionality in March as last changes, and the current offline installer has the same name and file size than the one I downloaded in June, so no, it doesn't look like GOG did anything about it.

That's a pity!

Well, at least one of the 6 (me) ended up leaving altogether. I still pop in from time to time (once every couple of months) such as now, just to check on the place, but I generally don't post anything anymore. The only reason I am weighing in here is because you specifically asked for the opinions of the 6 of us. And the fact that I'm doing this so long after you posted your question indicates how rarely I come here these days.

In the end, it just seemed to me that nothing much changed after all, and that all the good intentions we witnessed (and that I still believe to this day were absolutely genuine) never actually came to fruition. The one major change to the site, user profiles, is one I personally do not care about at all, so that didn't really do anything for me.

The community was always my main reason for hanging out here, but the drama queens and culture warriors that have been running rampant on the rest of the internet for years finally managed to worm their way in here, turning a place which used to be chill and full of civilized relaxed discussion into a toxic wasteland of flame wars, shouting matches and "political" arguments.

So finally, I just stopped coming here. The ratio of asshoies to good people got too high for me. I miss the discussions and the banter, but it seemed at the time that joining any discussion was a fruitless endeavour, since it was bound to degenerate into a war zone almost immediately.

What it comes down to is this, I think: GOG ignored the community for too long, and when they finally started to pay a bit of attention, it was too far gone to do anything about it.

As for GOG itself (outside of the community side of it), I think it just grew too big too fast, and as it did, the things that made it special (at least in my eyes) were lost. As often happens when companies grow to a certain size, the ideals, the passion, the soul if you will, begins to leak out and gets replaced by bottom lines, quarterly forecasts and public relations management. And so the magic dies. This is not unusual, it happens all the time. I was hoping GOG would end up differently, but it's hardly surprising that it didn't.

The thing is, a company is an entity in and of itself, and even if all the individual people it consists of are passionate, idealistic and "soulful" (for lack of a better word), that doesn't mean that the company itself will continue to embody those qualities. And it is still my firm belief that most of the people who work at GOG are those kinds of people I just described. After all, I've met them, and unless GOG somehow managed to hire tons of completely unknown Oscar-material actors to pretend to work there for a few days while we were there, I don't see any way that the sincerity and passion we witnessed could possibly be faked. Still, when dealing with GOG as a customer/community member, everything is filtered through the corporate entity, and all those great people on the other side of it are very hard to discern.

So, to wrap it up, these days GOG is just another store for me, and one that I don't visit all that often. The benefits they used to provide over the competition have either disappeared or ceased to be a priority for me. I miss the "good old days" here, but I do believe those good old days are gone, never to return.

All in all though, GOG must have done something right to keep me coming here on a daily basis for 9 years straight.

Conversely though, something must have gone wrong for me to stop coming here at all after 9 years.

You are not the only one to feel this way WishBone I feel it everyday WHY WHY did I pick up that issue of PC powerplay because free game (I thought it was on the coverdisk) then I found out it was through here WORST MISTAKE I EVER MADE

Seconded, and wanted to say I miss reading your input here. I recall you as one of the "real" staunch DRM-free advocates not willing to settle for corporate BS.

Thanks. And if GOG ever messes with the DRM-free policy I will certainly show up to give them a piece of my mind :D

So DRM-free doesn't matter that much to you? Do you do any gaming still, like through Steam? (sorry if I missed you talking about this)

I mainly recall you getting annoyed at pixel art, was that an undeserved reputation? (did you post about many other things too?)

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But hey, in any case, anyone who "abandons" the forum might find time to work on their backlogs. ;)

Thank you for the reply. And no kidding, what you said about growing too much, too fast, and losing the "magic". And also ignoring the community for too long. Though it should also be said that the community handled itself very well on its own before they started targeting the same masses as the other large stores. Then when growth and bottom lines became the priorities and they went for the same customers as the others, it only makes sense for that sort of people to get on the forums as well.
Another question though would be why do those people you say are idealistic and "soulful" stick around when they have to work for something that goes in the opposite direction. Then again, seems like many have left over the years, little of the crowd from the "principled" days being left. Or did I get that wrong?

It is sad that you leave/left and I enjoyed the time back then.
I agree to several things you are saying - though I still mostly enjoy being in the forums and I also still think that the good part of the community still has a chance to "win" and save the forums. I don't really believe anymore that GOG will ever fix the forums though ;)

All the best for you. :)

In principle, yes, I still think DRM-free is a very good idea. However, I'm not as young as I used to be, and as I grow older, I find that I have less and less time on my hands to do whatever I want. Having less time, convenience and ease of use has become a lot more important to me than it once was. I can't be assed with downloading installers and patches anymore. A good client is a lot faster. And as clients go, Steam is the best out there. I even use Galaxy from time to time, when playing some of my old GOG games. Not often though, as I rarely buy anything from GOG anymore. Before, I knew of new GOG releases because I was on the forum on a daily basis. I have no idea what's been released here since I left.

As for gaming, yes, I still game (though not as much as I used to), mostly through Steam, and mostly (damn near exclusively) indie games. The AAA industry very rarely makes anything of interest to me. Plus, most of the AAA publishers seem to be competing as to who can fuck over their customers the most.

You probably underestimate just how many people work at GOG. I know I did.

In all likelyhood, many people have left over the years for one reason or another. It's rare for an entire staff to remain after 10+ years. However, I do believe there are still many "old-timers" left, although I don't have any specific information to that effect.

Speaking for myself, if you have a job that you love, in a place full of people you enjoy working with, while you may not necessarily agree with every decision made by the company, you don't just leave. Everything has to very much go in the wrong direction before you entertain such notions. I have left a job in the past for such reasons. But people still have to eat, and need a roof over their head, especially if they have a family to provide for.

And honestly, while I do think GOG has lost some of its "magic", compared to most other game stores it's still pretty damn magical. My leaving had more to do with the community than with GOG itself. The problem is that the community is what kept me invested in GOG as a store.
You too, man. We don't talk much, but I'm glad to know you :-)

My (still small) business is slowly starting to do the same thing as it is growing so I can explain why these things happen from my point of view.

When you're a new company and build a team, most of your employees will have some free time during their working hours. You need them so you have to hire them, but there's not enough work to keep them busy all the time. That's exactly where the "magic" happens. Employees aren't exactly comfortable with doing their private stuff too often during working hours. They're afraid what the boss will think when they're on their smartphones all the time (I never told them that I don't give a crap what they're doing when they're done with their work :P ), so they learn to take their time with their tasks. This'll often result in a better outcome and some additional stuff that isn't really necessary but nice to have. And someone always has the time to talk with the community. That's the "magic".

When you reach a point where a normal working speed is needed to get your work done, you'll lose some of that magic. My people still feel obliged to deliver that magic, so they often push hard to get their regular work done fast, to still find some time for additional stuff and community work. But you can see that this costs them quite a bit of energy and that they don't want to do it all the time. They slowly start to leave aside the additional work (work I never asked from them) and concentrate more and more on their actual work.

So... what to do? Hire more staff and get back to "Well, work's done and I've got nothing to do"? I'd need to create one part-time position for every employee I have to get back to that situation. This would set my business back from "Things are finally going well" to "Crap! I hope I'll make enough money to get out without a loss..." Sorry, but I don't really feel like going back to the latter. I've had that for more than a year now. I'd also go back to risking the jobs of everyone when I start hiring new people for... "magic".

Let's see what GOG lost over the last couple of years. First thing that comes to mind is interaction with the community. Back in "the golden days" we often had some blues in the forums, helping people out with their probelms, chatting about various things and... well, just being present. I can clearly imagine this was a result of employees not having enough work to do. They probably just had some free time which they spent on the forums - with a smaller community! A smaller community means less problems, too. If there's one or two people who need help with something, you can hop in, help them and hop out again. But when the community's growing and everyone starts posting "Hit a blue with a pm", things are starting to get complicated. At some point you just can't do that anymore.

Another thing is the lack of "bonus goodies". When you're releasing two or three games a week, you have more than enough time to ask devs and publishers about some extras. You have the time to ask around who has the rights to promo material because you want to add a wallpaper pack, some avatars and the soundtrack to the game. There's time to contact the right people to add these things. But when you're releasing one, two or three games a day... well, you just don't have the time for this anymore.

Then there's stuff like the "News" posts when a new game's being released. Do you remember the times when GOG was still a bunch of funny guys? When they did videos and wrote long and fun to read news? That was because they had the time to do that. Doing the promo for two or three releases a week is a different thing than doing this for a dozen releases a week. There's no time to do a video or to think about a stupid joke (or "Enigmatic Hints" threads) for every release.

Don't get me wrong. GOG has quite a few issues. The forum is a joke, Galaxy's development is pretty slow (Galaxy 2.0 was a huge step!), you can't be sure to get patches on GOG... But if we're honest, all these issues are just more reasons to lose the "magic" and to get the actual work done.

"Magic" is a difficult thing. It's nice to have, but at one point it's starting to cost you a lot of money.

thanks for the info, have a good one :)