Nice post.

Awwwww man I would've loved to visit the guys at gog.

In my opinion I'd say that it's a bit unfair to blame GOG for the "decay" in its community. I think the "decay" (let's call it that way) is universal right now.
If you go to any online place (a blog, a news site, any sort of message board of any topic) and you decide to post any sort of opinion you'll get a 50% chance of being insulted or trolled.

It's everywhere. There's no way GOG could escape that. And I honestly think that's a "good sign" (so to speak). If GOG didn't have some sort of toxicity right now, that would mean that the site would be dead :P

But it seems Wishbone was here more for the community side of things, rather than the ANTI-DRM principle I guess. In that case it's logical that he moves away. Plenty more games in steam, surely.

But I wish him luck in finding a (mostly) non-toxic videogame community or something akin to the GOG of old. I suspect he won't find one nowadays.

Yup, that sums it up nicely. As I said, there's nothing surprising about this happening to GOG. It's just the way it goes.
You suspect correctly. That's why I didn't leave the GOG community for a different one. I just left the GOG community. No reason to exchange one toxic place for another.

Thanks for the reply. I honestly hope that things improve in the future (on GOG and other places) and that one day you'll be back among us and find your place here again.

Don't mind me, just passing by... ^:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2q6t7b4aPk

Yep, this.

GOG did a lot wrong, at least from my point of view but what happened to the community is not their fault, at least not directly. Things have just generally gotten terrible everywhere on the Internet. I used to have many fun conversations here about lots of nerdy stuff - movies, tv series, RPGs etc. But these days you can't even mention Star Wars or something like that without it becoming a flame war about gender and shit in five minutes.

I appreciate your insight, but I don't really agree. I mean, I'm sure you know what you're talking about in terms of running a business, but you're wrong at the very beginning about identyfing what GOG lost. For me the problem is not lack of goodies or funny news or any such "fluff" but major, crucial issues like user profiles and their terrible initial implementation, pushing Galaxy in offline installers, awful site redesign piss-poor communication with community etc. And all that is not explainable by the process of "losing magic" you describe. We're not talking about going the extra mile, but stuff they could have done right from the get go but chose not to, because in their breakneck persuit of growth they largely stopped giving a shit about the old customers who are already "hooked".

And yes, things have been calm for a while now with no new screw-ups, at least as far as I know, being somewhat out of the loop. But nothing will ever make me trust GOG and their integrity again the way I used to.

I understand your points, the current politically charged climate is infiltrating every online community you sadly cannot really escape it and there is not really any magical solution against it.

There is also the issue of, not to sound too elitist, that usually online community tends to be a lot more "friendly" the more niche they are so of course you cannot really expect today's Gog to have the same "classy community" than it had when it was only about "Good old games" with a much more limited audience.

So I think that there is only limited things that Gog can really do about it; they tried initially, even before they invited us, they continued afterwards by hiring a community manager and IMHO things were improving, but sadly the stupid twitter controversies abruptly killed both Linko Gog's career and most of their efforts in that direction.

Since then, while as whole, the moderation is more present than before, their presence on the forum as been limited to a bare minimum and I wouldn't be surprised if they received instruction to avoid any unneeded interaction with the community in fear that one misinterpreted comment or joke would trigger the next Twitter shitstorm.

While it is sad I don't really blame them for that, like I said there is not a lot you can do, forbidding political discussion was a good thing but given how politics and agendas are forced into everything nowadays (thanks in good part to the gaming press itself) it becomes very hard to have a discussion about anything without it derailing into yet another name calling competition.

Honestly, while it's far from perfect, I don't mind the moderation too much, it's usually rather neutral (which IMHO is very important) and most of the time when a thread is closed you know why. If anything I prefer it like it is now rather than it becoming a totalitarian dystopian cesspool like ResetEra is for example.

Apart from that I am a little disappointed in the lack of improvement on the forum or even the site itself, I was expecting we would have to wait at least a year before noticing any significant change but, here we are, nearly three years later and the forum is still there with the same old bugs, the shop part changed a little but still has the same quirks, when the profiles were released I was hopping it would be the first of many major changes for the web site but sadly it apparently wasn't the case.

They did improve things for the offline installer, I have to give them that, I still don't understand why they didn't do it like that since the beginning as it would have avoided a lot of drama, but still, they listened and fixed most of the issues that peoples were having with them. Galaxy 2.0, while progressing rather slowly IMHO, is also a step in the right direction as far as optional client goes.

As I have said before I think that Gog mistake was to start selling newer games under the "gog" name, don't get me wrong I love to have a place where I can purchase newer games including some AAA DRM-free, but I think they should have kept the "old games" and the "new games" separated; keep Gog for old games, sold cheap, 100% complete with no issue of missing patched, DLCs, etc... and then create a sister site for newer games with all the negative attached to newer games like constant patches, DLC, regional pricing, etc...

It's was pretty obvious, at least IMHO, that you cannot have the same "principles" for newer games than you can enforce for older ones, maybe you can if you are called Steam, but not when you represent only a fraction of the market.

Personally I haven't really changed my habit as far a Gog is concerned, but then again I never was a huge forum poster to begin with, being more of a lurker, I do regret that the blues have become a nearly instinct species but I can understand why they have gotten overly cautious and want to avoid taking any risk. I still visit Gog daily but it's mostly to see what new games are released or unofficially announced.

Speaking of changes, GOG has been making several polls on their FB site lately, asking followers which colors they'd choose for each category of game.
I suspect they're gathering ideas in order to revamp the site (like choosing colors for the game pages).

lol, it says alot when they skip their o wn forums for feedback. theyve done that before on twitter an' reddit as w ell

tbh tho i think part o' teh reason is just because the ir crappy forum soft ware doesnt allow such thangs (polls etctc)

Just quoting this so Wishbone will hopefully see it. Pretty much everything he said goes for me as well, except that like Gersen:

I still check in almost daily. I rarely post anymore though, since I find the lack of any real change in the forums after 3 years, and the shift in the community have killed my desire to participate.

i do hope GOG take note of the recent posts. The core of niche companies is the user base, even more so in this case. Communication and interaction is vital, it's not about simply marketing things at people but building a connection between the users and the product in a much more meaningful way. It's sad not much was done with the framework and ideas that were set out, but i suppose that's just how things roll.

We don't agree very often but in this case I do 100%.
Glad that you found this - not glad that you also obviously left already. Another loss to the community.
I still want to believe in the good of the community and I still think that there are enough good in the community left for me to still participate here.
Believe me, we told them again and again and again 3 years ago and we hoped that they understood but it does not seem to be so. Given the fact that JudasIscariot the most active blue here in the forum back then is not posting anymore at all for me is a clear sign that GOG basically decided against communication as long as it is not necessary (or they think it is not necessary). Imo that was a very wrong decision from their side.

All come to the dark side eventually...