That Halloween sale...

You know what IMHO sucks the most about the redesign? The catalogue, thanks to the removal of such miniscule features such as being able to tell what the fuck I'm looking at without having to hover my mouse cursor over every single goddamn tile, or simply being able to display this eysore mess of tiles as a list instead.

So, how do we handle a major sale? Just redirect users to the catalogue page, where (hopefully) some discounted titles will be displayed.

The redesign continues to baffle... not in a good way.

I may be in the minority here, but it's having the opposite effect on me. Before I'd go "Oh, a red discount icon next to this game I'm not really all that interested in, but it's ok for that price. Sold!" whereas now it's like "Fuck it, I'm just going to check on my wishlist if anything I like is discounted, because thank God my wishlist is still displayed as a list rather than tiles where you can't tell what from what."

The only way to conveniently browse this sale is thanks to lists that users made on the forum. And, sorry, I don't see why I should spend money on a store that can't be bothered to display its sales in a convenient way and leaves it up to the users to sort out the mess.

Because GOG doesn't respect customers with crap internet or bandwidth caps.

It's all too apparent with this "update".
I've basically not used the site at all since it has been a thing. Some of the titles I kind of wanted I'm debating just getting on Steam. Even considering refunding Darksiders 3 and going elsewhere. I'm sure someone will downplay this as drastic, but honestly my net is trash and this site is horrific in nearly every conceivable way.

This is not how you design a fucking store. It shouldn't be a chore to navigate, slow to load, and have poor discoverability. It makes Steam's "blue" catastrophe actually seem nice by comparison.

GOG, can you at least pre-generate all the screenshot images for the gallery?

*MOST* of the time, looking at each new screenshot entails a wait of about 5-10 seconds, which I expect is because the site is dynamically down-scaling a larger source image to the right dimensions before it can show it to me. After 2-3 such delays, I have honestly given up interest and closed the tab, because I would rather do that than subject myself to the irritation of waiting that amount of time for each image.

In the old site design, the gallery of 'small' images was big enough to give a good impression, and they were pre-loaded.

In the new design, browsing the screenshots is an appalling experience. It really, really sucks.

Dear GoG,

Congratulations, you have made it so that I no longer want to visit your website. Permit me to offer some perspective on how terrible that statement is.

In an average week I will spend around 60-80 hours gaming. When I am at work, I usually have a tab open where I am browsing the latest gaming news and new releases. I stay more abreast of most sales/deals/updates than most standalone gaming news sites. In addition to the above, I form a general nexus of game updates and recommendations for many of my friends, acquaintances, and coworkers, for which I strive to stay knowledgeable so they don't have to waste time looking information up. What all of that effort and time works out to for you, GoG, is that I used to visit your website multiple times a day, often for an hour or more, just so I could provide recommendations to other gamers.

I am firm advocate of DRM free games and always point someone towards DRM-less versions wherever possible, but this website redesign literally makes me not want to shop at GoG any more. It is painful for me find the information that literally used to be at most two clicks away. The auto-play videos, that I thought were universally recognized as annoyance tactics used by the bottom-most scum of internet advertising, are plastered all over the front page. There is a banner that literally takes half a 1080p monitor, a curator section that you are leveraging hard but seems to provide little benefit, a distinct lack of text that grates on my desire for high information density, and overall an almost cartoon-ish amount of graphics.

At this point, I doubt you are going to change things back even a little bit. You're weathering the storm of complaints, eventually people will tire of complaining because nothing ever changes, I have used that tactic in my workplace for dealing with various IT issues. Unlike my workplace though, you do not have a captive audience, your customers are free to find what they are looking for elsewhere. I would strongly urge you to reconsider some of the design changes made, especially in regards to ease of finding information.

Chauneko

That's the annoying part here.

I still miss the reasons behind these business-breaking changes.
Is not only the poor website: the aggressive, intrusive, game advertise. Poor curation. Lack of game choices. Lack of game updates. And the problems list keeps growing.

I feel no connection anymore to GOG.
GOG have made me transition from games on physical media to downloads... and here I stand.
Not shopping anymore on this website, due to pure missmanagement.

I would lie if I didn't love to see GOG recovering and growing, but all I see is a dying business.
The state the site is now, is not compensated anymore by DRM free.

DRM free now is the candy over poop cake... doesn't matter how sweet it is... in these conditions.

Dear Gog,

I do like how you streamlined and modernized the look of the store and homepage, especially getting rid of the multisized chaotic sales page of the past, I love how you added more sort functions to reviews, I appreciate how you are trying to update and working hard on making it all work together. However, the recent changes have turned me off from the store front, mainly for the reasons stated repeatedly before, to the point that i have to believe your team is working on fixes now as i type..., if not then im going to say most of my buying here is going to slow down dramatically as i cant be arsed with finding games to buy anymore

to reiterate,

more sort functions on the sale page (sales cost, sale percentage etc), ability to hide/toggle off owned items, ability to minimize icons or use list, ability to toggle off autoplay, move news to the top or immediately under promo splash banners, unhide daily deals, delete a few of the in your face witcher game promos, (i mean seriously, you hide that lovely halloween banner under that ?)


just spent a ton of time trying to find games to buy......it was cumbersome, annoying and offputting. pages and pages of unsortable games, with added onerous of pages and pages of games i already owned adding to the mix.

im done

This is one change I actually really like, I must admit.
Now it's not worth all the other changes, you're killing the company, but in a vacuum it's really nice.

C'mon GOG, you know you are better than this. Why is having a broken website with so many design flaws acceptable? Why must everything you do be so half-assed? Can we please get someone to acknowledge the numerous issues with the site and that they will indeed be fixed?

Functionality should be your main concern and not design work. However it seems like functionality has taken a back seat to horrible design.

With how the Halloween sale is being handled it is obvious that nobody within GOG cares anymore. Is most of this due to just plain laziness or incompetence? I seriously would like to know why customers have to search through multiple pages through the sales tab than have it featured on the main page as usual.

It's genuinely starting to feel this way, that no one on staff actually cares. The silence is deafening.

I'm not sure if it's general ignorance, or if GOG is cocky enough to bank on public apathy to eventually solve the problem, either way I really don't feel like making purchases like I used to as long as the site and those running it stay in such an anti-consumer state.

The only way I see that this will be fixed is that we start making more noise concerning on the situation and hope like hell that someone within GOG actually acknowledges the issues at hand. Just getting sick of the same old song and dance around here.

In case anyone who freqents this thread missed the fix: the community came to the rescue again, to fix what GOG screwed up:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_anniversary_design_community_fix

Very nice script indeed.
Thanks for the information.

While I appreciate community efforts, and their talents, I can t see me going tjis route.

GOG is a damn business.
Their first and main priority is to make its customers comfortable in spending their money; provide a pleasant, compelling experience from start to finish.

Until GOG do something to show some appreciation for me spending time on their website, along shelling my money, I'll not spend a single cent with them.

DRM free or not.

Im disliking it due to the "On Sale" page showing games not on sale... also to me it feels a mess when browsing for games a little more than it was before, even the catagories dont help narrow down some things.

Also IMO we need an arrange by price "lowest to highest" /"highest to lowest".