I don't understand why: Is their business dying?

I doubt it, I think it's more they've got their heads up their asses trying to do the whole ivory tower thing. Probably marketing gone so so wrong given how front and center Thronebreaker has been the whole time what with the full page ads and the stupid banners.

GOG is not the same as it used to be. It has constantly become worse over the last few years. The site itself, the support (in terms of quality and response time), a flood of new crap since ca. 2014 (pre-orders, DLC, games in development, separately sold soundtracks, ...), regional pricing, a client which is developed at a snail's pace, ...

Regarding the crappy re-design - I think there was a nice joke in this forum a while ago that GOG somewhat serves as "collecting tank" for bad web-developers who don't get a job elsewhere. Capable staff leaves, the rest develops something like the recent anniversary update.

I'm not crazy about it either - it's harder for me to use the site, so I use it less. So I spend less.

I'll get used to it, if I have to, but just like Steam, I won't be looking as much if the platform becomes (more of) a chore.

Nice work GOG!
[img]https://i.imgur.com/hq8ijP4.png[/img]


As long as things like this remain broken (and it's been like this since the revamp), I'm guessing more and more people will see GOG as a broken, buggy mess, and not want to spend any time or money here.

Sadly, that could actually be true. For this Halloween sale I bought some games on Steam and nothing on GoG, for the first time in a rather long while.

I think that GoG interface now resembles Steam a lot: a banner at the top, a few games in the spotlight, special offers for a few select titles, curated suggestions and more detailed lists with new/upcoming/popular titles. But for some reason Steam looks a lot better to me. Maybe I'm just used to it. Or it's the layout. Or the fact that on Steam I need to search and sort through hundreds of potentially interesting games - and every bit of information might be useful - while on GoG all I need to know is what's new - if anything - and what's on sale. Also Steam client is faster and more stable than Galaxy at the moment.

DRM-free is awesome but sometimes it comes at a cost, less titles, delayed launches, delayed patches, fewer sales with smaller discounts, occasionaly no MacOS versions, no workshop mods, less multiplayer options. GoG seems to be working overtime to increase that cost.

If that'd be the only cost I'd call it an awesome deal. Unfortunately for the past years it adds that of ending up supporting an organization that betrayed you (or the values you thought you had in common, I mean). And for the past month putting up with an almost completely unfunctional site in my browser and which is a complete mess even if it would work, indicating a specific disregard for me (some user categories I'm part of, I mean) and being perhaps the most in-your-face indicator of catering to a very different crowd, that doesn't give a damn about anything that made GOG, GOG way back. Which in turn means GOG doesn't give a damn about that either, so we're back to that betrayal. No news, of course, just, like I said, most in-your-face indicator yet. And THAT's one hell of a cost.

I really miss having the News section easily readable and near the top. I actually liked reading what was new and what was being brought back, or details about sales. I keep overlooking the News because it looks just like a bunch of uninformative, one word captioned screen shots that tell me really nothing. Sure, I understand a picture is worth a thousand words but that is literally meant for art and the viewer to make their own interp of it. Not video game stores and not for customers who want to stay informed.

And then there's this atrocity in my screenshot; not on a browser, oh no, but on Galaxy. Gog's Galaxy. The client. I can deal with change. I cannot deal with broken code. It's possible to make dynamically adjustable websites to fit different screens. I know, I've done it.

Same deal here. I bought on Steam and Humble, and didn't spend one cent on GOG. It's just too much of a headache to deal with on my crap internet, and I don't really trust them when they can screw up this badly and be so deaf to their userbase.

I say this as someone that hated the Steam discovery update and I still bitch about the blue monstrosity:

The primary thing is this is like an amateur knockoff of Steam. Steam's web design isn't great, I'm not sure I'd even call it good. BUT it does load quicker, it doesn't autoplay videos just by hovering, it doesn't take you to special advert pages before you can access the front page, special promos do get their own page listings, it doesn't blow the fuck up in the client or in windowed mode, screenshots load quicker, and the information is actually condensed. Hell even the curator system can be useful if you know of a decent one you like.

Whatever GOG did it's like they copied the rough design, but didn't even try to make it properly work. Somehow they one-upped like every other game service for "Worst Web Design".

That's the craziest part, people use GOG out of choice. They choose to support DRM-free and GOG, even at the cost of better pricing, convenience, and other things. And unlike other services no one has their purchases held hostage here. You can pick up and leave at any time. It doesn't make any sense for them to be so deaf to the customer or to pull as many dumb stunts as they have over the years. Valve gets away with shit cause Valve does make and offer some tools that are extremely <convenient> and the fact no one can abandon the platform easily once they are locked in.

Same here.
Switched to Steam now. Bought some new games for halloween (great games at great price).

My library on GOG is still much bigger, but hey, will be only a matter of time before nothing will remain here.

What I really miss is to see as a list the games, not as tiles...it's so difficult to take a quick look right now that I get tired after some minutes and abandon the page with zero buying intention

Say no to tiles. Say yes to frames. Screw it, bring back annoying backgrounds and pop in some endless MIDI loops. If we're gonna praise retro, let's do it right.

Got forget the eyebleeding palletes.

And for ear bleeding, don't forget the hamster dance. Second thought, forget the hamster dance. 1998 was a rough year for web development.

Back to post about my unhappiness again. The site is so much slower to load with this revamp than it was previously. More pictures, less text, forced video if you deign to touch a game card with the cursor, etc. Ugh!

Not everyone has a high speed connection to load pages quickly, GOG. It is unfortunate that you've fallen into the modern habit of bloated web design with no regard for those stuck with slow speeds. Please restore the old site design! It wasn't perfect, but it was so much better than this mess.