Hopefully enough bad press might pressure then into reconsidering their priorities.

you are talking about this kind fellow ?
https://www.reddit.com/r/armello/comments/50o6mn/the_poor_show_that_is_the_new_and_improved_gog/

well, i agree on what he says, and in fact i feel sorry for him because he seems genuinely sincere in still loving the game and wanting to support/promote it and, to be frank, he sounds too nice for my taste... Because i wouldn't be as kind and forgiving as he is, afaic...
sorry but the person suggesting him to buy it on steam is blindly insulting him in first place

because in the OP post, there are simple words as "I PREFER buying it on GOG, drm-free is VERY IMPORTANT to me..."

someone's answer is basically: well, just give up what's important to you, screw your own taste and preferencies, and just purchase a product in a way not suited to your liking and shut the fuck up

so, it's like you were saying "i like/want some fruits, and i hand you up a salad and say "well, have this instead... it doesn't make any difference" or if you tell a vegan "well, forget about it and have some meat instead"

you can put way more despise and offensive meaning in "just 5 little words" than in a long heated sentence, provided you choose those 5 words cleverly, as well as the context and the timing for them

someone from the reddit thread answered:
" I enjoy DRM free games, but the fact remains that DRM isn't going anywhere. It's stupid and shitty but it gives a lot more control to the devs over piracy and such."

(cough cough): well, the armello DLC available for free in many cracked games websites is certainly NOT a version of the DLC that comes from DRM-Free platform. So, no, sorry, the idea about DRM-free platform = more piracy is hard for me to see at all here :)

In my oppionion these kind of games shouldn't be here at GOG. Either the developer fully supports the game (and releases all future Addons on GOG) or he dosen't put it on here. It's the same thing with Ashes of the Singularity and it's multiplayer problem. I'm not in the mood to compare evereytime the GOG version of a game with the Steam/Whatever version, to check out if it has all of it's features, if it get's the same support by the developer or if I can play with friends, wich bought their game elsewhere...

Yeah, no. Assumptions. It's more likely he didn't read the OP properly, but even if he did, he could've just done a proper response and highlight again he wasn't interested in that because (point out OP or explain reasons).

Instead he goes on a frothing rant and derails his own thread by pointlessly creating animosity towards an entire group of gamers towards he is clearly predisposed.

sometimes you get tired of repeating over and over simple things using clear/simple words towards a part of the audience that won't give a daman or even bother to listen/read/understand anyway, no matter how many efforts you put up into explaining your point in simple and courteous words to such people thrice the time you needed to tell any other civilized human being who already got it right the first time.
so, no, i cant follow you in there, sorry

of course he should have bother to put a TL;DR small sentence at the end of his post, the kind of TL;DR part no one would even have bothered to read anyway and those people it would have been intended for would still ask things that were plainly written in it..

you see, i was very worried recently about how ugly (for the customers) thin,gs could possibly turn wrong with microsoft making force moves to drive people to their win10 and win10 app/game store, to the potential detriment of other drm platforms (because games that are exclusives to the win10 stores are the kind of game frorm the kind of publishers that here in GOG we gave up long ago hoping they would come into the catalog any day)

i mean, i felt concern for digital games platform and customers i'm not part of, because i dont use win10 and store, i dont use steam that much (and can totally give it up any time) and the kind of games actually in the "exclusivity" struggle. So, as i was not concerned, why would i even bother about someone else's problems ? you're right, i should rather not give a damn and just sit and grab some popcorn waiting to watch the show to come ?!

My disclaimer was about Kotaku, in case it wasn't clear.

That aside - judging by their reply to Kristian, they've decided that they can afford to alienate the existing GOG customers, and will treat any revenue from the GOG DRM-free edition as a bonus for no effort to spend on other platforms. And if it doesn't sell, it will only re-enforce their belief.

It would appear that the publicity the matter has taken doesn't bother them, given that they've decided that their GOG customers are not worth their time and effort anymore; I think they're just waiting for the whole thing to blow over, much like GOG does.

i dont know how it works in USA and maybe they have a culture of "customers are bound to shut up and be pleased with whatever they got" but here in EU and in my country (that is: for now, because new laws are slowly destroying that), we have rights as customers, and companies has duties towards their clients.

They can write any counter-terms they want in their TOS or EULA, if country laws say something different than their contract with client/customer, the national law prevails (i heard than is USA, global law < contract)

So, would LoG were selling a product only within EU and were based in EU themselves, what they just did (dropping aftersale/tech support because it was too much of an effort and expenses to bother about) would blatantly be illegal, clearly. And not only LoG wouldbe bound to a refund (THEY would have to do this, not any reseller in between would it be amazon or gog or whatever...) but they would also have penalties from institutions.

So i think in the future, we customers will have to push harder to force both politicians and companies to clarify the legal stuff when they are doing business across the world and across many legislations/countries. Recently EU had a court decision that told to facebook that "NO, we don't care that you put in your TOS that only your country's court was the only one qualified to settle any problem between you and a customer, no matter where this customer is from... If you deal with a EU customer, you'll go in a local court and EU customer won't give a daman about your californian/whatever court at all"
things are slowly moving. i mean, the law is here since decades, they now slowly reminging poeple out loud about it, next step is that they actually enforce such decades old laws they just reminded people about :)

So as a EU customer of GOG (which is based in EU°, i dont care asking refund to GOG because i dont have to... i'd rather deal with LoG on EU grounds.

but tbh, if you don't intend to respect the law regarding a group of customers, maybe just DONT EVEN START doing business with them in first place... we are used to interesting games only available on consoles or steam and not on GOG... We can deal with that (by giving up such games, or purchasing them on those platforms maybe). what is infuriating is putting it in a platform catalog and then run away as if nothing happened. (that and the backers on KS who may not have backed up the game at all if they had known the drm'free version would be dropped/crlippled/screwed up)

i think in future, GOG would maybe be inspired to put "respect and enforcment of already existing laws and customer rights" in their TOS of the deals/agreements they make with publishers/developper who enter their catalog. like "by puting your product on sale in our platform, you agree to uphold the law and comply to consumer rights" (sound odd, a TOS to ensure someone will respect already existing laws) or even rewrite as inner GOG TOS portions of said laws and consumer rights , bluntly as parts of the contract, so fr folks who think "screw the law, contract is all", if you copy/paste relevant laws as TOS parts, it solves the problem :)


something like this: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/law_enforcement_as_parts_of_tos_for_gog_partners_1

Err, why? I mean, they did provide the product that was sold, in a workable state. If they refused to honor "season pass" or "complete editions" that were purchased by GOG users, you would have a point, but here? They sell one product (the game), and then go away without bothering to provide the shiny stuff that comes later (DLC, game changing patches, etc...). Classy? Certainly not. But illegal?

What's worst about that reply is the 'closely monitoring who is engaging with Armello' statement. How are they doing that? DRM software enables that.

OF COURSE they aren't seeing GOG customers. GOG games don't include DRM, there's no way to track their 'engagement' with the game!

Unless 'engagement' is a euphemism for 'sales numbers', what they are saying is that the DRM-free customers aren't showing up in the statistics derived from their DRM, so DRM-free customers don't exist. It's terrible, circular logic.
+1

Just because we as customers don't like something doesn't mean consumer rights are being violated.

Same here. I was looking forward to eventually getting it, there aren't enough good anthro games out there. But this settled me firmly against it.
I think GOG does have a system somewhat like this in place, at least in Galaxy. This is all secondhand, but apparently it's what the devs behind We Happy Few have been using to push out incremental patches in Galaxy. GOG still has to roll them up for the shelves, I believe.

well you are right as long as, for now, it concern only dlc and additional features... But i can bet high that before end of 2017, there will be major bugfixes that we here at GOG will be denied update for...

also my post was inspired by LoG situation but more in anticipation of whatever higher craps any other dev would feel like puting to raise stakes

I mean, yes LoG so far didnt got that far as i described.. But better warn off wannabe offenders that we wont either take similar crap nor even higher ones from them than we did from LoG.

Hope i clarified my view, sorry if it was unclear and if my post seemed to "only" concern LoG current situation... It wasn't, it anticipated any further worse behavior from anyone else

@Kardwill: Hi, Kardwill,. I´m with Djaron in this point, because look, it´s pretty omission, negligence.
Devs. said Armello is requested in order to play the DLC, right? You can imagine perfectly any customer bought that product (Armello, the base game) with the idea of play the DLC too. But the assumption is not real, because the devs. are saying now that the base game in GOG is abandoned.

To me, that behaviour is not legal, nor pertinent.

See you!

oh... yes you are right, i didnt yet saw it this way... In fact, the angle you described is something like false addvertisement or missinformation. And those two things are ruled and enforced by some parts of consumers law (if not in all EU? at least in my own contry, those are).

i cant recall of any hightech/entertainment/digital product having such problem in the past in my country (i think it happened but dont have the cases at hand yet) but it's covered by law anyway.

@Djaron: Exactly, is about the management of information with the potential client(s), and about be transparent. Misinformation is not legal because the customer is paying for something that the company said can offer clearly, and then, just when the final day comes, nothing... The law protect to customers against these acts in many countries.