Wow things have gone downhill at GOG... That's unsettling. Glad to see some organized protest, but at the same time, really sad to see nothing being changed.

I used to think GOG supported Linux too, but I see the Linux users have been tossed aside now that they don't update their installers and still no Linux Galaxy client.

I was one such person and had already stopped buying games on GOG before I found myself needing to look something up, ended up browsing the GOG forums for answers and stumbled upon this thread. If I hadn't, I would probably have given up on GOG entirely by now.

I'm sure there are plenty of people like that. Not everyone in that position is going to bother with browsing the forums, so I think it's likely that a significant percentage are unaware of this thread.

Sorry, I'm confused: what the point of annoying low-level staff if they can't change the direction of the company themselves? I may be misinterpreting what you're saying.

I haven't skimmed a ton of the Discord, but from what I have seen, I kind of agree. Setting that aside though, Zoom has seems to be good work in general.

We don't......but atm they are doing several things better than GOG(and yeah, some not as good, like lack of game gift codes).

You mean like how some seem to do with GOG?

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Or they see little point in posting....etc etc.

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For a number of people it's likely akin to why some tell their problems to a barkeep/etc.....sometimes one just wants to vent/be heard.

I have no problem with people venting, boycotting, etc. (although if people are boycotting for too many different reasons, effectiveness might be lost); my concern is some people don't realize the staff we interact with don't make the "big" decisions for the company / set direction. (like, if they aren't given permission to explain why Hitman GOTY was accepted, we aren't going to get a response on that matter; though, imo, the reason for the acceptance isn't hard to figure out)

Does that include DRM'd multi-player or just single-player?

I get that......I was merely answering your question. :)

As for effectiveness: I think this thread's "biggest (current) usefulness" is allowing the ones within to vent....and at that I think it currently does a decent enough job.

I think many do get that. And yes, the low level staff most likely can't change/do/say much, but they can still "bump the messages/criticisms/etc up the chain of command", so to speak.

"Mental breakdowns"? You sound unhinged dude :P (which I guess if you're going for Joker "we live in a society" ... all right) Working at GOG is a job, not some conspiracy or crusade or whatever. Pepe Silvia

If they wanted to, GOG could easily lock this thread if they wanted, but they allow this to stay up.

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(as an aside, are people allowed to create "Boycott Steam" threads on Steam, or does that break TOS? Or we do worship Steam since they're infallible and we'd never question their decisions? ;)

I do concur with this.

Done! Welcome aboard! :-)

The list on the first post has now been updated. It's nice to see that a couple of new people have signed up on the list in the past few days. Kronan's free publicity seems to be doing wonders ;-)

Yes, I am quite active on the Zoom Platform Discord chat. What of it? Yes, there tends to be some criticism of GOG going on there sometimes; however, I would argue that most of it is quite justified, based on GOG's recent actions and decisions.

Objective, justified criticism =/= hatred. I don't hate GOG, I dislike the direction they have been taking in recent years and I want them to change. The world needs good, DRM-free game stores and GOG has a place there. But, they have been turning their backs on that, through their own cynical decisions.

I am advocating that people try out Zoom, as an alternative to GOG, for those who are similarly disenchanted. I do that because they are a really good store that are passionate about DRM-free, with games that work well and great customer service. A healthy free market needs competition and options for consumers, and DRM-free gaming is no exception.

It's hypocritical to criticize GOG, because another store might do something similar in the future? So, we should treat those that have committed offenses and those that have the potential to in exactly the same way? Whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?

Your statement makes no sense whatsoever.

There it is. Where have I heard this before.

I've only ever bought single-player games from GOG. Multiplayer is a bit more convoluted as anti-cheating measures may be needed. Would that count as DRM? I don't know.

I just want to own my games. There are many games only available on Steam that I'd love to play, but I'm not willing to pay a company to let me borrow a game from their servers. I've bought MANY games I already "owned" on Steam just to have the installer.

If I need your Steam client or Galaxy service to play a game I bought then I don't own it, I don't want it, and I won't buy it.

May I ask why you suggest it may be needed? If even one game without anti-cheat exists (it does), that proves that such measures are not necessary, other than that the developer/publisher insists on the game having them, but that isn't "necessary" in my view, just their bad design choice same as saying the game "needs" a client to start up. An example of something actually necessary would be more along the lines of system requirements, like try as I might I wouldn't be able to run a game like Kingdom Come: Deliverance on an old Windows 2000 PC.

(btw I agree and applaud your comment here)

Now I suppose these clients count as more than "just" anti-cheat measures, but the point remains that it is DRM, or if nothing else "DRM-like" and thus undesirable anti-consumer bs. I fully agree with the idea that if a client service is needed to play, the customer doesn't own the game.

Where it gets tricky is in terms of definition/identity, since many of these games with the client-mandatory type of multiplayer do have robust singleplayer so it seems slightly inaccurate to some people to say the game is "DRMed" but I would say such a game is overall "not DRM-free" or "not fully DRM-free."

Thus to me it is a valid question what such games are doing here on a store that is known for being DRM-free. There shouldn't need to be any "edge cases" or rationalizations like people tend to make, since if there were only fully DRM-free games here there wouldn't be anything for some of the "shill" crowd to make excuses for.

I tended to agree with you especially when younger, when DRM approach was at the beginning and more effectively likely to be curbed. But now is widespread, and even a somewhat sensible need of the industry side of big-budget gaming. I wish still that some real balance between users and publishers could be found, situation currently unbalanced towards publisher's control. To be short, don't be maximalist. As of now, maximalism kills business and finds a very limited audience. I think it's better to loudly point out the most outstanding/over-the-top cases, as a deterrent for publishers to cross some basic respectful lines.

I think most people would count that as DRM but I suspect many users don't really care about multi-player in general. (and multi-player tends to be gutted from older releases anyway rather than be ported, like TR2013 and XCOM 2)

Yes but then you get a half assed version of a game.