Hello GOG

It just has came to my notice with the announcement of Strafe, does GOG, beside all negative changes and slowly downhill ride has now joined the current age cancer which is: Day 1 preorder DLC.

https://www.gog.com/game/strafe I want to express my disgust as long time customer and collector (700+ games on GOG) and state, does i will boycott any game with preorder exclusive DLC.

I am sincerily concerned with the changes and the direction GOG is heading too in the last years.

Found these wishlist entries regarding the matter:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/eliminate_preorder_dlc
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/dont_lock_content_up_as_preorder_bonuses

You're late to the party.
https://www.gog.com/mix/games_with_preorder_exclusive_content

In reality GOG isn't going to avoid selling such games because there is far too much money to be had by selling them, and it is up to the publishers whether or not they want to include pre-order DLC or not. If a publisher wants to incentivize people with pre-order DLC and GOG says "we don't allow that" then the publisher will simply not sell their game on GOG and GOG is out any new-release profit that they would get from such a game, and the profit they would have received does not go into enhancing the website or investing in other ways to bring new content to the platform.

By not having such a policy it potentially opens up the number of games they have available to them instead of Steam or some other store making all of the profit off of the given game exclusively, while it lets the GOG customer decide whether they are ok with it or not instead of GOG making that decision unilaterally for all customers themselves. This way customers that do not like pre-order DLC can - like you - boycott such games themselves and simply not buy it, but customers that don't have a problem with it can go ahead and buy it without having to go to Steam, and get a DRM-free game.

Possibilities:

GOG doesn't sell games with pre-order DLC:
- GOG customers who are indifferent about it can not buy the game at all
- GOG customers who want the pre-order DLC can't buy it on GOG either
- GOG customers who loathe pre-order DLC don't have to buy it

GOG does sell games with pre-order DLC:
- GOG customers who are indifferent about it can buy the game on GOG
- GOG customers who want the pre-order DLC can buy it on GOG
- GOG customers who loathe pre-order DLC don't have to buy it

In both cases, people who loathe or simply do not want pre-order DLC do not have to buy it, so that is common to both choices. The only people who are affected at all, are the people who are either indifferent towards it or specifically want it. In the first case they don't have any choice because GOG would have made that choice for them, so they now have to go buy it somewhere else. In the second case where GOG does sell games and lets the customer decide, the people who are indifferent or favour it have the ability to buy it here at GOG if they prefer to do so. So option #2 - GOG selling the stuff is the option that gives customers the largest amount of personal choice in the matter rather than GOG deciding for them.

Having said all of that, I personally am not a fan of pre-order DLC and think it is a carrot on a stick marketing ploy that can be pretty shitty depending on what the bonus stuff actually is. But I am a fan of people being able to decide upon these things for themselves as an individual rather than a small group of people who hate something demanding that it be banned simply because they don't like it when they're not forced to buy it in the first place, and thus removing the rights of others to buy it who might be ok with it.

So I dislike the idea, and can get what I want by simply not buying things that I disagree with, without interfering with what someone else likes. Plus, I'd rather see GOG able to sell such games if there are people who do want them and aren't bothered by this because this makes GOG more profitable and the more profitable they are the more money they have for marketing, going to conferences and showing great sales figures to big game publishers to draw various other games here that GOG customers want to have. Also it adds more insulation against GOG ending up like Desura, Shinyloot, Dotemu or other now defunct stores. These indirect benefits are good for all GOG customers in the end because we end up with more choices.

Sometimes the best thing we can do if we don't like something is to just not buy it, rather than to try to prevent everyone else from buying it too.

People who call for boycotts (and collective action in general) have a point, the point is just misapplied in the OP. Preorder DLC is generally agreed to be a shitty, anti-consumer practice. No one likes it. Even the market would be healthier without it. So the thought goes, if people would just stop buying preorder DLC, the practice will end, those who didn't mind it will buy the game, those who hated it will buy the game too, and everyone will be better off.

And yes, an industry leader can enforce things like this. Google has decided to save its ads business by implementing limited adblocking into Chrome, and I bet that, instead of implementing anti-adblocks, publishers are going to stfu and comply.

Where this thinking fails with GOG is the part where GOG is not an industry leader, and a boycott just hurts GOG's bargaining power.

no

As much as I am against DLC of any kind. This is the less depraving version of it.

No problem. I "boycott", if you want to call it that, all pre-orders anyway. I don't care what's offered as an incentive for buying an unfinished product, whatever it is the people who sell it and the morons who buy it and help propagate this culture of dealing in empty promises, outright lies, fake footage, unfinished broken products and meaningless DLCs can shove it up their collective arse.

Pre-Order bonuses for me come in 2 flavors:

1) Pre-Order game and you get bonus DLC for free BUT it will still be available for sale at a price after game is released.

2) Pre-Order game and you get bonus DLC that will not be available after game is released.

I'm normally fine with 1 and I'll gladly pre-order when I'm interested enough. When it's the 2nd situation, I will not pre-order the game nor I will buy it after release (even if discounted to 99%).

An example of situation 2 was the game Tyranny, where despite my interest and wish to play the game, I didn't buy it because of those 2 exclusive pre order items, no matter how worthless they may be in game.

Hold on... I'm not in favor of pre-order exclusives in any way, but I was under the impression that in this particular case it was a joke.
I mean "pre-order to get exclusive weapon designed exclusively for the game" doesn't sound very serious. The weapon's name makes it even more obvious.

To me it would be a surprise if the DLC turns out to be indeed exclusive.

pre-order in general I think should not be done.
pay for a finished and complete product, this is what you need to do.

In this case the DLC appears to be a joke condemning the practice itself, but as it is not the first case i think my point is still valid.

Every developer is signing a contract with gog. If there is a bonus of any kinds, it is the DEVELOPER that wants such kind of bonuses.

It's even possible that gog says "we don't want that" and the developer responds: "Then we don't release it on your platform."

Like seriously, talk to the developers and to the people that pre-order games. If there were no people that pre-order because of such bonuses (doesn't matter if on Steam/Uplay/Origin or GOG), there wouldn't be such bonuses!


Also just to add: I believe this is nothing new on gog. There were pre-order bonuses for ages: I remember Cossacks 3, Shadow Warrior 2, with some kind of pre-order bonus.

Also I don't really care about something like "exclusive items", it's far worse to got with the EA approach: Pre-order our game and you can play it X days earlier...

There's a point you neglect to address, and it's the most important one of all: what happens to societies that cater to the lowest common denominator?

I don't think GOG should stop selling games with preorder DLC. A lot of people here are already complaining about the lack of "big" releases, and refusing to sell games with preorder DLC would only prevent more games to be released on GOG. As Ganni1987 said, I'm totally fine with preorder DLC as long as they are being made available to everyone for sale after launch...

Anyway, most of the time those DLC are mostly cosmetic stuff ...