LOL, I love how you worded that so aptly!

Alas, my "like" for GOG is indeed begrudgingly.

I like GOG's (sometimes) DRM-free games and GOG's offline installers, relative to Steam's and EGS' lack of DRM-free and/or offline installers.

But other than that, I cannot find a whole lot of additional things to like about GOG.

I can find a whole lot of additional thing to Dislike about GOG, though.

But I wish that wasn't so.

I wish GOG would act right, so that I could like it 100% have no issues with it at all and see it as the perfect store.

Unfortunately though, GOG is an extremely far cry from being that. GOG took down Hitman GOTY, weeks later, only after and because of the massive amount of income that the backlash from that debacle was causing, and would continue to cause GOG to lose, if they left it unaddressed, like how they left the Devotion debacle unaddressed.

But that quoted statement makes it sound like they did it because they love their customers so much --- which definitely isn't the case. If they did love their customers so much and if that was their motivation, then, as you said, they would have rejected that DRM'ed game in the first place and it never would have been on the store.

As for saying GOG has "the most lenient" refund policy: no it doesn't. With Steam, the customer can refund an unlimited amount of games.

In contrast, with GOG, they cannot.

Therefore, one could easily argue that Steam's refund policy is much more lenient.

I still like GOG which is why I still buy most of my games here. They have made some big mistakes in recent years which unfortunately comes with the poisoned chalice of trying to expand the store and compete with Steam and moneybags Epic.

I like GOG's forum, it is the only one that I am currently active on. A lot of good people have left, some sadly passing away, but I feel that there are many more good people left here than there are bad people or trolls.
I have made a lot of friends here and will be sticking around for as long as GOG exists.

Yes. I try to purchase digital games here (like Control) every time I can. Otherwise I go physical, or to Steam if I'm forced to (often when I purchase a collector's edition of a game).

A couple of times (Mirrors' Edge Catalyst, Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands) I was forced fed digital crap from EA and Ubisoft, though. I still feel like puking when I think about it...

Pretty much this. The forums have changed dramatically since the early days of GOG's open beta. GOG has always taken a pretty light touch when it comes to moderation (perhaps more on the side of just not caring about it these days), and as a result the forums have been frequented by more and more people who quite simply aren't worth interacting with. I expect those who still like GOG simply buy games and go have fun with them, while the forums have been left to those who mostly just stick around to spew vitriol on most topics.

One thing I appreciate GOG for is the effort they do to bring to the store games that for one reason or another had been unavailable for a long time. Consider for example Blade Runner which to my understanding had been in some complicated rights ownership situation for a very long time and had been unavailable in any digital store, let alone DRM free. Of course GOG is not the only acting entity there, I assume the various rights holders participate too, but still GOG being there ultimately made it happen

GOG has worsened in the last years. If I have something to criticise, I try to do it in a decent manner. If I like some new developement. I say it too. It's not a person or a creed or a belief. Like most things in life, I like something about it and I dislike something else, with a solid portion of things about it that I'm just lukewarm about.
Ah, and the essential: if I like a game I'll probably buy it, if I don't someone else who likes it will.
Peace, do not force thinking by opposites :-D

Whining people are loud.
Those who like it, are quiet, we don't complain and there is not much need to reply to those who just post to provoke.

Whose alt are you?

Well that took a weird turn.

And not even that guy ever claimed to be perfect :)

I don't remember dying on the cross, but whatever.

In spite of their screw ups, GOG has been my best option when it comes to games without needing a client.

Itch.io has a lot of games, but its "anything goes" nature muddies the selection. Amateur projects of varying quality, pdf files for tabletops instead of video games, and demos with the full game released elsewhere....it's a lot of content to sift through.

Fireflower and Zoom have a very small selection.

I'm willing to look into more alternatives, but I haven't found them yet.

The games on offer are entertaining. The prices are fairy reasonable but not fantastic. The storefront needs polish. The forum needs a reboot. The quality of the game delivery needs work. The client offers nothing lightweight enough for some customers and is too featureless for others - a redesign which allows full customisation of used features (and removal of all "phone home" crap) needs doing to cement interest. And the offline installers are showing signs of rotting neglect.

Overall it's that little convenience store on the corner which has been around for decades, has lots of things on shelves, but never quite hits the nail on the head for what you really want.

Like? Yes. But not love.
Huh? I don't see any specific anti-Australia stuff very often here. I see a lot of genuine backlash when my fellow Aussies make a d*ck out of themselves, which they seem to do far too often. But I see a lot of backlash against a fair number of different countries from time to time. If you do see it just ignore it, mate. Those who don't live here can't know what it's really like.

I'm not always wild about GOG's decisions (the Ukraine thing, rebranding from Good Old Games, et cetera) but I'm a diehard fan and genuinely like the company. To this day I don't even have a Steam or Epic account. If a game's not released on GOG, I just don't play it.

As far as the GOG forums... enh. I could take or leave them. By and large they're loose on moderation, which is a positive. It allows the free exchange of ideas and opinions. You can tell this severely triggers some posters who exist fully in echo chambers otherwise, because they exist in a perpetual state of outrage that people are allowed to say and think X and no one's censoring them. But by the same token, the upvote system is so wildly abused, all it takes is holding the wrong opinion once for some forum goblin to spend the next month of his life spamming sockpuppet account downvotes to teach you a lesson. In function, it's like the best parts of 4chan meet the worst parts of Reddit.