I'm of the opinion that whoever made the trusted partners list for EA was too lazy to look any further, and then the CM, or the person over the CM's head, just took a look at the list and assumed GOG was suddenly an unauthorized partner despite having more than 50 games here, and 3 games in the top 10 all-time best-selling list. Seriously, other companies like Ubisoft or Sega list dozens of retailers for their games, and they both include GOG as a trusted partner.

If anybody has an EA account (I don't), please hold EA_Cade's feet to the fire and ask him that how come they're not suing gog's pants off, considering they're an "not an authorised reatailer".

From what I can gather, they're still making money from selling the games on gog, but at the same time want to be absolved of any responsibility towards the buyers who got them here. Or they cancelled their contracts with gog altogether and Ultima Underworld/Syndicate removal was just the beginning.

Eh, that's a pretty generic response. I wouldn't say he had no problem so much as "didn't even think about it".

LOL, I don't know what's more baffling: EA not listing gog despite selling games here or Sega listing gog despite not selling a single game here.

That's a little late. I already have all the EA Games on GOG. But they haven't added any games to GOG since 2016. Maybe EA just forgot.

I don't see how that could be possible, given that GOG pays them every month for the EA games that are sold on GOG. Someone at EA must be responsible for overseeing that money, and would certainly know that it is coming from GOG.

My guess is that the list of trusted partners should be reffering tho Games that use Origin. Any Key purchased in those "trusted" stores are valid for use under Origin. Or launched via Origin.

A lot of the games in GOG are pre Origin titles, from previous deals, and they shall expire when they expire. Obviously they are not reffering to those oder games, games they ignore completely and are not available even in Origin. Only in GOG.

Woah, the Ultima Underworlds were removed? I only heard about Syndicate. That sucks big time. Good thing I already own them, but still.

IIRC we should keep an eye on the Zoom Platform. They recently announced a partnership with EA. Curios as to what that is all about and how things will progress. (I sense bad tidings!).

It's hard to tell whether he has problems or not, as in that single thread alone he copy-pasted a generic response twice. It seems he does the minimum amount of interaction, and not much more.

I can be completely wrong of course, but a copy-paste answer from any company representative is always bad.


Other companies don't mean much here, because different companies have different kind of contracts and agreements.

What does it mean to be an "authorized partner" for EA anyway?
Is there also some possibility to be an unauthorized partner?
Or if you are not authorized, you are not a partner either?

Reading those EA pages through, it seems clear that there is a way to buy EA games from unauthorized sources, without actually resorting to anything illegal or piracy.

So is being an "authorized partner" something like it is with some hardware, you pay some sum to the company for some official label, and hope that it increases the number of sales to cover the costs of getting that?

While at the same time it is perfectly acceptable and legal to be an unauthorized seller, but the manufacturer tries to steer customers towards authorized stores because it's more profitable for them?

So how this EA authorization should work in theory? And how does it work in practise?
Is it possible that GOG has chosen to be an unauthorized partner, because becoming an authorized partner wouldn't be profitable enough?

Just wanted to add that in my case the CD keys are there. There was a very similar case with the World in Conflict GOG version where Ubisoft issued a very limited number of geniune CD keys. People that bought the game early, now have them tied to their GOG account. Now it says “CD keys depleted” for anyone buying it. Similar thing happend here where EA just cared enough to generate a small initial batch and then forget about it forever. On Origin, CD keys are generated upon purchase, and differ from their retail counterparts, but are reedemable. Cheers

What do the serial keys do?

basically all "AAA" publishers refuse to acknowledge GOG exists even as they sell games here :P

What if GOG was an abandonware store all along?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdhhQhqi_AE