I usually despise replying in this way but

lol

Well, I guess I meant more in terms of quitting before getting started. I'm guessing most of the folks that are still here have learned to live with the broken forums and site.

However, this site and these forums are where every potential new customer comes and has their "first impression" of GOG. And right now, it's not a good first impression. And it's also almost like they don't care that they're not putting the absolute best site possible to make the best impression possible on visitors and/or potential new customers.

Having a web based store with a horrible web site is.... well not the best business practices in the world.

I guess when something more "important" fills your mind, you just don't crave for your old hobbies and stuff. I recall this happening also in the sports, like when I was training krav maga and taijutsu, quite often people, who has trained them for many many years, stopped it when they started having family, and seemed to have lost interest altogether.

For me though, I haven't really stopped playing games due to having a family... almost the opposite in fact because with small kids I tend to spend more time at home... so why wouldn't I play games then, if I am sometimes stuck at home?

Things that I used to do a lot but now do much less for some reason:

1. Watching movies (only occasionally watch something from TV if it seems interesting; I don't have Netflix or Disney or HBO Max or or or, and don't really feel like I should either as I will probably not use them that much).

2. Going to the aforementioned martial arts trainings. I feel a bit bad about this, but not really. I would want to occasionally go to a gym though but feel it takes too much time to go to commercial gyms (packing all the stuff, travelling to the gym, changing clothes, going to shower there, going back home... that is easily like 2-3 hours), so what I really would like was that our apartment house would have some simple gym downstairs where I can just go for 45 minutes to skip some rope and use free weights. I've been actively pushing this idea in our housing community as we have an empty room downstairs that would be suitable for that.

3. Going to bars. Hey I have a family already, the main reason for me to go to bars was to find my future wife (or failing that, at least some "free" sex). I don't miss going to bars at all, I never really enjoyed it. The only exception is when my old friends ask me to go out for our annual meetings where we talk shit, that happens like once a year, or less.

The only 'game' I currently play on Steam is "Dead Or Alive Venus Vacation" :P

I wished I could say I quit, but there sadly are still some games that interest me and that I can only find on Steam, like the upcoming "Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara". It would be a great game on GOG and complement games like A Hat In Time, but the kickstarter campaign was for Steam only, no DRM free release was offered. Usually I then don't participate, but this gem got me and so I'll make an exception. Maybe I can find a crack once it's out.

I have a steam account still but pretty much never use it.

In terms of games I paid for, GOG is the big winner.
In terms of number of games, Epic.

Honestly, with these two and a PS plus subscription, I dont see any incentive to go to steam to enjoy my fill of games.
I also basically came to GOG to get the best version of the witcher series (DRM-free) which is GOG.

I mean I didn't delete my account but I basically only buy what I can't get anywhere else on Steam these days. Honestly the main reason I'd say is the terrible discovery.

I have a library of over 800 games on Steam. Some were freebies but a lot of them I've paid for. I had a few times early on with Steam that I really wanted to just ditch my account but most of my issues with the platform have been fixed since then and my library is quite large so nah, I can't quit it nor do I really want to. GOG is still better due to DRM-free but my issues with Steam are far less adamant than they were even just a year ago lol

While I love what GOG does & still pick up games occasionally & prefer DRM free, unfortunately GOG is a long way behind as far as stuff I want to play goes & is only getting left further behind.

I haven't really played AAA games for a fair few years now, but even as far as AA & Indie games go, there is a lot of stuff that isn't on GOG yet (or still)

Hopefully GOG is around for a long time & keeps building on their catalogue, but from what I've noticed over the past year, things have slowed down

Yes, and from a customer relations standpoint, it's actually better to have no forums than to have one that is badly effed up. Potential customers view the former as a choice (even if they don't like the choice) but the latter as incompetent.

But it's not just the forums. GOG's entire business model, 100%, is this website (forums included). I can scroll from the first game in my Steam library to the last in a second. I have 17 PAGES, and 17 page reloads, to scroll from the first game in my library here to the last. And the notifications? Just a joke (see screenshot). My account shows over 500 notifications of updates. I'd bet money that less than 20 of them are game related.

Having a poor website (forums included) for a business that is 100% reliant on their website, is... well, probably not the best way to do things.

And the dumb thing is, it'd be trivial to make a button that clears all the update notifications rather than having you click 500 times on a game title for long enough to set the flag.

Thus the impression they don't care.

question - how does spam in a forum impact on buying, downloading and playing games?

(most gOg users, i.e customers, never go to the formus)

Well, I just explained it's not just the forums. But the forums add to the overall impression (an impression that spreads, word of mouth or typed letters in this case) that gog is incompetent. I hope I don't need to explain why an impression of being incompetent is a "bad" thing for current and potential customers.

This website:

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/

is similar to gog in that they sell their games on their website and have for the past 20 plus years. I've been there for 20 years, frequented their forums for 20 years, and I have NEVER, not ONCE, seen the level of spam on their forums I see here. It is rare, and when it does happen, it's gone quickly. My impression? OOTP cares about the experience current or potential customers have when on their website, and gog just... doesn't.

For me probably the most egregious example is the tags. We've been over how worthless they are many, many times for months now, at the very least. It's something visible on every game's page, and something that directly impacts the most basic function of the store - allowing people to find a game they'd like. And yet still GOG seems unable to do anything about it. Tomb Raider games are still tagged as 2D platformers and won't show up if you look for "female protagonist". If that's not incompetence and not giving a shit, I don't know what is.