Reminder that Bossa Studios plainly stated updating Surgeon Simulator on GOG would not be worth the time and money they would have to invest to update the DRM free build, and allowed to make that statement public. Different strokes, of course.


Out of curiosity, why not just leave the games be when you disagree with the publisher?
I'm guessing "I still want to play these games" is part of it, but there are many other games to buy and play, especially from devs and publishers who actually care about GOG.

let's see how this turns out. And ya most likely this is the only way to communicate with tinybuild (by not buying or well voicing that how they do it aint okay). We just should hope that gog not only gives a "refund" bc you are a good customer but does not communicate with tinybuild itself (if there are more users using the refund in this given case)

Actually no. It's purely out of spite at this point. I've never really wanted to play any of their games except Graveyard Keeper.

Even if its just one dude, flipping the switch to update the games ain't that difficult to do. It sucks that they're amateurish towards GOG and I hope they learn as a publisher to take them more seriously at some point.

I love Punch Club though, which is greatest time management game since Stardew Valley. I'd say give them a chance for the sake of the developer and not the publisher itself.

Nice, now I don't have to waste a single penny on their games and I can tell my friends to save their money as well. If they are willing to accept money from customers, they should give them the full product in return.

Remember BACK IN THE DAAAAYYY ~ when really good and polished games were made in Flash and given away for free on websites? Nowadays, you release a Atari 2600-looking game in 2019 and not only expect $10-15 but also screw over your customers because the platform they bought it on worries you? You're worried about piracy in the most crowded time of video games? You think your games are so AMAZING that it's worth pirating when you can literally pirate games made for millions of dollars just as easily?!?

Last decade is defined by corporate arrogance. I am not saying TinyBuild's games aren't worth the money, I am just saying that there were some INCREDIBLE video games being released in the early 2000s that looked as great as they played and were given away for free and still being updated for the players. But now, customers have clearly spoiled these publishers, because now they don't actually even want to sell us these games DRM-free

For me it is official enough. It is clear that they will not make a statement on their website or on GOG like : "Dear GOG customers, we know that you pay for our games on GOG. However, we are treating you like pirates and we won't be updating the games you purchased from us. Thanks for the money. Regards."

I disagree. While tinyBuild probably won't refund anything GOG will probably still do - and you made a contract with GOG and not tonyBuild. Unfortunately in this case tinyBuild will not even notice that somebody refunded a game.
I agree that it is "official enough" to complain. I just wanted to point out that they even mentioned to not wanting to make this official which is a pretty shitty move on their end.

People know that this shit is going on but are just so lethargic on the matter, so it slides and continues to do so. Truthfully people should be requesting refunds in mass to send a message that bs like this will not be tolerated. Why are people shocked about this happening though? It isn't as if this hasn't happened before or isn't still going on with certain devs/publishers.

Klei Entertainment comes to mind as well. When was the last time that Don't Starve got it's offline installer updated properly? A year? Not to mention the fact that they have been ignoring GOG on releases such as the Mark of the Ninja Remaster and the Hamlet expansion for the above mentioned Don't Starve.

Klumpen0815 did:

I haven't seen much "shock" as such, more people being fed up that this kind of thing keeps happening, and that developers and publishers are so nonchalant about being well aware of the issues.

The 2nd Class Citizens thread has been around for ages, and the occasional dev/pub has been contacted about issues, but it's often difficult to even get a reply, let alone anything other than "we're working on it" (which they are most likely not).

Some GOG users know about the problems; mostly forum users, and among those, the ones who actually do anything other than participate in "fun" topics or ask questions. I think with things like this incident, we're all just made that much more aware of how some devs/pubs deliberately decide to not support their games while still happily taking money from anyone who prefers GOG.

This thread was created in hopes that more people become aware. It's not just tinyBuild, but the staff member I talked to was particularly disrespectful towards GOG customers and it seemed like a matter that should be made as public as these forums get.
(Edit: Not to badmouth the staff member themselves, though. This is likely all they were allowed to say, and they did take the time to talk to me at all and reply when I kept pestering them.)

Maybe if people are fed up with this then they actually should do something. Being made aware or an issue and actually doing something are different cases entirely. I still say that nothing less than mass requests for refunds will send a message that customers are fed up with this happening.

This sadly is not an isolated incident and has happened before. The last case that I am aware of was with DrinkBox and the fact that they didn't want to update Guacamelee Super Turbo and stated that fact. The only way that was updated was that they wanted to release Guacamelee 2 and GOG probably wouldn't agree unless Super Turbo was up to date. Which happened slightly before Guacamelee 2 showed up here.

There are a few of us that have taken it upon ourselves to contact numerous devs/publishers because of practices such as this. While that works at times it is not the end all be all. It is not uncommon to be totally ignored or to be told that support for a product has pretty much ceased and not given reasons to why.

GOG needs to take at the very least partial responsibility for the products that they are pushing into the store front. If they want to continue as a business maybe they should be the ones to make sure that the relationship with their partners continues in a positive way and that updates show up in a timely manner. There is no reason that users have to take it upon themselves to keep track of which companies are fucking their customers over or which games are lacking in updates for products that have long been paid for.

My gut says that no matter how much you try to get people to request refunds en masse, there's only going to be a handful of people, and it'll only hurt GOG's bottom line, but not enough for them to do anything about it. (I have a feeling that GOG doesn't have contracts that allow them to retroactively withdraw funds from a publisher's account to cover a refund months/years after purchase and after the money has been paid to the publisher).

Actually doing something that makes a difference is fucking difficult.

Furthermore, I don't know if pointing guns at GOG is going to help much. I feel like they're in deep enough shit as it is.. and if we give them shit, things might just get worse in turn.

EDIT: Also GOG isn't obliged to mass-refund long after purchase anyway, and they probably would not do it if there were enough requests to make a measurable dent in their budget. If they grant any, they only do so to make you feel better.

Allowing broken products that are not updated on GOG but are elsewhere is helping GOG's bottom line how exactly?

Yeah, you're right, difficult things aren't worth doing. Fuck it, life is hard, might as well just give the fuck up.

Wouldn't want to rock the boat and actually get a fair shake for customers that feel like they have been ripped off. We couldn't have that now could we? That would be wrong to have a store front that was dedicated to providing products and services that people actually paid for. You either do right by the people that have been wronged or you are complicit in allowing these practices to perpetuate.