I rewrote MaGog's code for processing game pages, following GOG's complete overhaul of these pages (launched on 1 October), so she can now again scan these pages. The database has been updated with the changes that have occurred over the past 8 days.

I thought that some of you might want to learn a bit more about the underlying changes affecting the actual data presented on the new game pages, beyond the obvious graphical travesties, so here are some pearls I have collected while studying the new page format.

1) Genres: For the past week, the three genres of many games had been shuffled, so that the major genre was no longer the first (e.g. Always Sometimes Monsters' genres changed from: "Adventure, TPP, Modern" to "TPP, Modern, Adventure"). However, GOG seems to have figured out this bug by themselves (or perhaps someone reported it) and today it has been fixed.

2) File Size: The game sizes reported for many games have changed slightly (usually around 0.1-0.2 GB, up or down). No idea why.

3) Number of Ratings: This information has been removed by GOG. I'll let you guess why. The last values recorded by MaGog (around 30 September) will remain available in MaGog's database, for historical purposes.

4) Number of Reviews: Same as "Number of Ratings".

5) Operating Systems (a.k.a. Works On): This information has been removed by GOG. You might think that this information is essentially the same as the information displayed on the "System:" row of the "System requirements" section --- if you do, you haven't been on GOG long enough. Historically, the two similar pieces of information were sometimes at odds with one another and the "Works On" tended to often (but not always) be more accurate than the "System Requirements". Moreover, the "Works On" was easier to read without having to dig through multiple tabs. Alas, it is gone. The last values recorded by MaGog (around 30 September) will remain available in MaGog's database, for historical purposes.

6) Languages: This one suffered a lot. GOG decided to replace the old simple format (e.g. "Audio and text: German, English. Text only: Chinese") with a flashy new tick-and-coss table (most of which is hidden by default). Since format is more important that actual data, they apparently decided to remove all qualifiers from the languages listed. Wherever there once were entries such as "Czech (beta)" or "Spanish (Alone in the Dark 1 and 2)" or "Japanese (Windows only)" or "Chinese (Simplified)", etc., etc., --- and there were hundreds of these --- you will now find merely "Czech", "Spanish", "Japanese", and "Chinese". Moreover, some languages were deemed unimportant enough to be eradicated completely from all games --- these are Belarusian, Persian, Thai, and Latin-American-Spanish. Sadly, to allow MaGog to continue monitoring this field, all past information (qualifiers and "unimportant" languages) are now missing from MaGog as well. Also, note that now English is always the first language listed (wasn't like that before, as languages were sorted alphabetically and therefore English used to come, for example, after Chinese and German (Deutsch)).

7) Game Features: Previously, these were sorted so that the three major modes (single-player, multi-played, co-op) came first, followed by the other features. Now, all the features are mixed up, as they are simply sorted alphabetically. This sounded rather silly to MaGog, so she now resorts these fields to maintain the original --- arguably more sensible --- order. Also, for reasons unknown, six game pages are now without any features section ("Blood & Gold: Caribbean! - Soundtrack [DLC]", "Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut Soundtrack [DLC]", "Lords of Xulima Deluxe Edition Upgrade [DLC]", "Massive Chalice Soundtrack [DLC]", "Pixel Piracy" and "Vanishing of Ethan Carter - Collector's Edition upgrade, The [DLC]").

8) Bonuses: I suspect that many would agree that this is the one great improvement in the new format, as one is now able to compare editions with relative ease. The other changes here were that: (a) the bonuses have been shuffled from the previous (seemingly arbitrary) order to a new (also seemingly arbitrary) order --- no big deal, and (b) some information was removed, specifically the number of bonuses of a specific type (e.g. no longer "7 wallpapers", just "wallpapers") --- which is a bit sad. Also note that the compilation of bonuses was probably done by computer, which resulted in some bugs, mostly duplication of bonuses (e.g. duplicate Viking Diary and Behind the Scenes in "Valhalla Hills: Two-Horned Helmet Edition", duplicate Wasteland Novella 1/2/3 in "Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Deluxe Edition", duplicate Making of République Remastered in "Republique Deluxe Edition").

9) Age Requirements: Here too the order of keywords (e.g. Gore, Violence, Sex, etc.) has been changed (they used to be sorted alphabetically; not any more). Again, no big deal, probably.

10) System Requirements: Another victory for formatting over information. Previously, these fields were long descriptions that were often quite uncomfortable to read. Now, they're rather more legible, at least on desktops and laptops (less so on smartphones). But in the process, some data was summarily discarded. For example, you might now find that virtually no game on GOG requires a keyboard and/or mouse (before the change, more than 1,500 games required them). IIRC, these seemingly trivial requirements were added by GOG to all these games after some gamers complained that they were unable to play some GOG games on tablets. I guess now they can complain again. Interestingly, the long description of old is still present in the game page's HTML, except that it is hidden. In a brave (i.e. silly) move, MaGog has decided to monitor from now on the old hidden long description, rather than the new visible tabulated data, so that the extra information is not lost. Hopefully, GOG will continue maintaining the old description, even though it is hidden. Finally, some game pages have lost some of their system requirements altogether (e.g. "Surgeon Simulator [Premium]" lost its Linux sys reqs, "Project Highrise: Tokyo Towers [DLC]" lost its Mac sys reqs, "Shadowgrounds Survivor" lost its Mac sys reqs, "Titan Quest: Ragnarök [DLC]" lost its Windows sys reqs).

Not all is bad though. As part of the overhaul, some missing data (especially bonuses for premium games) was restored. And, of course, GOG now has video autoplay, which I'm sure everybody loves. Not to mention that one can no longer zoom in (ctrl-mouse-wheel-up) beyond a certain point (as I did until now, for I'm quite short sighted and need my fonts to be rather large), for then the "News" section on the front page (among other things) disappears (turns blank). Never mind, GOG is for young people with good eyesight and infinite CPU power.