Interestingly I received my free game after my 9th purchase, though none for the 10th.

Maybe you bought a bundle (as each game in it counts)

Not really, it's a bug that happened to more people. (including me)

A seriously dick move straight from the Gabe Newell Handbook of Customer Service. It's ironic that GOG has positioned themselves as the customer friendly alternative to Steam yet, in this case, managed to emulate them spot on.

Don't think they intended for it to happen, but rather f*cked up their calculations (or just underestimated the amount of mass-buyers).

Besides, if it happened on Steam, you're stuck with whatever you bought (+ possibly banned for complaining about it). Here you can still refund (as long as you haven't downloaded), if you're really that pissed about having lost the chance to a random freebie.

Thanks for reminding me, completely forgot Steam finally allowed refunds (though in a very limted timeframe) :P

I completely agree that GOG did not intend for this to happen and yet it did. It's what happens once the error is found that defines who or what you are and in this case I think GOG took a position contrary the way they portray themselves. I'm not dissatisfied with any of my purchases and the "value" of the free game is completely inconsequential. Rather, its the disconnect between my perception of GOG (my fault perhaps) and their handling of this situation. If this happened on Steam, I would not have thought twice about it. On GOG, it feels disappointing.

But what else could you possibly expect them to do though?
Give away games without permission from the developers/publishers and taking a hit on every single one?

How do you mess up calculations? If you know you are going to sell 10,000 games and every 10 games gives a freebie, shouldn't you have 1,000 games on standby for a worst case scenario? For the freebies to run out yesterday with the sale still going today means they grossly underestimated the freebies they would need.

Thing is, the more you buy, the less are required for the next freebie (10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 and only then it remains static):


Small Example of the math:


10 people buy 10 games each and everyone gets 1 freebie

10 x 10 = 100, which results in 10 freebies for 100 games sold


1 person (let's call him Mr. Whale) buys 100 games with each succesive purchase reducing the number required for a freebie by 1 until it reaches 5

10 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 6 = 40
60 / 5 = 12

Which results in 17 freebies for 100 games sold.


Which means a difference of 7 freebies for each 100 games sold... and to my assumption that GoG might have quite largely underestimated the amount of Big Buyers (don't automatically want to call them resellers or lump them in by default).

Then assume everyone gets a freebie per 5 games and have 2,000 games on standby for a worst case scenario.

Well, it's not me that you need to explain this too, but GoG...


Sadly companies rather often tend to underestimate the worst case scenarios.

As some people above, I too, did not expected to buy 10 games and only bought 4 but still can imagine my huge disappointment if I'd be in the situation like this. This is bad, really feels like a dick move. Come on, don't believe this "running out of freebies" bullshit, at least Witchers are the games they cannot ever run out of.

So are we going to just let this happen or maybe at least try to bring their attention to this SHIT? Wishlist? Support spam?

I love GOG, don't want to look like some douche, but this is simply not acceptable behavior.

There are several actions they could have done to prevent the problem. One big one would have been to put a 'while supplies last' warning on the free game blurb and not hide it in the faq or forum. Also, a warning the last several hours on the main page would have helped.