Breja: To be fair, things have been a lot better recently than they used to. The improvement since the moderation started, despite many difficulties at the beginning, is undeniable I think. Still, things will never be perfect, so don't let occasional relapses like this drive you off.
Like I said, I haven't spent as much time here lately, and was never as active as some of the other old members, but personally I don't see much of an improvement. I was planning to only check out the new release threads for a while, but apparently even that isn't enough to escape the forum drama and nutcases.
Overall, this place just doesn't seem as fun and friendly as it used to be when I first joined. For me a gaming forum has to serve one purpose, I want to talk about old and new releases, and other gaming related topics, and ideally it should enhance my experience with the games I play. For several months now, the GOG forum has been more likely to have the opposite effect for me.
To give one specific example: I was really looking forward to the release of Yooka-Laylee, since I played and enjoyed all the old Rare games on the Nintendo 64. But instead of discussions about the game, the only Yooka-Laylee related threads here were about the political drama surrounding it. And when it was finally released, a small but very loud group of people ( or maybe an even smaller group, with multiple accounts ) spammed the game with biased, useless protest "reviews" and ratings. Fast forward a few weeks, I finally bought my own copy and started playing it a few days ago -- Who knew, it's actually very good, and meets every expectation I had for that kind of game.
So the reviews and discussions here did absolutely nothing to enhance my experience with the game, and I would have been better off ignoring all of it entirely, and just focusing on the game itself instead. And this has been the common theme here for a long time now. The forum is full of fighting, trolling, political rants and general negativity.
I think to some extent we can blame the political climate, and in particular that past US presidential election. It divided the country, and people have been fighting non-stop ever since. The situation in Europe and elsewhere is heated too, but it seems to be the worst in the US. To get back to the Yooka-Laylee example, while reviews here and at Steam have been spammed with politically motivated messages, at the German Amazon website the vast majority of reviewers give it top ratings, and no one even seems to mention or care about that "Jon Tron Incident".
On topic: I'm afraid this isn't my genre at all, but best of luck to the devs. Here's hoping the crazies won't scare off any potential customers. At least all the political comments are vaguely related to the game for once.
