"up to" has become pretty common when GOG describes a sale. (Doesn't bother me though) Never get hyped just from the description.

In GOG's case a thing like that doesn't really bother me, since it's easy to see the actuall price of every item. It pisses me off far worse in physical stores, where you then have to inspect every game (or a movie or a book) for an individual sticker with the actuall discount. And then of course the one thing you want doesn't have a sticker, so you have to find someone who works there to ask, they don't know, they have to check, and by the time you get the answer you're fed up with it to the point where you don't want to buy anything anymore :D

I... don't understand this thread. How were you suckered? Where's the trick play on words? Why would you expect everything to be 80% off when the headline clearly states otherwise?

Is this a case of English in the US being subtly different than elsewhere?

I had the impression that everyone does this. All of the grocery stores/department stores in my home city do it all the time. "Up tp 80% of!!", when in fact only a precious few things (generally the older stock they want to move) are actually 80% off, while the more in-demand items are discounted far more modestly, or not even discounted at all. I think it's just a simple matter of quickly glancing at a headline and getting instinctively over-eager at the number (Up to 80%) and the names dropped (Pillars of Eternity....and more, up to XX% off!). I know I've done it sometimes too.

^This. Actually, when GOG started to regularly offer sales including different discounts, they used to simply state "x% off". After complaints from the community, similar to yours, they changed it to "up to x% off" ever since to prevent such misunderstandings.

Basically it's what all the above folks said; no tricks here; just the usual marketing at play as in pretty much every other store, both retail & online.

But, considering the part of your post that reads: ...let me tell you that the discount you see currently, IS a good deal. The game is great and it'll entertain you for many hours.

I am sure that OP has never been to a super market with such sale only to find there is only one item at 80% offf.

I haven't, but this is a frequent online store thing.
Actually I guess you could say it's more "disappointment" than being suckered.
Being suckered is when you think something at Wal-Mart is on sale (and all of those items even have discount stickers on them), go through checkout, pay full price, and never notice. I always have to watch the readout as those sale items ring up so that this doesn't happen. Sneaky, sneaky Wal-Mart. :P

Where this almost gets me is during those Weekly Sales, and this happened to me last week. I already owned EVERYTHING in the Weekly Sales promo, except for one item (forget the title, doesn't matter). It was on one of those "UP 80% OFF!" sales, but the only item in the list of "Items you don't already own" was only 10% off. So I'm looking at that game, thinking... "how is this price 80% of a $30 game?" And then I think, oh... right... it's UPTO 80% off. Heck, for that matter 0% off is "upto 80%". That's right, FULL PRICE is "upto 80% off"!!!

Like another of my favorites (not used by GOG, at least... not yet!) is "for just pennies a day you can own this product..." Well yeah, duh. EVERYTHING is just pennies a day! But how many pennies, and over what period of time? A million dollars can be broken down to "pennies a day", like a LOT of pennies per day, or a few pennies over a LOT OF YEARS! Two pennies per day will make a million dollars in "only" about 137 thousand years!

Would it be better if the sales were worded e.g. "starting from 25%!"... and then you find out that is the discount you get for any of the items, ie. none get a deeper discount than 25%?!?

It would still be true though, it starts from where it ends, like a stillborn child in their mother's womb playing a harpsichord.

I think that we can sometimes be sensitive to such marketing terms from past experiences with retailers making advertising claims like "up to 90% off" and then having a sale with 100 items on sale for 10% off and a $3 fridge magnet on sale for $0.30 thereby making the "up to 90% off" sale true to words because the magnet is 90% off and it is part of the sale. In my fabricated example, it is quite obvious this fictitious retailer has used dishonest marketing tactics to lure people into their sale disingenuously and once we've experienced this enough times we quickly become not only suspect of such claims being made by others in the future but I think in many cases people go in not only assuming such claims are bogus but looking specifically to validate their fears of dishonest marketing in some cases using their own negative confirmation bias.

The tough call is where does the line lay between honest and dishonest marketing claims and intentions? In my example above it is clearly a dishonest shill. I don't think that's always the case however even if I would generally agree that "up to xyz" is a marketing tool that is used disingenuously more often than not.

A slightly less ambiguous and more useful way of marketing would be for companies to give a range in the promos they offer such as "25% to 90% off!", or even "25-80% off, with special discount 90% off on limited select titles" or other words that at least attempt to be as truthful and clear as possible while remaining as terse as possible as well.

Whenever any gaming sites have sales on, they almost always go "up to 90% off" whether it is stated anywhere or not, so personally I am always interested in seeing a list of the most highly discounted items to see if any appeal to me. If the site provides the ability to sort by price and discount rate, I'll look through their list like that and make up my mind. Sadly, GOG has no ability to display sorted by price or discount % and I don't think they will ever add this ability either as it appears to be non-conducive to their business model of making you read through 900 pages of games in no particular order in hopes of getting whimsical purchases perhaps. :) What I always wonder is if that actually draws in more revenue from people's whimsical purchases forced to look at the entire catalogue, or if it loses revenue from people like me who would buy more games if I could sort them and find what I want in the least amount of time. I know GOG has had sales in the past where I would have bought something if I could sort it in a manner to find what I wanted in the least time but was too busy to spend 20 minutes scrolling endlessly through unsorted pages of games to try to find the gems on sale that I might go for.

So there are many ways they could improve the presentation of their discounted items in the future for sure, both with conveying the discounts, and with the ability to sort and filter based on discount and price and in ascending or descending order, also with the ability to filter in our out based on product type (ie: game, DLC, upgrade packs, movies, etc.)

GOG's engineering TODO goal list is probably massive enough that trivia like this is I suspect in their "someday/maybe" folder at best, rather than something we're likely to see any time soon though.

On a closing note though, I will say that I do see and appreciate a gradual improvement to how they do their promotions, at least from my own viewpoint - even if the improvement rate and specific features aren't as many as I'd like to see nor as fast as I'd like to see them happen, it's still forward movement which is good.

Easy fix: "Minimum XX% off, and up to XX+% off with select titles."

Edit: "fix" assumes that it needs to be fixed in the first place. It doesn't. But this should end the complaints of the OP.

Could be once again paying the $30-50 I paid back in the late 80s when these games first came out. :)

No one will ever be able to formulate a statement so clear and unequivocal that there won't still be be people who are confused, or who feel misled. =)