The store page's background is still black for the Phantom Liberty launch so I guess I didn't notice it, but how? We basically got two middling Quantic Dream games that were already DRM-free and a bunch of hand-wringing articles about being DRM.

There were people who said to keep expectations in check, but I don't think they could possibly have been low enough to accommodate that. Wow. I'll be the first to admit that there have been some really good releases this year, but my God do they still know how to concoct a disappointment.

Middling? They're David Cage games! They're fractals of insanity! The way he treats women in his games makes me wonder why he isn't on a list somewhere! Plus you know, the various inflammatory things he's said though the years.

https://checkpointgaming.net/news/2021/06/david-cages-alleged-homophobic-slurs-make-french-news/


https://screenrant.com/detroit-become-human-david-cage-quantic-dream-court/


And yes, I went in with low to no expectations and all I got was learning that GOG is trying to transition from normal infrastructure to Kubernites instead of just doing containers. Sure, there was a neat Easter egg or two, but I was also expecting maybe a major infrastructure change or two.

As for the Phantom Library, even that came with caveats, given that one of the skins is a twitch drop, which is great for everyone who doesn't have the game now, or doesn't have a twitch account. Oh, and speaking of which, people reported their libraries vanishing during the event, so that was a nice bonus and scream test. (Where you remove a seemingly unused resource from a network; esp equipment, and see if anyone runs up screaming.)

For a 15th anniversary it was absolutely terrible, hell we didn't even get the whole Quantic Dream catalogue, and if you're not into their type of games there was *NOTHING* else (nope, you don't get any points for running a sale, we get those all year)

It's one thing to keep your expectations in check, but this sorry excuse of a celebration is inexcusable :/

The 15th Anniversary was basically co-opted into the soft re-release of Cyberpunk 2077 event.

IMO GOG has surprised us with some great out-of-the-blue releases over the years, but most of their "events" are pretty underwhelming. The 15th Anniversary was par for the course.

Oh well... it's GOG.

Separate the art from the artist. I'm glad to have Quantic Dream games here, but they are definitely not for everyone. I think GOG probably planned to release Fallout 4 during the anniversary, but then changed their minds, thinking it may chip away at Phantom Liberty sales, since both are RPG shooters.

Also let's not forget the Video Game History Foundation bundle that was available for 24 hours, then pulled out of the blue and every mention of it buried, as if it never happened.

Blast from the past, was really the height of the sale. The whole sale itself was boring. GoG apparently introduced a new bug (at least I hope it's a temporary bug) that shows the browse all games section in horrible black and purple! The color scheme really doesn't work for gog and makes browsing more difficult!
Good thing they kept the blast from the past website, that despite the lack of search options, at least looks good!

Was that the third sale that was listed on the store's splash page? By the time I followed that link it just lead me to an "old" GOG page with no discounts. I wondered why the tab on the main page had a countdown...? So... there was a sale and it was pulled? *sigh*

Yep, I'm not really sure why they bothered to mark the anniversary at all if they had nothing more ready for it. They should have at least came up with a special sale format to somehow distinguish the Anniversary Sale from the Fall Sale they had just weeks before.

But hey, at least the classic GOG home page is still up, at least for the time being, so that's something.

The Blast from the Past link lead me to nothing. I kept hearing people talk about how great it was... but I found nothing.

Try this:
https://www.gog.com/blastfromthepast/

Hard to do that when the artist puts himself in the game directly and has himself lusting over a woman.

15th Anniversary Sale was indeed a major dud IMO.

The Quantic Dreams games were inferior, Achievement-missing second-class citizen versions that are therefore not worth buying. And they also didn't even release their best game on GOG, which is Detroit: Become Human.

Nothing else notable was released during that sale.

And there wasn't even any Insomnia event.

Hopefully GOG will finally convince SEGA to release the Persona games in time for the upcoming Winter sale. Otherwise, I expect that sale will probably be a dud too.

I expected that they'd manage not to break anything, is that really such a tall ask?

imagine caring about achievements in 2023, a grown man too lol. The game is the only thing that matters.