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New features, local currency option, new payment methods, store credit, and an updated look for GOG.com!

For almost six years now we strive to bring you not only the best in DRM-Free gaming, but also to give you the greatest experience possible. To that end we're always looking for ways to improve our site and service. Today, we're rolling out a vastly updated version of our store with an improved interface, sleek new look, and lots of handy new features. Let's take a quick tour, shall we?

Video: Welcome to the fresher, better GOG.com!

First of all we are giving you more DRM-free content: movies! We are starting with 20 documentaries about internet and gaming culture but we aim high! You can find more on this in the appropriate newspost, so let's focus on the other features we're rolling out.

We wanted to give you more choice as to how you pay for things on GOG.com. Now it's up to you if you want to pay in US Dollars, or in the currency primarily used in your country, whether it's the Euro, Pounds Sterling, Australian Dollars, or Russian Roubles. That's four new currencies supported by GOG.com for your convenience. Still - the choice is yours, so if you want to stick to US dollars, just switch to it - you find this option at the bottom of each page. To make buying things at GOG.com an even more flexible process, we're introducing some new payment methods: Sofort, Giropay, Webmoney, and Yandex.

All this also means that users for whom the local currency pricing has been enabled will have an option to select one of two different prices for each game in our catalog. Of course, we stand by the simple truth that $1 does not equal 1€, so a game with a $5.99 price tag will cost 4.49 Euro, 3.69 British Pounds, 6.49 Australian Dollars, and 219 Roubles respectively. $9.99 translates to 7.49 Euro, 5.99 Pounds Sterling, 10.89 Australian Dollars, and 359 Roubles. In a perfect world we would apply the same method of pricing to all of the games we offer. However, things are a little bit more complicated, and there are some games in our catalog that follow a different region-based pricing scheme. However, we wouldn't be GOG.com if we didn't find a way to make right by the users who end up paying relatively more for such titles. Here's where the Fair Price Package comes in!

The Fair Price Package applies to all of the titles which we couldn't include in our standard pricing scheme. If you end up paying more for a game than its standard US Dollar price, we'll refund you the difference out of our own pocket. The refunded value will be added to your account in Store Credit in the currency of your purchase. That's right, no more gift codes, you'll be getting Store Credit that you can use to purchase anything on GOG.com or partially pay for an item that's more expensive. More choice, ease of use, and less limitations!

Finally, the GOG.com store has gotten itself a substantial visual revamp. We went for a fresh, mobile-friendly design that should make it even easier to find the games you want, notice the hot promos, and see what's new. The main page, catalog view, product pages, and checkout have been updated and also lay the groundwork for even more overhaul, coming within the next few months together with many of the GOG Galaxy features. We hope you like it!

PS. Unfortunately, we need to drop some titles from our classic catalog. In such cases, we always do our best to give you an advance warning and a last chance to purchase such games - preferably with a considerable discount. Check this news post to find out which titles are being removed from our catalog, when will it happen, and what parting discounts for them do we currently offer.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by G-Doc
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modkon: Found one more issue: reviews of games cannot be rated anymore, it seems (I take it, this is just a temporary bug?!)...
If you still don't see it (I do) and happen to use adblock you might want to check the settings:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/welcome_to_the_fresher_better_gogcom/post562
I'll give it a while before real judgement on the new design. One thing I think needs to change. There is too much white space. I get it's a web trend right now, but I like higher information density. I'm betting others do too.

On a smaller note. Please make it more obvious that I own a game on it's store page.
high rated
Not at all "fresher" or "better". The font is uglier and more difficult to read. The layout is even more broken by larger font sizes than ever before. The Search button is usually off the right hand side of my window, and I have to resize my window to a silly wide size. I can no longer skip between screen shots with left/right buttons -- when I click on a screenshot to blow it up, it's just the image, no way to advance to previous or future images. HORRIBLE new screenshot interface, royal pain in the ass. Overall, the site is much more difficult to read and use. Big step backwards. Not at all happy with it.

I'm sure many of the disenters will be met with the canned response that people are averse to change, and once people get used to it, they will see the benefits. And I say to this, time and time again, NO. Bad UI is bad UI, and no amount of getting used to it will change what is bad. See for example the Microsoft Office Ribbon and Windows 8. I know what I dislike, why I dislike it, and why the old UI was better. No amount of time will change this. We can only hope that GoG will consider our feedback seriously and fix some of the more glaring flaws with the new UI.

Update: as I tried to read reviews, the font was just painful, as was the column wrapping. At larger font sizes (control mouse scroll wheel zooming), the layout goes berserk. The new font becomes very thin, as well as lumpy (different parts of letters are fatter/thinner), like a typewriter whose keys are making uneven imprints on paper. Once the font is big enough, the right-hand side menu goes away and moves to the bottom, but then the review takes up the entire width of the window, which already has to be very wide to accommodate the new fixed menu bar. Very wide text-wrap around is difficult to read (this is why we have many narrow newspaper column, it's easier to read this way). If I go all the way full screen on my monitor, the text width goes back to a readable size.

When games are listed, such as in a promotion, it's is completely unreadable if I zoom in more than 110%. Prices become misaligned, title names become almost entirely truncated, formatting just goes all to Hell. The fonts are so tiny that if I use 100% size, or 110% size, I can't read anything on my 1920x1200 monitor, since the resolution is too high. But if I zoom the web page to make the font bigger, the layout goes all to Hell and the site becomes both unusable and unreadable. The top bar also winds up shifted down the screen, with scrollable text above it, rather than being fixed at the very top. If I tell my browser to not allow website specific fonts, and use only my defined default fonts, then the rating stars don't display, because I guess the rating stars are done using whatever font the website it using and aren't in Times New Roman or Arial or whatever.

If the goal was to make the website more useable on more devices by making things more flowable, then this has *utterly* failed. The new design cannot tolerate anything beyond no-zoom, with no larger fonts, flows bizarrely as I resize my window, and is just plain unusable at much of any zoom level. I don't know what devices it actually *is* readable/usable on, but it sure as heck isn't my PC.

Change the font back to the old one, which resized nicely and was far more legible. The new one is too thin, and doesn't upsize properly, since it gets all lumpy and isn't rendered properly. Fix the layout and flow-ability so that larger font zooms can be used without breaking the website. I either can't read the website because the font is too tiny on my monitor, or I can't use the website because I've zoomed the font and the layout *completely* falls apart and becomes illegible/hidden/truncated/destroyed. Either way, the website is illegible.

At least the forums are still very readable :)
Post edited August 28, 2014 by ewelsh
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Breja: It used to be simple, one price, no DRM, no bullshit. Why mess with that? It WORKED.
"They could've settled into their niche as 'that place that sells old games', and let it be. But they have bigger dreams than that."
I guess they're living their dream.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by MoP
Why is everyone trying to make websites for touchscreen devices? Some of us still use "old fashioned" laptops.
feature suggestion, have something at login to remind you if you've left your caps-lock on like a fool while you type your password in. I've seen it on other sites. Could have used it just now lol.
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VanishedOne: At least the Community WIshlist has its old colouring. Perhaps it'll turn grey when it leaves beta. :-P
Perhaps. Maybe the designer is a great fan of this book, this "50 shades of..." you know ;)
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Breja: I thought about it for a while, and the more I think about all that is going on, the more worried I get. I know I will sound like the "get off my lawn!" old guy (and I;m not even old), but all the new stuff is just making my skin crawl recently. And when the PR announces something as "Newer and better" it almost always means "not nearly as good, but will hopefully generate sum buzz".

First we have the "gog galaxy thing" (optional I know, but bear with me), now we get the "mobile friendly" design and movies... it feels like GOG is grasping at straws to appeal to some vague "cool, hip, newer audience" instead of just being the GOG everyone loved, the store with DRM free games- no nonsense, just games. (what? people use PC's to acces a PC games distributor? nonsense! make it mobile! and add some facebooks and twitties to it! thats what kids like, yes?) It used to be simple, one price, no DRM, no bullshit. Why mess with that? It WORKED. WORKED for customers, WORKED for Indies, and must have worked for other publishers too, since it's now with the big change that we lose over 30 games from the catalogue.

I cannot wrap my head around why was there no discussion to gather feedback beforehand, no survey among the users? That just elevates my distrust towards the changes. If everything was hunky-dory the big change would have been announced way before, not just dumped on everyone out of the blue. It smells of "we know this sucks, so we're not giving you any time to react, and we hope you'll just get over it".

I'm not saying I'm leaving GOG, but it feels more and more like I'm staying here because there is no good DRM-free alternative, not because I like it so much here.

I was always very impressed with how fair GOG was, and willing to listen to the users. So I hope at least some of the changes will be reversed, or somehow corrected.
I don't know that site redesigns are the sort of thing a company tends to get community involvement on. They probably already have a long list of wishes from users over the years about what they would like to see. One thing is for sure, they are inevitable. Any healthy business isn't going to stick with a website for very long. People hate change, so someone is invariably going to wish things didn't change, but is really unhealthy for it not to.

To that, when it comes to mobile friendly design, that isn't about appealing to a hipper audience. At this point they were grossly behind on the trend to the point that the old site could be considered user hostile. I'm pretty sure they have been getting flack about it's lack of accessibility on mobile devices for awhile now.

I will say I don't get the movie thing. A handful of game documentaries isn't really bringing movies. I would love to see movies trend DRM-Free, but I don't know that GoG is going to be able to pull that off, and It does feel really weird.
high rated
Dear GoG,

The new design really is incredibly dull and ugly. Maybe it is more functional for mobile devices but it is a huge step in the wrong direction for those who use their PC to buy their PC games.

I have visited this site virtually every day since I joined a couple of years ago because it made me happy to do so but I am finding the more changes that are made and the further the focus moves away from the Good Old Games the more I am losing my interest. I have always felt a tremendous amount of goodwill from this site and that is why I have bought hundreds of games here even though I have only actually played a fraction of them, but that goodwill is being slowly but surely eroded and I now feel far less compulsion to do so.

Do what you like with your site, I just want to put my thoughts out there. It is a shame, that's all.
I liked the old design more.Don't like the new one,more cluttered,less efficent and less soul in it.
Can we get an option to use the old design?
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JustSayin: Why is everyone trying to make websites for touchscreen devices? Some of us still use "old fashioned" laptops.
Ideally it should do both. Old sites were pixel locked and couldn't adapt to anyone really. Trends now are to let the site expand and flow to what the end user has. It has to transition through a couple of states sometimes, but the theory is nobody is getting excluded. Everyone is considered.

Sometimes it means there is a compromise made, and there could have been some better version of something if it was targeted to one screen resolution, but there are too many resolutions in both orientations to be running a business that way.
I like the new look but it seems there are still a few kinks that need to be ironed out.

* The rating stars are now black, making them more difficult to see.
* On some pages, the games I own are not showing up as such or are more difficult to see.
* Navigation around the site is not always simple or easy to figure out.

Please do not forget that some of us are older and need reading glasses to read fine print. In short, there are "ease of use" adjustments to be made. I trust that these will be worked out in time.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by Khalaq
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Deltafunction: *snip*
100% agreed
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Breja: I thought about it for a while, and the more I think about all that is going on, the more worried I get. I know I will sound like the "get off my lawn!" old guy (and I;m not even old), but all the new stuff is just making my skin crawl recently. And when the PR announces something as "Newer and better" it almost always means "not nearly as good, but will hopefully generate sum buzz".

First we have the "gog galaxy thing" (optional I know, but bear with me), now we get the "mobile friendly" design and movies... it feels like GOG is grasping at straws to appeal to some vague "cool, hip, newer audience" instead of just being the GOG everyone loved, the store with DRM free games- no nonsense, just games. (what? people use PC's to acces a PC games distributor? nonsense! make it mobile! and add some facebooks and twitties to it! thats what kids like, yes?) It used to be simple, one price, no DRM, no bullshit. Why mess with that? It WORKED. WORKED for customers, WORKED for Indies, and must have worked for other publishers too, since it's now with the big change that we lose over 30 games from the catalogue.

I cannot wrap my head around why was there no discussion to gather feedback beforehand, no survey among the users? That just elevates my distrust towards the changes. If everything was hunky-dory the big change would have been announced way before, not just dumped on everyone out of the blue. It smells of "we know this sucks, so we're not giving you any time to react, and we hope you'll just get over it".

I'm not saying I'm leaving GOG, not even close yet, but it feels more and more like I'm staying here because there is no good DRM-free alternative, not because I like it so much here.

I was always very impressed with how fair GOG was, and willing to listen to the users. So I hope at least some of the changes will be reversed, or somehow corrected.
+1
To try and show that not everyone is a grumpy old man who doesn't like anything different, I would like to say that I enjoy the new look.

The only big downside I see are that it does seem a bit grey. Some more color would be nice, especially with the logo. There was no reason the big green GOG had to go.

Over all though the layout does seem a fair bit easier to navigate. Also a pet peeve of mine has finally been answered, since now I can go directly to my wishlist from the "Account" panel. Before this was impossible, as you had to go to the library first then switch over to see your wishlist.

EDIT: Also, I hope this means we'll be getting GOG Galaxy soon. I'm still excited for that.
Post edited August 27, 2014 by EckoShy