According to his LinkedIn page, he worked on Far Cry 3 "at Ubisoft Montreal". I've no idea if he still works there but the general company attitude seems to have rubbed off on him (especially reading his above snark-saturated comments against modding).

He did have a very short stint at Ubisoft, this is before he left the AAA industry and formed Hinterland Games and started development on The Long Dark and he has actually had a long standing "issue" with GOG, for a long time.

I dont quite remember why, but I dont feel like digging through DMs from like 6 years ago on my old suspended twitter account.

Galaxy thinks otherwise. It tracks game time. And you cannot even delete/restart it. There is an option to disable the feature, yes! But... If you played a game from former Galaxy version, it still keeps all data stored -and displayed-!!!

Responding to the tweet, Chandana Ekanayake (developer of Falcon Age): "Where do I sign up? (meant sarcastically with face with rolling eyes) Wasn’t a fan of GoG before and this seals it."

That seems highly hypothetical to me. Which GOG customer buys games to play through them immediately after? I thought we just hoard them. ;)

Anyway, I don't really see the difference. Any rational person would see that getting refunds for a game that you've played through is abusing the system, regardless of whether you keep the installer after the refund or not. Selling your used retail copies is another matter but if you played through a bought game and then returned it to the retail store, noone would think that's perfectly normal behavior. The person doing it would probably think themselves cool for cheating the system and others would think they're kind of a dick, but hardly anyone would see it as ethical, just because it's technically legal. And if you already stoop to that, you could just as well pirate the game or get a refund immediately and keep the installer. I think the group of people who would do something like that but not any other abuse is really marginal.

I think we have to just simply accept that some indie devs are going to bare a grudge on GOG for this, hopefully in time they come around and mature, but ultimately GOG made the right choice here and sometimes doing the right thing gets you in trouble with the morally-challenged.

This may sound ridiculous, but I'm genuinely scared by seeing the stupidity of some devs. I've been playing video games since the golden times of Richard Garriot, Brian Fargo, Molyneux and Mike Singleton (still remember being awed by Gollop's "Laser Squad").

These guys performed miracles with very scarce technological resources. It was the Golden Age of piracy and these guys knew that their games were being pirated to exhaustion. Still, their goal seemed only to make video games that everyone would love to play and enjoy the success and fame that such games would gather.

Now - in the XXI century - we get devs who work with Unity engines and have a much easier task and who seem little more than greedy, spoiled brats with scarce grasp of how the real world's like.
(insert "old man yells at cloud" meme here) :|

I am not, because it shows very quickly whom not to support, makes choosing devs who stand up for the craft rather then making money rather obvious.

I understand what you mean. And I give you 100% reason.
But when I talk about "being scared" I mean that I never imagined how different younger game devs would turn out to be in comparison to their predecessors. And how much they'd support and enforce DRM.

The "old guys" (like Fargo, Ron Gilbert, Gollop, etc) have no problem in selling their games without any form of DRM and even support the DRM-free policy.

As for some of the "young dudes"... I really wanted to buy "The Long Dark". Was only expecting the game to have a cool discount to buy it on GOG. Until the game vanished. Now the guy who created the game will not see my money.

I could just as well download a pirated version of the game, fully patched and 100% playable. But I have better things to do with my time, like giving my money to devs/publishers who sell on GOG and playing their games.

Still... returning to the original topic: stupidity always scares me. Because some (most?) of the greatest tragedies in human History were born out of stupidity.

The sensation I have (which in any case pretends to be the absolute truth) is that he is not only throwing a say that doesn't corresponds to him in how this platform applies it's refund policies, but also assuming that the purchasers (and potential purchasers) will be acting in bad faith by getting the game and returning after getting tired, which is not cool.

I don't blame devs at all for thinking 30 days is excessive. I think 30 days is excessive too. That said PC singleplayer stuff (which is 99% what GOG sells) has been on the honor system for a long time now, so I doubt it makes much difference and devs probably shouldn't freak out about it. We'll see though.

Also I doubt this guy has any control over what publishers do.

hehe 2 hours is enough sure :P
i bet eu law gives much more time

I agree...

... but...

I would argue that -- especially with a growing number of indies -- we're seeing what they feel is an attack on their most recent strategy -- releasing an absolutely bare-bones "base game," collecting money from sales meanwhile hinting at a roadmap that is really solely dependent on the number of "base game" sales.

Isn't that strategy the same as most games nowadays?

Not quite. Why? Because they know the "base game" is only a skeleton of an experience -- almost a proof of concept.

So, with that thinking / strategy...

Within 30 days a gamer has a high probability of figuring out a game they purchased is just a proof-of-concept and saying... well... this sucks... especially at full price. Refunded!

If these indie devs were providing full games on release, this 30 day policy would mean absolutely nothing. It's because the devs are playing a "long con" that 30 days hurts.

And I will again say... gamers want games and prefer to keep them. The game return / refund numbers are not high, but continually releasing bar-bones proof-of-concept games or straight unfinished games will push those numbers higher.

IMHO this all is a symptom of growing entitlement within the development community. They feel that gamers owe them sales... even when they provide unfinished work in a consumer-unfriendly strategy. Provide a good, full experience and gamers willingly pay.

Yep many new games are just a base to put dlc and micro on it.
And we havent even talked about the early access ones , half of them never see a barely enjoyable state.