I've been avoiding this thread because I have to work to do and really can't afford to get caught up in the entertaining random fun that you all are having.

However, I wanted to pop by and ask a question. I had heard informed speculation that Banished was going to be a flash freebie yesterday, however I don't see any evidence of that happening. In fact, I completely missed every single flash freebie, even though I checked the homepage about a dozen times yesterday. Bad timing.

Anyhow, can someone enlighten me as to why there was speculation that Banished would be a flash freebie? Follow up question: is it likely that Banished will be freebie another day?

I'm sure it's a great game and that the devs deserve to get paid well for making it, but with my back log and current giveaway going on, I really can't justify buying it just yet, even at it's current sale price. If it were just a bit cheaper, or obviously free, I'd jump all over it.

A banner for the game has been found by JMich among all the other banners for the flash sales (including the other free games and some games that also haven't been featured yet) so it looked like something was planned with it and I hope it still is involved in any sort of deal. Link to the images is in the first post of this thread although I can't access the pictures right now.

edit: Apparently the link in JMich's original post is still working. click

The freebie turned out to be Alan Wake's American Nightmare instead, which was the other game freebie candidate. Banished still has not showed up yet and probably will show up on another day either at a discount or another freebie offer, or it might not show up at all either.

As has been mentioned numerous times in the promo threads, the GOG Summer Sale promo web page code was reverse engineered and analyzed to determine various things about the sale including games slated to be in the flash sales and what bundles there would be. From that analysis, every single thing came true so far. Banished was one of the 8 games that did not show up, so it was presumed it would be one of the freebie games that GOG said would be flash sale freebies, or that it would show up later at a discount. So right now, Banished and the Outlast DLC are the only two things in the promo which were predicted to show up and have not showed up yet. Every one of the daily bundles predicted to show up have showed up exactly as predicted, and every flash game that was predicted also showed up except for these 2 remaining unknowns. So while nothing is 100% guaranteed, the predictions have about a 99.99% accuracy rate so far and are good to lean towards being correct as a result. :)

Even if some predictions turn out to be incorrect though, JMich and others that contributed to forensically studying GOG's web page source code to figure out the sale have done a great job. :)

Excellent explanation. Thank you very much for filling me in on the important details of the hows whos whens and whys of it!

Pay it forward(as I know you already do) :)

The person who introduced me to GOG and The Witcher games offered to pre-order The Witcher 3 for me last night, which was such a wonderful surprise and gesture(especially given the regional pricing differences that have me refuse to purchase it myself based on principle, as does ALL regional pricing with a significant price difference) and reinforced the notion that I have so many unplayed games, some of which have been thoughtful gifts from others, and I have not reciprocated the energy so to speak by playing them yet. So I said to my friend that I will accept his offer only if I finish the first 2 games.

My hand is healing well but my wrist was a little more damaged than I realised and it appears to have exacerbated an previous injury that I had from an enjoyable tussle with 2 steroid-fueled cops back in the day when I thought going to a peaceful protest might make a difference in the world. Still, with that said I'm back to the punching bag(lightly) with both hands(mostly elbows still as I'm wary of re-injuring it) and can do push-ups and lift stuff again, which is great considering I couldn't even hold a pen at first!

That website no longer exists and redirects to SOE's homepage, a company notorious for some of the most shocking decisions ever in MMORPG history.

So, no re-appearance of the Omerta Japanese DLC since the freebie? Spewin I missed it at the time.

Ah but there's a small detail that makes a world of difference. This calls for a bit of history first. Bear with me for a few paragraphs.

At the end of 2012 Ubisoft lost the rights over XIII due to some copyright lawiery stuff and GOG couldn't sell the game anymore.
I still have the game on my shelf. I can download and install it and it works alright. Even if it were pulled from my shelf, I could still install it as long as I had it downloaded prior to their removal. If I want to play my game I can do it regardless of Ubisoft or any other company's say on the matter. Even GOG couldn't lock me out.

Now see what happened to a bunch of games with their lovely DRM blended in. From 2007 onwards Microsoft spent a few years pushing that piece of crap called GFWL to game devs. Several of them incorporated it into their games but as it turned out, it was an awful mess that only managed to annoy and anger customers. Loyal, paying customers - you know, the opposite of pirates. Eventually Microsoft decided it would pull the plug* on GFWL on July 2014 but then there was another problem: what would happen to the hundreds of games that depend on it? Some devs patched it out of their games, most don't have the resources or don't care. Either way, once MS puts that server to rest several games will simply stop working forever.

* Announced in Aug 2013 in a since-deleted support article for AoE Online (source: Wikipedia) Apparently MS realized it has painted itself into a corner and shutting it down would be even worse.

As you can see, MS doesn't even have to go bankrupt to lock customers out of their games. But Valve isn't Microsoft, right? They're profitable and they're creative, with a bright future ahead isn't it?

Maybe. Maybe not. Gabe Newell has been doing a great job leading Valve but are you sure he'll never make a stupid decision that empties the company's accounts? And what happens once he gets too sick or dies? Are you sure Valve's next president will guide Valve as well as Gaben? As an example, are you willing to bet Apple is going to be the same innovative company without Jobs at the helm?

The only thing that's certain about both the financial and technological landscape is that it changes a lot. As skeletonbow said, it's a gamble. It might take a few years or it could be 5 decades but eventually Steam will be gone. I'd rather depend on it the least I can, just in case.

Is ether one like to come back on sale?

I've been on vacation and only really just started to catch up with the sale :/

All we know is that we believe there will be 2 bundles offered per day until June 28th as advertised and predicted, and we presume there will be flash sales recurring until then just as it has every day as well, with the exact same games (227 or so) rotating in the flash sale. It is speculated with a high degree of reasoning that June 29th will be a repeat of June 18th and offer all bundles and all flash sale items all day as an encore of the entire sale for those who missed daily deals previously. We don't know this with 100% certainty but so far everything that was predicted including exactly what games would be on flash or what bundles would be available have come true 100%. Past performance is not indicative of future results and all that. The best thing anyone can do is to monitor the sale every day for the best deals on bundles and flash, and hope there is an encore on the 29th. Whatever one can't get a better deal on come the 29th they can take advantage of the 700 games priced at 50% off which is a decent deal as well. There are a few predictions that haven't yet occurred and GOG could throw any kind of surprises, bonuses, etc. at us at any moment that were not predicted as well. Best way to play the game... is to stay in the game. :)

The Deluxe edition appears in flash sales at $7.50 so keep an eye on the front page every 2.5-3 hours until it cycles back in.

Both versions are available 50% off ($10 and $15) all day every day until the 30th 1PM GMT.

You probably confused it with Shattered Haven or Shattered Steel. Shattered Union is published by Take-Two and, thus, 100% impossible to have ever been available on GOG.

In my case it was not informed speculation as I expected Alan Wake American Nightmare to be the 4th freebie, but I saw no need not to hope for Banished to be a freebie until AW:AN appeared as clickable in the Coming Soon section (freebies were clickable there, unlike other games).

Given jmich's sleuthing I'm still hoping to see it in a flash sale before the end, otherwise I'll get it at 50% Monday morning before going to work.

Not so much 'informed speculation' as long-shot hope. When seriously considered, the possibility of the flash freebie being Banished appeared rather small.

Very convincing argument. I'd even go a little further with the Games for Windows Live reference. When it was originally being pitched to publishers, mobile was small potatoes, Apple really didn't matter much for gaming, neither did Linux, and Microsoft was very much on top and looked like nothing could ever happen to MS. It seemed like a real real safe bet. If anyone could afford to keep these servers running, surely the richest software corporation in the world could.

However, I really doubt publishers really care about the longevity of their products. History shows that they have always been more concerned with rushing out new products, regardless of quality, for the quickest, easiest buck. That's why so many old games, before GOG came around, remained very difficult to get working on modern operating systems, many times even if the version difference was only one step, like Me to XP, or XP to Vista. There are more examples too to illustrate that short-sighted thinking, which also is evidenced in the incredibly tumultuous nature of the industry itself. It fails to look back, and it fails to look forward, so focused on the immediate profit. EPIC is probably the ONLY independent large publisher/developer that has consistently bucked that trend.

To further argue against the inane idea that Steam has the customer's best interest at heart, and is worth placing blind trust in, I present the fact that you do NOT own your games, you license them from Steam and Steam retains the right to deny you access to them FOR ANY REASON. If you don't like them changing their terms of service, you can't just take the games you "bought" prior and leave the service. No, your account is terminated and you lose access to everything permanently. If your conduct is something they don't like, you lose again. If you even begin to start the process to attempt to sue them for some reason (I know it's hard to imagine that a corporation may eventually mishandle the 'rights' of a customer') you lose all your games.

They are like the Walmart of gaming. Try to unionize, you're fired. Speak to the media about deplorable working conditions, you're fired. Try to get OSHA involved, you're fired.

What if Steam believes that taking a different approach, say leaving PC in the dust to support only the ARM architecture (not terribly far-fetched of an idea a few years from now, although I'd still be shocked) because supporting both architectures increases costs. You think they'll just give you all the games you bought, DRM-free? No. In fact, they don't even have the power to do that. Every publisher of every game that has Steamworks would have to sign off on that, and be forced with paying the development resources to unhook the two. No, instead they'll say "thank you, it has been a good run, you got years of use from what you paid us, and we even gave you free achievements along the way, but we've decided to go in a different direction, wish us luck (and fuck you)".

The money you paid them would have been better spent on hookers and blow.