The FAQ says: This implies that the method of the refund will always match the method of payment. Is it possible to get a store credit for a different game if we prefer? I imagine it would be a lot faster in many cases, and I for one would be just as likely to spend any refund on a different game from GOG.com anyway.

Have you tried running your games Ina computer? It seems to work for everyone else..

It should be possible, since that is the default for gifts that don't work, unless the buyer of the gift code also asks for a refund. Should you be in that position, ask support directly.

I have to agree it is odd that you are having so many problems. I have over 250 games on GOG and of those I have tried only one will not work. Personally I find that trying to run the game from either the start menu or directly from the directory it is installed in usually solves the problem. Running as administrator works most of the time too. It must be frustrating for you but I think the problem is something to do with your PC rather than the games themselves.

So I was playing Zork 1 and for some reason my monitor keeps on blowing up because of it. Can I get a refund?

So what's stopping people from claiming fake problems and demanding refunds even though their game works perfectly? Not that I'd do that, but I assume there's going to be some sort of proof required... right? Are you willing to tolerate, say, 2-3 refunded sales from each active account once people realize they can get away with it? Not everyone is part of the "we love GOG, please take my money" bandwagon, and I think your hardcore forum community gives a much more positive impression of the user base than what actually exists on average.

Seriously, this is the Internet. Even if you start denying refunds for a certain account after a certain amount of abuse, what's stopping someone from making a new account and doing the same? What if players pool together to get refunds across many accounts while behind-the-scenes they're distributing the refunded titles between each other?

Obviously people can pirate anyway, and at a certain point these are not really "lost sales" so much as another form of piracy... but I'm not sure GOG realizes to what length some people will go for the sake of scamming others. Is GOG going to review every request in detail? Start searching random message boards to find people who are group-abusing? Hunting down IP addresses and fake names/credit card details/PayPal accounts? What if users start using proxies and VPNs, are you going to try to sort through that mess? And the difference is, this time, it's the GOG support team wasting its time and energy on the pirates, instead of simply ignoring them.

Maybe it's because I do support for online games myself, but I have very little faith in gamers to not abuse anything you give them the opportunity to. It's a gigantic headache waiting to happen, and while I'm assuming the plan is to improve revenue by increasing buyer confidence etc., I don't think that will actually make much difference in the long run - they already accept the risks of buying games digitally. At best all you're doing is getting a second chance to restore the faith of a small fraction of your customers that have issues (your words, not mine).

I applaud this very much. If I wasn't supporting GOG because of philosophy, selection and pricing anyway this would convince me. As is, it makes me even more ready to wait and see if new releases find their way here.

I've already posted, but I will do so again.

This is one of the things that makes GOG so special. This is really, really, cool. Definitely shows they are thinking about us, the customer.

Ok, at that point I knew you must be joking. Nice trolling attempt. :)

I don't know about the "runs like crap" part, but the poor gamepad support is just how the game is (in all PC versions, not only on GOG). It just seems the developer who ported it to PC decided to change the controls to keyboard.

The odd thing is that the game does seem to react to some gamepad input (ie. using the thumbstick might make some in-game menu scroll, etc.), but I think pretty much everyone must play the PC version with the keyboard at this point.

I think the original DP release thread on GOG had more information about that gamepad issue. Apparently the developer had tried to add some kind of gamepad support, but using some archaic pre-DirectInput method that doesn't really work anymore. Some guy (fan) was supposed to make a fix for that, not sure if he has progressed.

Anyways, I intend to play it with the keyboard for now.

How does the game perform on your PC? Like I said, Alan Wake or The Witcher 2 work quite well for me, so I don't think it's entirely because of my system.

But yeah, in between the performance issues and the weird controls, I'll just stick to the PS3 version for the time being. If I enjoy the game, and there's some progress on patches/fixes for the PC version, maybe I'll give it another chance some time.

By the way (about this policy), when GOG refunds a game, is it usually from their own pocket, or does the refund come from the game publisher/developer?

Because for me the reason to demand a refund would be if e.g. the published had abandoned the GOG version, and refuses to release the same updates/fixes to it as to e.g. the Steam version. So i would rather see the publisher getting the hit from the refund, not necessarily GOG (albeit GOG should of course do its best to persuade the developer to release GOG fixes too).

Other than that, I most probably won't be using the refund option, as I've always had the "buyers beware" in my mind when buying old classics, mainly the early Win9x games. Plus, I am usually willing to go the extra mile to make them work, even if it means running them on an older PC or installing third-party fixes. For instance:

- Gorky 17 (GOG): In the end I played it through my old laptop which runs Windows XP, even though I got it satisfactorily to run on my semi-old Windows 7 laptop. On my newest PC (which has both in Windows 7 and 8), it has various graphical issues so that I consider it unplayable there. I think these issues are more prevalent on NVidia than ATI/AMD graphics cards.

- Interstate'76 (GOG): Yep, it has the broken physics which actually makes the game too easy (as it makes the enemies drive slower than they should), and flamethrowers don't seem to work correctly. By running it on older hardware and using the 3rd party utilities mentioned in the I'76 sub-forum, I was able to make it run pretty good, in fact even the flamethrowers work now (albeit I don't think they are needed for finishing the game, they probably didn't work back when I was playing the retail version on my old PC long time ago).

- Shattered Steel: had to slow the game down somewhat (by repeatedly pressing Ctrl-F11 in DOSBox) so that the laser guns would hit enemies, and not just go through them.

- Saints Row 2 (Steam): Yeah, in the end I had to install that "Gentlemen Mod" or whatever it is, and carefully slowing the game down with it just so that the game would run at correct speed.

I don't recall having performance issues with it (the little I've played it so far), but then I am unsure in what kind of PCs it is supposed to run. This was on a ASUS G75VW gaming laptop.

The graphics seemed a bit odd (like colors and such, and the intro FMV which looked like from PS2 or PSOne era), but maybe that was just the style of the game.

Ah, that makes sense. :)