I do agree, there needs to be a seperate forum for these giveaways, they are kinda just flooding the forum and pushing everything else aside.

Yay. Let's drive away users instead of just ignoring threads we don't like. Wonderful idea!

@ne_zavarj, please don't stop, just because people don't appreciate your generosity in working with the devs to arrange these draws.

Really, GOG should just put up another off topic forum. The forums here have needed one for several years.

While some forums go to the extreme of creating hundreds of forums when they start, and thus dilute their community to the point the forum dies; GOG is taking the other extreme and not adding forums when needed, and thus are causing situations like this which drive users away.

Not very classy at all.

I will NEVER. For me, giveaways are an important part of the forum. Not for me, I actually don't enter many of them, I already have plenty of games I haven't played yet, but GOG is the ONLY forum on which members are so generous towards their fellow forumers. Plus, as a member said, those threads often lead to interesting conversations.

Take away the giveaway and GOG's forum will have lost an important part of their soul.

But who am I to say such a thing when obviously a handful of people don't like the forum to run in a way they don't agree with?

ne_zavarj, I only once or twice got a game from you, but thanks, thanks a lot for all the giving you did to the community. Seems that your generosity has been misunderstood...

Last time he said he'd leave the forum for a whole year it lasted 3 days or so, wouldn't hold my breath to 'in the moment' statements like this :)

For me the problem isnt that there are giveaways, its thats theres just so many run together on multiple forum posts at the same time, flooding the forum and pushing all the other topics aside. Had those giveaways been done on the same post then maybe people wouldnt have been as annoyed?

^ This

I can understand the viewpoints expressed here, but I also find it amusing, and somewhat ironic that not so long ago, some people were complaining that ne_zavarj was shameless, greedy, and begging for games at times. And now people are complaining about too much generosity and giving. I'm not sure what the answer/solution is, or if one is really needed, but one thing is for sure....Reever's observation holds true

Is the reason you're not going to create a giveaway forum because you don't want to in any one way appear to be officially supporting them?

This is something I'd agree to. Nothing wrong with having a giveaway, but making a separate thread for each game and all at the same time ... sheesh. Heck, a lot of them would appear to be coming out of the same bundles but simply separated.
If i'd play the skeptic I'd say that he's A) being generous with other people's stuff, as a lot of the giveaways stated the stuff he was giving away was given to him by someone else B) Stuff from cheap bundles (he had a crapton of bundles he tried trading in classifieds for a while but gave up on that eventually as there wasn't enough interest) C) Right around the time of the Summer sale which is a great time to be seen as generous so you can get stuff you actually want back :)

None of that means he isn't doing it out of true generosity now. People can change. But it also doesn't mean that just because the threads are there and are giveaways that there's no self interest there either.

Is it just me or perhaps there is indeed a very easy solution to his situation? There was an issue with numerous giveaway threads and it bothered some people (including me). The problem was articulated and the solution was found - a script which can hide giveaways. I'm well aware then some mistakes has been done in between and ne_zavarj felt bad about everything and decided to leave. If it was also my comment that had contributed to that decision then I'm truly sorry. I think that none of the other users had any bad intentions towards ne_zavarj. As it was said several times - it was just a misunderstanding. But why don't we just use the perfect solution that have been already found? Those who don't like giveaways will install the script, ne_zavraj will make next giveaways, some people will get their games. It's a win-win-win situation. It is the easiest and classy solution. Because "classy" doesn't mean that no mistakes are done (it's impossible) but it means that a solution is looked for and eventually found.

But you know what's the worst part? I hope I'm totally wrong here but I have a really bad feeling that this easy solution won't be applied. Something is rotten in the state of GOGland...

Official channels? And here you are saying you weren't abducted.

I feel kind of responsible here as I did do this in the past. However back then there were fewer threads, so there was not the need to solve this problem.

I agree that there is now a reasonable argument for allowing people to filter giveaways as there are so many. It's really nice that so many people are now being charitable and sharing, but that does make this forum hard to follow for those of us that don't compete.

I think a separate forum is a poor solution, you'll just end up with requests for subforums of each type of topic. If you take TheJoe's view of the general discussion forum, then it's purpose is solely for discussions on games. so then we'd need a world events subforum, a religious debate subforum, a "this person has died RIP" subforum.

I think filtering is a much better idea, however the problem with client side filtering is that (I assume) it would screw up paging, so if page 1 was full of giveaway threads, you'd only see a blank page. It would be much nicer if we were allowed to add tags to our posts to indicate their content. It wouldn't be too hard to add either a drop down, or a few checkboxes to our post (possible just for general discussion), then add a forum preference for the elements we aren't interested in. That way we all have our own specialised subforums without even realising it.