The ads are more likely designed for people who pirated the installer. If I remember correct, GOG mentioned that they get a good inflow of customers from people who got to know them through illegal download installers.

then its even more important to show avaible games and not pissing them off with LOOK YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!
yeah but only if they are avaible

That's new to me - last I checked GOG's legalese it only allowed for personal backup copies...

Yes you're right, every time they lost the rights to a game they should rebuild all 300+ of their installers, blocking one of the computer for several hours or even days. Totally worth it. (although, now that I mention it, I have to wonder how they prepare their installers. Surely they must be using some sort of automated build script, right?)
Maybe he meant "friend" instead of friend.

Would you really want to have to download every game all over again because they change the installer to remove a game that is no longer available?

Damn that is a run on sentence...

I am just glad that the installers are not tie4d into live ads. That would be WAY worse than seeing a decades old ad a few years from now.

what the problem with live ads in this case?

No way, you never connect your application to the internet without a good reason. Even if it's just to check for ads, it's just a bad practice to send data off the user's computer. For every software developer the user's computer should be sacred and nothing should happen without the user wanting it.

There is always the possibility of those game returning to GoG, so it might be a good idea to just leave those installers alone, and think of the Games passing before your eyes as a historical reference to GoG.com's evolving catalog... :P

This is akin to watching an old VHS TV recording and wondering why the movies are no longer in the theater. lol

Seriously don't give GOG incentive to update all of their installers every-time games are taken out.

Yeah I had the same issue on the Shadow Warrior 2013 installer. I just emailed support about it as a quick little feedback.

It would need to connect to the net and that to me would seem a lot like a DRM, which is not what GOG is about.

What makes my friend interested in GOG is if I tell him what distinguishes GOG from Steam & Co: DRM free, money back guarantee, etc. If all he sees is an ad for a game, he will just try to find the cheapest store to buy it.
What keeps GOG running is their distinct business model, not that they sell game x or z, since these days it seems most "good old games" also find their way to steam.
And the pirate will most likely just do another search on his "illegal download platform" and download that game as well.

mind you, this is all a bit a academic discussion. In reality, clicking through the installer takes a few seconds and while the installer is working I just put it in the background and continue surfing, reading emails, get coffee, etc.

But since we live in an age where we get constantly bombarded with advertising, I find it worthwhile to argue for a bit less of it.
If I come to your store you can tell me all about your new products, products on sale, your top seller, those "people who bought this also bought..."-lists and whatever else you can think of. But if I bought something and go home with it, I don't want you to throw another ad banner at me when I'm unwrapping the product.
fair deal?

But the terms of service say the installers shouldn't be shared...

I don't mind the Ad's being there, and it can't be known if they would lose games in the future. But it just seems better stuff could go there.

But i don't own a DD site so *shrugs*

No. Gods no.

Then people will start worrying about installers phoning home when they try to access the web to pull the ads. Any installer not downloading anything -- which is why GOGs installers rock so hard, because you DON'T need a net connection to install them -- shouldn't be accessing the web.

This isn't iPad/Android land, and that cure is worse than the disease. It's like complaining that a product placement in Back To The Future (1985) no longer exists is a critical bug.


And to people who think the ads are "for people who pirated the game" or "shared the installer", the ads are for other games available ON GoG, not for GoG itself.