I'm not sure we need an outright pay gate. But, I think giving users the ability to ignore posts by certain users or default to hiding posts by people that haven't bought any games or are newer than a certain number of days would go along way.

Ignore functionality goes a long way towards cutting down on flamewars as it allows people to just block the user that they're having problems with until things cool down. I use it myself when available just because it allows me to continue participating in a thread without the temptation of responding to jerks.

I really think the problem is that GOG is having trouble hiring / keeping people. They have been trying to hire web programers for literal years based on their Job Opportunities page. Don't know if it's the corporate culture or a local shortage of programmers, but 'GOG doesn't have a web team' seems closer to the truth than 'GOG doesn't care'.

Not disagreeing with those points.

I work inside a sausage factory (i mean a software company), so I'm familiar with how crap gets off the rails and the prioritization always seems screwed up. So I'm a little sympathetic to the new chat being crap. Sometimes I f--- up too. But it has been quite a while, and it seems like for a live (ostensibly production) function, you should always be able to rollback.

So basically sure. I can see definite signs of a lack of investment at several levels. Failure to curb rampant hostility. Failure to stamp out fraud and harassment, and failure to fix bugs that are affecting basically all the users of the service.

Usually these types symptoms come from understaffing or mismanagement though. In my experience both of those factors tend to be pretty entrenched.
I don't pretend to know how things are done in the job market GOG is in, but over in Silly-con Valley, it's very common to have some positions listed permanently, because you expect to have some steady growth in the future, so you want to "fill the pipeline" with applicants. So sometimes you have a position listed forever despite hiring someone every 3 months and keeping them all.

I still think Rep is fine and isn't the true problem, just the symptom of the problem: scamming alt accounts. Let's be honest, there's a class of user who exists here simply to scam as many keys as possible, often on as many accounts as possible to sell accounts later or turn them into Steam... whatevers - I don't Steam so I don't know the exact mechanics but numerous users have mentioned there's a mechanism for turning Steam keys into cash and / or games.

Fix rep without a General Forum Paygate, and the problem of scamming alts still exists. Make an alt have to buy a game, and all of a sudden you erode that alts "profit margin" for scamming; if not enough to eliminate it surely enough to reduce the problem to where it was before - a nonissue (or at least a lesser one).

I am 100% on board with you for chat though. There has to be a way to "Block User" rather than just "Allow Friend."

*EDIT (I think?) to add:

Even better, have a "New User Forum" - allow users who have purchased (not just redeemed) a game to post in any forum, but until a user has purchased a game they can only post in the "New User" forum and the subforums for any game in their account.

That way "newbies" ;) can still ask about games they might be interested in and get feedback from existing Users, but until they are shown to be more than someone's 30th account / key reselling alt they don't have General Discussion privileges.

And limit chat/PM privileges to those other new user accounts, or disallow it altogether, so they can't bother longstanding customers.

Post count without access to proper posting history is of little to no help, one can post all day long and have contributed exactly zero to the community.


As far as I know, the web team and the Galaxy team are two different teams



Since it would appear that no-one at GOG is actually keeping an eye on what's happening on the forum, unlike TET used to do, allow me to bring to your attention a nasty incident that happened these past couple of days. a good summary of what happened, [url=https://www.gog.com/forum/general/mahayo_redux_gog_fix_your_forum/post90]here's some additional info related to it, and the link to the thread itself. And [url=https://www.gog.com/forum/general/mystery_game_4th_edition_giveaway/post276]here's a post that might be of interest to GOG.

Unless GOG's ok with the forum becoming a cesspool that will be dominated by such individuals, I suggest you bump up addressing these issues in your priority list.

I'd say yes, but only if there were no "Block User" controls. If there's a block user I don't think that would be needed. I don't want to segregrate / discriminate new users. I'm a firm believer that 99% of new users will quickly move to "General Discussion" status and have no problems interacting like human beings. I just want to have a way to keep out users / alts who have no interest in becoming part of the community and only want keys / accounts for resale and other uses.
*edit to add: Hello!

Vote Ixamyakxim

Good ideas but I think you may discount the motivation people who want to obtain free stuff or troll others may have. There are certain folks who have no problem clicking through hundreds of offers and signing up for random things all day long just to get a few free things; and there are definitely people who take such enjoyment at amusing themselves at the expense of others that they might be willing to spend the time masquerading as a good new user on multiple alt accounts and getting access to the 'normal' forum. I personally think some of those folks must see it as some kind of game in itself with the reward or payout being their ability to pull one over on others or negatively impact others.

I just don't think there is any simple or complete answer to 'solve' the problem of people who want to abuse others or their generosity. It can certainly be made more difficult but that is no guarantee that it will stop it, though it may decrease it.

Look, I'm not trying to hate on you, I'm really not, but... If you're the community manager, and as such your job is to facilitate communication between the company and the community, but the company doesn't tell you what's going on, and the community feedback you give them is ignored... Well, then what good are you? I'm not saying you are bad at your job, but it seems like the company you work for doesn't actually want you to do the job they hired you for.

From where I'm sitting, it doesn't seem like GOG gives a rat's ass about either you or us. But then, along with web design of course, communication is one thing GOG has always been astoundingly bad at.

Oh lord, from what i'm reading there isn't any actual solution, it will be something dumb that doesn't actually solve the problem, i really hope that i'm wrong and that solution appears this week...

You would prefer the mechanical indistinctness of marketer speech that you'd get from another CM? There's probably a shitload of backend stuff on gog's todo list including a functional wallet system and better galaxy multiplayer feature integration before some of these new forum features and new rep system. CDPRED is busy working on TW3 expansion content. gog.com's developers likely have a full plate just building out Galaxy.

So... ahm... anything? Any news? Has the search party at least found the web team? Have we even confirmed it exists?

The web team.. doesn't have internet.
She's delivering the messages to them personally.
Unfortunately, they're located in a far away land. It will take around 2 weeks. :P

Lol she said she'll be back tomorrow.