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Qoelet: I totally agree with the considerations about GOG Vs Steam, that's why I want to relocate here ;) . However, when I bought my bike in Steamcity part of what I paid went to the bike maker, part to the city government, in VAT. Now, I cannot fathom why someone has to buy again the friggin' bike: sure the bike maker has to shut up, because they already sold me the bike; do I have to pay GOG again VAT? Import taxes? Well, ask me: maybe I will decide to pay them, but ask me.
Emphasis added by me.

You are not paying GOG 'again', because you never paid GOG in the first place.
You chose to give your money to Steam. Keeping with your analogy, SteamCity is the bike maker, and it is them that you paid.
GOG didn't see any money from you, so why should they give you a free game?

If you went into Supermarket A, and bought a loaf of bread... would you then go into Supermarket B, and demand that they give you a loaf of bread for free?
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Qoelet: I totally agree with the considerations about GOG Vs Steam, that's why I want to relocate here ;) . However, when I bought my bike in Steamcity part of what I paid went to the bike maker, part to the city government, in VAT. Now, I cannot fathom why someone has to buy again the friggin' bike: sure the bike maker has to shut up, because they already sold me the bike; do I have to pay GOG again VAT? Import taxes? Well, ask me: maybe I will decide to pay them, but ask me.
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FrodoBaggins: Emphasis added by me.

You are not paying GOG 'again', because you never paid GOG in the first place.
You chose to give your money to Steam. Keeping with your analogy, SteamCity is the bike maker, and it is them that you paid.
GOG didn't see any money from you, so why should they give you a free game?

If you went into Supermarket A, and bought a loaf of bread... would you then go into Supermarket B, and demand that they give you a loaf of bread for free?
No, steam is the environment in which you bought the game, as GOG. They did NOT make the game. They are a SHOP. And the bread loaf is only always ONE, like the game is ONE.
Back to bikes, I already paid VAT ONCE, you're saying that I have to pay VAT TWICE to two cities; I think it is not great but it would be somehow almost OK, but you want me to pay again also the seller. For a bike I already have.
Post edited February 11, 2021 by Qoelet
Connect is as dead as the “Reclaim your game” initiative is, and Connect was better because, unlike “Reclaim your game”, it actually worked for more than 8 games and in all regions.
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FrodoBaggins: Emphasis added by me.

You are not paying GOG 'again', because you never paid GOG in the first place.
You chose to give your money to Steam. Keeping with your analogy, SteamCity is the bike maker, and it is them that you paid.
GOG didn't see any money from you, so why should they give you a free game?

If you went into Supermarket A, and bought a loaf of bread... would you then go into Supermarket B, and demand that they give you a loaf of bread for free?
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Qoelet: No, steam is the environment in which you bought the game, as GOG. They did NOT make the game. They are a SHOP. And the bread loaf is only always ONE, like the game is ONE.
Back to bikes, I already paid VAT ONCE, you're saying that I have to pay VAT TWICE to two cities; I think it is not great but it would be somehow almost OK, but you want me to pay again also the seller. For a bike I already have.
Then, I want a free version on Playstation, Xbox and Switch too!
You can rise a fair point about selling the same version (PC, in this case) multiple times on multiple stores, but as things stand right now, GOG connect is just a loss - since nobody else does it, keeping it alive encourages to buy on Steam and ingoring this place since the user will get a free backup down the line anyway. Business suicide, it was good when GOG was still obscure, but now keeping it going is only a bad move.
In any case, the problem is mostly on the publisher's side, not the distributor.
Post edited February 11, 2021 by Enebias
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Timboli: None of that alters the specifics of what I said.

You cannot blame a customer for what Steam/DEV/PUB decide to do.
Look at it from the other perspective .... if they sell for cents at Steam, then they (DEV/PUB) are ripping us off at GOG if we pay a lot more than that here.
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Dogmaus: Not really on Steam, but in bundles like Fanatical and Humble, that only sell Steam keys and not GOG keys. Not counting the many resellers. Yes, buying on GOG is being ripped off in many cases. I haven't blamed customers. I am saying that who has decided to spend their money on GOG only is paying a lot more for less, while Connect was rewarding those hoarding Steam keys with the GOG version of the game. A giveaway for everyone is more fair to GOG only customers - like Brigador.
I understand your POV but you have to remember that GOG Connect ALWAYS was a rare exception and never the rule. Since it has been introduced years ago I guess we are probably talking about 50 games max or so (maybe even less). So in this case it's a gamble with slim chances to "win" at all. I don't consider GOG connect to be unfair since it is just a bonus given out now and then and it never was more (I am sure it never was meant to be much more).
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FrodoBaggins: [...]
If you went into Supermarket A, and bought a loaf of bread... would you then go into Supermarket B, and demand that they give you a loaf of bread for free?
No, you are wrong here, for several reasons.

To deal with the easy one first - difference between physical and digital stores.

In a physical store, the store buy x amount of stock to sell on to the customer. The store then owns the prouct and and can do what they want with it.

In a digital store there is no stock. Rather the store acts like a middleman between the publisher and the customer. The store agrees with the publisher to deal with all the customer and all that entiales, for a % cut of each sale. So the store here does not own the stock, and they are bound to the agreement with the publisher.

Not to mention that when you buy a bread and use it, it is gone. And if you do not use it, it goes stale and then rots after a few days. DIgital games..... does not.... so the physical state of the bread depreciates, while the game do not

Next point - the wonderful world of licensing and services. When you buy a game on a service like gOg, Steam, Origin et al., you are in fact buying two, but different, product. Firstly you buy a game license, this is the right to play the game. Secondly, you buy the right to use the platform service, i.e. to maintain the library, cost of hosting the files, support and so on. The fun part here is that as they are seperate, there is no reason why you should not be able to activate a game license on a different service, as long as you pay the service cost. It doesn not happen in reality, as it is very combersome, messy and open to abuse, so no services are offering this (and offcourse there would be little profit in it)

But, the point still stands that when you buy a game on gOg you buy 1) a game license and 2) license to use gOg services to manage the game.

So to your comparison here do not work as:
a - you cannot compare physical and didigital stores and products, its comparing apples and giraffes
b - you do not buy a license for a bread, with the store as a middleman service provider to manage your bread
Post edited February 11, 2021 by amok
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Qoelet: No, steam is the environment in which you bought the game, as GOG. They did NOT make the game. They are a SHOP. And the bread loaf is only always ONE, like the game is ONE.
Back to bikes, I already paid VAT ONCE, you're saying that I have to pay VAT TWICE to two cities; I think it is not great but it would be somehow almost OK, but you want me to pay again also the seller. For a bike I already have.
GOG is a shop. You didn't buy the game from GOG - you chose to buy it from steam. So why should GOG give you something that you didn't buy from them? It's like me demanding that you give me a free game, even though I didn't buy anything from you.

If you don't like bread, let's go back to bikes.
You buy a bike from Shop A. Would you then go to Shop B, and demand that they give you a free bike?

Or go to your local newsagent, and buy a magazine.
You go on holiday somewhere in another town. Would you walk into a shop, and expect to get a free magazine?

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amok: In a digital store there is no stock. Rather the store acts like a middleman between the publisher and the customer. The store agrees with the publisher to deal with all the customer and all that entiales, for a % cut of each sale. So the store here does not own the stock, and they are bound to the agreement with the publisher.
For a store (in this case, GOG) to have a % of each sale, a sale must have taken place in the first place. But there was NO sale with GOG. That's the whole point. The game wasn't bought from GOG, therefore GOG didn't get any % cut.
Post edited February 11, 2021 by FrodoBaggins
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amok: Next point - the wonderful world of licensing and services. When you buy a game on a service like gOg, Steam, Origin et al., you are in fact buying two, but different, product. Firstly you buy a game license, this is the right to play the game. Secondly, you buy the right to use the platform service, i.e. to maintain the library, cost of hosting the files, support and so on. The fun part here is that as they are seperate, there is no reason why you should not be able to activate a game license on a different service, as long as you pay the service cost. It doesn not happen in reality, as it is very combersome, messy and open to abuse, so no services are offering this (and offcourse there would be little profit in it)

But, the point still stands that when you buy a game on gOg you buy 1) a game license and 2) license to use gOg services to manage the game.
Again... Qoelet didn't buy the game on GOG. She rented the game from steam. So she has the right to play the game on steam. She didn't pay GOG for the game licence, or for the right to use the game on GOG, or right to support this game, the cost of hosting the game files etc. She paid steam for those services.
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amok: Next point - the wonderful world of licensing and services. When you buy a game on a service like gOg, Steam, Origin et al., you are in fact buying two, but different, product. Firstly you buy a game license, this is the right to play the game. Secondly, you buy the right to use the platform service, i.e. to maintain the library, cost of hosting the files, support and so on. The fun part here is that as they are seperate, there is no reason why you should not be able to activate a game license on a different service, as long as you pay the service cost. It doesn not happen in reality, as it is very combersome, messy and open to abuse, so no services are offering this (and offcourse there would be little profit in it)

But, the point still stands that when you buy a game on gOg you buy 1) a game license and 2) license to use gOg services to manage the game.
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FrodoBaggins: Again... Qoelet didn't buy the game on GOG. She rented the game from steam. So she has the right to play the game on steam. She didn't pay GOG for the game licence, or for the right to use the game on GOG, or right to support this game, the cost of hosting the game files etc. She paid steam for those services.
I was objecting to your bread analogy - it is wrong and does not work
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amok: I was objecting to your bread analogy - it is wrong and does not work
Um... it is not wrong, and it does work.
What if I bought some bread this morning, so now I expect you to give me some bread.

If you buy a product... ANY product... from Shop A - you cannot expect another shop to give it to you for nothing.
Post edited February 11, 2021 by FrodoBaggins
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amok: I was objecting to your bread analogy - it is wrong and does not work
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FrodoBaggins: Um... it is not wrong, and it does work.
What if I bought some bread this morning, so now I expect you to give me some bread.

If you buy a product... ANY product... from Shop A - you cannot expect another shop to give it to you for nothing.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/is_gog_connect_dead_now/post36
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FrodoBaggins: GOG is a shop. You didn't buy the game from GOG - you chose to buy it from steam. So why should GOG give you something that you didn't buy from them? It's like me demanding that you give me a free game, even though I didn't buy anything from you.
You are forgetting one vital thing ... GOG don't own the games, they are just a store front selling on behalf of the developers and publishers. GOG are just the middle person, and no-one said they had to even come up with the idea of GOG Connect, let alone implement it. Part of GOG's ethos, at least in the past, was about being fair to gamers, and not having to pay twice for what is essentially the same game ... which is an act of fairness.

GOG rightly see GOG Connect as a promotional tool, and in that regard, any monetary loss is no different to losses on advertising, except they have the added bonus of making their customer base happier with them, so actually it is better than regular advertising.

It is a false dichotomy to see it as giving a free game for nothing.
There was a statement some time ago explaining that EPIC's low revenue cut had affected GOG, and that they had been forced to cut theirs as well to remain competitive:

"In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore." "With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller. However, we look at it, at the end of the day we are a store and need to make sure we sell games without a loss."

That ended the Fair Price Package and has ended up also affecting free games during sales and GOG Connect.
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Gearmos: There was a statement some time ago explaining that EPIC's low revenue cut had affected GOG, and that they had been forced to cut theirs as well to remain competitive:

"In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore." "With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller. However, we look at it, at the end of the day we are a store and need to make sure we sell games without a loss."

That ended the Fair Price Package and has ended up also affecting free games during sales and GOG Connect.
they could throw us a bone and give us newsletter discounts that correspond to our wishlists.
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Gearmos: ......

That ended the Fair Price Package and has ended up also affecting free games during sales and GOG Connect.
Yep, that and other cost cutting measures.

Despite what some here think, there is plenty of evidence to show that not all is rosy profit wise with the GOG arm of CD Projekt Group. Reported facts and figures don't tell a complete story, but actions usually do. So despite propping up by CDPR, or because of it, some of us have grave concerns about GOG's future. That said, things started looking better in a few ways once the imminent release of CYBERPUNK 2077 got closer, and has remained that way ... in spite of recent hurdles for them.