A sale with a number limit to downloadable games? A very small number at that... used to encourage sales? This feels very Valve-like to me. Am I being too closed off or am I not the only one in thinking this is a pretty crummy tactic?

Still though, DRM free platform, so whatever goes goes, so long as the games stay open and the platform doesn't limit us too much, then I'm all good.

you're not long enough a gog'er to get why insomnia is fun. give it some time

Why is it Valve-like when Valve don't do it?

It's the point of insomnia. Quick deal cycling with limited quantities. And the current format is so far the best.

I was wondering the same, even the flash deals/daily were removed from their sales. And people tend to forget that Gog is a business, if they're offering games it's not because they're nice, it's because they want you to use gog more often, so, yeah, insomnia sale is a tactic to get impulsive buyers, same thing with every "limited deal offer" or "Discounts up to 90%".

I'm still not a huge fan but in the three plus years I've been here it has improved. I remember when freebies would pop up randomly and all showed up the next week in trading threads courtesy of the bod wielding assholes who snagged them all. :P

Being registered longer than anyone else gives them no higher status above anyone.

And the reason I say it is Valve-like <<< like being the key word, is because it would typically be something similar to what Valve would cook up. There being an incentive to constantly keep an eye out on the sales page and a low game limit to encourage people who may not purchase then, to buying, out of fear that they'll miss it.

What do the folks do who are at work or away from home? I'm sure there is more than a few hundred people using GOG as well... isn't 50 a little low? The games are where the fun lies, not eyeballin' sales.

There's no need to be so defensive either. I like GOG... I'm not going to bad mouth your beloved, I'm merely sharing some concerns.

It's not about being better or having a higher status. GOG has been doing sales like these for years, long time GOGgers look forward to the Insomnia Sale. It's amlost a tradition at this point! You haven't been around long enough to have seen this before or to know the bittersweet agony of "500 Copies left of Jack Keane 2."

Oh you didn't hear? They virtually found those virtually buried in a virtual cement pit in virtual Mexico.

How can one trick people in buying stuff they don't need? By making the stuff appear scarce. And it works even better when the offer-time is also limited.

Not keen on this style of sale, but still managed to grab something...
Don't like it, don't buy, simples, plenty of other sales come und go.
Don't know about the whole steam likey thingy, poopz.

If you look at the offers, several times per day since the beginning (like me), you'll notice a lot of repeats + that every new time when a game is being discounted the number of copies grows.
It would be really awesome if the discount also grow like for the games that started at -33% to go to -75% :)

Because a large amount of people at this forum use Valve as a scapegoat when they can't form a basic argument.

The insomnia sales have been rather divisive for the community since the very first one. Some hate them, some love them.
Keep in mind that the idea was originally "discounts so high, we can only offer them in limited numbers". That was before 75-80% discounts were a regular thing on GOG, so it made some sense then. Is it gimmicky? Yeah, definitely, but it also does have a certain charm to it as a sort of community activity here in the forums. The idea is to give people a reason for checking the site frequently, since a game they want might come up.
Originally, the games would start with relatively low numbers of copies, and increase significantly on subsequent repeats in the sale. I think they ditched that now to prevent "THE KEANING" from happening, meaning a single title won't hold up the sale for hours because no one wants to buy it, which was a serious problem in the first insomnia sale. Now, each appearence of a game offers fewer than 100 copies, but they return much more frequently.

Personally, I'm a bit disappointed with it this time. There seems to be a severe scarcity of actual classic titles on offer, and I have very little interest in most of the- in my eyes often still overpriced- indie titles.

I'm somewhat disappointed because there's a scarcity of sale-related drama. It's predictable, it's fair, it's satisfying and yet somehow... not.