Posted December 05, 2015
HunchBluntley: All fair points. But I would still say the way to give feedback to developers and publishers in the clearest voice possible is to contact them directly -- no middleman.
That's correct, but in reality very few people take time to send feedback to the shops, let alone directly to the producers. Although we can't blame people for managing their time however they choose, allowing them to voice an opinion as fast as checking 2-3 boxes in just as many seconds, it's something worth the trouble, especially when your feedback is not requested but accepted as a feature. HunchBluntley: if you tell GOG to tell a developer why you're not buying his game, the most GOG can reasonably do (having a business relationship with said developer) is pass on the info and, if pressed, say to you, "We passed on the feedback; all we can say is they received it."
I must make this crystal-clear. The feedback component I thought about is a simplified version of the game library tags (completed, next to play, backlog etc). You choose one or more options presented by GOG and that's it. No custom answers, no replies expected (from GOG), only predefined answers for the question "What keeps you from buying this title?" Once you provide the answer(s), GOG can have a better picture of what people want. Passing the feedback to the developers/publishers would be as simple as filtering feedback based on developer and/or publisher, which is done in a matter of minutes in code. All in all, the detailed feedback should be addressed to those who can actually make a change. Site features to GOG, questions about differences between the content of releases here and Steam/Origin also to GOG, game issues to the developer/publisher and so on. But I'm thinking about something that lets GOG know what stands in the way of me buying some titles. If I can get away with 3 clicks, perfect.
It should also be clearly stated that the feedback feature is there for statistical purposes only, as a base for improvement in customer satisfaction. So whoever spends 3 seconds to offer feedback will help themselves and GOG to improve their customer service.