Pretty awesome! That's how customer service should be done.

If you get a game for free from them you'll bound to come back, right?

They earn the reputation of excellent customer service by actually going out of their way to help. Not to mention that they do so far faster than most other places too. The free games are a nice bonus, yes, and they were certainly a nice surprise. But that doesn't factor into how good their customer service is, the fact that they are actively trying to find a way to increase speeds over here is what makes me far more likely to continue using them.
For the record, I've gotten free games in the past from Valve too, but I certainly wouldn't call their customer service any thing other than piss poor. Big Fish games also are in a habit of giving away free games too (as happened the last time I contacted their support) and they're also making a killing in terms of profit.

See my point about Valve. They could give me all the games on Steam for free and they'd still be the last place I'd buy from when there are viable alternatives.

I'm certainly not saying it's a bad thing, obviously they are making a profit. It's just unusual to see such generosity especially in your case when they could have provided you just a demo.

Excellent news! As another dude who benefits from fast speeds in that place called Asia (perhaps you've heard of it?) it makes me want to get more stuff off GG, though Steam's speeds are not bad either. I'm so conflicted.

I quite like Gamersgate. Aside from having to use a proxy to buy games (Euro prices are too high for my liking), their site is easy to navigate, downloads are fast, customer service is top notch and they're generally pleasant to deal with.
I already made a topic on Steam so it's probably no secret I'm no fan of it: support outright SUCKS, they're even more expensive than Gamersgate but proxies don't work (they found a way to counter that), download speeds are lower for me personally, everything is tied to their Steam software which is annoying, etc.
My favorite company would be Impulse Driven though (or Stardock). Great customer service, the client is just for ease (doesn't need to be running to play a game) and you can choose whether you patch the game + fun to use, etc.

Must... resist... urge... to... troll.

Didn't you say you gave up on those bastards?

They could have done yes, but I wonder how many demos hosted by GamersGate are 6 gigs in size? The aim of this was to test the download speeds for mid to large downloads and granted they could just have asked me to redownload Sacred 2 again, but I guess my annoyance at having to spend over 30 hours downloading that may have been partially responsible for their offer.
They actually did personally apologize about that experience a few weeks ago -- and I assumed that was the end of it and was happy with the apology.
Now if this were Steam, could you see them apologize for the horrendous download speeds? Actually, I know from when they did have poor download speeds that they won't apologize at all.

Hmm, one time activation most likely by a very light version of SecuROM and then never needing to go online again (unless you reinstall) or 3rd party client which performs online authentication every time you want to play... There's not much of a choice for me anymore. I'd take the client less version where realistically possible.
And yes, it's GGs current download speeds that are the only thing keeping me from buying more large games from them. Hopefully they'll take the results from this test and will decide to permanently switch SE Asia customers over to the US servers -- as far as I know they've only temporarily switched me over.

I'm sure that Gabe after finishing a bowl of sand eels would say HOHOHOHAHAHAHAHOHOHO somehting about Solo and Wookie then want a dance from slavegirl Leia.

Thats why it would be trolling and I refuse to do that. Although...

If you can work out how to set up and use Amazon's EC2, Valve can't detect it as a proxy =) Unfortunately, I still can't work out how to set it up and while I can find many mentions on the net from Japanese who use it, none provide instructions that make any sense >_<.

Had a bad experience ? :P Please spill the beans if you have - I'm always curious to hear stories unless they're on the level of anjohl's "it happened to me so it happens to everyone!" *laughs* I'll trade you 5 bad Steam experiences in return if you want ;). All in mint condition!

You will find them well documented if you use the search function. Needless to say I certainly ain't happy with them. And if you live outside the US then don't pre-order anything from them. You have been warned.

I found this one link in Japanese and it mentioned the words Steam Store a lot, along with EC2. I can only read the characters shared with Chinese and even then I don't get it. Perhaps you've seen that one already?

Yup, that one gets linked to a lot from other sources too. But like you, it makes little sense to me.