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I've helped a few people out here, in paying less money for games, or getting a hold of games they otherwise couldn't get.
I want to start up a website, separate from GOG (love you GOG), where people who are verified as cool for doing this kind of thing, can aid people who want to buy games that they otherwise couldn't get due to stupid publishers or whatever.
Obviously as you all know, that this program would open itself up for abuse, so we'd need to figure out a way to punish those who would abuse and reward those who would use the program correctly.
What I'm asking of you, the GOG community, is to help me in fleshing out this idea, and to maybe help me get started in the right direction.
I don't have any information on web design, I don't have any information on hosting, or setting up a domain, or anything really, I just have an idea that I'd like to put to use.
I have reasons for wanting to keep it separate from GOG, because I don't want it to be associated with GOG. Because if for some reason something goes wrong, I'd rather take the bullet than endanger GOG.
If you're interested in this program, lets post about it here.
I will have a few people I've done trades with post in this thread, to verify my integrity.
Please ask any questions you might have, offer suggestions, and help me with tackling this idea, as it seems like an ingenious idea, there is something that could happen to us, because we are circumventing regional restrictions or unfair pricing - somebody wanted it to be that way for a reason. :(
I think that a simple phpbb forum could be enough for this idea.
As you have said, there will be people wanting to abuse the system, but I have no idea how to prevent it, so we will rely on the honesty.
As for taking part in this action, I am not against it.
Personally, I think this could turn out rather bad. For example, if Valve got wind of it, they'd further restrict gifting. They already IP block activations on countries where games are not getting released. They also delay activation of games until their local release now too -- almost certainly a result of too many Eurozone customers attempting to avoid the higher price point and get earlier access to the game (Borderlands is a fairly good example of the latter) while being way too open about it on the Steam forums.
An actual site set up to facilitate such a practice will almost certainly be interpreted by Valve as "trading of gifts" and could potentially get accounts disabled permanently -- i.e, both the account of the person gifting and the account of the person receiving the gift would stand a very high chance of being disabled for good. And while you may ask people to never post about the site on the Steam forums, some stupid idiot will inevitably do so.
Likewise, I expect if people over advertised certain flaws in other sites and their regional confirmation (or lack thereof) they'd close up those loop holes fairly soon and we'll end up with publishers doing what some already do on D2D -- revoking gifting rights for certain titles (only this time, it'll be for all titles). Your intentions are good but I think doing it too openly will be more detrimental than useful.
Yeah, I just looked around Steam support page and found this:
May I sell or trade gift subscriptions?
Steam Gift Purchases can not be sold or traded. Attempting to sell or trade a gift subscription is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and may result in your account being permanently disabled.

I don't know about other digital distribution services, but since Steam is the biggest player out there, many people will be afraid to use your website because of the risk of getting Steam banhammer...unless you want to make an underground, members-only website, but I don't think that was your idea.
Post edited November 28, 2009 by Catshade
I say you go ahead with this plan. Because if it works in any way at all, you'll find yourself on the receiving end of some very interesting lawsuits.
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Catshade: Yeah, I just looked around Steam support page and found this:
May I sell or trade gift subscriptions?
Steam Gift Purchases can not be sold or traded. Attempting to sell or trade a gift subscription is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and may result in your account being permanently disabled.

I don't know about other digital distribution services, but since Steam is the biggest player out there, many people will be afraid to use your website because of the risk of getting Steam banhammer...unless you want to make an underground, members-only website, but I don't think that was your idea.

Well here's the thing with that, the four packs they often sell, are designed explicitly with the idea of gifting, so perhaps a straight up "tit for tat" won't work, what I've been doing, is just accepting the exact funds for a game or games, buying them, and then gifting them.
It's either going to force companies to remove this gifting feature, or it will make them realize that the internet is world wide, and that regional restrictions are utterly stupid.
You can consider 4-packs to be the exception though as you will retain one of the copies and have 3 gifts. You can also, apparently, only purchase it once per account (people who own a copy of the game already have reported that the checkout process can't be completed). Single copies of games aren't restricted like this but Valve do impose a limit on the number of gifts that can be made per account per undisclosed period of time.
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bansama: Single copies of games aren't restricted like this but Valve do impose a limit on the number of gifts that can be made per account per undisclosed period of time.

Anything to back that up? That's something I've never seen.
I've been saying around here that we should implement such system, however I think this would only work from a decentralized point of view (not having a major website for example) because as much as I like the idea, I partially agree with what bansama said..
It could be bad.. real bad..
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michaelleung: Anything to back that up? That's something I've never seen.

Only the fact that guy who gets my US based gifts has to keep asking support to re-activate gifting (he gifts to a lot of people).
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michaelleung: Anything to back that up? That's something I've never seen.
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bansama: Only the fact that guy who gets my US based gifts has to keep asking support to re-activate gifting (he gifts to a lot of people).

If he gifts to a lot of people, probably the fact that he gets restricted has nothing to do with you. Correlation is not causation..
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A-Pock: If he gifts to a lot of people, probably the fact that he gets restricted has nothing to do with you. Correlation is not causation..

I never said it had anything to do with me. The simple point is, that anyone who gifts X number of gifts within Y amount of time, loses the ability to send gifts (and no, Valve don't make the limitation public).
Maybe I could take you up on gifting me a US exclusive D2D game on Monday (when I'll have moneh)?
Good idea, but you need to be cautious.
Just yesterday, I paid someone to gift me L4D2 from a 4 pack. I took a punt and it paid off, but a more trustworthy solution would be nicer rather than transferring money to random strangers.
However, if Steam got wind of it and disapproved of it, they could easily ban people who've been gifting and remove all the gifted games from people's accounts. Since I bought a gift copy of L4D2 I do wonder what'd happen if the user I bought it from gets banned or something...would it disappear from my account? That'd be a bummer.
Anyway, I'm sure Steam are aware that plenty of gifting going on is because money has changed hands, facilitated by user forums like GOG. But not sure how they'd respond to a forum totally dedicated to it. You'd think they'd be perfectly happy since they're getting money, but I've learned not to second-guess Steam's logic.
As everyone else has said, there is a lot of reason for concern doing something like this, but when Weclock and I and a couple of others purchased L4D2 it went really well. Doing something like that on a large scale to help out others would be an awesome organization.
some of the other things I'm concerned of, is someone backing out of a payment.
payment to the company would be in full, but then if that person tries to back out of payment to you, then you would have gifted this person a game for no reason. :(
Losing money is not fun.
So, I would like to figure out some kind of reward system for those people who complete transactions successfully and without loss and figure out a way to protect users from losing money.