GOG prides itself on being the most costumer friendly provider of digital entertainment around. This is a suggestion that will let them take that a huge step further.

The idea is simply that if a game gets discounted or receives a price drop withing a certain time after purchase, the customer will be refunded the amount they paid exceeding the lower price. I'm think a 14-30 days period, where the latter will be more beneficial to the customer. A caveat could be added, where the game would have to be available at the lower price for at least a certain period period of time, probably 24 hours, for the guarantee to take effect. That way GOG could still have promos similar to the Insomnia Sale, without people expecting to be refunded for game that was only available for cheap/free in limited quantities.

For this system to be implemented a 'GOG Wallet' feature would probably have to be implemented as well, so that GOG could essentially refund the customer in store credit, to avoid transaction fees and the like.

I might be overly positive here, but I think this might not only be a move that would be beneficial to the customer, but could possibly also earn more money for GOG in the long run. I can only use myself as an example, but I don't terribly mind paying full price for a game I want to play, but if it's been available for a while I will still often end up waiting for a sale, because seeing a game go on sale just days after I buy it is always a bad feeling. Rationally I know that I was happy to pay the price when I did, and the difference will usually be a couple of bucks, but psychologically it feels bad enough that putting off the purchase is a safer way to proceed. So I can only make a more or less educated guess, but if more people think as I do, I can see this leading to more games being sold at full price. The staff at GOG will be better equipped than me to estimate how this could affect sales, as they have access to sales data, obviously.

I added this as a suggestion for the wishlist, but it has so far not shown up. I will edit in a link once it does.

Nah, i dont think gog needs this, i will often pay gogs prices for stuff even if its a bit more cash, the support that the staff give is second to none and id rather pay a bit extra for a good customer experience.

I doubt that would ever fly in the highly competitive digital games marketplace. Mathematically it equivocates to taking every single one day sale, weekend sale, 5 minute long quickflash sale, etc. that is ever ran on any game promotion no matter how short of a timeframe the promo is intended for - and extending the promotional period 14-30 days (using your numbers) total. A one day sale or one hour sale promo magically turns into a 14-30 day promo sale, whether it is 10% off or 85% off.

Yeah, that's absolutely wonderful for the customer, but rather terrible for the bottom line of making a profit. It's not clear how things work behind the scenes though, and I highly doubt that GOG.com gets to decide on their own when they're going to put every single game on sale and what all of the terms of the deal are going to be. They almost certainly have to negotiate the pricing deals, sales promos etc. on a publisher by publisher basis, and possibly game by game. The likelihood of every publisher agreeing to such terms across the board that if they permit a game to go on sale for 85% off - all customers can retroactively claim the discounted price going back for 2-4 weeks would probably be laughed at by most game publishers.

If GOG made this a standard practice that was generally offered on their site, then they'd really have two options to implement it:

1) Make it a part of the negotiations on all existing and new titles and publishers in the future, a term they have to agree with to be published in the GOG catalogue. It's a hard enough sell for a lot of publishers to even embrace the concept of releasing their games DRM-free as it is, but to try to tell them they have to allow a 30 day window for everyone on any sale price that any of their games ever go on promo for also? Most publishers would likely laugh in their faces.

2) Don't make it a required hit on the publisher, and instead just eat the hit themselves. Publishers would still have to be ok with it as the potential is there to saturate the market with their games at lower price points than they intend, but GOG would subsume the losses.


I understand where you're coming from though, and I agree it sucks when you buy something today and it goes on sale tomorrow for a big discount and you feel bad because if you knew in advance you would have waited. but 14-30 days is really stretching it in this highly competitive market. If something like this were to be remotely entertained by any game publishers or GOG, I doubt they would consider more than a few days or a week maximum if they'd consider it at all. One more thing that would enter into such a decision is "what is the scam angle", or in other words - how would dishonest people attempt to try to game the system and take advantage of the deal, perhaps in combination with the money back guarantee or other tactics.

So I get what you're saying and who wouldn't appreciate such a thing for sure, but from a business perspective I don't think it really adds any value that is going to draw 5/10/50% more sales or anything like that. The impact on business revenue of adding such a service feature would likely be relatively minimal and give marginal benefits. The majority of games are actually a good deal at the regular price afterall anyway - or the person wouldn't have bought it in the first place right?

My suggestion to people who want to get a really good deal always, is just don't buy any games at all unless they are 50/75/80% off or whatever number works best for one's expectations. I've got a big backlog now and I pretty much wont buy any games anymore unless they are 75% off or more. That's not really an issue because GOG, Steam, and other retailers know very well that the huge majority of customers shop this way and their regular prices are marked up accordingly so that when they go on sale, they still get the margins they are looking for over the long haul.

There are a few things I'll pay more for occasionally, but 75% off is my usual threshhold and my suggestion to someone cost sensitive would be to just do the same. :)

I just thought of something else... if such a policy did exist, the super-frugal amongst us, which is probably the majority of us - would use that feature as often as possible. I know I certainly would. This would generate a huge number of reverse financial transactions (or store credit) and cause their cashflow to bounce back and forth like a teeter totter, not to mention possibly incurring additional transaction fees at credit card companies/paypal etc. Any consideration of such a feature would have to be implemented in a way that would likely be used infrequently by people rather than a standard way to always get a cheaper price on almost everything in a huge window of time or the CFO types would break a rib laughing at the idea. :)

I'm far from rich but I think the prices here are more than fair. There are so many special offers, even if I miss one, I might get the next two games for less than $5. Asking for additional discounts is just rude and greedy in my opinion.

^^ This.

GOG is doing a mighty fine job, in my opinion, and don't need to 'cheapen' things any further. Heck, they even just gave away the entire Fallout catalog!

People, read what he's suggesting rather than just the title! He's suggesting that if you buy a game from GOG, and then GOG discounts it soon after, you are refunded the difference between what you payed and the 'sale' price. Not that if some other distributor offers the game cheaper, they refund the difference.

Honestly, this...might be a good idea. It would reduce people holding off from buying in case there's a sale with it in, and would be quite consumer friendly. Of course, GOG might miss out on some income from more people buying during sales, but we have seen them choose to be customer orientated over profit orientated, so they might do it.

I don't think that will work as a business model. However the GOG wallet might be a good idea considering their new 30 day refund guarantee, that way if someone does need a refund they can sidestep the transaction fees.