GOG.com Not Really Gone 276
gspr writes "On Sunday, Slashdot and many others reported that DRM-free games site GOG.com was shutting down. Now the site is back, revealing that it was all a hoax. According to the site: 'Now it's time we put an end to all the speculations once and for all. It's true that we decided that we couldn't keep GOG.com the way it was so we won't. As you probably know by now, GOG.com is entering its new era with an end of the two-years beta stage and we're launching a brand new GOG.com with new, huge releases.' So it was all an advertising stunt."
The important part (Score:5, Informative)
They still won't have DRM and they still won't have a download client.
Love it or hate it, this is one of the more successful marketing stunts of late.
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To be fair to them, the language of the shutdown announcement was peppered with hints that there's be a change, but ultimately that it was a transition of sorts.
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What about people who went to the site, didn't realize it was a joke, and won't be back?
Re:The important part (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes!
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they still won't have a download client.
The only download client needed is a web browser. That is as it should be.
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No, you should have a proprietary client that uses a special protocol. It should be tied in to your globally-unique key, which upon first use adds your globally-unique MAC and CPU IDs to ensure that you are not selling the game to another user.
It should also be able to install other systems on your machine that track usage and report piracy.
Nah, it should be an FTP client.
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No, you should have a proprietary client that uses a special protocol.
Which should really just be a slightly-obfuscated Bittorrent so you don't have to pay for as much bandwidth. When someone calls you on this, you call them hackers because they reverse-engineered your secure protocol technology.
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Well, a download client that supports resume, hash checking and block based re-download of corrupted blocks _would_ be nice though. Especially because we are likely talking about multi-gig downloads.
It could still use plain http, and allow people to download the games using the web-browser. The extra download client would just add a bit of robustness.
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Now, in the fu
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Love it or hate it, this is one of the more successful marketing stunts of late.
Yes, lying can be very effective marketing. Just like the important announcements about my Verizon service I get all the time (actually FiOS ads), the Clear ads I get in envelopes saying "This is not junk mail" on the outside, the letters to my business that look like they are from government entities (but aren't, as the fine print admits), and the Siemens pop-up ads on scientificamerican.com that have an extra "close" button that takes you to the Siemens website. As long as consumers fail to get sufficie
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Not that I disagree with anything you've said, but my comment was based a lesson I picked up from a former prof: "the only bad marketing is when people don't learn what your product is". Shutting down out of the blue was a dick move but their brand awareness is now through the roof.
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All marketing is lying.
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Re:The important part (Score:4, Insightful)
they did not lie.
they just said they couldn't keep the site the way it was.
it was the news (including /.) that said that they were closing.
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"We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await."
When was the last time you heard a company say something like that when announcing that their service was coming out of beta? Sure, if you parse it really carefully you can claim that it technically isn't a lie, but how did they expect it to be interpreted? If the news (like slashdot) misunderstood their intent, why didn't they put out an announcement contradicting it immediately?
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Um, are you that dense? Their INTENT was to craft the announcement in such a way that people would assume they were shutting down. That's the thing that was supposed to give them the media coverage (as it indeed did). The fact that they technically didn't lie is a fact that should have only be noticeable in hindsight, which appears to have been how it worked.
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Re:The important part (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all we would like to apologize everyone who felt deceived or harmed in any way by us closing down GOG.com without any warning and without giving access to your games. We apologize for that from the bottom of our hearts!
Sounds like they realise that they upset some people. When was the last time you got an apology like that from a company that made a mistake that didn't actually harm anyone?
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What have they lost?
The chance to make a good impression the next time I hear about them?
Sounds like they realise that they upset some people. When was the last time you got an apology like that from a company that made a mistake that didn't actually harm anyone?
Sure, apologies are always nice, but I wouldn't call them that unusual. Hell, Verizon apologized to me just yesterday, because I got spam text messages on my phone. Verizon! And gave me a $5 credit, which is enough to counteract a lot of future spam, too.
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No, a successful stunt suggests that you pulled it off. Everyone knew it was a hoax from the beginning and said so, therefore, they failed.
Secondly, they would have had plenty of game press coverage if they just announced the changes without pulling this stupid stunting gimmick. Hell, RPS and Joystiq (among others) not only cover them regularly, but write about their weekend sales on a regular (almost weekly) basis.
This didn't get them more attention than it otherwise would have. The only thing this accompl
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Well, it did get them 2 important posts on the most important globally influental website out there - Slashdot.
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Love it or hate it, this is one of the more successful marketing stunts of late.
Successful? I didn't realise that the goal of marketing was to make your customers and potential customers believe you're incompetent losers. I have much less respect for GOG after they've pulled this and am less likely to buy. I can't believe I'm the only one.
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Which is all I care about. You can rip the games out and play then on dosbox or wine.
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Re:The important part (Score:5, Funny)
I have the original box for Discworld II - Missing, Presumed...? but the discs are, sadly, long gone.
I can't be the only one who noticed the irony.
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It's only ironic if you forget that the box will follow you wherever you go and do unpleasant things to people/creatures/things that threaten you. ;)
Annoying stunt, but still glad they're here. (Score:2, Insightful)
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They meant closing down the beta service, they left that out for excitement or whatever some marketing moron thought.
Unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
The stunt worked, they got two front page /. articles about them. Of course, the downside is that they're now on my blacklist.
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Whatever you care to say about DRM, it is at least honest. Amazingly enough, some people prefer to do business with honest assholes than with dishonest nice guys.
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Admittedly, that's more towards the scummier end of things, but DRM often seems to lack honesty. I'm not sure the last time I saw a CD which stated that it had DRM, the only
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What I mean is that, with DRM, you know what you are getting, or you should. No one is claiming that DRM is anything but what it is. These guys claimed they were shut down when they weren't. That makes them liars.
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Should you? how? DRM covers so many different things to different people, it can mean anything from basic CD protection at one end to ubisofts shit at the other. Noone (not even the companies running them) really knows how long the activation servers will remain online and i've never seen a company be upfront about the problems caused by the anti-hacking steps they take as part of thier DRM efforts.
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Are you claiming you don't know what I mean? Go ahead and say that you really do not understand what I am getting at here and I will explain it for you. I have real sympathy for the retarded and will go out of my way to help, if that is what is required.
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Well, GOG.com seem like nice guys, doing the right thing, happy customers, etc., except then they went and lied like this. Bad form.
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Re:Unintended consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? What boxed games say on the outside "warning includes securerom and may screw your machine"?
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Does it need to say that? I just assume, if it is commercial, it has DRM, and if it has extra nasty DRM, I will have heard about it.
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Fair enough they put warnings on games that you will need an internet connection.
What they don't tell you is the other side of things, a purchase with an online activation requirement is essentially a rental of unspecified duration, sooner or later those activation servers will almost certainly be taken offline (especially in an industry as volatile as gaming, sure steam is big now but who knows if it will stay that way). Nor do they tell you about the problems that ever more agressive CD protections schems
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Yeah, but that's not what I was refering to. You know when you are buying a DRMd game. You know what DRM is for, and who it serves. You know you are dealing with assholes. With GOG.com, I don't know, can I trust them? They are liars. As I said, I'd rather deal with the asshole that I know is an asshole than the supposed "nice guy" who fakes his own death as a publicity stunt.
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However i do think i shall compare their catalog to Impulse's, find several games i want that both sites have, purchase those games from Impulse, ("Age of Wonders" seems li
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Is impulse DRM free? Does it require some bullshit client?
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My usual buying pattern when looking for games was to check first GOG, then Impulse, and finally Steam, and buy it from
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I agree.
<Homer Simpson's voice>GOG, you just lost yourself a customer!!!</Homer Simpson's voice>
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Clearly, you are mistaken. The only rational and sensible opinion on any matter is the one identical to mine. Therefore, no sane poster here can "disagree" in good faith. So, someone who "disagrees" can be safely presumed to be acting in bad faith and modded appropriately. (I.e., "Troll", "Flamebait", or the ever-effective "Overrated".)
Am I kidding, or am I serious? Good question.
Let's be honest here (Score:4, Insightful)
GOG has been gaining popularity and consumer visibility, ESPECIALLY in the past few months. Unless they were hit with a huge lawsuit or financial disaster, there would be no reason for them to close permanently.
Sincerely,
A not surprised (yet very relieved!) gamer
DRM demonstration (Score:5, Interesting)
It was all a demonstration of what inevitable happens to DRM media.
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And targeted at consumers of non-DRM media: The message was "We operate on a shoestring, so buy it from us while we're still around to sell it." (Not a bad message, come to think of it. You'll buy that game now, not six months from now, since you don't know if the seller will be around six months from now. And if you do buy it now, because it's DRM-free, you'll at least have it six months - or six years - from now when you finally get a
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Bought Half-Life 11 years ago. Registered it with Steam 7 years ago. Lost the disc sometime since then. Finally beat (the Steam DRMed versions of) Half-Life, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift 6 months ago.
You were saying?
Unprofessional (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why should a company that sells games act professionally? The sillier the better I say.
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Pretend you're going out of business when you're not? That's not silly, that's frustrating or unsettling.
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I bought a game from them last week, and was concerned that it would no longer be supported. This is especially scary when they don't sell you physical media.
Yeah... that was my last purchase from them.
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Yeah... that was my last purchase from them.
^^
I don't buy appliances from the crazy neighborhood appliance store that's had a perpetual "going out of business sale" for the last three years, either.
Re:Unprofessional (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why would you not purchase from them in the future? You pick a game, you buy it, and download it, and it's yours. DRM free. For life. You're not buying stock in the company. Or are your principles so rigid that you have to take a stance against every "wrong".
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Why would you not purchase from them in the future?
Because the money you are giving to people who are willing to lie to you if it will put more cash in their own pockets could otherwise be spent on products from companies that have an ounce of respect for their customers. If you don't punish companies that cheat, the only companies that will survive are those that do.
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So using DRM is respect for their customers? Because that is what other game sellers do.
If you could not see through their little "deceit" you need your head examined.
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So using DRM is respect for their customers? Because that is what other game sellers do.
I didn't say anything of the sort.
If you could not see through their little "deceit" you need your head examined.
So, it's OK to lie if the lie is obvious enough? Should I point out that the Slashdot editors apparently bought it, since they carried the story (and it's not April 1st).
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Or perhaps they were proving to the public that you didn't lose anything if they went away. You still had everything you purchased from them. That's huge, what with various DRM servers shutting down and removing content people thought they purchased.
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They did not lie. They withheld some facts (unless you actually bothered to ask them - they were actually quite forthcoming with the journalists who did, rather than jumping straight to the conclusion that they were going bust, rather than coming out of beta), but nothing on their announcement was an outright lie. And they made a very good point about DRM in doing so.
If they had been selling DRM'd games and had actually gone bust, all of their customers would have been screwed. As it is, the only 'prob
Re:Unprofessional (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps I'm missing something, but is this PR stunt really worse behavior than the competition or are you talking about not buying games from anybody?
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As opposed to the companies that DRM the hell out of their products, refuse to give refunds if the aforementioned DRM prevents you from using it and fails to disclose the degree to which the DRM impacts the security of your computer?
Disgusting behavior is disgusting, even if the competition is worse.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but is this PR stunt really worse behavior than the competition or are you talking about not buying games from anybody?
They're selling games, not water; you can live without it. If you can't find any good options in the entire gaming industry, spend your entertainment dollars elsewhere. If you aren't willing to walk away when a company/industry treats you like crap, they'll just keep doing it.
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Cheating: to practice fraud or deceit
They deceived the public in order to benefit themselves with free publicity (media attention).
If GOG had a competitor that refused to lie to the public for publicity, that competitor would have to spend a ton of money on advertising just to keep up, which would put it at a significant disadvantage. If there isn't sufficient consumer backlash to dissuade companies from doing such things, how can an honest company possibly compete?
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is "marketing" a real profession? (Score:2)
Lovely. (Score:2, Insightful)
Essentially, they call their customers suckers after taking away access to the games they chose to pay GOG money for, then call them too sensitive for feeling pissed off by that ("We're sorry you were offended"), then say that taking money for games is no longer good enough, so everyone's just going to have to take, oh, let's say whatever we decide is good enough for you.
This certainly matches with the usual playbook of corporate non-apologies - smarmy, fake ingratiation, blame shifting their own words, all
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Why are you so angry?
Re:Lovely. (Score:4, Informative)
I mean even 3d Realms when they went out of business made arrangements to handle recent orders.
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You buy and download the game. It's yours. Forever. No matter what happens to GOG that game will still play on your PC
If Valve ever goes under, though, you're SOL. All your games will no longer work*.
*Yes, I know Valve could release DRM-removing updates on all their games if they start going under. Really think that'll be high on their list of priorities, though?
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Yeah - that was the fake ingratiation part.
Ryan Fenton
As a loyal customer (Score:5, Insightful)
... this stunt was horrible and silly and an annoyance. I recently reinstalled my computer, and when I went to Gog.com to redownload Gabriel Knight I got that stupid "zomg we're closing down" message. It feels like something straight out the 1990s, when nobody expected any degree of seriousness from Internet companies - thanks for reminding us how WE SHOUDLN'T TRUST YOU in the future, that's great marketing.
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Part of why I love GOG is that I don't need to trust them. There is no DRM. I'm free to make my own backups and never visit their site again after purchasing a game. It doesn't matter if they go crazy and pull stupid stunts like this. It doesn't matter if they get bought out. It doesn't matter if the game's copyright holder gets into a snit and pulls the title. I still have my backup. This is as it should be.
Yes, it was a stupid stunt. But a rational consumer has to assume that eventually every bus
Fire your PR firm (Score:2)
Whoever organised this stunt needs to be shown the door. They've managed to do permanent damage. What's more it was so badly executed you wonder if it was the incompetent work of a 3rd grader.
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Personally, I'll be recommending them in the future, it's just really hard to pass up on cheap, DRM free games that are simply fun to play. There aren't a whole lot of options for that out there.
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I'm not sure, but if any 'harm' comes to the company from this, I suspect it'll be less from people being angry at them, and more from people who either saw the reports of GOG's demise, or saw the 'placeholder' page, left, and don't come back because they missed the news that the site is back.
That is, people who heard GOG was dead, and believed it, and just never look again.
Good God, it's Magog Brothers!!! (OT) (Score:2, Offtopic)
"Yes my brother Gog was right. How were we to know the comet would land right in the middle of our giant warehouse. It's a cataclymic sale down here. We're up to our poor necks..You're crazy we got'em. Your nap will rise again and that's my story...Good god its Magog brothers, Atlantis Carpet Reclaimers, serving Hooker, Heater, Hellmouth, and the low desert area."
-- Firesign Theatre from "Everything You Know Is Wrong (and dogs fly spaceships!)"
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Not a hoax, and not really a stunt... (Score:3, Insightful)
So far as I can tell, nothing they said was untrue, people just read more into it.
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Mr. Seebs,
We regret to inform you that your position has been terminated. You will now be escorted from the building by security. Someday next week we will allow you to stop buy and get your things.
-HR
4 days later:
Mr Seebs,
Haha, you fell for it. You're actually being transferred to a different position with the same responsibility, and we needed to remodel your office. Sorry if you were offended, but nothing we said was untrue - your fault for reading too much into it.
-HR
It sort of serves the GOG community right (Score:4, Interesting)
For 2 months the GOG forums have been rife with posts about how their birthday event better live up to expectations, or else (else is always ominously undefined). I think many customers were getting a little annoying. Living 2-3 days thinking GOG might be gone probably grounded a lot of these folks and imo it serves them right. I've purchased a ton of stuff from GOG and will continue to do so, since they're still offering the product that I want.
I was depressed when I saw the notice not because I wouldn't be able to redownload some games I'd lost in a hard drive crash but more because there's no other company like them. GOG folding would be essentially saying, "Okay, Steam wins." Steam sucks in my mind, if that's online game sales, count me out. I already feel marginalized for enjoying PC games (even if I do have a 360), I'd be left with only indie titles sans DRM on my PC. I like my indie titles but I also like some of the big releases and the classics.
I think there might have been a couple of behind the scenes reasons for doing this and all in all, it will benefit GOG in the longrun. It probably cost them some goodwill in the short term, but if the cost is low enough that's not de defacto a show stopper.
You were surprised? (Score:2)
The web page did say something was happening today (Score:3, Informative)
All the people who said they had failed was either reading a bad summary or didn't check it out for themselves.
Their temporary page had two things.
First, was, they "could not continue operating like this". Now, that can mean they're going out of business, or it can mean something else. The literal translation is, "change is happening". That change could be "this site is dead", or it could be "please wait for the new and improved GoG 2.0".
Secondly, they said "you will be able to download all your games on Wednesday". So something was happening today. If they were shutting down, it's a last-gasp download mania.
Fact is, they didn't say "GoG.com is now closed for business, we thank all our customers for the past 2 years". It's also sort of unprofessional, because it screws everyone who bought a game just before they shut down, but haven't downloaded it yet (which is a dick move).
The funniest part... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is the negative reactions now.
"Huff! Puff! Well, *I* won't be buying form them again after *this* treatment! Harumph!" Seriously, people, do you have any idea how you sound? Like a curmudgeonly old fool. Oh, you are SO offended! And you know *someone* out there is thinking of suing because their fragile little selves were damaged.
My reaction was "Oh, shoot, I was going to go and get Syberia next week." and then "Oh, cool, I can still get Syberia." Any reaction more serious that that is a complete failure of your perspective matrix.
As for Syberia, hey, I played the updated Monkey Island and now have an urge to go play some of the point and click puzzlers I missed. Weclome back, GOG. :-)
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Heinz did a similar thing a few years back, IIRC. They said they were going to drop Salad Cream in the UK, claiming that it was losing ground to more exotic dressings. It got a ton of news coverage before the company decided to "change their minds" and keep on selling it. Thankfully. It's delicious!
I actually fell for it too, I started buying it more frequently after that episode. It's one of those things you don't think of because it's been around for so long, and the thought of "what would life be like w
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You guys never fail to point out just how bad your food is. We call this stuff (acidified fake mayo) Miracle whip, as far as I can tell the miracle is that somebody actually will eat it.
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GOG was down Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and is still down today. At midnight PDT tonight, that will be 144 hours.
How is that "few" or "measly?"
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the extremely excellent original Discworld games
Excellent as long as you play with the mouse in one hand, and the walkthrough in the other. Or at least have the Universal Hint System open on another second monitor.
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Really? It sounds like to me where a company I had a business relationship with has this odd idea that randomly shutting down, and locking me out of things I've bought, is a company I will no longer do business with. And it also sounds like good old word of mouth, will make sure that my friends know that this company enjoys randomly shutting down and locking them out of their purchases for PR stunts.
Yep, works well.
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Nobody would *seriously* be inconvenienced if Netflix locks out their video streaming for 6 days. Or if Microsoft kills their Xbox Live access for 6 days. Or if their email provider/ISP locks out SMTP/POP3/IMAP/Webmail for 6 days. Or if FexEx/UPS refused to deliver anything to them for 6 days.
Would you seriously consider using any of those in th
Re:Still won't use it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I never used GOG before... (Score:4, Insightful)
and I certainly won't start now. I'll stick with Steam, Valve doesn't have to stoop to such underhanded practices to gain popularity or even commercial viability. Never mind the fact that Steam will be around long after GOG is nothing but a footnote in gamer history.
This has got to be the most ignorant thing I've read in this thread. You do realize I'll be playing my games from GOG long after they're a "footnote in gamer history" whereas your Steam games will quit working soon after Valve goes tits-up, don't you? Playing offline will only work for so long before the Steam client demands a connection and there won't be any universal unlock forthcoming (I don't know why this myth even persists, it's ignorant in the extreme), they won't own their own assets when it happens and not a single person who could do it, supposing it's even possible, will be willing to go to prison to come through for you. GOG already came through for me, the games can be downloaded, backed up, and installed at will and only the downloading part even requires an internet connection.
Of course Valve/Steam doesn't even have to go down and out, you can lose your account and all your games on their whim. They've been nice so far but that doesn't mean it'll last forever. They're have certainly been wrongfully banned accounts in the past and the only "oops, our bad" I've heard from them involved 1000s of accounts. What happens when 5 accounts get wrongfully banned? They won't investigate and no one will care.
Enjoy Steam if you want, it may be a gilded cage but it's still a cage.