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Sdfghj: What is gog's stance on that?
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JMich: Not sure I understand this question.
Is it "Do Steam Workshop mods work with non-Steam versions of the game" or "Will GOG implement a system similar to Steam Workshop for GOG games"?
I very much hope that gog will not implement a system that is as precluding as the steam workshop. What I want to know is, whether gog sees a problem with steam denying access to mods. To me this seems similar to manufactures forestalling the use of 3rd party cartridges for printers or capsules for coffee makers. Which in most legislations is illegal.
And, of course there is the eminent problem that customers might buy a game from steam instead of from gog, because they want access to specific mods. Surly, that cannot be good for gog?
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GR00T: That's what you think! :P
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PaterAlf: Don't be mean or I'll post the evil pics. ;)
I retract my previous statement. *slinks away into the forest*
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Pheace: I'd be more worried about GOG's income being dwarfed by a game like Gwent. That's a far more worrying trend.
I don't think it is, and I'll tell you why from my own experience.

I'm a translator who specialises in three areas - finance, mechanical engineering and game localisation.

Now, I'd love to only translate games. But there's very little demand for freelance EN>DE and DE>EN translations in the gaming industry (especially since most of the mid-tier developers and developers in Germany have gone and all that's left is a failing F2P market). My main client until a few years ago was in Austria through an agency.

As a translator who places value in ethics and certain principles, the bulk of my income comes from work that isn't unethical, but doesn't strive to aim for the greater good either - that's the financial end of it. The "ethically neutral" stuff doesn't make me feel good, but it's my bread and butter. If I picked and chose what jobs I felt were solely in keeping with my interests, I'd go bankrupt in an instant.

Because I can make a reasonable living off more stable financial and engineering work, this means I don't have to hesitate or barter too high when I get a gaming project in, because I'd much rather be writing dialogue than translating how many millions a bank is making or how loan applications should be turned down.

Similarly, even if Gwent is GOG's bread and butter, it provides a healthy financial basis on which the company can develop a stable DRM-free business. So even if they cannot secure new games regularly enough, they still have enough income to keep the existing business going.
Post edited October 06, 2017 by _ChaosFox_
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Sdfghj: I very much hope that gog will not implement a system that is as precluding as the steam workshop. What I want to know is, whether gog sees a problem with steam denying access to mods. To me this seems similar to manufactures forestalling the use of 3rd party cartridges for printers or capsules for coffee makers. Which in most legislations is illegal.
And, of course there is the eminent problem that customers might buy a game from steam instead of from gog, because they want access to specific mods. Surly, that cannot be good for gog?
Is it really Steam that is denying access to the mods or is it the devs of such mods that decide to use Steam Workshop for it?
I don't like it myself, but I can't see anything that GOG can do about it.
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PaterAlf: my english got much more fluid after I drank some glasses.
My German identity keeps reading the German in this sentence ("fließend"), but my British identity keeps thinking "verbal diarrhoea", which usually goes hand in hand with lots of beer.

I think I spider! My English is under all pig and mein Deutsch saugt Eselbälle!
Post edited October 06, 2017 by _ChaosFox_
Just wanted to say thanks to JMich, PaterAlf, GR00T, and the rest of the folks that visited GOG HQ. It's pretty nice to have an honest evaluation of the inner workings of the site from some of our forum regulars.

That being said, I wonder if we can possibly get a sticky for this topic? It might help to alleviate some of the constant threads about "GOG IS ABANDONING DRM-FREE PRINCIPLES." It would also allow us to keep a discussion of GOG's business principles in one place.
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_ChaosFox_: Is GOG aware that they need to prevent abuse of this principle where developers would offer a token 1-2 hour single-player feature and then gate the bulk of the content behind online servers?
DISCLAIMER : I am the "Swiss" mentioned in the OP.

Yes the issue of games like that one like that was raised (not specifically Absolver but in general) and yes that are well aware and very cautious about it. (see point 2 of the first post)

The issue that can happen sometime is that it's not always very easy to draw the line between a game with an optional online component (e.g. Dark Souls, Dragon Dogma) and a games with a token tact-on single player and/or offline mode that is just a glorified tutorial, most of the time it's clear cut but sometime the frontier is more blurry.

Even for Absolver it's not that clear cut (note : I haven't played the game yet); some peoples complains that most of the content is locked online for no reason, that the single player is way too short; but on the other side you also have peoples who says that the single player part is not really that much shorter than similar Indy games and that the online part is mostly end-game grinding that only really matters if you want to play PvP. (Again I haven't played the game yet so I don't know if it is "true".)
Post edited October 06, 2017 by Gersen
Oh boy!!! Sounds like you people had fun.
I wish to visit there some day.
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Sdfghj: What I want to know is, whether gog sees a problem with steam denying access to mods.
Not something we asked, and not something GOG can do anything about. Steam is owned by a different company and it uses their own methods of distribution. Best GOG can do is ask the developers to make the mods for a game only need the files, and not to care where the files were obtained from, similar to how Shadowrun Returns implements the User Generated Content.

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PaterAlf: Is it really Steam that is denying access to the mods
It's a weird case, similar to trying to buy on GOG the soundtrack of a game you have on Steam. To be able to download a mod from the workshop, you need to own the game on Steam (and also have it installed).
A few games did allow one to download a mod without owning the game through a workaround, but not all of them do (or the workaround may no longer work).
Post edited October 06, 2017 by JMich
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PaterAlf: my english got much more fluid after I drank some glasses.
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_ChaosFox_: My German identity keeps reading the German in this sentence ("fließend"), but my British identity keeps thinking "verbal diarrhoea", which usually goes hand in hand with lots of beer.

I think I spider! My English is under all pig and mein Deutsch saugt Eselbälle!
See, I need some of the magic beer again! ;)
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astroclay: Just wanted to say thanks to JMich, PaterAlf, GR00T, and the rest of the folks that visited GOG HQ. It's pretty nice to have an honest evaluation of the inner workings of the site from some of our forum regulars.
Thank you. I was afraid that people might not see us as part of the community anymore (which we still are) after this post but instead as puppets of GOG (which we are not).

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astroclay: That being said, I wonder if we can possibly get a sticky for this topic? It might help to alleviate some of the constant threads about "GOG IS ABANDONING DRM-FREE PRINCIPLES." It would also allow us to keep a discussion of GOG's business principles in one place.
Good idea. I will do this at o...oops - I will contact Judas about this ;)
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astroclay: That being said, I wonder if we can possibly get a sticky for this topic? It might help to alleviate some of the constant threads about "GOG IS ABANDONING DRM-FREE PRINCIPLES." It would also allow us to keep a discussion of GOG's business principles in one place.
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MarkoH01: Good idea. I will do this at o...oops - I will contact Judas about this ;)
Not a good idea for the moment in my eyes. Sticky threads tend to be invisible. People just don't look at the "sticky" section of a forum.
You guys promised us pictures from the meeting or didn't you ?
Post edited October 06, 2017 by Painted_Doll
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JMich: A few weeks ago, some forum members received an e-mail invitation for a “one of a kind community event” in Warsaw. The reason for the invitation was that GOG wants to improve communications with the community. They are aware that they have been having difficulties on that front, that mistrust has been building, and that many of the larger controversies in recent years could probably have been avoided altogether. To this end, they wished to get the input from some of the community members, to see what improvements could be made.
Not everyone who was invited could make it, but 6 of us did go. Other than myself there was one Swiss, one Scandinavian, one Canadian and two Germans. It’s up to them whether they want to come forth or not, I’m not going to name them.

In Warsaw, we had a tour of the GOG Office, a tour of the CD Projekt offices and a QA Session with iWi, W0rma, Destro, elcook, fables22 and KatyaGOG. We spoke to a lot of people with diverse responsibilities within GOG, about all manner of things, some trivial, some important.
All of us signed an NDA so there are severe limits to what we can disclose. Specific names and numbers are out of the question, and so are details of ongoing negotiations and future plans.
There are some things we can share, though. Some of us may choose to share some of our personal experiences and opinions, but to begin with, here is a list of things we discussed with GOG:

1) Economy: Financially, CD Projekt Group is doing very well. GOG is not in any kind of danger and shouldn't be for the foreseeable future.
2) DRM-Free: DRM-Free is here to stay. Even if the industry moves towards online or mixed experiences GOG will continue to offer fully offline installers and single player experiences that will not depend on any kind of network or client connection (though there might be an optional use of such capabilities, if the player wishes).
3) Market share: GOG is currently at a decent position (we did get numbers but we can't disclose them). They are not irrelevant but they also need to grow for more publishers to be invested in bringing DRM-free titles day 1 on GOG and assure updates the same time Steam is updated.
4) Galaxy installers: Our understanding is that there was no malice behind the announcement, though naïveté was probably involved; they had a lot of support request from users complaining that their games didn't update, and that they didn't have access to multiplayer, achievements or cloud saves. These were from users that downloaded the games but didn't understand that they also had to install Galaxy to benefit from those extra features (despite all the banners and other "try Galaxy" buttons), so they wanted streamline the experience for those users. They underestimated the strong reaction from other more advanced users from the forum, and it resulted in the shitstorm we are all aware of. Classic installers will stay and an option to set default installers is coming (but we don't know when). And despite how the forum may feel about the Galaxy installers, according to GOG it did lessen the support load.
5) Regional restrictions: GOG is aware that the situation is not ideal, but there isn’t anything they can do about it right now. They are looking into ways of changing this, but that is a lengthy process.
6) Regional pricing: Situation is complicated. The pricing model does depend on a lot of factors so it’s not so easy to enforce a specific price point. For classic games GOG still tries to prevent higher price points than the base price.
7) Forum: GOG knows the current forum software sucks, and they are looking at other options. Suggestions and opinions on required features were given. They know about the importance and are investigating the ideas we shared with them, but replacing the whole forum is not an easy task and will take some time so don't expect anything soon, however other improvements to the site might come in the meantime.
8) Moderation: GOG did ask us for feedback, as they are looking on how to improve the forum moderation.
9) Product acquisition: The wishlist does help. Enthusiasm in forum threads also helps to get the ball rolling. Doing the legwork of finding who owns the rights can take a lot of time and that is something the community can help with (see the old https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_search_for_game_rights_a_diaryesque_thread/ thread), but just make sure that any data you send to GOG is correct and let them take care of the rest.
10) Old games: GOG are still very much actively trying to get more classic games onto the platform. They are working to make deals both for new partners, and for games in the back catalog of existing partners that have not yet been released on GOG. It is quite difficult work though. All the low-hanging, mid-hanging and even quite-high-hanging fruit has already been picked, so it takes quite a lot of resources, but they are still committed to it. They also occasionally go back to games they failed to get earlier and try again, if they think there is a chance they might succeed this time.
11) Game rejections: Games do get rejected. A lot of them. GOG does provide feedback, though neither party is required to disclose it to third parties. Some partners also assume that they cannot actually disclose any of it, and that may be true for some of the feedback.
12) Support: Support does work almost 24/7. The only section that gets a lower priority on weekends is technical issues with games, and that is because people may work remotely and not have access to all the testing machines to try and reproduce the errors.
Were they talking about job opportunities? Personally, I would love to work there.
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Painted_Doll: You guys promised us pictures from the meeting or didn't you ?
Here is one of the the reception they held.