Today's final giveaway is as lackluster as this Winter Sale. If GOG is going to offer freebie titles to reward and fascinate members into opening their wallets, best to give us real games instead of unwanted visual novels. This isn't how Steam does things. Another sale, another write-off.

May i ask what games did you want to get as a freebie on Gog ?

Well, I think the giveaways are moreso to attract outside customers and retain prior customers.

I'd love to see HUGE giveaways, but I'm realistic.

What I do agree with is this Winter Sale...

... has been pretty "mid."

With 6000+ titles I'd hoped to see some exciting prices... but for the most part it was just the usual suspects of the last year or two (again).

Going down over my list, I was also dismayed by how much wasn't part of the sale. No BANNER SAGA trilogy. No WILDERMYTH. No FORGOTTEN REALMS COLLECTIONS (individually). No KINGDOM UNDER FIRE games. No EADOR games (although they are on sale elsewhere).

I thought maybe there would be an insomnia flash sale, but no... and the various flash sales on the main page were middling as well; saving .25 cents on a game that's already $2.50 on discount isn't that enticing.

GOD OF WAR was certainly meant to release during the Winter Sale but didn't (probably due to Sony). Once that was removed from the table, there just wasn't much interesting... other than the sale's length.

As usual I put everything I even remotely was interested in into my cart ($600+)... and then whittled it down to must-haves.

How many must haves were left? 0

That's $0.

I'll certainly pick up a game or two by the end of the sale... but... nothing I'm excited to play... or at such an amazing price I had to buy it NOW!

Meanwhile...

... sales elsewhere are luring me with games that aren't on GOG and probably never will be. ;(

(To be fair, the Sony PSN sale is pretty "mid" as well.)

Gotta say, the new popup cartoon style promos, featuring the member's name integrated into a cute story, are clever. That's like what GOG needs. Some creativity and fun to promote browsing and sales. Otherwise, visiting GOG had become the same old, same old, even during the major sales.

What?

^ Haven't seen one yet? They only periodically show up and sometimes match various GOG promo emails. Maybe GOG is still testing this as a means of engaging members.

Annoying popups that address you directly and offer some game suggestions especially for you. I have only seen them on my phone so far, not on PC.

Haven't seen any yet. I don't get GOG's spam and I never browse on my phone, if either is a factor. Good thing too, I guess.

I'd say in the past 2 or 3 days I've seen the popups maybe 3 or 4 times in updated Firefox on my Windows 10 desktop. So maybe GOG is measuring response before deciding on whether to commonly implement this promotional feature. Perhaps it'd be better used during major sales instead of year round.

See attachment. On pc.

Yep. Definitely happy never to have seen these, whether it's my adblock or I'm just lucky.

Heh the cat is almost always recommending me games i already own, also the few ones i recently seen but didn't buy or own.
Shows up almost everytime i check my wishlist or the store.

That's thanks to rejected cookies

We've had these popup ads before. They changed the design, though.
See attachments what they looked like during summer sale.

What didn't change about the ads is their utter uselessness by always suggesting already owned titles.

Hmmm. New Year sale 2024 in the next few days, if at all?