Nice move from gog, but I'd rather do something like:
30 days if technical problems/not downloaded (so like the old refund-system)
7 days (so you have at least 1 weekend) with the new system.

Still open for abuse, but "30 days no question asked" is a lot in this industry imho.

And that was not possible already under the 30 day guarantee that a game will run or you get your money back? Or the fact that anyone can already share the installer with as many people as they like?

I think the offer is reasonable considering the number of games that have cost more in terms of my time to actually get running than they have in cash. If after all that hassle it turns out to be a pile of unusable amateur code then yeah, it's a reasonable refund. That said I've never refunded a game.

Just drop drm-free already, gog. It's more trouble than it's worth. Stop hampering yourself. You'll still be a european company with european sensibilities. Your parent suffers in no way from having drm in their games on some stores. You'll be able to make an outstanding platform with your hands untied.

Now i'll have to buy Rimworld again on GOG :-) Props for building a customer relationship based on trust and respect.

This is undoubtedly very customer friendly, probably the most customer friendly policy out there...

Alas, I'm fully convinced it will be abused so much it won't last long. Somebody will surely buy a lot of games and mass refund after downloading, maybe with multiple accounts, or scam somoebody into "purchasing" their account with a full library -something we all knows happens, even if it is absolutely against the terms of service- and ask for a refund immediately after.
I hope you implemented plenty of failsafes, because a cretive criminal could work wonders with this.

Folks, I fucking love you all. This is exactly why I ditched Steam. By gamers, for gamers.

Massive fistpump. You da real MVP's. You're breathtaking. Respecta Selecta. GG GOG, GG!

If they dropped DRM-Free, they'd be utterly done. It's literally their core principle and the thing that differs them from the bigger platforms, along with the bringing back of older games of course

I agree with this. People who want free games will find an easier way to get them than go through all the hoops of buying, downloading and requesting refund. The bigger problem can be a buyer's remorse or drunk buying followed by a buyer's remorse :D
Anyway I believe this refund policy change will be good for a paying customer who has some legitimate problem with a game.

I don't see this being something that will be abused majorly - it's not automatic, you have to apply to an administrator to get the refund, they will notice if you are trying to (excuse the pun) game the system.

I have a question that wasn't covered in the FAQ and which probably should have been.

I bought a game at full price last year, after a week it was on sale at 70% off.

With this new policy, if the same situation occurred again, could I get a refund and then rebuy that game at the sale price?

I have a feeling, this won't end well...

The old refund policy which changed, had been fairer (especially for GOG itself). Not eligible for refund, if you downloaded main game, unless issues that render it unplayable and support being unable to solve them for you. Eligible for refund by default, if you downloaded only the extras but never touched the main game.

People like to exploit agreements for their benefit. I predict this change will chip away at GOG's profits. Customer friendly, sure, but fidelity and goodness is very rarely mutual and syncronized.

IF instead, the fair pricing system returned, that would have been ideal... But that's just me.

I know this might be a different issue but how about the preorders? Is the period also starting from the date of purchase or from the launch date?

I'd assume they did the math and the benefits of the good pr and getting people to take more chances on buying new games outweights the amount of money lost on the abusers.

I was wondering if GOG was ever going to make this change considering it did put them slightly behind Steam with an otherwise similar refund policy. Not only was it changed but they doubled up the period. Now that's quite unexpected.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if the effort for their refunds was just outweighing the potential cost of this kind of change, considering they expected you to work with staff to get it to work before allowing you a refund, which had to have became an increasing burden the bigger the service gets. Imagine the manhours spent on that. Now they can just ditch those expenses entirely except for the rare case where someone will actually try to get their game fixed.

------ I hope they're prepared for this one. As in, it needing permission from the person it was gifted to as well, else this is going to lead to a massive increase in fraud cases. It was extremely common for games to be bought with fraudulent methods and then traded for something with actual long term value. It'd absolutely make any kind of trading extremely risky if it doesn't require it.