OK, let's go through this thoroughly now:

- With Twitter and Facebook you sign into third party services, and by liking GOG there or whatever, you may get some draw prizes. That's how it works with all social media.
- With GOG Connect, everyone who uses that is expecting to get games, that's very straightforward. Although not very well communicated by GOG it seems, as there's at least one "GOG Connect not working for me" message on the forums every week.
- Checking the main page, again quite simple - you see what is there, and choose to click or buy or whatever you do. You may miss something if you don't check it frequently, but that's how it is with all game stores, nothing out of the ordinary.

What GOG has done here is that they have given wishlists some secondary functions that no one knew.

1) It is a ticket to enter to enter some prize lotteries. In case you want to opt in on everything, you need to click on every single game on GOG. Not very convenient. In case you want to opt out for some reason, I'm not even sure how to do that. Other than not using the wishlist at all.

2) It is a shadow mailing list. Those who had certain games on their wishlist got messages about their removal, whereas the rest of us, didn't. People have wanted for years better communication about game removals, but now it is tied to wishlists? Does that even make sense?

Some users have joked about "insta-wishlisting" new titles that come to GOG, but with these new, unannounced wishlist features, we probably should do that, to ensure that we are getting same opportunities and same communication as other users.

This post pretty much proves my point.
I don't personally think those things are OK either. But, at least in those cases there's a marketing reason why they do it. It gets them exposure into people's feeds and pages and what have you.

I don't like those forms of marketing as they're more or less spam, but at least there's a marketing reason for doing it. In this case, they didn't announce this to anybody ahead of time and AFAICT they didn't announce it after the fact either, so anybody who didn't receive a copy and isn't on the fora probably won't know about it. Which makes it a doubly stupid marketing tactic.

I know one can select not to get email notifications for wishlisted items, but I don't quite remember if and how it affects the related notifications in the bell (which can't be disabled as far as I know). Does one get the latter ones only when they opt to get the email ones too?

Or are you referring to some other account setting?

I remember that I got quite a lot of bell notifications in the beginning, but they are gone since I've opted out of getting mail notifications. So I guess these things are indeed connected.

I missed the email notification from GOG (but found it just now). For those keeping score and trying to figure out who got what and when and how and all that fun stuff...

I got a free copy of the Strongbad game which I had on my wishlist (wishlisted after playing Poker Night a while back). The last game that I purchased from GOG was Lords of the Fallen the day it came out, so not part of the current sale. It was quite a while ago since I bought another game though due to life and whatnot though so I don't think they are sending free games to people in proportion to people purchasing things in current sales or anything like that.

Anyhow, thanks GOG and Telltale for the free game.

Fuck, I have not received anything

Thanks GOG ! I got Batman:The Enemy Within -The Telltale Series

Oh my! I just got Tales of Monkey Island for free! A fantastic gesture from GoG!
Thanks guys!!

So, Gog is at fault for not trying to guess who wished for games they didn't put on their wishlist, otherwise they are evil conniving grasping greedsters?
So, now Gog have to compensate for your lack of input to the convenience tools they have added for you to use?
Exactly. I'm surprised PixelBoy plays games, which inherently reward certain actions and punish others. This is like complaining that the manipulative game designers made me a homicidal killer, because I had to learn mass killing to play their evil gamez.
You're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overthinking this. How are Gog to know you want the game they are able to give away?
You are seriously complaining that the method they use to deliver a surprise to people is unfair because they didn't overtly tell you that if you didn't use your wishlist (facilities they spent money to develop for the convenience of their customers), then your wishes won't come true?
You should search for "implied demand", it will explain the economics of the process that you just participated in. Now, with a simple Pavlovian example, Gog has sparked a meme for the people who use the forum (did they have to tell us to use to forum to ask questions that may crop up in the process of installing (old) games on various platforms, including the hleter-skelter community of Windows environments, covering countless configurations of third-party hardware manufacturers, too?).
This was me. So I was pleasantly surprised, countering your abomiable mood.
I had no idea Tales of Monekey Island was even on my wishlist (I have about a hundred titles I keep there, the only titles I am interested in —but then I only own a few hundred games, so perhaps my gaming tastes are too elitist?) but I was pleasantly surprised to receive it gratis.

Thank you!

GOG is a public business and, as such, business transactions should be trasparent and equal to all customer.
This means advertising and explaining how the different parts of the service will be used.

There is nothing wrong in giving out a limited amount of games following some GOG-chosen criteria.
There is all wrong in not communicating to customers what, and when, is happening, so to give a fair chance to all of them.

This is why car companies advertise sales and incentives at 360 degrees, explaining exceptions and how pormotions stack/don't stack.

I'm just sad as I've seen GOG moving from my only and favoured online shop, to something that I don't want to give money anymore.

OldOldGamer, How can you be such an asshole?

Perhaps if you think of it as a game: Gog are trying to build their virtual business in an asymmetric cyberscape, whilst many users are attempting to maximize various needs and desires through social media, including the purchase of games and the metagaming that attends to such a process in the milieu.

Then, perhaps instead the behaviour will appear in a better light?

Otherwise, if I were a cruel vulgarian with poor social skills, I would say "It sucks to be you."* :)

* Meaning you are unlucky, then, that the injustice, vel de dicto vel de re, offends you so.


edit: typographic loanword emphasis

I got Rime, very cool, thank you!

I feel the same way!

In the course of passing years GOG have really come down from the level that they used to be.

- They got rid of one world prices.
- They started to accept games which aren't complete and fully patched, which was one of the selling points of the early GOG.
- They have created some features, such as arrangeable game shelves and GOGmixes, and then deleted all them without any communication to users.
- They have made Galaxy users their primary focus, and traditional downloads are presented only as an inferior backup system.
- They have rejected several high quality games as "too niche", while the entire point of GOG was to be a niche service to begin with.
- Now, they have started doing random things like favoring customers who use wishlists, and don't even announce that! The only semi-official thing we have about this, is one blue reply in this topic!

Don't get me wrong here, GOG is still my favorite service. I have bought hundreds of games here, and so far zero on Steam.

But what I see here is not GOG improving, but rather moving towards Steam and other services, which do not have a customer-first approach to their business.

Back in the day GOG didn't have any freebies, during some super weekends discounts could have been up to 40%. I was a happy GOG user. These days I am seriously hesitant to spend any money on GOG, as I don't see them being the same service that I once signed onto.