This is pretty much what I assumed.

Though it's easy for me to say since I'd already spent a lot of money, and the only game left to appear I was interested in (Rayman) I'd already bought in round 1. So I was sticking around at that point only for the forum chat and the miniscule chance of a crit to have something to give away.

Still, I assume y'all learned a bunch from this sale and if we see insomnia again it will be tweaked to be even better! And more efficient at opening our wallets and throwing money at you. ;)

He, I'm sure a lot of insomniacs continue to click the purchase buttons hoping to land a critical hit.

The whole point is : GOG overestimated the numbers of copies / per game for the fresh ones in the last round. (possibly for some games in the whole promo aswell).

I won't blame anyone at GOG, but you should understand some customers which didn't have a chance to get one copy in the 2 previous rounds could be frustated.

I perfectly understand deciding the amount of copies for each round isn't something really easy to estimate. And as mentioned by some a time limit for games not selling as expected should be considered in the future for this kind of promo.

Make it rain!

lol that movie is awesome.

So there's a lot of work that goes into maintaining the Imsomnia sale while it's actually running then? I assumed you guys just switched it on and left it running while you went for a week off :-D

I...must pretend not to know of what you speak. :)

But what if the game sold faster than intended? Would they keep an "out of stock!" sign up for that 5 hours, or would there be a new game up right away? This would mess the pacing up again. And that would require the time to be adjusted.

No, no, I am merely suggesting an upper limit, not a fixed duration. A game would be available for NO MORE than 5 hours. It could still sell out in 5 minutes and be replaced by the next game, which would then be available for up to 5 hours. As I say, this allows GOG to determine a maximal time frame. For example, 150 games which are available for no more than 5 hours each would run for, at most, 750 hours. It would very probably run for much less, but they could be sure that it would definitely run for no more.

Capisce?

Well, we already figured out that, more or less, but it still think GOG should at least have warned customers before ending the promo anticipatedly. You promised the promo would go on until all copies were sold, after all.
There were potentially better solutions like putting a very low number of copies for the remaining titles and/or setting a maximum time limit for them.

I would also suggest to consider putting the remaining titles in the next weekend promo so those who missed the chance to get them could do it.

I understood your point.

Though even 5 hours I'd say is probably too long a window, esp. when you run into those times where both queues are stalling (seemed to be fairly common in Euro overnights) - like Fri night when both Gabriel Knight and ...whatever that other one was sat side by side for 7+ hours.

If at least one queue is moving it's not so bad, but with both stalled it's pretty dead outside of forum chatting. A minor tweak, but perhaps also reset each person's chance to crit on an item say, every 30 min?

At least then an item hanging on would have some appeal since you'd get more cracks at it. I realize GOG doesn't want to encourage scripts that hammer the servers, but a 30 min reset wouldn't do that.

I think any way it played out would have caused some happiness, but I agree that the people who stayed up hoping for a specific item ended up (deservedly) feeling like they were misled.

Probably better to just at least kill the two items left an hour or two earlier, and then run through the remainder with a very limited # of each (25-50) that would have encouraged them to go first [fast, not first].

Still, I imagine GoG staff were suffering from lack of sleep the way most of us were as well. ;)

Yes, or another possible solution would have been to put all the remaining titles on sale at the same time with a maximum time limit. There were plenty other possible solutions that were better.

I'm not their website coder, but my guess is that option was not easily available to them on short notice for technical reasons, esp. considering the sale was winding down not just over a weekend but also in the overnight hours for their HQ.

Perhaps they could look for specific complaints on the forum threads and offer to make those individuals whole (either with a gift or extending the sale price to those people). Though perhaps that just infuriates the people who were grumpy and didn't already post their grievance.

Or perhaps they try and work these items into their upcoming weekend sale at the same or even similar deal. Hard to say, but I'd say we should take a deep breath, and let us and them get a good night's sleep before assuming they will or won't do anything. :)

Later today they're announcing their new hardware product - the GOGulus Andromeda VR headset, which adds VR like experiences to old 2D-only 80s and 90s games, and GOGOS, their own custom Linux-based operating system!

I had no idea they had such power over people. The marketing director must feel like a puppetmaster now. :)