It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion2017: GOG.com Year In Review(173 posts)(173 posts)
(173 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
This is my favourite topic
Posted December 29, 2017
Looking back at 2017 on GOG.com

We made it! You made it! 2017 is almost over – and whatever your take on the world at large, only one thing can truly be said for certain: it's been a great year for all of us here at GOG.com – thank you for being a part of it!

Let's take a brief look back at the year 2017...





Over 2000 DRM-free games
Our catalog passed two thousand titles in 2017 – but if you know us, you know it's not just about the numbers. These are over two thousand unique experiences that we truly believe are worth playing!

Did somebody say good old games? Well, we brought back quite a few of them this year – the really tough ones and the ones we really missed – restored by our talented teams and friends across the net. There is the Jazz Jackrabbit series – CliffyB's gaming debut; SWAT 4 – happily no longer among PC Gamer's "15 great games you can't buy digitally"; The Suffering series – with scary monsters by Stan Winston Studios; the delicious Pizza Tycoon series; many long-lost classics Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, Rise of the Dragon, Heart of China; [url=https://www.gog.com/game/titanic_adventure_out_of_time]Titanic: Adventure out of Time… and more!




But the good and old is only half the story. 2017 was an amazing year for gaming, with award winning and groundbreaking productions releasing DRM-free on GOG.com. If the indie revolution is behind us, then this is the renaissance!

2017 gave us Divinity: Original Sin 2 – PC Gamer's Game of the Year and this year's most popular game on GOG.com! Followed by Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice – Best Audio Design, Impact, and Best Performance at The Game Awards; the niche but loveable Piranha Bytes RPG; [url=https://www.gog.com/game/cuphead]Cuphead – winning Best Art Direction and Best Independent Game at The Game Awards; and so many others!

All in all, in 2017 alone we released nearly one quarter of our entire catalog – and it's an honor to work this closely with so many talented game developers and great publishers.





GOG Galaxy out of beta
In 2017 the GOG Galaxy client left behind its BETA tag – with a few great new features to boot! We added Universal Cloud Saves, technology which allows us to introduce Cloud Save support to classics and new games on GOG.com (now nearly 300 and counting). Plus an in-game overlay, a built-in FPS counter and screenshot tool, as well as an array of expanded settings allowing you to customize the client to your needs. Anyway, that's how we earned our sense of pride and accomplishment.





We are legion
We saved the best for last – and that's you lot. As we grow in size, the GOG word spreads farther and farther out! Tens of thousands of you have joined us this year across social media and our very own twitch.tv/GOGcom channel. That's over <span class="bold">240,000 following our Twitter shenanigans</span>, more than <span class="bold">340,000 of you with us on Facebook</span>.

<span class="bold">As for twitch.tv/GOGcom</span>, we can't thank our dedicated Stream Team enough for sharing our love for games seven days a week. In 2017 we reached 50k followers – oh, it just went up to 51k – and there have been over 214600 individuals watching us so far. If you combine all our 2017 streams, we streamed for 169 days and 15 hours (that's about 45% of the year!) and if you combine all the time people spent watching our channel in 2017, you get 38 years and 272 days!





Thank you so much for being with us in 2017 – we hope your 2018 is amazing, and we can't wait to show you what's in store for this year!
Post edited December 29, 2017 by Konrad
Posted December 30, 2017
Happy new year to everyone at GOG (and to the GOG community, which includes some incredibly nice and generous people). There's been a few, uh, 'missteps' - Galaxy installers anyone? - but a whole lot of positive stuff as well. Here's hoping for many more DRM-free releases in 2018.
Posted December 30, 2017
No matter how many times you call that red pencil a blue pencil, it will still be a red pencil.
Let's hope you can do a lot better in 2018, as many GOGers are losing their faith.
Happy New Year, time to increase the gear.
Posted December 30, 2017
avatar
Tarhiel: I guess more will be coming :)
Well, I think we can assume that we will get: Skyrim, remaining Wolfenstein games, Medal of Honor Airborne, Dead Space 2 and 3, Crysis 2 and 3, Dragon Age 2. Maybe even Mass Effect series. But I wonder if we get more Ubisoft games like Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 2. I'm very interested in that because my Uplay experience was very terrible and I won't buy there anymore. But their games are good and I really would like to buy them here without any DRM/Uplay.
Posted December 30, 2017
Great year indeed. And thinking ahead, I would love to see 2018 as the year of GOG Galaxy in Linux ^_^
Posted December 30, 2017
Thank you!

From just another User.
Posted December 30, 2017
high rated
I'm chiming in a little late for this board but I wanted to give my own feedback for GOG.

Thanks for staying DRM-free

Thanks for supporting Galaxy and releasing improvement and backwards support, optional online features, etc.

Thanks for releasing the rest of the Homeworlds (just make sure to update DoK as I've heard it's in need of a serious one).

Thanks for releasing many other various classics that I thought I'd never see.

Thanks for supporting indie devs and bringing us both in-development titles and continuations of notable serious, such as Spellforce, Divinity, and more.

Thanks for all the sales, even if the blind sales started to give me duplicates (friends and family got some free games)

And now for the important notes for times to come:

Lighten up in your curation department. The "too niche" excuse is really ticking a lot of people off, and you just look hypocritical as many of your games are very much "niche". You're losing out on games, customers, and trustworthy devs and publishers. This is only slowing down your catalogs growth!

There are various games on GOG that are very much "mobile", so any indie game that may seem "too mobile" is still game for GOG as long as it's reputable.

Secure more new releases and not just leftovers. A catalog with fresh releases that are DRM-free would bring good business, and prove that DRM-free is more than just something for vintage titles mostly.

I hope to see Civilizations 1, 2, and 5 eventually, and maybe even Beyond Earth

I can also dream for a contract with Microsoft so you can officially release the original Age of Empires series (it's not likely to see the HD remasters though).

Release more RPG's, and more adventure titles when you can. And for the love of god, release more racing games that aren't just classics. Every genre matters!

If you need to, license more games under the GOG banner, just like you did with so many gold box classics and other strategy titles.

Most importantly: Pay attention to your community. Fix broken games. Don't force galaxy, ever. Make it easy to download a Galaxy free version for personal backup. Don't leave un-patched games; work with devs/publishers to fix games that need to be fixed and can, no matter what the cost. If you just want to leave it broken, then consider removing it. If you care about your customers, patch it yourself with official permission, or work with the games makers! Support not just what's coming, but also what's already here!

Here's to a great 2018!!!
Post edited December 30, 2017 by JinseiNGC224
Posted December 30, 2017
high rated
2017 was a year full of controversies on GOG.

There were many great long awaited releases such as TES: Oblivion, Fallout 3 plus New Vegas, Saints Raw 4 and Dying Light to name a few.

There were also some great sales and free games.

On the other hand there has been an aggressive push of Galaxy, libraries of which broke Windows XP compatibility even for non Galaxy users. A really bad move of announcing Galaxy into game installers.

There were some DRMed releases such as Gremlis Inc. and Gwent too.

Lately GOG has made some moves back to the right direction though (at least in the way I think of that right direction). Gremlins Inc. is no more. Getting again closer to the community by inviting GOG users in Warsaw (I'd really love to meet many people from this forum in real life too).

I wish GOG and all the users a happy and better 2018 with many good games, fun, constructive discussions in the forum and no more controversies.

I'll go against the wind and I wish against Galaxy on Linux with all the pros and cons that it brings. I think there are better ways to provide supporting libraries and interfaces than an on-line client.
Posted December 30, 2017
2017... we are still 99 % drm-free and that's a great thing.
The main problem is Gwent... right now is not drm-free.

and there is still gog galaxy... a secondary feature that will be more and more forced to players
Posted December 30, 2017
avatar
Tarhiel: I guess more will be coming :)
avatar
Andrey82: Well, I think we can assume that we will get: Skyrim, remaining Wolfenstein games, Medal of Honor Airborne, Dead Space 2 and 3, Crysis 2 and 3, Dragon Age 2. Maybe even Mass Effect series. But I wonder if we get more Ubisoft games like Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 2. I'm very interested in that because my Uplay experience was very terrible and I won't buy there anymore. But their games are good and I really would like to buy them here without any DRM/Uplay.
You´re not alone in that :)
Posted December 30, 2017
Dear Gog ,

When these will be available in here ?

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® 3 Gold
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Lockdown™
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas 2

Almost bought Rainbow Six Siege but as i heard / read it doesn't have a real single player mode , only a fake one ( Terrorist Hunt Lone Wolf )
Posted December 30, 2017
high rated
Adding Galaxy to the installers was a very poor move, to say the least. And here we are, about 8 months later, without an option to set the classic installers as default. How's that listening to feedback?
There is still room for improvement in several areas, as others have pointed out. Only time will tell though.
By the way, thanks for bringing Fallout: New Vegas here.
Posted December 30, 2017
Personally I would rate 2017 as an "OK" year for GOG.

GOG already mentions the good stuff, but a lot of problems have been kicked down the road and 2018 needs to see a lot of work for GOG to make it out on the positive. Now that Galaxy is out of beta, I expect that the forum will see some attention.

I hope to see some APIs being published "soon™" so that Galaxy will be even more optional.
Posted December 31, 2017
Happy 2017! You've done a great job and Galaxy has developed into a great games client that offers ownership of the product unlike all it's competitors. I'm really enjoying using it!
Posted December 31, 2017
Although I've had this GOG account for a few years, 2017 was the year when I really got into this platform.

I've greatly increased my collection during this year through the free games offered, GOG Connect, and the amazing sales. I took advantage of those sales to load up on classic DOS adventures, RPGs, and strategy and simulation games.

I know the Galaxy client is controversial, but I enjoy using it. I like that it keeps track of my time played, even when logged to different computers.

That said, the most important feature that I think GOG should strive to continue to offer is the distribution of game versions that are faithful to their original releases. I really appreciate when I buy an old DOS game and I find that both floppy and CD versions are included, as an example. I would be even happier if some of the games distributed only as ScummVM packages also included their original executables, even if the files were included only as "game extras". I'm also very thankful when games include good scan copies of their original manuals, and I'm also very happy when they include strategy/hint books.

If GOG can continue to offer DRM free, classic games that are faithful to the originals, I don't see why I should be worried about the Galaxy client. Client features such as cloud saves, screenshots, overlays and so on can be very helpful, as long as those features doesn't come as a tradeoff over the fundamental points I've mentioned above.

To wrap it up, thank you for creating and maintaining such a great platform, and for making classic games available once again.
Posted December 31, 2017
It was a really nice year for the catalog. Kudos and congrats for that.

For the nuts and bolts stuff of the site and customer experience, it was mediocre. Definitely needs more work
.
On the developer side it *sounds like* there needs to be some improvement in communication, infrastructure, something. Been some comments by developers that make it sounds like things either aren't as clear or aren't as seamless as they should be, leading to difficulties with things such as timely patch delivery to the customer library.

Criticism aside, it is still easy to get to the games that the customer has purchased, with multiple options: browser, Downloader (thank you for not getting rid of this capability), and Galaxy. It sounds like Galaxy has some good features, though not without some hiccups here and there. And it's still optional for 99+% of the offerings.

If I were to point to one improvement I'd like to see the most, it would be customer communication. We realize that there are some things that you can't discuss, such as contract details. But there are also things that you CAN talk about, such as plans for the forum structure, your criteria for determining which game characteristics can lead to its appearance in the catalog and the general decision process, why certain promises are taking a very long time to bring to fruition (installer default, anyone?), etc. The longer you leave these things up in the air, the more time your customer base is allowed to come up with the worst possible explanations.

So yeah, good year for the catalog and sales numbers. So-so year for the overall customer experience. A couple really WTF decisions, and communication is generally lacking for certain issues.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion2017: GOG.com Year In Review(173 posts)(173 posts)
(173 posts)