A few weeks ago, some forum members received an e-mail invitation for a “one of a kind community event” in Warsaw. The reason for the invitation was that GOG wants to improve communications with the community. They are aware that they have been having difficulties on that front, that mistrust has been building, and that many of the larger controversies in recent years could probably have been avoided altogether. To this end, they wished to get the input from some of the community members, to see what improvements could be made.
Not everyone who was invited could make it, but 6 of us did go. Other than myself there was one Swiss, one Scandinavian, one Canadian and two Germans.
UPDATE: Since we are all known now, the users who went were JMich, PaterAlf, MarkoH01, GR00T, Gersen and Wishbone. The event took place on September 25, though we were in Warsaw from the 24th, and left on the 26th.

In Warsaw, we had a tour of the GOG Office, a tour of the CD Projekt offices and a QA Session with iWi, W0rma, Destro, elcook, fables22 and KatyaGOG. We spoke to a lot of people with diverse responsibilities within GOG, about all manner of things, some trivial, some important.
All of us signed an NDA so there are severe limits to what we can disclose. Specific names and numbers are out of the question, and so are details of ongoing negotiations and future plans.
There are some things we can share, though. Some of us may choose to share some of our personal experiences and opinions, but to begin with, here is a list of things we discussed with GOG:

1) Economy: Financially, CD Projekt Group is doing very well. GOG is not in any kind of danger and shouldn't be for the foreseeable future.
2) DRM-Free: DRM-Free is here to stay. Even if the industry moves towards online or mixed experiences GOG will continue to offer fully offline installers and single player experiences that will not depend on any kind of network or client connection (though there might be an optional use of such capabilities, if the player wishes).
3) Market share: GOG is currently at a decent position (we did get numbers but we can't disclose them). They are not irrelevant but they also need to grow for more publishers to be invested in bringing DRM-free titles day 1 on GOG and assure updates the same time Steam is updated.
4) Galaxy installers: Our understanding is that there was no malice behind the announcement, though naïveté was probably involved; they had a lot of support request from users complaining that their games didn't update, and that they didn't have access to multiplayer, achievements or cloud saves. These were from users that downloaded the games but didn't understand that they also had to install Galaxy to benefit from those extra features (despite all the banners and other "try Galaxy" buttons), so they wanted streamline the experience for those users. They underestimated the strong reaction from other more advanced users from the forum, and it resulted in the shitstorm we are all aware of. Classic installers will stay and an option to set default installers is coming (but we don't know when). And despite how the forum may feel about the Galaxy installers, according to GOG it did lessen the support load.
5) Regional restrictions: GOG is aware that the situation is not ideal, but there isn’t anything they can do about it right now. They are looking into ways of changing this, but that is a lengthy process.
6) Regional pricing: Situation is complicated. The pricing model does depend on a lot of factors so it’s not so easy to enforce a specific price point. For classic games GOG still tries to prevent higher price points than the base price.
7) Forum: GOG knows the current forum software sucks, and they are looking at other options. Suggestions and opinions on required features were given. They know about the importance and are investigating the ideas we shared with them, but replacing the whole forum is not an easy task and will take some time so don't expect anything soon, however other improvements to the site might come in the meantime.
8) Moderation: GOG did ask us for feedback, as they are looking on how to improve the forum moderation.
9) Product acquisition: The wishlist does help. Enthusiasm in forum threads also helps to get the ball rolling. Doing the legwork of finding who owns the rights can take a lot of time and that is something the community can help with (see the old https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_search_for_game_rights_a_diaryesque_thread/ thread), but just make sure that any data you send to GOG is correct and let them take care of the rest.
10) Old games: GOG are still very much actively trying to get more classic games onto the platform. They are working to make deals both for new partners, and for games in the back catalog of existing partners that have not yet been released on GOG. It is quite difficult work though. All the low-hanging, mid-hanging and even quite-high-hanging fruit has already been picked, so it takes quite a lot of resources, but they are still committed to it. They also occasionally go back to games they failed to get earlier and try again, if they think there is a chance they might succeed this time.
11) Game rejections: Games do get rejected. A lot of them. GOG does provide feedback, though neither party is required to disclose it to third parties. Some partners also assume that they cannot actually disclose any of it, and that may be true for some of the feedback.
12) Support: Support does work almost 24/7. The only section that gets a lower priority on weekends is technical issues with games, and that is because people may work remotely and not have access to all the testing machines to try and reproduce the errors.

Thank you for this. It's a lot of insight into how GoG works.

Thanks for writing this up! Knowing that the invittaions and meeting happened goes a long way to showing involvement and attention from GOG.

Did this guy greet you all at the door?

Good to hear, although not too many surprises here. The issue regarding Galaxy in particular doesn't surprise me at all, given that so many people have become obnoxiously lazy as a result of Steam's autoupdating and that GOG somehow needs to cater to this need. What was the result of this discussion?

No they apparently found a golden ticket in a chocolate bar.



@jmich, I was really expecting some sort of joke from the subject line.

Anyways, an interesting read. Good to know there is some communication going on somewhere. Its a shame however that a lot of damage has already been done.

No, but a spatula was involved. Lots of notes were taken. No idea what the analysis of said notes will result into.

Can't say there was much surprise or really much that was new information there but I hope you had a good time (probably did). The one thing that surprised me was that they do work through the weekends (except game support). Good to know at least.

Felt a little ironic that they wanted to improve communications with the public by doing an invite no one but a few people knew about and then restricting what these people could say but an NDA is entirely reasonable and understandable of course, just came off a bit funny xD

You forgot the most important thing: We had DRM-free pizza!!!

Edit: So yeah, that means I was there as well. :)

Wow, thks 4 sharing & the update. It is gd & a relief 2 hear GOG is doing well financially & also does care abt feedback fr its forum members. I know some of us here may hv occasional unhappiness over how the direction they take with the forum but it is heartening 2 know they do value our opinions enough 2 send invites 4 a few of us over 2 their HQ. i presume all those who were invited over are current very active members &/or who hv help contributed much 2 this forum so i'm sure u all wld hv given them constructive comments on improving the forum.

So on behalf on the members here (if i may), i wld like 2 thk those who went again 4 helping us pass on the opinions of what the majority of us GOGers feel & think abt this forum. :)
Ahhh... nice 2 know our regulars had a nice meal as well over there. Lol. I wonder if sharing some pics of HQ is allowed & not under the NDR, haha. ;p

Along with an apron and the French Monk's mother?

And do the snozzberries really taste like snozzberries?

That kitchen is bigger than my kitchen and I have a B&B! XD

Shit, they probably have nicer beds too.

I need to call everyone checking in here today and tell them to save their money; go stay at the GOG headquarters.

What? U mean u... errr, i mean our Mascot isn't invited over? Blasphemy! LOL.

I could post some pics (not so many that really show their HQ though), but I have to ask the others first, because they are on some of those pics as well.