Gog downloader links on another page... the headers are vague and end up hiding too much, most of my accounts bar was invisible til i disabled ABP for those pages.

Minor annoyances...

Thank you, as long as you can confirm I'll get my game back, I can wait.

The Witcher 2 has been censored?

In Australia it was, thanks to our previous lack of an R-18 rating for games.

Was? Was it ever fixed for us, or is it still censored for Australia (sans current bugs)?

I believe It's still censored if you purchase it from an Australian IP because it would cost CDPR too much to get it re-rated, but much like the banned Hotline Miami 2 it's still possible to get it by buying it in another region or having it gifted to you from an international user.

That said I'm not 100% sure if it hasn't been re-rated, because while a version marked with an (AU) sits on my shelf, the current Witcher series sale says I do not own TW2.

That's optionality and 'freedom of choice' for you. ;)

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I own it too and it never shows as owned on the front page or elsewhere, only in my account. It's a bit annoying actually; I've been resisting making a support ticket for it for years because it's too minor, really, but... lol.

I actually agree with you on all your points, I can't stand smartphones or the culture they've helped foster (I too refuse to get a smart phone) and I'm usually the first person to be up in arms over changes to a well worn user interface, but as far as the GOG UI goes, I honestly don't think it's that bad outside a few kinks, some of which I know will be ironed out.

It doesn't really come across as a mobile site to me, not the same way many other sites do, I actually like that the game banners on the shelves look a lot more professional now, the artworks are better and more consistant in quality and with the old shelf having numerous games with shoddy or even identical duplicate boxes, I really appreciate having the game name and tag section below each title. Though I too would appreciate a non-paginated shelf, my annoyance was tempered by the nice quicksearch option it now has.

I actually did like the old shelf, but honestly even to me, I feel it did reek with age... the wood grain texture was poorly applied, the boxes had a tacky Photoshop gradient shine, the fact some games were hard to identify unless you already knew the box art, and the new & updated section took an ice age to even load... it all felt dated and was becoming quite a mess. I could see how it might be aesthetically off-putting to new users.

Do I think the new shelf is perfect? Hell no, but it is a perceptual upgrade I think was needed if GOG is to grow, it is a business foremost after all, and honestly, it could have been a whoooole lot worse.

So you know, if your version does have (AU) after it, it's censored. However the only content censored is a couple of sidequests that involve Geralt having the option of sex as his reward, where our version has him automatically decline.

It's not much really, but I had to have the uncensored version, not so much because the extra sexytime was important, but for the simple principe of owning the game in it's original form, unaltered, just as the developer intended.

Feedback on Wishlist.

NOTE: I'm forced to mix in here a couple of things related to "PRIVACY" and "FRIENDS".

The old Wishlist had a nice, personalised look and feel to it, but that was sacrificed in favour of the bland, cold and eye-bleeding bright look of the game catalogue in List View. It no longer looks and feels like one's personal Wishlist, just a subset of the game catalogue, which again seems like it was done with GOG's convenience in mind and nth more; there's certainly nth here to make one feel that their user experience* was taken into account.

Now, if we look into the details of the New Wishlist page(s)

GENRES: suffer from the same issues they do in the Game Collection page(s).
PRICE: as has been mentioned since the site revamp, the filters are too broad, and don't allow any kind of more complex filtering, like "under X amount" and "above Y amount". I'm not sure if they still work on nominal prices only, for example if they take into account that a game with a nominal price that falls within "under $20" but above $10, should appear among those that fall within "under $10" when discounted.

SORT BY
Available options are: Title, Date Added, and By User Reviews. Let's take a closer look.
Sort by Title: has its place and use, if the alphabetising didn't suffer from the issues already discussed. But also says nth about one's preferences and priorities.
Sort by Date Added: has its place and use, in absolute terms of chronological order. But since Date Added depends on when a title is made available on the site, it doesn't really say anything about one's preferences and priorities.
Sort by User Reviews: Let's get the obvious out of the way first - it's misleading; it's User Ratings, which is not identical to User Reviews, as one can rate a title without leaving a review, if I'm not mistaken. If this has changed, someone please correct me.
I suppose that it has its place and use, though in my eyes it feels more like a marketing tool used by GOG to push sales. Especially since one is given zero options to sort their wishes based on their personal preferences and priorities - oops, here's the need for some form of manual sorting again.
So, GOG thinks (actually, they're sure) that our experience is improved when they give us the option to sort our wishlist by what others think and prefer than what we do.

Now, one could argue "but the old Wishlist had even less options" - true, that's why one would expect that changing it would result in more options for proper personalised sorting/ order/ managing. Yet the New Wishlist favours filtering and searching over a personalised experience; on this front, nth was improved by the change, and from a certain POV, it makes even less sense for the Wishlist than for the Game Collection.

There is a positive change though - sharing one's Wishlist. And having options on how to go about it. Expect that one does not when they've set to share their Wishlist to "with friends only" and has pending friends invitations.
Based on a little experiment a few users and I conducted a couple of days ago, user B, who has received a friend invite by user A who has set their Wishlist to "with friends only" is instantly and automatically granted friends privileges. They can view user's A Wishlist before accepting the friend invitation, and for as long as the invitation is pending. So, if user B decides to decline user A, they've already been made privy to info that user A reserves only for their friends.
A friend invitation expresses the sender's interest and intent to be friends with the recipient, but does not automatically seal the friendship on the side of the sender (invites that the recipients have not acted on show as pending on the sender's side). And it most certainly should not be treated as a sealed deal.

Anyone interested in the details of our little experiment can go here and read on.

Given that "with friends only" is the default setting, this bug introduces a breach of privacy.
I said bug, because I sincerely hope it's a bug that GOG needs to look in and fix, as otherwise friends privileges are poorly handled.

Lastly, the transition to the New Wishlist was not smooth - certain titles did not carry over in mine. I had Armello and Worlds of Magic in mine, but they're nowhere to be seen now, yet they still display that little lifeless, grey heart everywhere else on the site. And I know that I'm not the only one that has this issue.


* To expand a bit on this - user experience covers one's behaviors, attitudes, and emotions about using a particular product, system or service, in this case everything GOG related. GOG seems to fail to take into account all three, and that they're interlinked and affect each other; "betting" on them to be "manipulated" with initial hyping PR talk, and over time in favour of their choices with the silent treatment (let's wait for the discontent to die off, they'll get tired over time and get used to he changes) is not the way to do things.

Honestly, between sneaking galaxy drm into a games starting with Double Dragon and this not well handled website redesign I just hope there isn't another shoe to drop. I really really don't want to get an update to Icewind dale forcing me to use galaxy for multiplayer. How do I know the games I have already bought won't be "fixed and updated" to allow me to better utilize my "choices"? Right now I just have my fingers crossed. This is the only site I buy games from, for several reasons. Adding drm to my library and telling me I just got options would be enough to get me to leave.

My condolences... :( hope it will be solved.

Just wanted to say thank you to GOG for putting in the time and effort on the new account setup.

The friend list and wishlist options are useful, I no longer have messages appearing 5 hours after they were sent, the pagination has eliminated the problem of my library either lagging severely or only partially loading, the changelogs are extremely helpful in providing info regarding updates, and the order history has done a fantastic job of reminding me that I might possibly have a bit of an impulse control problem when it comes to buying GOG stuff...

Thumbs up man, GREAT post.

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but it would be much more convenient if the blue dot would link directly to the changelog (or show a popup). Nevertheless, I'm glad that we have changelogs after all. It was overdue.