Nah! It's not just about information, even though the information is mandatory. Obviously, this isn't a "gift" if they expect something in return. If it isn't a gift, it has to be a contract. A contract, requires transparent rules of what exactly is being traded. Hence: information is mandatory.

However, telling alone doesn't make it legal. Because, any clauses that couple a perceived "gift" with providing consent to receive ads, or permission to collect and use your data are by definition null and void, and acting upon them is illegal. Simple! Or is it ?

Perhaps we should rather say, it was illegal.

Today it is kind of a gray zone, for it is technically still illegal (the law was never withdrawn), but there are some "new" exceptions; Not in the law itself, as it has no such exceptions, but by a court ruling a few years ago.

A) It's still illegal, if the offer is directed at children or people who are under age in general. That applies even if there is only a chance that the participant might be a child.

B) There has been the aforementioned court case that shops ever since did rely on when dealing with adults. Except, that court case has been overused, as contrary to popular belief: It never made ALL of these arrangements legal, only SOME.

The specific court ruling affected a fringe situation where a shop was giving away not a game, but a chance to win a luxury item, i.e. a car. The court argued, that unlike with a cheap item, it is implausible for a customer to expect anybody would give away something as expensive as a brand-new automobile without expecting anything in return. Furthermore, the court argued, that prohibiting ALL cases where people could trade data for benefits was not the law's intention. Ergo, the court ruled, that such trades are acceptable under the condition, that the giveaway was so prohibitively expensive, that it was obvious the shop needed the agreement to cover the expenses of what was given away. However, only under the condition that participants are still able to revoke their permission at any time.

You might argue, that GOG's situation is therefor not covered by this particular court ruling.

Giving away an old digital product that is strictly virtual, takes no shipping or handling, has no physical form or material, and whose usual resale value is barely 1 Euro, does not qualify. Neither is it so prohibitively expensive that GOG is required to utilize customer data to pay for the expenses. Nor is a customer in a situation where they could not reasonably expect to be given a free game with no strings attached. Particularly as the fact of giving away a free base game can easily be interpreted as a means to boost sales of related paid titles, the game's paid DLCs, and/or other paid installments in the same game series. In fact, it is very common for shops to make the first installment of a series temporarily or even permanently free to boost sales of later parts of the same series. (Amazon does it all the time.) Ergo, customers can reasonably expect that.

It's a gray zone with good arguments why it shouldn't fall under an exemption from the law, and some few arguments why perhaps it could regardless.

Thanks GOG for the game.

Thanks for the fish!

Always good to get some freebies here and there!

Somehow I doubt that this weekend is going to be dominated by anything else other than Sea of Stars and whoever got the early access to Starfield. I think we all know what next weekend is going to be dominated by.

Microsoft / Bethesda? Meh! Hard pass.

I read an interview where the lead of the project literally said: Bugs are part of the experience.
Sorry, but no. Definitely disagree.

He says, they are not bugs but "funny" little issues, like your companion boxing you into a corner, making you unable to move, forcing you to remove and respawn them via the in-game console. You, know: "fun"!

Mind you: He knew about it, he decided not to fix it, then went on an interview and called it "player freedom".
Or to say it with Bob Ross: Those aren't "bugs", they are happy little accidents!

Good thing Microsoft and Bethesda don't build cars. Can you imagine a car that won't start due to missing updates? Or that's slowing down and stopping in the middle of the road because of a forced reboot? And then gets stuck in a reboot cycle? And after the update, your ignition is suddenly on the other side? And you need a mod to get seatbelts?

Fun! Freedom!!!

That's Microsoft / Bethesda in a nutshell. There is already a list of game breaking bugs (pardon me: "game breaking fun accidents"), safe game issues, achievements not working, login failures, FPS drops, crashes to desktop, glitches, you name it. You pay a hundred bucks to kick off the "fun" of your "experience" by finding and installing community fixes. Huzzah? Classic Bethesda.

Nope, nope, just nope.

Thanks for the giveaway!

Even thou I doubt I'll ever give it a go (not my type of game) it still looks somewhat interesting. Reminds me of similar games from that era, which to me is a good thing.


Also... that cover image on the store page.

:D

Yeah I'd agree that bugs a par for the course with Bathesda. Starfield is by far the least of their buggy releases. Skyrim's backward dragons on release made all versions of the game uncompletable until a patch that was released weeks later. Fallouts typically came with a slew of issues on PC as well.

So far, I've been lucky enough to not encounter any issues, but then again I'm playing on a console and they clearly put more love into those releases.

Three years ago I wrote to the publisher 1C Entertainment, and they sent GOG an update that corrected a bug in the Hadar location.
https://www.gog.com/forum/kings_bounty_series/gogs_kings_bounty_the_legend_v1_7_build_35396_has_some_serious_bugs/post53

Hope it's solved, my downbload was made in June 2019, so the bug may well be corrected.
I can't recall a update notification to that game but it's easy to overlook. It's a bit too much time to reach the Dwarf section of the game to try the bug.
If anyone is playing the game right now, it would be nice to know if the bug still there.

Friendly remainder: there's a few copies available on community giveaway, wich would expire in a few weeks. If you want the game but did not want to claim, the keys need a good home.

I have the key to this game myself. Who would trade me this game for Quake 4.