I've read a lot of criticism of GOG lately -- in fact wrote a bit of it myself -- but...

... since I value much of GOG's current catalog and GOG's existence in the marketplace (I'd hate to lose this collection of predominantly DRM-free games), I'd like to try to temper that criticism with constructive thoughts on improvements to GOG. And in so doing, I ask that people speak their mind, but...

... try to remember that GOG is not a non-profit charity. It would be great to be a museum of distributable DRM-free games, but that's not the case. It needs to generate profit and make moves toward securing future profits.

With that said...

How would you improve the GOG experience both for the customer and for GOG?

Why bother though, really, wasted energy. Just to talk?
When is the last time they improved anything? I guess this is like therapy for us, talking about what could be better even though it'll never happen, sort of like writing a letter to your mean old dad and never sending it to him.

So it wasn't just a deja vu on my part ... ;)

I'd like to talk to GOG manager please.

No, I've posted things like this a few times. ;)

I find it more constructive than numerous threads of simply complaining (even with well-founded issues). But then I actually want GOG to thrive and not "burn down" for their "transgressions."

And when better than in the eye of the storm (again)?

For me...

I'll stay away from the DRM issue for the moment. Why? Because I need to think first on how a DRM-free store of any size could prosper and grow in this current climate. So, with that said...

One of the things I would like to see GOG do is take a page from Sony's early PS4 days.

What do I mean?

In the early days of the PS4's release, there were very few AAA games releasing. Sony needed content and decided the best way to get content fast was to actively court...

... indies.

And this courting meant genuine outreach, assistance, and active promotion. Sony pushed indies almost as if they were AAA titles, and indie studios who had almost no interest in the PS3 gen, suddenly wanted to get onto the PS4 / PSN store. Sony REALLY COURTED these studios... not just a store listing and a release acknowledgement in a thread.

So do I think GOG should court every indie game and studio? No, certainly not...

... but...

... indie devs like Game Labs shouldn't be ambivalent about being here (or adding more games to the GOG library). Small publishers like Asmodee Digital (Gloomhaven) or the re-formed Microprose should be here and be excited about working with GOG. Instead they often aren't here and don't seem that interested in releasing here... or -- as we've heard a few times -- the GOG process seems opaque, communication has been at issue, and the whole thing has often seemed too much effort for too little return.

IMHO this is a main point GOG needs to focus on moving forward. They will never get AAA titles upon release. It just won't happen, but... indies -- especially those that fit in with the complexion of older classics -- should be here on day 1.

Now, does GOG have the resources to do this?

I think they must... or scale ultimately down to Zoom's level and forget actively competing in store sales.

But to do this they must allocate resources, communicate effectively, and chase those devs and publishers!

(lastly, I really do think GOG and CDPR expected to make their store's strength based on the success of their own content -- that devs and publishers would want to be part of the "home of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077" -- but that just didn't happen. now they need to re-think and re-organize. decide if they really want to run a store selling other peoples' games?)

... making them stay loyal to their original principle. A DRM-Free games digital storefront.

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Elaborating:

Based in the reality that GOG is a company, (not an ".org / free organization") they work to produce profit. Profit is the basis of capitalism. And agreements are the basis of capitalism.

What is in the moral principle behind capitalism agreements, therefore, behind GOG having profit?
A: Fulfilling their part of the agreement.

How will they fulfill (keep fulfilling) their part of the agreement?
A: Remaining loyal to the agreements they've made with their customers, therefore, continuing to offer DRM-Free and Fully functional offline products they sell here.

If they, as a store, offered a niche product that are DRM-Free games, and conquered a loyal customer-company relation oriented by that principle, achieving success is exactly being able to strenghten their relation with, and expand the number of, their clients, with this niche product.

GOG is the larger DRM-Free digital game store, in my humble opinion. How they did this?
This may vary, of course, I understand that it's more complicated than that, but the core answer is simple.

They kept fulfilling their part of the agreement. They kept selling DRM-Free games.

Naturally, in this market (Gaming industry), the terrain is vast and, through the years we've seen many things that contribute to the growth of this niche (DRM-Free games) [Companies abusing of games as a service, overpriced dlcs, online only content -> servers shutting down people losing all their time investment, etc]. That's also why Zoom Platform is also growing non-stop I believe.

So it's really an opportunity for GOG to stand apart in this situation with the whole gaming world (companies alike) watching the result of such decisions. GOG is an example to the industry. If they decide to do the right thing, which means, in my opinion, stand for their core principles and decide to stay friendly and faithful to their clients they may conquer the DRM-Free niche completely and encourage companies to do the same in pursue of clients that search for this niche I think.

This is just a simple opinion of someone who learned the importance of the drm-free concept for software preservation, games and any programs alike.

Sticking to DRM-free. (Like truly. Not trying to corrupt it and say "it's not really DRM if you think of it this way".) This would make the customers in better positions, obviously. But it's also better for the staff. The support team. The community management team. Hell, even the mid-level management and developers. I don't know what besuited C-suite Uber-managing Necktie-wearing Team-leaders [censored] decided to go ahead with things like Hitman, and CP2077, and Gwent, and [look at the rest of the list]... But it's a great way to ruin the enterprise for EVERYONE, not just the customers.

There's definitely a staffing issue. All this "user acquisition" they've done alongside the lax standards (see above) and escalation of Galaxy has wrecked support. I'm pretty sure they're all stressed over there. I feel bad for Julia and Susi and all the rest having to play double duty in support and community relations (and, as mentioned above, in writing shitty PR-speak CTA of their higher-ups).

Every coding entity gets stuck in the "gotta release new features!" cycle, but every company that sets aside specific time for fixing, iterating, internal improvements, refactoring, etc (all the 'not sexy' stuff) tends to have happy coders, happy teams and better products. A couple friends of mine work for companies that do it, and they're always overjoyed during the couple weeks a year of "free time" where they can go back and work on shit they've seen for years, but never were allocated time to work on by management. I highly suspect the giant gaping flaws we see with the catalog, for instance, are probably nightmares and irritating to the behind the scenes too. I'm absolutely certain that someone would love to better the automation of the offline installers, but the same besuited C-suite... are probably telling them not to "because people won't use Galaxy otherwise!"

(Side story time: Do you know one of the top reasons rail is so bad in the US is because no one was using the white elephant highways as they were built because they weren't wanted and rail was better? Then the feds started forcing rail debuilding alongside highway expansion, forcing us into this awful car-centric society today. The same thing happened in the UK, though to a slightly lesser degree. I'm not sure why this story came to mind... {coy eyes})

There's been a lot of press about GOG's parent CDP and sister CDPR, and how management and the environment was over there with CP2077... which led to a worse product and also bad environment for employees. With GWENT and other crap being here, I'm 100% certain it's coming from the top down. Strangulation happens usually around the top of the body, but takes out the whole being. And you can't function very well serving your customers while you're gasping for even meager traces of oxygen.

Does GOG do dogfooding days? Where everyone who works there just uses the product in its various ways? They'd see the problems we have. They'd be able to do their jobs better. And a few air-gapped machines in the office to test everything out online on ("I'm on air duty today!" = "I'm just playing games via offline installers.") might not be so bad for some of the QA team. (Team? Is there more than or even one anymore?)

Me as just a consumer who check their forums?
One thing I've been trying for maybe 2 months now: pass the issues I find for a moderator through DM and hope he/she is actually passing them to the responsible teams.
I also try to help spread awareness on GOG games you can play without anyone pestering about ownership, like games that can be emulated and games that have DRM free multiplayer (I wish it wasn't needed, but CD Projekt isn't really helping).
Also, GOG's store and forum softwares can feel rather lackluster, so whenever I can, I mention about the scripts Barefoot Essentials and GOG Games data grid view, as well as plugins for blocking unneeded tracking/telemetry, such as uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and NoScript (all of them have something to block from the site).
And lastly, use something like gogrepo. Much better than manually downloading each file or downloading things through Galaxy.

Make GogChan a virtual assistant.

I agree about DRM, but aside from that I think GOG must...

... publicly state (or restate) their mission.

As I've said elsewhere, GOG's actions the last few years have seemed chaotic and they've put the entire mission of the company into question. Without this, there will certainly be a continued erosion of confidence among longtime fans / customers.

And if DRM-free is no longer a focus, I'd certainly like to know.

I'd like to ask you to politely explain what you meant by that because I honestly didn't understand what you meant by it.
If it was an allude to my post as if I was doing something that I wanst, please clarify. If I misunderstood it, pardon, and I'd be happy if you could clarify.

As you probably know, I don't know anyone in the team of support and Im not saying anything bad agaisn't them. I really wish the best for them as a team, because, like you said, many workers suffer for their 'bosses' decisions. (We know that it's much more complicated than that.)

By giving my opinion of how free-market is good in terms of client-company relations, I explained what, in my opinion, makes GOG great as a digital store and what they should keep doing to succeed, because, well, that's why I came here as a client in the first place: drm-free games.

What you meant by "pr-speak cta" and "lax standards"? And, did you allude to my post?

Thank you.

-edit:

Had to read your post three times to understand what you probably meant in this paragraph...

Basically, you're saying/analizing that you feel GOG staff is overwhelmed and probably burdened out and, in consequence, you think that the recent situations with Gwent, Cyberpunk 2077 and HITMAN, for example, emphasize this probable reality?

Thus, those decisions, like launching HITMAN, with online-only content, highlight that the situation staff-wise is not good?

Anyway, I really wish the best for the team as a whole. Like you said, it's a convoluted situation for everybody. For the clients AND for the team that is in the front of the community reaction.

To all the mods reading this:

I hope the best to you, really. We know that it's not your fault and I personally hope that everything goes well over there decision-wise, for us and for the whole team. Like @mqstout said, we can't imagine the stress and strain you might have been feeling after CP2077 situation, and now the HITMAN one. Sincerely, grab our care, affection and kindness to deal with this the best way you can.

I'm perfectly ok if they shut down at this point. They've rarely fixed low-hanging fruit, so obviously their future is less important to them than it is to most of us. They choose to let their shit-riddled site stagnate and not update obsolete infrastructure. This is what they've chosen, and they have decided to let everything that makes them unique go by the wayside chasing a dollar (or a zloty). I'm reminded of the dog with the bone. He sees another dog with a bone in the pond. He barks then tries to take the other dog's bone. But the other dog was his reflection, and the dog lost his bone. Greed is a terrible thing.

I wrote on my own, quoting or referring to no one else. 'the above' were previous points in my own post.

PR-speak = public relations speak = "spin" where you use a lot of words to say nothing or the opposite of what it looks like it's saying.

CTA... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass ['their' rather than 'your']

What I meant by the paragraph: GOG's spending tons of money, goodwill, and other resources on user acquisition (getting new people) and completely ignoring their existing customer base (taking us for granted). They're also not adequately staffing and otherwise able to support the added user base (which is why we have the obscene support wait times, along with "click to keep ticket open" auto-replies and generally curt responses). GOG used to be renowned for top-notch support, in addition to being DRM-free, but now it's a mockery of what it was.

And because of this, people are doing multiple roles, like the community managers also being forced to handle tickets and go as in-betweens because [rightly] upset people are posting to the forums as their tickets go unresolved from support.

And the last bit refers to the PRESSURE the bad decisions of the higher ups are putting on the community managers and support people to handle the fallout from the crap like DRM in Hitman (handling refunds, needing to post community messages, needing to be careful with a [rightly] incensed crowd of customers)

EDIT: Do some web searching for customer acquisition vs customer retention. Acquisition is EXPENSIVE and, while necessary, explosive acquisition is not good to a healthy company. Retention, on the other hand, is cheaper, still allows for growth, and has good prospects for long-term value for the company. You know something is wrong with management when a company starts forfeiting retention to focus on acquisition. It means the top management is looking to be acquired or sell out, or out-of-control shareholders are demanding unreasonable short term growth, long-term viability bedamned.

(Coincidentally, Wizards of the Coast is currently doing all in on acquisition at the expense of retention right now with Magic the Gathering, too, and it's severely messing up the game.)

Thank you for clarifying.
I got it partially, but with your explanation I could fully understand what you meant.
Thank you.