Nope. I don't mean what I've personally felt for the forum's occasionally nauseating content and the intellectual level of several of its members. I mean that the way they treat the forum, it feels very much like the forums are some sort of cumbersome obligation ("a shop website should have one, right?"), a chore that they manage begrudgingly, with the absolute minimal effort and zero interest.

Be it on the technical side (having to make it function), or the social side (having to deal with the moderation conundrum), it really looks like they'd simply prefer not to (have to) hear about the whole thing.


To put it differently : We can be sad about the state of the forum (form and/or content), but not really about the fact that gog has a forum at all. We are dealing with the forum voluntarily (when we do). They are supposed to deal with it, yet choose to, well, not.

Of course not with us. We will demand insanely complex games which in turn (once we have a majority) will drive the share price down so that buying the second half of CDP will be peanuts (once we bought the first half).

Ok, I was wrong. I agree with you.

And I'm sure it's both. But in case you considered that aversion as just derived from sloth or anti-social inclinations consider polish contemporary atitudes toward hierarchical power are mixed, to say the least. Working here for a while already that was one of my first noticeable culture shocks, which given historical context is easy to understand.

Ergo, an ingrained aversion to stronger forms of moderation / social control is also a factor for sure, but to some extent derived purely from ideological / ethical roots.

I find it funny how every time this discussion appears there's always some excuse made for the lack of improvement on the forum, i mean, if there is a position that gog doesn't need to hire is the PR department... So, if eventually we find out that gog has more than enough people on the web department what will be the next excuse?

You can roll your eyes but i only ask you to think about this for a minute, why is there a lack of communication between the community and gog? Why is gog even wasting money on a community manager? When was the last time that he write something in this forum? All we got is a Ciris 2.0.

All very good questions. Too bad we'll never get any real answers.

I've said this before and I probably won't win myself very many friends by saying it, but...
I don't think GOG's ever GOING to care about the forum unless it directly affects them in some meaningful financial way. We'd LIKE to think the best of the company, but that's honestly just unrealistic.
I suspect that they could probably close the forum altogether, semi-effectively silencing those who're upset about whatever not-so-kosher business practices they take, and still turn a decent profit. The forum's such a small portion of the userbase that they just don't have a reason to cater to it.
In a way, ignoring the forum is what they actually WANT to do, since most of the dissenting voices to whatever new feature they're implementing (Connect, Galaxy, microtransactions, etc.), features which are presumably making them more money or gaining them new customers, always come from right here. Those who get tired of it all just leave, which is one less negative comment the company has to deal with or has to risk new users reading.

Thing is, one of the best features of Steam is the forum and i know that people will dismiss it considering the amount of shitty people over there (considering the userbase population on both forum i woul risk saying that the ratio is 1:1 in comparion with this forum) but you can read opinions about games before purchasing; and you can interact with the devs about game development, bugs, etc;

The same could have been said about this forum if gog actually cater their community, good OLD games, games that no longer have support from the devs and depends a LOT from a faithful community that knew how to fix the games, where to find mods, best way to play it, etc.

What do you see nowadays? Old threads (on the games forum) with low activity, a great amount of people left the forum and new members aren't really that interest in joining a dying community (unless there is some freebies to be grabbed).

So, the forum doesn't generate income but it might help get new customers (or maintain the current ones) by indirecting helping others with problems/questions related with gog games.

But as anyone with marketing/PR experience can tell you, for every person yoiu hear a complaint from there are many more who never say a word. Also people who are not happy with a company, product, or service are much more likely to tell friends/family about the experience then people who are happy with the service they received.

While that's normally the case, given the popularity of Steam, I'd say a lot of these features aren't an issue for the majority of people. You could argue that it IS an issue for the majority of GOG's userbase, but that begs the question of whether the numbers reflect that.
Really? Huh, I didn't expect that.
If I remember correctly, some time back, didn't GOG try to get developers on the forum, putting them in pink text or something?

Yeah, actually when i arrived the forum played a big role in hooking me to gog. Not only the atmosphere, diversity, inclusiveness made me see it as a sympathic, mature, progressive bunch, but there was also a stunning subculture of generosity and selflessness, with random gifts exchanged on a whim (i think the first gift i received was from an unknown user who had just found one of my posts funny).

This had two financial effects. Firstly, I identified to the GOG microcosmos, and progressively became a faithful customer because of it. Secondly, I spent quite a bit of money in gifts and giveaways, as this was a place where giving to strangers with no personal profit was not deemed a bizarre, irrational behaviour.

Then, three things happened. On one side, scammers, leechers and whiners (complaining about giveaways clogging the forum) killed the spontaneity of gifting. Secondly, some international events brought up and normalized the worst racist, sexist, and homophobic behaviours, negating the image of a clever community. Thirdly, very recently, a little pack of unchecked trolls turned the place into a public toilet wall.

So, consequences. I ceased to buy games for others (firstly because apparently giveaways were ruining the day of other people, secondly because there was too many chances for a nasty xenophobic twat to benefit from it), so less money for GOG. And I ceased to view the GOG community as some sort of land-of-the-nice, superior to Steam, and this kinda shattered the (possibly wrongful) exclusivity I gave to GOG. I ceased to boycott Steam as if it represented a less noble cyber-population, and I have now little hesitation to buy there a game that isn't on GOG yet.

No giveaways, and no community-driven "faithfulness" (no "gog" self-identification). The former is an objectively sad evolution, the latter is probably healthier. Both are little losses for GOG. And illustrate the impact of a community on consumption habits.

Edit : Oh, also the way I was enthousiastically advertising GOG. I was mentionning its exceptionally excellent community and its particular culture (and I was encouraging the first disgruntled forumers to stay, based on it). Nowadays, let's just say : haha.

Orange if i'm not mistaken and besides the *insert game name* release thread i doubt that they're active on this forum.
Yeah, same for me, i used to purchase games here (even for giveaways) but nope, no more, they don't deserve a cent, lies and apathy doesn't get rewards...

Well, I'm still a huge customer, I still favour GOG's DRM-free versions when available, and I still consider the site itself does, globally, a great job, so, not really "same for me". But the community (both its demographic and its management) did trim the margins...