They really should give us an actual time estimate. "Temporary" is too vague. I believe them that it won't be permanent, but something that lasts a year is still "temporary".

That is the main problem I have with this temporary gift locking as well and the reason why I like other folks here want GOG to make this official with an announcement for everyone to see on the website. I am aware that it won't remain this way forever as it would make no sense for GOG business wise. But, by not providing any details to us regarding this issue and what they are planning on doing to combat the exploitation of gift keys gives GOG the excuse to remain blasé regarding it.

That was fast.

i actually thought that its just an attempt to condemn the price dumping, but noticed today that fallout games aren't regional priced! so i don't know what the hell is going on, since this fraud cc story is hard to believe for me, don't think its that profitable and successful.

With DRM you can lock out "invalid licenses" from playing the games. Just remove a game bought with a fraudulent key(credit card from the library, and there you go... Of course some games on i.e. Steam also work without the client, those would of course be "unprotected".

With GOG, a game once downloaded will work, even if the company locks down your entire account. And that's what I want (as a customer) but what causes problems if people buy games with stolen money. Maybe Galaxy will alleviate the things a little. Most people aren't very tech-savvy and don't manually back up installers. And I think most "stolen" keys are sold to people like this. So when GOG revokes the games, they will (probably in an angry way) revoke the transactions, and the scammers lose the money for the stolen keys they sold. But in the meantime, I can understand that GOG prevents the purchase of codes for high-value games. I just wish they would be more open about it. And I hope the scammers won't go for account selling in a big way (see WoW for an example).

Maybe gog could allow gifting at least for users who bought more than nnn games and who spent at least xxx money.

OK, let's talk about what credit card fraud is for a minute.

Committing credit card fraud means you are pilfering actual credit or debit card numbers from account holders, and then fraudulently claiming that you are the account holder when using those numbers to make a purchase or to transfer a balance. There are numerous ways to do this (too many), the current trend being RFID scanning, with the most crude and certainly the oldest - and still the most effective - being to simply steal physical credit and/or debit cards from people in public environments. And yes, pick-pocketing is big business, as much today as ever.

The tremendous draw is that once you use them to buy something, you don't have to spend ANY of your own money. This means that whatever you get by selling the commodity you fraudulently obtained is effectively 100% profit, minus a small store or "fence" (middle man) fee to find a buyer for the stolen goods. It's like running a business wherein you never have to pay employees or for office space or to manufacture the product you're selling, or have any overhead or wholesale expenses whatsoever.

So yeah, it's extremely profitable. The very reason people do it is because it's incredibly profitable and relatively easy work. The primary reasons that MORE people don't do it are because 1, they don't know how easy it is or don't have enough / any knowledge of it, 2, you can be severely punished if you're caught, and 3, you're doing something which is at the very least ethically wrong, which hurts a very high number of people in the process, including your own family if you're caught.

I can't speak to how successful these particular criminals have been - only GOG staffers have that information. But I can tell you that this is most certainly a very real problem that anyone selling an in-demand commodity has had to face since credit card fraud has been a thing. I have zero doubt that it is a very serious issue for GOG, and has very likely already cost them a significant amount of money, some portion of which they may never be able to recover.

By the time the license is revoked, the store's already faced with transaction fees for the initial purchase, and for the charge back. There may also be an issue with each dev/pub's cut. These can't be undone by revoking the license, at least the former can't, if I'm not terribly mistaken. And then there's the matter of reputation and credibility on multiple fronts.

The fact that GOG restricts the purchase of gift codes suggests that they think that the solution must be pro-active. I can only hope that they'll find a better one.

^ Exactly. Steam has the same problem that GOG has, because it's all about the initial transaction - by selling portable commodities (keys), there's little that Steam or GOG can do to completely eliminate theft. And if the thief is able to get money for the commodity? It's theirs to spend. Someone (most likely the distributor of the key, an insurance company, or the bank financing the transaction if the account holder has a zero-liability clause) is not going to see that money ever again.

Tried again and fail today. Check with bank and they say there are no blockage.

Oh well just send a support ticket and see what they say.

Maybe its just me, but I don't really understand it.
There are people actually selling GOG keys online? And people buy them in good faith?

I won't pretend this is a simple matter, or that I know how to solve it, but I think there are much better ways to handle it. Good suggestions have already been posted.

Why no warning? I don't believe they are trying to catch people in the act. And why are long-time trusted users affected too? If someone had been buying gifts for a year now, without incident, why are they been treated as suspicious? They already treat us differently based on our location!

We cannot lend the digital copies we own (unlike physical copies). We cannot resell the digital copies (unlike physical copies). We cannot give away the games we already own (unlike physical games). Now we cannot buy many of the games to gift (unlike physical copies of the games). I don't like where this is heading...

Works the same with Steam keys for many years now, so why should people stop buying extremely cheap keys? Just because they're GOG keys? People simply don't know that all these key seller sites aren't exactly legal sources. Just have a look at the GOG forums recently. People complain because their keys got invalidated and users with 2012 registration dates complain because GOG games are more expensive on GOG than on G2A. And when you tell them about credit card fraud and chargebacks they'll tell you that they purchased the key with their own credit card and didn't do any chargebacks. People really are just THAT stupid.

Because people don't read any warnings, or simply ignore them. "Dammit, I just paid 15 bucks for a Witcher 3 key and now they tell me I should ask the vendor for a refund... Too much hassle. I just activate the game and hope they won't notice." I bet another common thought would be "Yeah, but I bought my key at G2A. I always buy my keys there and never had a problem. They're legit and trustworthy." Or what people said when GreenManGaming sold Witcher 3 keys for cheap... GOG said that GMG is not a legal reseller of GOG keys and that they can't say where the keys came from. And what happened? People thought that GOG was just envious because GMG was able to sell the game cheaper than GOG -.-

No, sorry, forget about the warning. It won't help a lot... Gamers want MOAR GAMEZ MOAR CHEAP. Give them 5% more discount and they'll ignore every single warning sign on their way.

Because it would be too much work to unlock us. That's work time that could be invested in looking for a permanent solution. GOG already has the code to lock gifting in a certain region and just used this feature to lock gifting in every region (that's why we get the "in your region" message for worldwide restricted games). Another reason would be that you can't automate the process. You can't say "only people who spent 100 Dollar for own games can buy gifts", because our friendly credit card thieves would do exactly this: Spend 100 Dollar from the stolen credit card for "own" games before they spent the other few thousands for gift codes. And when you say "only users who are here for at least 3 years and have spent 100 Dollar for games are allowed to buy gifts", you'd still lock out a shitload of normal users. AND you'd create some weird elite members who have more rights than other members. That's crap. The only way to allow gifting for non-scammers is to unlock us manually on request. And seeing how "fast" support answers to serious issues (like payment problems) recently... Nah, I don't think it's a good idea to flood them with "I want to gift a game" messages...

The situation sucks, but I can see why GOG did what they did. They seem to be heavily overstrained for a couple of months already, so they probably didn't have the capacities for another solution.

Why is it that every time i come here i am growing more worried about the direction GoG is heading?

Thank you for the time you took to help me understand what is going on.

I would use "ignorant" before jumping to "stupid". I had never came across G2A. I see some really good prices there. Some of them may be purchased during promotions, others are suspiciously low.

Actually, I was talking about warning us users of the restriction. I think it is bad form to be notified through an error message.
I meant something of the form of a post, saying "Dear users, due to the unbearable credit card fraud that is targeting us, we decided to take measures to protect us. Some of them may affect you, so we will do our best to let you know in advance, as to minimize your inconvenience..."

I do agree that a sign saying "beware of untrustworthy people" would not look good or do much to thwart fraud.

However, The Pirate Bay has the games on a permanent 100% discount! If they want the games super-cheap, try them there. No DRM, no gifting restrictions...

GOG sits between two evils: pirates and credit card fraud. I understand it is not a nice place to be on. Even more so when not using DRM. However, I feel they lack some tact on customer relations. I know they are not making me too happy. If GOG fails, I'm afraid people will use the fact to say that the DRM-free model is broken.

We can agree there are no perfect solutions. The region lock can be bypassed easily if enforced in a selective way. On the other hand, discriminating against users who spent over $50 more than 12 months ago, and had no problem in their transactions would produce a high enough barrier to entry. Few scammers would go to the trouble of investing that much in an account. With the complaints on the quality of the forum, a higher barrier to entry might also help here.

Another alternative would be to limit the gifting on newer accounts. For every month without any chargeback, you would be able to gift more (in number or cost of games).

I'm just throwing ideas! The present ban cannot be permanent. I would like to read some critique of these or similar proposals. This solution would not be too difficult to implement. GOG already has all the information needed.

This is not a "GOG sucks" post. Its an "I think GOG could do better. What am I missing?" post".

Yes it is. However, it already exists here as regional prices and availability.

stasis and satellite reign joined the noble club of restrictions