Honestly feeling it too.

@GOG you guys are doing a terrible job with the discussion threads and need to rethink your community engagement strategy beyond just arbitrarily changing COC and locking threads. Its a moronic approach.

There are some cool discussions and DRM-free games are great but the forums honestly suck and this initiative is only making it worse.

The forums here are quite disappointing for a site that has been active for such a long time. The only forum worth visiting is the discussion is on the general thread because game threads seem to focus on trouble shooting rather than game discussion and theory crafting. Not being able to produce guides, share photos or achievements, or other ways to engage in community building is also disappointing. Giving people space to share guides and talk about games within the game threads themselves would limit particular game discussion to that thread.

Look at the Witcher 3 thread which is the biggest “game” thread here. All posts are questions regarding troubleshooting the game to make it play on PC. The Witcher 3 thread should have discussions on the tv show, theory crafting, community polls on best romance, and other stuff, just like all the other gaming threads. The lack of ability to actually contribute means everything gets moved to the general thread.

Instead of just banning all political speech, or non-gaming, make separate forums for them. A thread for general discussion, a thread for gaming discussion, and thread for gaming news, and a thread for politics and life and making certain trusted members mods based on their attitude, community member opinions, and time as a member.

If you want to “mimic” a gaming forum community, mimic gamefaqs. Each game has their own discussion thread where users can post questions about the game as well as contact FAQ creators for help and tips on the game. Since people stay on there, a community naturally builds. Yes, the gamefaq community is toxic but so is every other internet community (except for maybe porn lol).

Closing popular threads that provide value to users only serves to alienate them and have them less engaged in your community which is not what you want. You want people on your site so when you advertise a new release or sale, people read and react.

Going through and locking individual threads is stupid low value work which serves to further alienate the community when there are other more important things you should be doing to make the forums better. Add features to allow users to contribute and try to get users more engaged and connect with other members. Allow the forum to self-police rather than try to impose a draconian hand on the forums. This action right now is the equivalent to taking a fire extinguisher to put out a small camp fire when the rest of the forest is burning down.

@GOG staff in general: Rework the CoC again to allow posting about game deals on other sites in a special designated thread.

I have a really hard time believing that.

Am i allowed to post ? The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Deluxe ( gog version ) is free in this month on another website ?

I can understand when your CoC forbids linking to other offers for games which are advertised or just released on GOG. But closing an isolated thread about general gaming deals after more than 10 years is just a joke. And closing a general discussion thread about DRM-free stores definitely is a new low on GOG.

For many years GOG was my one and only digital store for games. But it was not this thread which eventually made me change that and create accounts on other stores. GOG, it was your own behavior, dropping more and more of your initial principles, even weaken up your last remaining principle, being a DRM-free store, and more and more dropping Linux support.

You better work on properly advertising your own sales than closing a discussion thread about DRM-free stores, which more supports the idea of DRM-free gaming than it could harm your business.

nope thats a lie , it is not free as you need to buy a subscription for it

GOG is dead to me.. and I'm an avid steam,epic,etc, DRM hater. (I will not be using them either btw)

Greed, hypocritical decisions and politically correct people have corrupted and ruined once Glorious GOG.
-no politics, unless it's from GOG or the right kind of correctness.
-no spam, unless it's GOG Forum Games approved.
-no external store links, unless it's through GOG.
-no fixing broken shit, unless it's directly and obviously detrimental to their bottom line.

Also, remember to only bring up mod actions they have a problem with, to the very people who have a problem with it.

This forum will only be Forum Games (allowed spam), soon.
It'll be replaced their controlled channels on woke Big Tech like FB, Reddit, twitch, etc.
No critique and converse, just control and consume.

GOG MODS! You don't have to do these things if you don't want to. They don't control you.
You're doing it because you want to. Take the consequences.

nice summary