The question remains what those 3 games on your wishlist are. It's quite obvious that the list of games GOG gave away is pretty restricted.

Here's how my experience unfolded:
[1] I received an email (something that is uncommon for me, but YMMD).
[2] I was pleasantly surprised to find I had been given a free game.
[3] During the sale, which has extended for the last week, I checked the discounted items; conveniently those in my library and those I had previously indicated I might purchase (herein referred to as a wishlist) were also noted. I could, therefore, peruse the games page by page, selecting games to investigate further or merely add to my cart.
[4] Once at the end of the list (fourteen pages) I perused those items in my cart, selecting some lucky ones for immediate purchase, and others for relegation back to the wishlist.

I think that feels like a fit-for-purpose process in a virtual store. :)

I think you may just be magnifying your own fear of missing out. These are video games (mostly) valued at what most people would spend on a cup of coffee. So you didn't get a $5 freebie. So what? Did you even want to play the game?

You seem to be merely offended by the notion that you might have wanted to play a game that may be released for a discount that you may not notice because you aren't receiving notices of discounts because you switched them off because they annoy you.

Sorry, but that is not the case. GOG did some giveaways in the form of a lottery and people were complaining as well. But since you prefer such kind of lottery why don't you try to see the recent giveaway as such with the "lottery" part being people using the wishlist (with the few games that are possible to get) or not.

Now you have a lottery with three options:
1) Not using the wishlist - no win
2) Using the wishlist but putting the wrong games on it - no win
3) Using the wishlist and putting the right game(s) on it - one win to multiple wins (depending on the games)

How is this so much more different than the "completely random" lottery you are asking for? If GOG would have told people before this what they are planning there would not be any randomness involved at all anymore. Instead some would put all those games on their wishlist while some might still complain afterwards that they missed the notification because their newsellter went into the spam folder or they did not find the announcement on the site (which would not be a miracle atm).

What I am trying to say here is that I highly doubt people would not complain in any cases in which some win and some don't.
If they had advertized the chosen criteria (which in this case was "certain games on the wishlist") they would have ended up giving out games to everyone which does not seem to be the goal here. It was more like a lottery where they chose certain games on wishlist as a criteria to see if people win or don't win. They could as well chosen "bough 5 games during the last three weaks" as a criteria but they decided for this - maybe because as a side effect they could be sure that people were interested in the games as well.

Really? That is not a Telltale game and would change the "rules" for this giveaway completely.

And that 'some' would probably account for thousands of more customers than GOG had copies of games to give out...which is probably why they instead did it secretly.

I'm offended because they're giving out free games with no transparency at all and assholes are suggesting that it's unreasonable to complain about the arbitrary way in which it was handled. Apart from 1 particular post, the silence has been deafening.

Some people are getting multiple games, most are getting none. It looks terrible to see that kind of arbitrary giveaway going on without any sort of notice.

There's all sorts of ways that they could have given out a set number of games that wouldn't have resulted in people being so upset by it. The fact that they're using the wishlist in this manner is rather troubling. It's not a matter of having missed out on it, it's the complete lack of warning that there was going to be an arbitrary giveaway based upon the wishlist going on. Had they done that and people missed out, I'm not sure it would have been the issue that it is. Instead, they're completely ignoring the issue as if there's no problem.

Personally, I regularly miss out on games that are on sale, a large part of it is that I've got so many games that it's going to take ages to play through the ones I've got, so I don't bother to put things in my wishlist that aren't typically things that I really want.

GOG has a history of these sort of ill-conceived of giveaways and promos that mostly just anger people. I'm not sure why The Enigmatic T left, but the quality of the sales here took a nose-dive about the time he left.
It's completely legitimate to call GOG out on this bullshit. There's numerous ways they could have handled this without pissing all these folks off. Some people are getting 3 games and other people are getting none because GOG changed the rules about how the wishlist worked.

I'm sure this probably sounded like a good idea in that meeting, but let's be honest about the fact that this just plain sucked. The lack of response from GOG is also inexcusable.

Limiting it to one game per person would have probably created a lot less ill-will than hearing from people who got not just one or two games, but three.

This isn't the first time that GOG has had a tone-deaf giveaway this time of year and the apologists got all riled up by the fact that people were rightfully complaining about being completely left out of the event.

Personally, this kind of behavior on the part of Gog doesn't exactly put me in the mood to participate in their sales.

Not at all.
I can willingly accept if the giveaway was clearly stated to have a limited amount of copies, randomly assigned between users that have those games in the wishlist.

This way could have achieved various goals:
* Keep customers hooked to the website waiting for these giveaway
* Push for using the wishlist on a more regular basis
* Gain trust from customers that feel engaged
* Keeps complains to a minimum
* Could have included promo codes to users that oen the game already, to give back to the community and other users, creating an healthy environment
* Create fun discussions on the forums instead of crap complaining threads

Instead, the incapability of the marketing office (or all GOG departments it seems ...) Is bringing down the whole business.

What they achieved with this secret sale is... Negative publicity only.
GOG took a potential benefit and turned against itself.
Amazing.

So, using the wishlist for games that you might like to buy isn't transparent?

You keep insisting "all these folks" are disgruntled. So far three people have commented, and two of them have admitted they either don't use the wishlist feature, or would use it in a way not designed.

Really, what is the difficulty in using the wishlist to keep track of games you might like to buy? That way, when you check through the list of games available, you can quickly identify those you have pre-screened for immeidate purchase without having to read the detailed particulars.

The Gog website won't make you a cup of coffee, either, but it will help you keep track of games they have available for purchase. You can see all the games you have bought, and even when you bought them, as well as those you might buy. Easy!

OK, let's bring the money aspect into this, even though I think it's somewhat derailing the conversation from real issues.

Let's say somebody got Tales of Monkey Island, Batman: The Enemy Within and Minecraft from GOG (I believe these were games that were given, correct me if I'm wrong here).

That's $19,99 + $24,99 + $24,99. That's almost 70 dollars!
I don't know which trendy cafés some of you go to, but that's one pricey cup of coffee.

Now honestly, if some people get something worth 70 dollars, whereas some others don't even get a chance to participate, how can anyone say that this is fair for all users?

We can also add to this the fact that some of these games may fall into legal limbo and become forever unobtainable, which is probably even more important for Telltale fans than the indicated list price. Those who didn't use wishlists didn't even get an email message about Telltale situation, so that even if they were willing to spend money themselves, they were never informed about anything.

As nobody from GOG wants to tell us which games have been given away I've skimmed over this thread and found reports for these games:

Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series
Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Game Series
Minecraft Story Mode - Adventure Pass
Puzzle Agent
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Tales of Monkey Island

Has anyone gotten other Telltale games for free?

It seems that whatever GOG does, even something as generous and cool as giving away free games someone will complain.

hedwards How would limiting it to one game per person instead of 3 or whatever it was, make it better for the whiners who don't even use the wishlist? They would still not win a game and instead others would win not 3 (or whatever), but at best one. So is it better for you because others would win less? And that isn't being an asshole?

Or perhaps they should announce the giveaway few days before, so that everyone who reads it go and use the wishlist just so they might win a game, instead of using the wishlist as it should be used. Suddenly you would have X amount of people (100s, 1000s? ) who would add god knows how many games just in case they win one of them.

I stand by what I said earlier. People complaining that other people won a game for using the wishlist, a feature which themselves never use in the first place, are ASSHOLES. Get over it. It's too late to cheat your way through (the chance) winning a freebie.

Don't take this personally, I don't know you and it is not directed at you.

AND BTW, any of you whiners, have you now started using the wishlist or are you waiting for the next giveaway to bitch again for GOG giving away free games?

You're being obtuse.

Using wishlists as the basis for a giveaway is hardly transparent.

As far as 3 people go, I hardly doubt that. There's a small number of people that are commenting on it. Considering that most of the stuff that needs saying has already been said, I'm not sure what purpose there would be in posting.

I just got sucked in earlier.

Now, if Gog would actually address the issue, then there might be some point.
Moe trolling, the retail value of those 3 games, as previously mentioned is around $70. If you can't see the difference between missing out on a giveaway that's worth $20 and one that's worth $70, then you're a complete moron.

Ignoring that, had they limited it to just one game, then they could have had a real giveaway rather than this secretive, we'll shower a certain number of people with a large present and leave everybody else out. I take it you come from a place where you don't have to bring enough candy for the entire class, it's fine just handing it out to a few friends. Around here, that's not something that would ever stand.

The whole thing was botched and the more of these ignorant posts I see, the less interested I am in giving GOG any money this Christmas.

It's really not hard to understand why this is such a problematic giveaway and the sucks to be you brigade are really doing GOG no favors.

The right thing for t hem to have done was to admit that it was a screwed up giveaway and simply apologize for the way it was handled.

Lastly, as I've said before, this doesn't really do GOG any good here, they piss off a portion of their customer base, give away tons of games that they can't subsequently sell to the people most likely to buy them. From every angle this was a foolish thing to do.

This is neither particularly generous nor cool. There's plenty of ways they could have given away the games that wouldn't result in this kind of complaining. Why should some people randomly get $70 worth of games, others $20 and everybody else none? If they were being generous, there's plenty of ways they could have spread it around more or included more people without it costing them any extra money.

The only other time I've seen complaining about a giveaway, it was when they gave everybody who hadn't bought a certain game a copy, and those who had bought a copy got nothing at all. Not even a coupon code to give to somebody else.

Gog used to be rather generous and have interesting promos, but those days are long behind us.

Making it sound like it's unreasonable to call out GOG for the bullshit is rather ridiculous. I personally care primarily because of the jackwagons that are trying to sweep the issue under the rug, the issue being the precedence that this sets.
I won't be buying anything more from you for the rest of the year as a result of how this was handled.

Why should some people get $70 worth of games and others get nothing due to a misuse of the wishlist feature? I get that the giveaway games aren't always for everybody, but the way this was handled was particularly disappointing way.

No advanced warning that the wishlist would be the basis for a giveaway and even people who wanted those games aren't necessarily included even as some get several games just for having it in their wishlist.

I'm still unhappy about being one of the relatively few members here that were left out previously when you guys gave everybody a copy of a game that we'd purchased and we got absolutely nothing of any kind while getting to watch as the people who did get it posted about how appreciative they were.

Lame

As I see it, nobody owes anyone anything. So it is generous and cool to give away games for free> I didn't get any games for free and I am happy for those who got some.