LMAO

What an interesting point of view from AstralWanderer, who could have thought the real quest to complete here is in trying to get support?

But in any way, I agree that this absurdity should be removed, it has no place in the upcoming 2023. The only more-or-less worth interacting bot of 2022 was ChatGPT, that's some cool piece of engineering (not flawless though), GOG's bot is a pet rock comparing to proper bots.

Yes and No.

In the end it is all about demand on Support services, and even when working from home it is about the number of staff., especially when it comes to being cost effective. Staff at home still cost money.

So issues of staff competency aside and paying for better qualified staff, you can still have a shortfall due to demand, and as GOG grows, which it seems to be well and truly doing, I imagine it is hard to keep up with things like good service, and just because they need good staffers doesn't mean they are easily available or can take on the job at a moments notice.

Before the support bot came online, my own personal experience with GOG Support was good. So for me at least, it has never been the case of replacing bad support with a bot.

What happens with a popular store though, is the mindset of the many customers, often coupled with language issues, that can make support a very tough frustrating and tiring job, with a lot of time being wasted over poor communication.

Of course those same communication issues don't go away with a bot, and if anything they increase. But despite not liking bots myself, I guess support staff are less stressed etc due to the bots.

Bots would be incredibly hard to setup correctly, accounting for all the potential variables and language difficulties, so much so that I wonder if they even really try, and whether a bot is just more of a deterrent for all but the truly desperate or savvy folk.

It would be interesting if someone develops a helper bot to outbot GOG's bot to get the real support on the line in the end for a user.

Happy New Year, everyone. Thank you for the replies. I can't respond individually, but I've read them all.

My preference would be for the chatbot to be removed. If they want to catch frequent questions, they can make you enter a short description of the problem. You'd in fact be typing into a search bar that shows potentially relevant support articles in real time. If there's nothing useful, then you just continue past that step.

Alternatively, if they're going to keep this thing, it should let you create a support ticket when you say you want one. And at the very least it needs to be aware of GOG Galaxy.

The Dilbert comic is spot on. I've been on the receiving end of GOG's "does this article solve your problem?" automated e-mails and they were complete nonsense. There were articles in foreign languages and troubleshooting suggestions for Cyberpunk 2077.

It's sad to read that support used to be good. I almost feel nostalgic for something I never experienced. From the moment I signed up, support was "overwhelmed due to Covid" and it hasn't improved notably since. I've complained about the "Stellar 24/7 support" note on every game's store page, but they're perfectly content to keep that piece of false advertising there.

As for the issue in the OP, the game is back in GOG Galaxy for now. It has previously returned for months at a time, so who can really say if the issue is fixed or not? Time will tell. Response time was 4 days, which I consider relatively speedy, especially for a ticket filed on Christmas Day.

I was unable to open a support ticket for the website taking my payment, but then indicating there was an error, and not putting the games in my library, while still billing my credit credit card.

Thank you Ice_mage for sharing how you opened a ticket.

The person who thought -this- support bot was a good idea should be [redacted for suggesting very bad and painful things]

I'd support removing the bot in favour of having to run through a scripted (click-through) FAQ first before the support form appears. It would catch those customers wanting simple solutions to common problems, whilst allowing the more complex problems to be sorted at the end.

I don't like AI bots, and especially those which painfully pretend to be real people (and include features like delayed fake typing).

I had less frustrations talking to Clippit decades ago. At least THAT assistant was helpful once in a while.

Agreed.

If they took all the support tickets, support information and access from publishers of their games and the forums and fed it into OpenAI, it MIGHT be worth using. While it lacked individuality from what i'd seen in examples they were competent enough for troubleshooting.

You're welcome. It's a shame directions are needed at all. Directions have even been posted by staff.
I doubt anyone thought this was a good idea. I think it's meant to act as a roadblock to getting support and they're pleased how effective it is at that. "The testing phase" was supposed to last until mid-2022 with the removal of the chatbot on the table. There's been no update since. If you don't stumble onto creating a support ticket with the chatbot, there's essentially no recourse. Only if you head to the forums you might discover the support e-mail address apparently still works, and you can try contacting a staff member, after you change the default privacy settings.

Someone's posted a new thread in General titled "Support?", clearly without first typing "support" into the search box. While I don't like chatbots, it brings home how much of a necessary evil the chatbot is.

The only search box on the site is for looking up games in the store. It's pretty hard to miss the Support menu at the top of the page, but it seems in the case of the Support? thread, the chatbot is non-functional due to browser add-ons or settings.

As they're posting on the forum, I assume they've found the forum, which has it's own search tool; and typing "support" into that gets lots of relevant forum threads.

I'm going to necro this thread to express my disgust over this chat bot. It's horrible for the following reasons:

1. It's basically a frontend for the knowledge base. The problem with this is that I'm resorting to directly contacting GOG Support in the first place is that I couldn't find the answer to my question in the knowledge base. So the chat bot adds no value whatsoever to the support process.

2. The support bot gives the impression that GOG is actively trying to avoid providing direct customer support. This is a very bad image to present to customers. Digital delivery is all about trust, and a storefront trying to make it seem like they don't want to support the needs of their customers does not foster a sense of trust.

There was literally nothing wrong with the old support form. Nothing. If you all are trying to reduce support turnaround times, hire more support people - it's a simple problem to solve. Replacing human support agents with a really bad bot is ridiculous though.