I wrote a support ticket.

I revieced no notification for "The Corsortium" and "Guild 2 - Pirates of the European Seas". Dragonsphere is shown updated again though! Seems like the whole update system is broken.

The Eternal Order of Dragonsphere has updated again today!

This is my first post on the forum.

I only post to say that these Dragonsphere updates are driving me crazy.

You are spamming me with notifications although I have the game hidden. Hidden means Ignored.
I do not care if it updates or not.

Right now I have the game hidden, but get daily notifications about this game and am forced to see them to make the flag go away.

But the notification flag from "My Account" does NOT go away. It instead remains active several hours after I have already seen the updated game.

It's very annoying. Please fix this.

Hi,

I got a reply from support. The issues will be fixed tomorrow.

Oh, please... They have to test function of update flags on something - and it looks like they have no luck with fixing this long-term issue...

I don't believe you are right. No self-respectable website tests any function on a live site. You have a beta site, not accessible to users, for tests like this. It's probably just a bug.

...and once you think you solved the issue on the beta, you are going public... and... Murphy's law... crap happens...

It is only my speculation, of course... and it is definitely an annoying bug, but because Dragonsphere is the first game in everyones game shelf, I think GOGs are testing another long-term and very annoying bug - when update flag is still on long time after you checked what was updated...

I'm not sure, but my understanding is that the flag should disappear about (or up to) an hour after you download, not after you just check, but I may be wrong.

for me it works like this: the flag disappears after hour or so, once I checked what was updated (don't need to download anything), but before it was that flag disappears immediately after checking...
Best thing they can do is IMHO to add sorting option "by recently updated" into game shelf and ditch those flags all together - it is much more useful when you are using more computers...

Just woke up and checked the site and I see that Dragonsphere has been updated today. Thanks again for maintaining this game so actively GOG! :)

I actually counted the number of updates over time for Dragonsphere and made a graph of it:

http://i.imgur.com/2iMEK72.jpg

Could you explain the units you used for each axis?
Is time measured in days or hours?
Perhaps you could use a logarithmic scale to make data more presentable?

As others have said, it's not normal best practice to run tests on a live site, where all your users are exposed to the consequences of anything breaking.

But if for some reason the folk at GOG needed to, I think some notification of what's happening would really help. Has anyone seen any acknowledgement from the GOG staff that they're aware of the odd behaviour, and are working on fixing it? Or advising users what to expect with this problem? I haven't.

I'm not actually complaining. It's not breaking anything, except perhaps users' confidence in the site. But I always think when something goes wrong, proactive communication is the very first, best step, so your users (i.e. customers) know what's happening. How about it, GOGFolk?

Sure, time is measured in days.

I updated the graph to use a logarithmic approach as you suggested, should be more clear now:

http://i.imgur.com/3l0L1cp.jpg

Judas obliquely acknowledged that they are aware of it somewhere in this thread, but without explanation.
We all know that transparency and communication are not GOG's strong points, but we still love them nevertheless.
I don't believe that GOG is exceptional in not being too communicative, it's normal organisational behaviour.
Yes. Now it's much clearer. Feel free to promote, check in, publish, or whatever it's called in the repository you use.
You can quote me as reviewer.