First off, we’d like to give you all who participated in this discussion a HUGE THANK-YOU for your activity in this thread. We’ve gathered all your comments and gone through them one by one, and now we’re back with some answers!
Because of the sheer number of commenters here, we don’t want to link each person with a quote. Instead, we’ll format our reply so that it goes by topic to cover the major points as concisely as possible. :)
REFUND/EXCHANGE POLICY Q: You asked if exchange can be only made on one-for-one basis, so if you buy a game worth $12 you can only exchange it only for one $12 game or for i.e. two $6 games. A: If you want to exchange game(s) or movie(s), you either choose a replacement product that costs the same or less, or you get $5.99 or $9.99 coupons to use on any non-discounted titles, anytime (note that the codes cannot be used with discounts - only the base price applies). For example, when exchanging a $11.99 game, you would get two &5,99 coupons that can be used for 2 different games. In the future we plan to handle this via store credit.
Q: You asked what sorts of technical issues do or do we not count as "significant" as it comes to money-back guarantee. A: We can't define all the rules here as everything depends on the games/bug/technical issue. We are doing everything to make sure our customer support is reasonable with the goal to solve your problem. At the end of the day we are all passionate gamers here and can understand what is good or bad for us.
Q: You asked what does it mean "withdraw from a purchase" and can you choice between exchanging items and withdrawing purchase. A: In some European countries, users have a “right to withdraw”, or cancel their order, up to 14 days after purchase if the product has not been used (downloaded, streamed, activated, gifted etc). We extend this right to everyone worldwide, and increase it to 30 days.
And yes, you can always choose whether you want to use your right of withdrawal or exchange a game or movie. The same applies to pre-orders.
GIFT LIMIT Q: Many of you asked about gift limitations and what we mean in this case by "might defer on a case by case basis”. Our idea is to allow any customer to gift 5 copies of each game per day. The reason for it is that nowadays the key re-sellers business seriously harms developers and publishers. They buy games or movies as gifts and re-sell them for a profit.
There can be different solutions here, but as we are DRM-free platform we can't use them. That’s why we decided to slightly limit the number of gifted games per day. We do believe it won’t harm regular customers and will protect our partners. Still, if some of you want to organize a big giveaway of a certain game, you can always contact us.
PRIVACY Q: You asked for more details about sharing info with partners/publishers. A: The only data we share with third parties are non-personal and aggregated, for example for reporting purposes we have to share how many copies of a game were sold during a given period of time, how many purchases came from a given country, how many purchases came from Mac users, etc.
This is all aggregated non-personal data - the User Agreement doesn’t allow us to share e-mails or other personal data with our partners, so you’re safe!
Q: You asked what information is up for consent when sharing info with 3rd parties. A: We are referring to things like cloud saves for example, which we might or might not introduce at some point. Some companies are asking to register to third party services in order to get access to your "saves" from other devices. In such a case, you'll have to create an account in this 3rd party service - and agree to their policies, which would be separate from ours.
STORE CREDIT Q: You asked how exactly store credit works in terms of validity period and ways of refreshing it. A: Once you get your Store Credit from us (yes, we are giving this amount from our own pocket) you have 365 days to use it. That’s because we have to keep a reserve for these funds on our books and bank accounts.
How do you keep store credit alive? Simply by buying a game that grants new store credit. Then, the 365-day validity period immediately restarts.
Q: You asked if you can convert store credit from one currency to another. A: Unfortunately converting store credit from one currency to another isn’t possible - we’d have to start GOG Bank Services to do that ;) If you want to use your store credit in USD, you will have to pay in USD for given purchase... HOWEVER! You can have 2 store credits, one for USD and one for your local currency, but you can’t make transfers between them.
OTHER ISSUES Q: You asked about our liability - that we do not take full responsibility for how things work. A: Due to the nature of the PC platform, we can’t guarantee that every game will work on every single computer, hence the wording of (UA 14.2) - but you’re covered with the 30-Day Money Back Guarantee if something goes wrong. :)
Q: You asked about UA 2.2 where we say that “When you buy or install GOG games and you might have to agree to additional contract terms with the developer/publisher of the game” is not some kind of DRM intrusion. A: It just means you’d have to agree to a separate agreement with the developer or publisher - nothing to do with DRM.
Q: You asked about age restrictions. A: If you’re over 13, you own the account, but until you’re 18 you need your parent’s/guardian’s consent to have it. If you’re below 13, you can’t have an account on GOG… But your parents are welcome to sign up!
Q: You asked about merges and how likely is it that GOG will be sold to another company in the near future. A: We have no plans of selling GOG to anybody! However, different situations can happen (like a merger with our mother company, CD Projekt, into one legal entity). If that were to happen, we would, of course, give you all due notice.
Q: You asked about using VPN when travelling. A: If you travel, you should pay the price featured in the country where you are - we have to identify where a purchase is made for tax purposes (paying the right amount of VAT to the right people). The identification also applies to the actual game prices in case of the games with regional pricing.
Q: You asked if "for your personal enjoyment" mean you can't make a review video with clips from GOG games and monetise it on YouTube? A: Basically from what we understand you want to monetise derivative work, which requires approval from the developer/publisher. Still if you want to make a "let's play" thing - you are more than fine to do it as you are not monetising the GOG content.
Q: We stated that you are you are responsible for making sure you have sufficient Internet access to download purchased titles. Does this mean that we won’t support people that may not be able to access our servers due to blacklists by providing access to FTP servers? A: We can't know the restrictions/limitations of Internet usage in each country of the world (yes, we are available world-wide!). Thus, we need customers from these countries to check what is possible/impossible to do in their area themselves.
As an example, we do have some registered players from China and so far they haven’t had issues accessing and using GOG.com, but as mentioned before this might change if local restrictions change.
Q: You asked about removing content. A: There are actually two questions here: Would we remove GOG services, and would we remove GOG content.
Regarding GOG services - yes, we might add some features and remove others (for example, if they are not working properly or you guys don’t like them).
Regarding GOG content - we do all we can not to have that happen, but sometimes part of our content has to be removed due to license expiries (on music for example) on the developers’ or publishers’ end - therefore, we don’t know too far ahead of time until an element of content needs to be taken down, just like you.
Still, we'll be always trying to inform you in advance if we would have to remove something. And remember: thanks to all GOG content being DRM-free, you can always back things up on your HDD to avoid problems with availability!
Q: You asked about user-generated content and our ”limited” rights to it. A: We need to have enough rights to your profile to show other people your profile name and avatar on the forums. We’re not asking for ownership rights.
Q: You asked about some details in regards to Public Profiles - like what games will be shared or which details would be visible. A: As much as we'd like to answer on these questions right now, we can't as we don't know how the final implementation will look like. Just rest assured that we are taking your comments in consideration. And to clarify - the GOG Galaxy client will be fully optional.
Q: You asked if final version of documents will be worded in as little legal language as well and how does that influence how binding the terms are . A: Yes, the final versions will be worded exactly the same way they are now - our legal counsel says they’re binding, and we say they’re much easier to read this way ;)
Uff.. That’s a pretty long post. If you have any more questions, feel free to add them to this thread by the end of this week and we’ll do our best to get them answered. We are also attaching an amended version of the User Agreement and Privacy Policy where we already made some changes based on your comments - they are marked in green for your convenience.
Cheers,
The GOG.com Team
Here are the updated files:
GOG_Privacy_Policy_EN_updated GOG_User_Agreement_EN_updated
