Many GOG users from our beloved community felt deceived by our PR stunt and are still mad us. We sincerely apologize everyone for not giving you access to your games and not informing you beforehand about the closure.

As one of the GOG monks said in the video: "acts count more than words", that's why we have prepared something special for the great community we have here on GOG.com. More details will be revealed next week... and we promise it has nothing to do with closing anything, from now on we have only pleasant surprises for you.

Hi All,

We tried to make our action possible to predict (all hints, and previous information that this year we are going out of beta etc) but it seems that it was not enough of them.

But the biggest mistake we made in different assumption. We treat in GOG.com system as you pay and you get your installer file and the whole access to redownloading your games was initially invented as additional feature, kind of backup option in case you lose your file. So we thought that being not able to re download your games for a few days shouldn't be a big deal. I think that many users get so much used to steam like systems that they are treating constant access to your library as the base of the system. But here as we sell DRM free games we basically think that when you buy the game, you download it, and it is yours. Sure if you lost your installer you can always re download, but we thought that this is not the first and the most important thing.

And of course we could have made many things better, to be sure that this experience will minimize the suffering (although some of this we just couldn't resist to cause;) and maximize the anxiousness.

BTW It all also raised quite interesting question (repeated quite frequently on many places) about DRM systems in general. What would happen if you lose access to servers of the dd store with DRM games? Of course all the companies making their best to make system stable and accessible, but there are random events. They are not so likely, but you know, everything is good as long as it is good and nobody expect problems, but unexpected things happening, our internet provider may fail, there may be electricity shortage and servers go down, the company may get into financial problems and may be not able to secure enough of power and server bandwidth, there are even countries where government can cut your access. Things are not eternal on Earth, and what then? Since there was no big disaster with any of the top DRM stores not many people care about it, but if something like this happen and many gamers will get into troubles, this may show another dark side of DRM (which we don’t like here so much, as you know:-)

Cheers,
Michal
PS. Here you can also blame me about the whole event as I was the one who participated in inventing it;-) so really feel free to tell me how much you don’t like me:-\

PS2. it all doesn't mean that we won't do anything similar again! Maybe something causing less nerves and more excitement, but surely we want to take your emotions out from daily patterns from time to time:-) Most likely we don't pretend that we are dead once again;-) but be sure that we will invent something. We don't want to be another generic and boring place, so be sure that we will try to entertain you (and ourselves;-) in future as well:-)

It is not available in my country as well :-(

And that IS exactly how we respect you! :-)

By giving outstanding service, with unique values that anybody else is not giving. And by providing it to all gamers worldwide, without saying for example that some of the stuff is not available in certain countries.

So while I agree that certain things we could have done better during our stunt, I refuse to agree that we should behave as any other company. Because that it may be called "proffesional" but it still doesn't guarantee that much. I used personally other DD stores, and I remember how many times I couldn't play purchased games. The difference is that nobody told me sorry for that and only automatic email system was pretending that it gives answers to my questions. Is that professional? I don't think so, but this is so often those days...

BTW: You know how much easier from business perspective would be to start just a DRM store, with country restrictions, strange price calculations (1Euro=1usd) and no compatibly guaranteed? All companies goes this easy route. And we don't, why? Because we respect our customers and their needs, more than anything on Earth, which still doesn't mean that we don't want to do some things differently from time to time;-)

We already noticed that pretending our own death was not funny for many of you;-) so won't do it again (most probably;-) So please be sure we'll try to adjust our sense of humor for future... and if we fail in that, there will be no choice, GOG has to become a part of some big company with a right sense of humor, level of professionalism and respect given to gamers. As a part for example of ea or ubi we will surely not be allowed to make such a stunt and many other things as well btw;-)

No, no, we will not be doing something similar in future most probably, even if it can bring us 20 times bigger traffic than the massive Christmas promo (that what have happened today;-) because you're right there are things we shouldn't joke about, and this is your money! Lesson learnt;-) We need to move to something else next time;-) (you said that joking about ones dead pet is also not funny:-D I think somebody else has to judge the things like that in GOG because I actually think that it could be nice black humor;-)

Regarding security of your credit cards details. It is as secure as it can be done by internet banks, because as far as I know GOG.com (because of security reasons) don't save, collect and store any of that information. All is done by payment system provided by external company - experts in that field.

M

Thanks for that guys. But there is no such a danger.

Stunt was invented mostly by me and Marcin (Polish monk:-) so whole responsibility is on us (French monk loved the idea as well so there is some guilt on him as well;-) Basically if you want to execute stunt inventors you need to rid of two guys who kind of invented the site itself (creativity sparkling in many directions as you can see;-) and one guy who make it running flawlessly on daily basis. It is still doable, as we are not type of the guys fighting for the chairs on which we sit (and beside that we sit on too many chairs, so one less would be even a nice change;-)

Actually, me and Marcin would love to be less involved in PR activates and we will be glad not to interfere GOG.com PR in future. And the change of the style may be on the way (naturally, not by execution;-), as I heard that recently we received very nice job applications for that position!

And as a final word. I really don't like that we made you feel offended and treated unprofessionally. So please accept apologizes for that. We could have organized everything in the way that existing customers would feel more comfortable even with this kind of stunt (we could warn people and ask to download what they need for upcoming days as there is something unexpected coming, for example;-). Anyway we will try to compensate it somehow in near future (please don't expect too much, we need to earn some money for our salaries and new servers as well;-).

And I believe next week there will be good time to post some kind of sum up. There are also good sides of the stunt (GOG appears in so many places where usually we wouldn't appear), but of course it shouldn't be done at our dear users expanse! Lesson learnt2;-) (the thing that it shows how fragile DD is, may also be not that bad thing, overall).