If I buy a group of games and choose to "gift" them, will I get individual codes for each game that I can split up and gift separately, or do I have to place multiple orders?

Multiple orders, almost certainly. I've seen multi game codes before, so that's a given.

Gift seems to equal order, unfortunately, so you'll have to place more than one order.. =/

It'd be nice to be able to place multiple "sub-orders" in one go - some games for yourself, some gifted as code#1, some as code#2 etc. - and pay for everything in one transaction.

It'd also be nice to be able to gift games directly to an existing GOG user. Then you wouldn't have to either get their e-mail, mail it to yourself and then painstakingly copy&paste it to a PM - just to be told that "oh, I already own that game/bought it 30 seconds ago". By gifting directly to a GOG user the system would know if the receiving user already had it or not.

Of course, it might be a bit difficult to implement as you'd get a race-condition between the giver and a receiver of the in-the-process-of-buying-it-himself variety..

Thanks - that's a pity.

Ideally, each item in your basket could have a "Gift this item" checkbox.

Race conditions like that should be a "solved problem" these days.
I do remember (a few, ahem, years ago) a girl in my Comp Sci class bringing down an entire venue ticketing system, whilst working there in the summer, with just such an issue tho'. Not particulay newsworthy in itself - except the system was written by one of our lecturers!

While it's easy to solve it technically, the time between transaction start and transaction end is measured in seconds or even minutes, which makes simply locking the order ability of the potential receiver during the potential giver's transaction undesired. Making two accounts dependant on each others in this way might not even be feasible without large changes in the current code base.

Another solution would be to (partially) roll-back one of the transaction if they were to collide, but that requires a lot more coding. It also involves rolling back changes in another system (the payment service used) - usually best to avoid if possible.

I'd probably go for a solution where you'd, simplified, were in one of the following states: 'default' (null), 'checking out' (your ID), 'being gifted' (gifter's ID). Upon going to check-out, you'd query this state - if it's null (or your ID, although that should probably not happen), it's set to your ID and you proceed as normal, either buying yourself some new games, alternatively gift codes.

If it's another's ID, you'd get a message saying that user this or that may be in the process of gifting you something; would you like to wait a bit, PM this user or proceed as usual (to avoid people blocking your check out for "teh lolz"). How the latter is implemented on the potential gifter's side may wary, for instance turning the "directed" gift into a gift code instead (if receiver is actually buying the very same title(s)).

When you want to gift someone a game, you - after checking if the recipient doesn't already own the title - change their status if it's currently null, otherwise you'd get a message saying it's not a good time trying to gift.

I don't know GOGs code base (or even language/platform/db etc they use), but it shouldn't be too much work to implement the above. Question is, would it be worth it? Personally I'd rather go for the ability to have "sub-orders" for different (anonymous, e.g. gift codes) recipients. (Belatedly) added complexity rarely is worth it in the long run.

..yet another </rant> brought to a browser near you by pH7..

That's how Telltale does it, I'd like to see it here as well.

Personally I like the way that Cipher Prime do it. When you buy a game it gets added to your account in an "unopened" state. You can generate gift codes for games that you own as long as you haven't "opened" then (to keep to that analogy) if you want or "open" them to take the gift option away and allow you to download when you want instead.