They already have said somewhere that it was from people obtaining free gift codes and turning around and selling them elsewhere, and it's really just the legal ramifications from there.

As great as these type of giveaways are, something like this is going to spread like wildfire via word of mouth/email/facebook/etc. ultra fast, and invariably someone will be out there, if not 100 someones who wish to take advantage of it for their own financial gain. The only recourse a game company has to prevent someone else profiteering off of their work and goodwill is to do something to reverse or prevent the abuse. Kind of sucks the gift codes are no longer valid for actual friendly gifting but I could not really fault Interplay and GOG for changing the original intention in light of the abuse.

It's probably going to become par for the course though (the abuse) so I imagine future freebie promos will have some kind of limitations on them to be generous to a degree but prevent or limit abuse. Valve for example just did a Left 4 Dead 2 freebie promo on Steam the other day. The rules of their promo were basically one free copy of the game for anyone with a Steam account, and you had to both add the game to your profile *and* actually begin to install it before the promo ended and there was no gifting to others. Some might complain about that, but such people have toxic entitlement mentalities whereby something free offered to them which they otherwise would have had to pay money for previously can end up being seen as a negative thing to them because it isn't free "enough" and they want more more more. I've seen people react to it saying things like "I'll never buy a game from Steam again for this". Because giving people something for free under no obligation to _ever_ have to do so - can be seen as a reason to never purchase a game from a company again. I just sit and read stuff like that and say to myself "WTF? Entitlement mentality much!" ;)

Perhaps too many people have been treated to too MUCH goodwill and have come to expect it and then some. Me - I expect nothing at all from any company or person, but if and when I do get something I am absolutely grateful for it regardless of whether it comes with a set of conditions that are my idea of flawless perfection.

Hopefully people don't end up ruining it and stopping these awesome types of promos from appearing in the future! ;)

Yes, sadly there are those who will try and gain money from promos like these. I certainly understand why GOG/Interplay decided to make the remaining codes expire and I will not blame them for doing so. I hope Bethesda don´t remove the games from GOG so those who never played the series can experience the games the way they should be played, DRM-Free.

"My Return to Vault 13
I was not treated to a hero's welcome when I returned to Vault 13. The Overseer met me outside the massive Vault door, and told me point blank that while my services to the Vault will always be remembered, he could no longer trust me or what I had become. He said something along the lines that I had saved the Vault, and now I must leave. Bastard

So, I left.

The days and weeks that followed were hard on me. I had met few true friends outside the Vault, and they had died following me. Now, my family had kicked me out and said that I could never return. I screamed. I cried. Slowly I came to realize that the Overseer may have been correct. I had changed. Life outside the Vault was different, and now I, too, was different. But I have never forgiven him for doing what he did to me."
The Vault Dweller's Memoirs, Fallout 2 manual

You shall be missed on GOG old boy.

I'm sorry for however off-topic this may be, but I missed this whole debacle.

I BOUGHT all three Fallouts from GOG years ago. If GOG is forced to pull them out of their catalog, will the downloadables disappear from MY Personal Collection? Do I need to perform a mass download before I lose all of it?

Probably not, but just in case... ;)

I think that would require Beth to prove that GOG never had the right to sell Fallout series. Which won't happen.
But as triock said, just in case... :)

Actually, I wasn't part of the abuse. I'm pretty sure the fellow above you said that the problem was with 'legal and licensing reasons' , and "more specifically code resellers". Please note the difference between "selling" and "gifting".

Of course, you can sit there all day and accuse me of selling the codes, but the fact remains that all of the codes I collected that were actually redeemed were given away on this forum, and any GOG system operator with the proper clearance (and the will to spend the time checking) can tell you that.

Edit: actually, that's a lie. I saw one guy on Steam Trades trying to sell the codes, so I kept an eye on the thread and gave codes to the people that tried to make a deal with him (basically in order to screw over the scammer the best I could). And here is the link to that thread: http://www.steamtrades.com/forum/eVgh8/h-fallout-collection-redeemable-in-gogcom-w-offer-bundle-games. One of them had some difficulty redeeming the code and posted "dyzlon" (a misspelling of my username that is super-common for some reason) in the thread trying to get my attention before contacting me on Steam to tell me that the redemption ended up going through fine. I gave a code to one other person as well, but he deleted his post.

Edit2: I also just remembered giving one code away to a guy (a moderator, actually) on a Chatango module on the Indie Gala website. Ask all the mods there, and eventually one should tell you that he remembers me. So there. That's exactly three codes not given away here, and I can account for them.

Edit3: Actually, I have 104 useless codes. You can't get anything at all right, can you?