Neonivek: "Why can't a contest be a win for us (winning some games) and win for GOG (growing their company)."
You see things don't work like that in real life. Most of the time the contests are a win for the company and a loss for the community.
So yes one (or how many) people will win this contest costing GoG a small amount of cash, lets say a thousand dollars. While they essentially get from the community thousands of dollars of advertising or more for hosting it.
Anyone who isn't that winner is essentially the loser.
It would be one thing if this was just a really great contest and the result was GoG got advertisement as the community paid nothing and GoG got something. This is, however, GoG making you do their advertisement for the ability to win a prize. The community in this case is actually paying a real price, they just don't know it.
For anyone wondering why anyone has any issues with the contest that is why.
As for me, I don't really care. Myself and all of my personal friends wouldn't enter a contest set up like this. So it doesn't affect me.
Somone always need to lose if you want to have a winner
if all peoplle won the lottery draw you woud have a wery lousy outpayment for the winners or the participants.
To the other
Wiki Quote :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referral_marketing Referral marketing is a structured and systematic process to maximize word of mouth potential. Referral marketing does this by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about their supplier, their company, product and service and the value and benefit the supplier brings to them and people they know.
Referral marketing takes word of mouth from the spontaneous situation to one where maximum referrals are generated.
Online referral marketing, using digital marketing as a platform, is the internet based approach to traditional referral marketing. Given the advances in tracking customer behavior online through the use of web browser cookies, online referral marketing provides a high degree of tracking and accountability.
As mobile access to the internet becomes increasingly popular, offline referral marketing using trackable business cards are also becoming increasingly popular. Trackable business cards typically contain QR codes linking them to online content for sale while providing a way to track that sale back to the person whose card was scanned.
A study conducted by the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Pennsylvania, on referral programs and customer value which followed the customer referral program of a German bank that paid customers 25 euro for bringing in a new customer, was released in July 2010. According to Professor Van den Bulte, this is the first ever study published on the financial evaluation of customer referral programs. The study found that referred customers were both more profitable and loyal than normal customers. Referred customers had a higher contribution margin, a higher retention rate and were more valuable in both the short and long run.
On whether customer referral programs are worth the cost, the study says that it records "a positive value differential, both in the short term and long term, between customers acquired through a referral program and other customers. Importantly, this value differential is larger than the referral fee. Hence, referral programs can indeed pay off.
Quote end.
So gog just need to find a less intrusive and spammy way of doing it.