While as it's a nice gesture, I have to wonder if it'll increase developer/publisher wariness when deciding whether to put games on the service or not. GOG already has it tough enough trying to convincing them to embrace the DRM-free aspect of the store.
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If someone is abusing the system and keeps playing and refunding games, they will probably stop allowing refunds for that person or just lock their account so they can't purchase anything.
Technically, you can play through all the games on Steam for free if you want to because you can create an unlimited number of free accounts. Just play the game for less than 2 hours and make a local backup of your save file. Then refund the game, purchase it on another Steam account and start playing from the save you backed up locally on your computer. Then refund again and repeat. Create as many Steam accounts as you need to play through the game in 2 hour increments. I'm pretty sure Steam will eventually lock your accounts though, just like GOG will.
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Simple. Not everyone is completely amoral and a lot of people, once they have a decent income, happily pay some money since they know that devs have to make a living as well. Ever since I have a stable job, I haven't play a pirated game, since there is no point doing so.
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It's a lot worse, I know of a private torrent site someone kept updating a set each week that grew to over 1.5tb, but the person stopped, when so many sites went down because of lawsuits.
I am sure it all went underground and someone probably still has a set of everything (which by now would be bigger then 5tb, i know someone made that calculation).
There is still another site somewhere that has a 500gb set and with a safeyear (<2004).
Gog has some games no longer for sale, so for achiving purposes it's atleast handy.
Overall i must say the amount of uploads compared to some years ago really diminished, and think people lost interest, especially because GOG used to have more exclusives on oldies, now it's games that are on steam also anyway.
Also there is just a plain open website with all if not most all of their games to just download.
There is also a project called exodos (and one called win3x0) which someone entirely made himself which contains every possible dos game ever, all tested with documentation and screenshots, running through launchbox, but that's the best real nostalgia collection out there for all those games gog will never rights too. Just as illegal (even though we talk about mostly abandonware) but still it's there.
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I think, it's doesn't matter. If man want to use "buy-play-refund" trick, he can just use torrent. If man doesn't want use this trick - he won't use refund.
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I think the main important change if we compare this to standard Steam 14-day-2hour refund
.
Let's face it. The 2 hour limit is absolutely ridiculous, and only useful if something doesn't run immediately and don't want to mess with it, or if you really dislike the game as first impression.
WIth many games there can be issues with drivers, hardware, colliding with anti-virus, and if someone wants to fix these, that often require multiple restarting of the game. Or just delving deep into ingame options. Or you have to edit .ini files. And-or the game starts with 10 minutes' worth of unskippable cutscene and it crashes afterwards.
2 hours can be not enough to troubleshoot a game properly, at least it's super easy to to spend half of it or even more just to try playing the game. And it offers no protection if the game inevitably bluescreens on the 4th hour of a 10 hour game.
It's a convenience-option for the gamers who just want to play and exchange the not working game, but far from the proper "we promise the game is working from start to finish). Abusable with the short-storygames sure, but doesn't cover the bases on any "proper" length game.
While the 14 day refund is quite arbitrary, it's likely set it in a way that it disturbs the periodic money transfer to the developers the least. ( They don't get money for sales at the moment of purchase) Which leads me to think that GOG's 30 days refund means they are more willing to act as a middle-man between the purchaser and the dev and do the business even 15-30 days after the purchase. But this is kind of the smaller, less important aspect IMO.
All things considered and the mentions of torrenting... is this really a risk for GOG? From the point of a single piece of game sold in the store, that game could be found on all torrent sites, because of the DRM-free version. Them offering a better-than-average customer support can't really open the floodgates more open for rulebreakers, while customers get a larger safety net.
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I am quite possessive so when I buy it I keep it even if it's not currently working. XD
I usually find some way to force the game into working and believe me that I have played games in really odd shapes. ;D
Okay, I see the problem with the 2 hours... but isn't there enough warnings in reviews, discussions and comments for you to value your risks in buying such game?
I have come across some of those and still decided to buy few. And if it wouldn't be working, I would take the shot as it was mine decision. ;) But I was lucky I think. :)
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PCs are a fickle thing. One thing may work today, and the next Windows or graphics driver update will break it. Also as PCs aren't each the same as consoles, you can expect a game may not run for you, but can't really be sure.
Point is, 2 hours rarely useful because if people warn you it doesn't run at all, you don't buy it, so the 2 hour refund is not used. (also still idk how Valve allows broken thing to stay in store). If it's troublesome at any point of the game (again, it may crash on hour 5 on your PC but not on mine) then the 2 hour refund is useless.
Basically it's just a minimum effort, minimum trouble thing that Valve had to do because of laws, but sold it as them being the nice guy, while the feature serves them in the first place (laws). GOG's 30 day refund is primary good for the customer :)
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I know, I know, you are right. ;)
I just don't use it so it's not that appealing for me. X)
I hope that costumers will be more responsible and respectful towards their purchases, because it seems to me that lately they are just discarding anything they don't like without any second thought - be it games or normal daily things.
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I don't really agree with that logic. It's true that it can take far more than 2 hours to fix a game, on the other hand I'd expect a customer, experiencing such severe problems, to request a refund before they keep wasting their refund window.
Of course if you are desperate enough, wanting to play a specific game by all means, you could take the risk. But I don't see why a store should necessarily cover a risk the customer is taking willingly.
Of course it's still great if GOG provides an even more forgiving service. I just wouldn't consider Steam's policy as insufficient, as it offers good enough conditions for almost any scenario.
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Agreed, I just wasn't as clear in text as I was in my own head
only useful if something doesn't run immediately and don't want to mess with it
Without anything negative linked to it, it is really useful for casual users who expect a plug and play experience.
But I don't see why a store should necessarily cover a risk the customer is taking willingly.
Frankly, because the EU's law is that even digitals good should be refundable within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification. because a store is responsible for what they sell, and the pretty-good refund system is still achieved by us giving up pretty huge part of our rights. ( 14 day + any reason one -> invalid if the game was running for 120 minutes)
Still better than it was before implementing any kind of refund system, but while Steam makes us sign that we give up rights if we want to use the service, GOG expands on it.
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Frankly, because the EU's law is that even digitals good should be refundable within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification
This is correct. But so is this here:
However, the 14-day cooling off period does not apply to all purchases. Some of the exemptions are:
- online digital content, if you have already started downloading or streaming it and you agreed that you would lose your right of withdrawal by starting the performance
So Steam (and any digital content provider) only has to offer refunds for 2 weeks if you don't use the purchased content. Steam is actually providing more than legally required, by granting us these 2 hours.
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I found the info on some similar site, but couldn't find those exceptions there, seems like your dad source beats mine :D thanks for it really though, I'm surprised the article involves the part about forfeiting the right of withdrawal. Either I was under-informed since a good while, or they even clarified it later.
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I think, that's not. For example you bought a game during sale. But you don't play it for a two week for some reason (you try to complete another game, you haven't enough time etc.) After 2 weeks you download game, run it and saw, that this game doesn't work on your machine. So... refund.
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The thing is, I no longer buy games to play them immediately, that needs to be something I really want, like Mass Effect, Witcher or so. And even if the game didn't worked currently, I wouldn't have refunded it, I can be patient and I never give up easily. XD
Seems like I am wrong target group. ;D
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You will be shocked, but I bought Witcher 3 a couple of year ago and still didn't play it =)))))
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They reserve the right to refuse requests on an individual basis, either by dubious reason for refund or by excessive refund requests. This mostly just allows them to give a reasonable period for protecting purchasers from "not everyone can get to playing a game they bought right away, and some games don't work properly on every setup".
The only real risks [for GOG] of this setup that I see at a glance are:
First, multi-accounting to bypass refund limits [With Steam account linking and discounted bundle purchases, that'd at least dissuade the users who have any interest in retaining games to begin with, meaning any sign of abuse is generally going to be from someone who wouldn't give GOG spit to begin with; As such, GOG may deal with suspected multi-accounting rather strictly].
If there are too many new accounts refunding games, I assume GOG'll limit the minimum library size for refunds [since there's no way for them to track playtime on drm-free content, which'd be the more ideal approach]. GOG may also limit new and AAA games eventually, as those'd be the most prone to being abused.
Second, complaints by exploitative, entitled users about being refused dubious refunds. But such toxic individuals will eventually be toxic regardless of context, so perhaps that isn't a real change in what GOG has to deal with.
Besides, since you can just download a drm-free game and immediately request a refund (while still retaining ownership of the game), it doesn't actually matter what GOG puts for the grace period. So they wouldn't ever really be factoring that in to their deliberations to begin with.
Honestly, the real issue is in having a refund policy related to non-reversible purchases in the first place. If they're going to allow for that, then there's not really much option but to be generous about it (and thereby develop goodwill and increased purchases among those who won't exploit to begin with). The only other real alternative is making it so that Galaxy downloads are no longer DRM-free and that refunds are only allowable for purchases that haven't been downloaded through drm-free. And that just doesn't seem like a direction GOG wants to head at the moment.
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It all sounds reasonable, but seems like a big hassle to me...
thereby develop goodwill and increased purchases among those who won't exploit
This putted bug in my mind, you know, how will they motivate me to buy from them when this feature is useless for me and only leaves bitter taste?
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how will they motivate me to buy from them when this feature is useless for me and only leaves bitter taste?
It's a "We offer cookies, and now they're decorated even more prettily!" affair. It doens't cost them anything (as the time limitation is, as I noted, fairly meaningless in relation to the mechanisms involved), but invokes goodwill among their cookie-loving customers. Those who ignore the cookies to go straight to the cakes [I feel you!], should mostly not be affected either way and, for the outlier responses, they can be assumed to balance out in their overall positive and negative balance.
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Haha, that's great comparison! Cookies. I like it, makes sense. :D
Yes, you are right, it's not affecting me in any bad way, so I am not really complaining just polemizing (is this a word?). :) I just feel like there is a lot of concessions towards wrong cast of costumers. Be it in the service or game development.
Isn't refund system bad for the small developers in the end? And now we don't talk about the straighforward bad developers.
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For myself that is great! Will very likely ever use it in case of a broken game.
For the general public: with free account registration and this, technically no limitation to someone buying-playing-refunding every single game within the 30 days. (They could torrent it as well, but GOG is surely virus-free)... so I kind of expect to have some kind of limitation to their good-willed offer.
But then, I really doubt that would affect proper users. Like if you own 80 games as an active GOG user and player, and then buy 2-3 not working ones in a row (Which should be possible but super rare) that generally looks okay. Someone having 0 paid wins and juggling the 3rd big game, with the previous 2 having playthrough-length gameplay time - that is quite fishy :D
I trust them to have this already figured out if they did chis change on their own accord.
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"How often can I refund my games? Is there some sort of limit?
We trust that you're making informed purchasing decisions and will use this updated voluntary Refund Policy only if something doesn't work as you expected.
This is why there are no limits but instead, we reserve the right to refuse refunds in individual cases.
Please respect all the time and hard work put into making the games you play and remember that refunds are not reviews. If you finished the game and didn't like it, please consider sharing your opinion instead. Also, please don't take advantage of our trust by asking for an unreasonable amount of games to be refunded. Don't be that person. No one likes that person."
Love this part though, essentially if you are one of those people to buy > play > refund and do it enough spite there being no limit, they can refuse your refund.
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I really hope this all will help them survive the Launcher war. GOG deserves it.
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And that's why aside of bundles, I always try to buy games on Gog (I have almost 100 games now there). This new policy is really awesome, but when they have offline installers, they can't really measure how much you play the game, so that's why the no limit of hours I think.
In steam the 2 hours refund policy is too little for big games like Assassins Creed and I think more than enough for short games. So why not make it proportional to the game duration? It could be assigne by the devs or with a tool like How long to beat. For example: if the game lasts 50 hours, 5 hours to try it; if it lasts 10 hours, something like 2. It could be tricky to implement, and maybe too random though xD
Definitely the best would be a demo of the game and that's it.
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That might well be true w/r/t regional pricing. But for me personally it doesn't matter, because I'm from a € country I have to pay very high prices on Steam. Some games are even cheaper on GOG straight away after release, so I buy a lot of games there.
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Indeed, GOG has a very large supporter base from € countries and unlike what some people may fear, I doubt it will go out of business anytime soon. But, it seems Steam intentionally makes games costly for € or £ countries --almost as if it wants GOG to survive the launcher wars.
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As with any refund policy, there are clauses (there have to be), but there's nothing negative about giving a larger refund window.
It's still better than Steam's 2 week refund policy, which to me feels a bit short considering their Summer sales; some of us buying lots only to get around to playing them many weeks (or months, for shame) later to find we dislike something, and having no way to get a refund.
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A game is the developer's hard work, so it should be their choice if they want to extend such goodwill, not forced upon them. You are right about "scummy thieves" but GOG giving them the right to legally scum the developers is in very poor taste imho.
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"Everyone at GOG believes in a 'gamers-first’ approach. It means that every part of our store is designed with gamers in mind and your purchase safety and satisfaction come first for us. The latest update to our voluntary Refund Policy adds another piece to this customer-friendly experience. And it all sums up in one sentence: starting now, you can get a full refund up to 30 days after purchasing a product, even if you downloaded, launched, and played it. That's it.
It’s important for us to say that this update is possible thanks to your respect for all the time and hard work put into creating the games you buy on GOG.COM and playing by the rules. We're grateful for that and encourage you to continue to do so.
For more details on how the change works, please check this FAQ article."
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