Good Old Games Lets You Return Broken Games

Looks like a nice company, with a special chill room with Fat Boy chill bags to sit on.

That guy has a good voice.

The GOG version of I76 is buggy as hell, I couldn't complete it.

No, they said in the video something along the lines with if your computer meets the listed requirements and still can't run the game, and our support team can't find a solution, you will be refunded. That probably does not cover cases were someone buys a game listed as compatible with Windows Vista and 7, but not 8 (not all GOG games are compatible with 8 yet), and then is unable to play it in Windows 8, or in Linux through Wine or something like that, but would probably cover misprinted system requirements (a few games on GOG are listed with their original release requirements, despite being set up through DOSBox which has higher requirements, and in the cases of CD-ROM games, you may not just be able to copy it to a 90's computer and run the game as is).

A couple of years back, Good Old Games went through a rebranding, and a website infrastructure rebuilding, to re-launch the website as 'GOG' where new games (such as The Witcher) were available to purchase as well as older ones.

To do this, and to 'trick' people with an attempt at viral marketing to make people pay attention to it, they put up a page saying something along the lines of 'Good Old Games is closed forever.' on a Friday. The website, and the ability to re-download purchased games, were unavailable over the weekend while they were rebuilding the site, and then it was relaunched as the shiny new 'GOG' on Monday.

In short, people couldn't re-download games over a weekend, and people were led to believe by the 'closed forever' message that they had lost all of their past purchases. But then it was back up by Monday and everything was happy again.

Really, in the end, it wasn't as big of a deal as websites and users made it out to be. All of the games still ran just fine from when people bought them in the first place (there is no DRM, after all), it's just that people just saw the 'closed forever' message over that weekend and assumed the worst... and, for some reason, still think that GOG are somehow untrustworthy. It's a bit silly.

But... but that means I would have to stop collecting GOG games and start playing them to see if they run!

@mewarmo990: One reason, and only one reason to buy non-steam games. This in fact mainly applies to indie games. Indie games and teams usually have direct sites you can purchase from. With the HiB and paypal there now systems freely available that you can buy and sell things without the need of steam with the ease of use as steam. Often if you buy directly through the game's website you get it for the same price as you would on steam and they usually give you a steam key and sometimes a DRM free copy. So in the end it's like you actually own the game and also rent it off of steam (because you don't actually own the products on steam).

I hope that fake fire doesn't burn down their office.

Interstate 76 flashbacks man. Everyone knows it was cooler to shoot out of your car with the pistol and kill the other driver so they die on the horn. Blew my mind when I was young.

Another reason why I'll always buy from GOG over Steam if they have the same title.

@sweetz: I understand that, but with GoG you don't even need a program, still, it's a valid point.

well guess it's time to buy those copies of DK and DK2 (not sure why i haven't already tbh...)

I love GOG, and I've bought a bunch of stuff on there, most recently the two Dungeon Keeper games. In the reviews for DK2 there's a whole bunch of "Fuck you this doesn't work I hate you fuck off" type reviews, relating to an issue with the game's hardware acceleration implementation. This has been a known issue, and it used to involve a bunch of Windows Compatibility tweaks and stuff.

Anyway, GOG built a fix to this and the game works smooth as ever on Windows 7. This is the kind of thing people ought to be doing with old games, making them run as close to the way they were intended to as possible, for posterity. Because publishers by and large do not give a shit about their games two years after release, and for a long time a new version of Windows was enough to kill half your game library.

@angethedude: I thought it was within 24hours of launch, no questions asked, as long as it's an EA title (or a week if you don't launch it)

I like GOG. This makes me like it even more.

No you dummy, it means you have 30 days to file for a refund.

Why pick on Interstate 76 :P

Finally catching up to the high standards of EA's Origin :)

How about you just give me back my money for this copy of Sanitarium that crashes and erases my saved data before I can beat the first Act?

@jouhn Your wording was poor. We're praising something that should be expected or it should be expected that we praise it? If the former, it is a bit odd to have to make paragons out of companies that simply apply sensible customer policies. But that's what happens when you're in an ecosystem of companies largely exploiting and restricting its customers at every turn and rarely listening to criticism. You kind of have to applaud the ones that just act like its run by normal human beings both for the sake of them knowing we appreciate it (no matter how standard it should be - because it's obviously not standard) and maybe others will catch on.

Here we are again, praising the thing as if it were the second coming of christ, that should be expected, like the PS4 used games debacle.

For whatever reason, I'm super fucking pumped that I just watched an infomercial for a 30-day money-back guarantee for digital games.

I assume that they would want to try to fix the problem first. Must be a frustrating job, getting these old ass games working on newer hardware.

I wish Steam did this. I have a stack of games that, for whatever reason, have never worked at all no matter what I've done.

I love that dude's voice.

Our crack team of customer service investigators = 4 people.

It's almost as if GoG wants to make videogames work like a regular, accountable industry?

I love how the bombcrew, like two years now after the switch took place, still refer to GOG as Good Old Games.

This is really awesome. I hate how things have turned into, game doesn't work on your system after you bought it, then fuck you. No refund.

hahahaha haha ha. hahahaha ha haHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Being a dick on the internet problems.

hahahaha haha ha

Comprehension problems.

The d/ler is shit, but I like strong competition to Steam; not that I think Valve will go Googlevil, but they may get complacent and distracted.

I don't refuse to buy games that aren't on steam I just don't know how to find games that aren't on steam. I wish I knew of a store that had other good games for sale cause steams library is lacking in some respects. And gog dosen't particularly interest me cause i'm not that into old pc games. Unless vinny is playing it.

Love this site, personally my favourite DRM, they give you great extras, and pretty much every problem is solved by the awesome community in the forums and so on.

BTW: If Interstate is non-workable I'm fairly certain that's because it's a Directx 3 game which I'm almost certain that all versions of DX below 6 are not included in current distributions.

It's interesting that they picked Interstate '76 for the demonstration of a game breaking, because that game is very broken on modern systems and they haven't been able to get it to run on them. It's one of the few games in their catalog that doesn't have Window 7 listed as supported. I think I've just about figured out how to get it playing as nicely as possible with 7, but it's been a slog.

@cybertification:

I don't refuse to buy non-Steam games but all other things equal, I will often go for a Steam copy unless there is some DLC extra or physical good that I want. It's just convenient to have it all tied into one platform with the social integration and everything, though it does have its disadvantages (since its introduction, Offline Mode was very unreliable for me until earlier this year).

That said, I love GoG and the way they do things.

GOG and CD Projekt RED are awesome.