GOG.com pulls a massive pro-consumer move with updated refund policy

[TechyBen]

Yeah. Same as Steam IMO, GOG is practically an advertising platform at this point, so as long as it *has* users it cannot fail to generate money, and possibly profit, for them. (Though Valve aint making games as such anymore, they get % off of sales, and any "free" games on Steam will still generate users etc. Hence all the physiological stuff and games/trading cards etc they do)

[RonnieOP]

4 hours ago, Thaldor said:

They actually currently have probably the biggest buffer there can be. Even if the GoG isn't making huge profits CDP has CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most sold games in 2019 even while it's still only in pre-order, that most likely is huge sums of profit even if they have put few extra gears on the development to meet some build-up hype and exceed some expectations. Not to add the huge sales spike of the Witcher 3 after the Netflix-series came which was completely only profit for CDP.

 

More likely I would say that GoG is trying this out because they are doing so well they have the money to make huge mistakes. They even might have done this just to shake up the markets and get more discussion going around how badly digital platforms handle refunds by putting in place an example of extreme pro-customer policy and hoping that few consumer officials and other authorities take a note of it. Like in the past year we have seen quite a bad examples of how game industry handles refunds (*cough cough* Fallout 76 *cough cough* somewhat now Warcraft 3 Reforged *cough cough*) so, it's not really a surprise that there would be players who would try to push the whole field to better way by doing something drastic and CDP is rather known to go few extra steps just because the want to do it for the community (IIRC few retro games they have have been given to them, not by the publishers or studios, but by their original developers who have managed to keep some rights over them and they actually reach out for the original developers to get some extra contents besides the games, it's not much but it's far more than Steam and others offer even with extra fees, giving only a manual for a game is already quite a much today). More or less it was more likely that GoG would pull some stunts this year to burn some of those CDPR profits and probably this is it, if this goes well and doesn't blow to the CDPs face and they are left with even more money, I would guess something else will follow, after all now they have money to tryout some crazy ideas how to grow their userbase.

I dont think they have the biggest buffer by any means. Sure cyberpunk got a lot of preorders. But thats not pure profit. How much do they make after paying all the bills and the cut to steam and epic?

 

And then with this policy someone can buy cyberpunk, beat it, and get a refund.

 

CDR isnt going to just allow GoG to use up all the profits they get. That would be a horrible move financially. 

 

Not to mention GoG could lost dev support if devs start having to give back money due to a refund policy they were never told about or asked for input.

 

It could turn out fine. It could also turn out horrible.

 

 

[JZStudios]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Love how people are so pussy whipped by large companies these days that they boo a move that benefits them. 

 

I mean, people were losing their shit over the Steam refunds too. I don't see why the same dumb argument can't be applied to that. If you can download the game there, powerplay it for 2 hours and keep returning the game why is that any different? You can also make new accounts.

And but then, Oh no! The indie devs will suffer because their games don't take that long to beat!

 

And yet, it happened anyways and the world industry of games hasn't collapsed.

[RonnieOP]

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

I mean, people were losing their shit over the Steam refunds too. I don't see why the same dumb argument can't be applied to that. If you can download the game there, powerplay it for 2 hours and keep returning the game why is that any different? You can also make new accounts.

And but then, Oh no! The indie devs will suffer because their games don't take that long to beat!

 

And yet, it happened anyways and the world industry of games hasn't collapsed.

 

Hows it different? I mean do you really need to be told the difference between 2 hours and 30 days?

 

Nobody is upset they are doing this. We are just being realistic and talking about potential outcomes of it.

 

Movie pass was great for consumers. $20 a month and see all the movies in theaters. But that doesnt mean people couldnt see the possible downfalls from it. (And if you kept up with the moviepass drama you know they were right lol).

 

We arent talking shit about GoG. We are just discussing the possible effects.

 

I dont like steams refund policy. But i also dont see the need for a 30 day refund policy either.

 

If it takes you 30 days to figure out if you like a game or not....idk what to tell you lol.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

What impressed me about this isn’t the refund thing.  I personally think it’s actually a bit too long.  7 days is more in keeping.  The steam refund system is near useless though.  You can (and I have) run through the refund period merely confirming that a game does not work.  I’ve got steam games that will NEVER EVEN RUN on my system because of it.

 

What impresses the heck out of me is actually the standard previous stuff about no drm and full downloads.

[RonnieOP]

31 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

What impressed me about this isn’t the refund thing.  I personally think it’s actually a bit too long.  7 days is more in keeping.  The steam refund system is near useless though.  You can (and I have) run through the refund period merely confirming that a game does not work.  I’ve got steam games that will NEVER EVEN RUN on my system because of it.

 

What impresses the heck out of me is actually the standard previous stuff about no drm and full downloads.

Yea GoG have alot going for it. The issue is the lack of titles which is probably because the lack of drm tbh.

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Thaldor said:

They actually currently have probably the biggest buffer there can be. Even if the GoG isn't making huge profits CDP has CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most sold games in 2019 even while it's still only in pre-order, that most likely is huge sums of profit even if they have put few extra gears on the development to meet some build-up hype and exceed some expectations. Not to add the huge sales spike of the Witcher 3 after the Netflix-series came which was completely only profit for CDP.

 

More likely I would say that GoG is trying this out because they are doing so well they have the money to make huge mistakes. They even might have done this just to shake up the markets and get more discussion going around how badly digital platforms handle refunds by putting in place an example of extreme pro-customer policy and hoping that few consumer officials and other authorities take a note of it. Like in the past year we have seen quite a bad examples of how game industry handles refunds (*cough cough* Fallout 76 *cough cough* somewhat now Warcraft 3 Reforged *cough cough*) so, it's not really a surprise that there would be players who would try to push the whole field to better way by doing something drastic and CDP is rather known to go few extra steps just because the want to do it for the community (IIRC few retro games they have have been given to them, not by the publishers or studios, but by their original developers who have managed to keep some rights over them and they actually reach out for the original developers to get some extra contents besides the games, it's not much but it's far more than Steam and others offer even with extra fees, giving only a manual for a game is already quite a much today). More or less it was more likely that GoG would pull some stunts this year to burn some of those CDPR profits and probably this is it, if this goes well and doesn't blow to the CDPs face and they are left with even more money, I would guess something else will follow, after all now they have money to tryout some crazy ideas how to grow their userbase.

 

How can any company have a buffer when they don't have any profit?   having one of the most sold games doesn't equal money in the bank.  

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, RonnieOP said:

Yea GoG have alot going for it. The issue is the lack of titles which is probably because the lack of drm tbh.

We’ll see how it goes.  I got pathfinder going and I’m liking it a lot so far.

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I mean, people were losing their shit over the Steam refunds too. I don't see why the same dumb argument can't be applied to that. If you can download the game there, powerplay it for 2 hours and keep returning the game why is that any different? You can also make new accounts.

And but then, Oh no! The indie devs will suffer because their games don't take that long to beat!

 

And yet, it happened anyways and the world industry of games hasn't collapsed.

 

People will always find a way to abuse it. My line of thinking here is that it's not going to be instant-refund nor always-approved. It will probably be left to the developer if they will accept the refund policy or not. Intangibles are intangible and are consumed once purchased, it doesn't matter after that point, any offer of a refund is only the store putting out an olive branch so you will keep shopping at their store.

 

But let's also look at the other way crooks can metaphorically game the system. Let's say someone has thousands of stolen cards, they can burn through every single one of them on gog, and then "refund" them to paypal or something and then run off with the money before any of the card owners find out. This is one of the reasons why refunds, even at brick-and-morter stores tend to require a manager's approval. Just that non-instant refund is enough to make people nervous when they're doing something wrong, and "refund everything" policies like Walmart and Costco have, do get abused by a small number of people. With large stores, it's typically easier to just eat a small amount of shrinkage/fraud than it is to go after every single person who abuses it, and instead change policies so that it's just harder to do so.

 

The other thing, is that most realtors will only refund back to the original payment method. This is also to prevent abuse, and merchant/bank that underwrites the card will also consider it fraud if you sit there and buy/refund the same product every few hours just to side-step a generous refund policy.

 

What should happen is that gamedevs should wake up and stop trying to create $1000 worth of DLC microtransaction nonsense for their games, because a reckoning will be coming when someone decides they would like everything offered by the developer, they zip up the entire thing on their disk, refund it, and then unzip it back to play it or share it. If you don't believe me, this is exactly how pirates do on the Japanese digital download sites. The pirated content is typically out there before it's even been available to purchase for hours, and the only way you prevent this from happening is by breaking the game into multiple parts and having the parts released "after" the refund window closes, sneaky but at least one person is going to buy the game.

 

[RejZoR]

I just watched AngryJoe's news video about it and they talked about Indies being outraged over this policy and how GOG didn't communicate with them beforehand. But no one mentioned, would refunding go out of GOG's pocket or out of devs pocket? Coz if GOG's internal policy is, we guarantee it with out own money, then it's great. Devs still get like it was sold and GOG covers the refund loss. Win win.

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Coz if GOG's internal policy is, we guarantee it with out own money, then it's great. Devs still get like it was sold and GOG covers the refund loss. Win win.

how the fuck is that supposed to make sense and be a win-win?

That is bad on so many levels

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

how the fuck is that supposed to make sense and be a win-win?

That is bad on so many levels

Win win because devs aren't screwed over by refunds and GOG keeps the outstanding reputation. Sometimes having this as certain small expense makes up in extra sales by people who were hesitating to buy things otherwise.

[suicidalfranco]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Win win because devs aren't screwed over by refunds and GOG keeps the outstanding reputation. Sometimes having this as certain small expense makes up in extra sales by people who were hesitating to buy things otherwise.

no that is simply bad.

If the dev fucks up to a point where the customer wants it money, both GoG (30%) and the dev(70%) must give the money back to the consumer.

Are store fronts now supposed to be charities now?

[TechyBen]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I just watched AngryJoe's news video about it and they talked about Indies being outraged over this policy and how GOG didn't communicate with them beforehand. But no one mentioned, would refunding go out of GOG's pocket or out of devs pocket? Coz if GOG's internal policy is, we guarantee it with out own money, then it's great. Devs still get like it was sold and GOG covers the refund loss. Win win.

I won't update it in the other thread as I cannot be bothered. But a game I play just got pulled from NVidias streaming VN PC services. "Indie" and they want a cut of the "profits" being made of "their work Nvidia stole". Yeah, I care little for those self absorbed and self centered people.

[Kisai]

16 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I just watched AngryJoe's news video about it and they talked about Indies being outraged over this policy and how GOG didn't communicate with them beforehand. But no one mentioned, would refunding go out of GOG's pocket or out of devs pocket? Coz if GOG's internal policy is, we guarantee it with out own money, then it's great. Devs still get like it was sold and GOG covers the refund loss. Win win.

I'm not surprised one bit.

 

I don't think GoG is going to cover anything out of their pocket, they are almost certainly deducting any refunds against future sales.

 

Me, if was running GoG, I would probably use the same rules used by subscription sites for refunds:

1. If you login, and access any content beyond the front page, no refund.

2. If you lie to the credit card processor in requesting a refund, no refund.

3. If you chargeback, you get your entire account canceled, ip address banned, and if I'm feeling especially vindictive further bans from everything else that I manage.

 

The only circumstances (and believe me I used to rerate bills for a certain telcom and have bent rules to enable refunds that customers might otherwise not get due to impatience) where people should get a refund on an intangible product is where:

1. If you have never launched the game

2. If you launched the game, but didn't reach what I'll call the "story insertion point" of the game (eg didn't complete the tutorial or leave the first room)

3. If you did NOT access the game's files outside the game launcher.

 

AND, have not continued to play the game after requesting a refund.

 

Now 1 and 3 are a bit difficult to actually determine, as there are other reasons why a game might have different file-access times than simply launching or making a save game. Yet, you want to ask questions as to why you want to refund a game, and saying "I didn't even play it" is easy enough to verify if there are no save games. However if the game has cloud saves, not only is it easy to determine, but the game dev can actually prove you did play the game beyond their refund window and can deny a refund. If you do refund it, they can then delete the cloud save and ban your customer id from ever playing it again.

 

2 is easier to determine if a game has an achievement system. Simply check if achievements for the story insertion point were activated. Yet GoG doesn't actually have this functionality. Steam does, and Steam also has the ability to log how long you play the game, hence they have a refund path that can be easily justified. GoG on the other hand has no way of checking anything, it's up to the developer to go back to GoG and go "no that guy just requested a refund, but kept playing the game"

 

[xAcid9]

15 hours ago, TechyBen said:

I won't update it in the other thread as I cannot be bothered. But a game I play just got pulled from NVidias streaming VN PC services. "Indie" and they want a cut of the "profits" being made of "their work Nvidia stole". Yeah, I care little for those self absorbed and self centered people.

I'm not familiar with Geforce Now, i thought client need to login their own Steam account to use Geforce Now? Which mean they already purchased the game right?

[RejZoR]

5 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

I'm not familiar with Geforce Now, i thought client need to login their own Steam account to use Geforce Now? Which mean they already purchased the game right?

GeForce Now is literally a remote rendering service. You basically play with Steam, but not on your own PC.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

GeForce Now is literally a remote rendering service. You basically play with Steam, but not on your own PC.

So the complaint of game developers is that while the player bought a license to play the game the complaint is about which physical copy they are playing on.  It’s a point so thin as to be nearly non existent.  Stupid of the developers imho.  It would sell more licenses because a person would no longer need the hardware needed to play the game.  Just the license.

[RejZoR]

18 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

So the complaint of game developers is that while the player bought a license to play the game the complaint is about which physical copy they are playing on.  It’s a point so thin as to be nearly non existent.  Stupid of the developers imho.  It would sell more licenses because a person would no longer need the hardware needed to play the game.  Just the license.

Their argument is about as solid as complaining over you bringing your Steam login to friends house and logging into your account there.

[TechyBen]

53 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Their argument is about as solid as complaining over you bringing your Steam login to friends house and logging into your account there.

Securicom has entered the chat:

 

But yeah. It's super super low move and IMO "illegal", as the original T&C/EULA said nothing about not being allowed to play on a VM, no matter where it was hosted, and the "status quo" with the consumer/publisher/developer was that providing a license was paid for, they could play it (on games, commercial/enterprise software T&Cs are specifically different, same with their status quo).

[RejZoR]

14 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Securicom has entered the chat:

 

But yeah. It's super super low move and IMO "illegal", as the original T&C/EULA said nothing about not being allowed to play on a VM, no matter where it was hosted, and the "status quo" with the consumer/publisher/developer was that providing a license was paid for, they could play it (on games, commercial/enterprise software T&Cs are specifically different, same with their status quo).

GOG also has GOG Connect where you gain access to games bought on Steam. Not all of them, but quite some got carried over from Steam to GOG for me coz I was on Steam before GOG. Now I mostly buy on GOG even if it's slightly more expensive. No DRM is just so much better.

[Bombastinator]

43 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

GOG also has GOG Connect where you gain access to games bought on Steam. Not all of them, but quite some got carried over from Steam to GOG for me coz I was on Steam before GOG. Now I mostly buy on GOG even if it's slightly more expensive. No DRM is just so much better.

I’ve got some steam game that I would rather have be GoG games.  How would I do that?

[RejZoR]

11 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’ve got some steam game that I would rather have be GoG games.  How would I do that?

Go to:

https://www.gog.com/connect

 

Link Steam account with it. Steam profile needs to be public so GOG can read it. If you're eligible for certain games, you'll get them copied over. But I think A lot of them were time limited things. Read the FAQ on that page below for more details.

[Mihle]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

*snip*

You have the subscription mind on something that is not, that does not work, also, it's very good you aren't the boss of GOG, if you where, there would be much much less customers than the quite few overall they already have. (Compared to steam)

 

Firstly, some of the things you say would break the law in EU/Australia if I take it word for word. Secondly, to do it, the only option would be to not have it be DRM free. GOG does have achievements and time tracking, but if it was required from the user, it also can't be DRM free, it's impossible.

And DRM free is one of the two main points GOG have had over other stores before, and the only one for games that aren't old, GOG would most likely have less customers if it even still existed without that

(Now it have more than those two main points they have had tho, for example this refund system and GOG galaxy 2.0 for example, but those are newer things)

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

Securicom has entered the chat:

 

But yeah. It's super super low move and IMO "illegal", as the original T&C/EULA said nothing about not being allowed to play on a VM, no matter where it was hosted, and the "status quo" with the consumer/publisher/developer was that providing a license was paid for, they could play it (on games, commercial/enterprise software T&Cs are specifically different, same with their status quo).

Legality is not even a thing that should be asked if the game does not connect anywhere online.

 

Running a game in a VM is how the vast majority of fraud happens, and that's why EULA's usually are worded that they can terminate your account should it be discovered that you have been doing so.