GOG.com closing a marketing ploy

[Molyneux]

I'm a bit pissed at the site, but I'm not going to sweat it too much. I've always been satisfied with my purchases there before, though I am still hoping in vain that they get some Lucasarts games up there. I want my damned X-Wing Alliance!

[weemadando]

Wah wah wah.


They masked a site redesign and relaunch and the consequent downtime with a marketing ploy. Turns out that it worked. How many news stories, blogs and forum posts have gone up about this? Its the best advertising they've ever had and it's been totally free.

If you think that makes them immature and irresponsible good luck dealing with some actual issues in life, because this was fucking genius.

[Jade Falcon]

Wah wah wah.


They masked a site redesign and relaunch and the consequent downtime with a marketing ploy. Turns out that it worked. How many news stories, blogs and forum posts have gone up about this? Its the best advertising they've ever had and it's been totally free.

If you think that makes them immature and irresponsible good luck dealing with some actual issues in life, because this was fucking genius.

Pretty truw. SB for instance mentioned GOG pretty much since it was started and when this came up there were a fair few folk wondering what the hell GOG was. When they thought the site was closing some wished they had heard before. It has generated a lot of publicity, not all of it good granted, but it has made the site more known in some fields.

[General Zod]

Wah wah wah.


They masked a site redesign and relaunch and the consequent downtime with a marketing ploy. Turns out that it worked. How many news stories, blogs and forum posts have gone up about this? Its the best advertising they've ever had and it's been totally free.

If you think that makes them immature and irresponsible good luck dealing with some actual issues in life, because this was fucking genius.

Great for publicity? Maybe. But if you think it's a great way for them to earn customer trust you're out of your mind.

[weemadando]

Wah wah wah.


They masked a site redesign and relaunch and the consequent downtime with a marketing ploy. Turns out that it worked. How many news stories, blogs and forum posts have gone up about this? Its the best advertising they've ever had and it's been totally free.

If you think that makes them immature and irresponsible good luck dealing with some actual issues in life, because this was fucking genius.

Great for publicity? Maybe. But if you think it's a great way for them to earn customer trust you're out of your mind.

What exactly is the trust breaker? How is any of this a terrible breach of your trust that would make you believe that your details are unsafe with them?

[PeZook]

They shouldn't have admitted it was a hoax. The slick way to do that would be to start some rumors, watch the publicity roll in and then deny they were closing and announce that it was merely a rewrite and they were misunderstood.

That's the incompetent part.

[weemadando]

They shouldn't have admitted it was a hoax. The slick way to do that would be to start some rumors, watch the publicity roll in and then deny they were closing and announce that it was merely a rewrite and they were misunderstood.

That's the incompetent part.

How is that incompetent? They intended to get publicity and did. Goals achieved. Pretty much the opposite of incompetence.

And it's not like it was a hoax, they simply said that they were closing down the existing service, that people would still have access to all their already purchased content and that new challenges awaited. GOG had been in beta the whole two years anyway, so it's no surprise that they had to relaunch at somepoint. Then when they clarified the message it was even clearer to anyone who wasn't a fucking drama queen.

[Vympel]

Well, I'm just happy I can get my MOO2 now. And I-War. Sweet, sweet I-War.

Sucks that I have the CDs for I-War but I've got fuck all chance of getting the first game to run on a modern machine. Which is ridiculous given how relatively new it is.

[Stark]

It runs fine, but you need a wrapper to fake the terrible 3DFX stuff. It looks even worse than usual in software mode.

Are you a tually going to play them or are they just for the backlog? Lol

[General Zod]

Wah wah wah.


They masked a site redesign and relaunch and the consequent downtime with a marketing ploy. Turns out that it worked. How many news stories, blogs and forum posts have gone up about this? Its the best advertising they've ever had and it's been totally free.

If you think that makes them immature and irresponsible good luck dealing with some actual issues in life, because this was fucking genius.

Great for publicity? Maybe. But if you think it's a great way for them to earn customer trust you're out of your mind.

What exactly is the trust breaker? How is any of this a terrible breach of your trust that would make you believe that your details are unsafe with them?

They gave out absolutely no warning whatsoever that they were going to shut down their site for a "relaunch". If I buy a game and their site suddenly shuts down or "closes" before I finish downloading it what am I supposed to do? I'm out a game and some cash, and frankly I can't put much trust in that kind of reliability.

[weemadando]

What exactly is the trust breaker? How is any of this a terrible breach of your trust that would make you believe that your details are unsafe with them?

They gave out absolutely no warning whatsoever that they were going to shut down their site for a "relaunch". If I buy a game and their site suddenly shuts down or "closes" before I finish downloading it what am I supposed to do? I'm out a game and some cash, and frankly I can't put much trust in that kind of reliability.

Yeah, except for the part where they said that they'd be arranging an interim solution and had contact details for customer support listed for anyone who was concerned.

[Stark]

Yeah, so they knew people would be annoyed, did it anyway, and that's fine because people are talking about it?

Like I said, if their customer base wasn't brand-obsessed nerds who literally can't get their product anywhere else, this would have been a pretty transparently bad mood. They're obvious less 'businessmen' and more 'trolls', but they certainly don't care about my reaction because I'm old enough to own all their products and not lame enough to buy their shit.

The very existence of people younger than 20 who want to play 90s (ie, dodgey) games is pretty funny; the best part is when these young people 'discover' a game, the way kids used to 'discover' Hendrix.

[Vympel]

It runs fine, but you need a wrapper to fake the terrible 3DFX stuff. It looks even worse than usual in software mode.

Are you a tually going to play them or are they just for the backlog? Lol

Hey I've made great strides! I've polished off a bunch of PC & PS3 games in the last few weeks. On Batman: Arkham Asylum now.

But yeah, I don't plan on getting any games off gog.com anytime soon. Or any game from anywhere for that matter. That's why I haven't bought Civ5. Only exceptions are Fallout New Vegas and TFU2, which will punt everything off and take priority. Everything else can wait on the backburner.

[Molyneux]

It runs fine, but you need a wrapper to fake the terrible 3DFX stuff. It looks even worse than usual in software mode.

Are you a tually going to play them or are they just for the backlog? Lol

Hey I've made great strides! I've polished off a bunch of PC & PS3 games in the last few weeks. On Batman: Arkham Asylum now.

But yeah, I don't plan on getting any games off gog.com anytime soon. Or any game from anywhere for that matter. That's why I haven't bought Civ5. Only exceptions are Fallout New Vegas and TFU2, which will punt everything off and take priority. Everything else can wait on the backburner.

Just idle curiosity, but what is TFU2?
A friend had been planning on buying the King's Quest pack from GOG, and was very happy to find out it was a stunt; he's blaming it on a lack of English facility on the part of the website staff.

I picked up Painkiller there awhile back, as well as Freespace (haven't yet played) and Fallout (tried playing, couldn't deal with the graphics). It's a decent site, but I'll be holding off on buying until I've got a bit more ready cash.

[General Zod]

Just idle curiosity, but what is TFU2?

The Force Unleashed 2.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well they gone done it now.
(sic)

Forget PR stunts. They just released Planescape Torment.

[Vympel]

Yeah I just saw that shit. Finally I get to play that game again.

[General Zod]

Yeah I just saw that shit. Finally I get to play that game again.

It hasn't aged well.

[Stark]

Are you saying giant boxy shade-cubes aren't good?

How can people who love the game not already own it, anyway? If they already pirated it, why would they buy it through GOG? If they already own it, why would they buy it through GOG? There's some nerd element I'm missing here. People on this board even pointed me at a (relatively) modern frontend for it.

[weemadando]

I half-played a friends copy back at uni and loved it. I'm very tempted to pick it up.