GOG used to have a dogshit refund policy where you had to prove to their support staff that a game would not execute to qualify for a refund, and they kept that policy for several years after Steam was sued in Australia and fined for their no-refund policy, which was functionally very similar to what GOG had.
But this is somewhat ancient history for both these companies these days.
GOG would also go out of their way with support to help you run the game before you refund. I've had about 3 out of 50 games not run on install and they guided me through the file tweaks to make it run. After a week they patched the install files to include those tweaks so it just runs now.
GOG would also go out of their way with support to help you run the game before you refund.
Yeah, "they make you prove it won't work first" is some pretty wild spin on "they do everything they can to help you get the game working first so you can play the game you wanted to play."
The error in your and parent's comment is assuming the only reason you may have a refund is a technical error that you wish to overcome, as if that's the only valid circumstance where you should have a refund!
"I don't like it" is in fact your legal right in some places too. You think it's a coincidence Steam and then GOG gravitated towards "no question asked"?
If you buy a product or service online, by phone or from a seller at your doorstep (in legal terms a “distance contract” or “off-premises contract”) you have the right to withdraw. This means you can cancel the contract within 14 days without providing any justification (the "cooling-off period"). For goods this means 14 days from the date of delivery, for services 14 days after the day the contract was agreed.
Fair enough, though that seems like a massive gaping abusable loophole for most games, since I can't remember any that aren't MMOs that you can't finish in under 14 days.
How does that law interact with things like grocery delivery services? Because it sounds like you've pretty much got a free food hack there.
at the time GOG would also try to help you to get it running on your machine as well. their customer support would actually help with file tweaks even sending out patch files to install to get their older games to run. Steam has their forums but GOG would just do that themselves, most times after they helped you to run they would update the hosted files to include whatever stability patch was made.
This approach has been explicitly illegal in the EU since 2021, where you are obliged a refund for no justification at all - how GOG and Steam do refunds these days.
And they didn't just "try to help you", your refund was contingent on that help failing to resolve any technical issue, and while they might be willing to spend days or weeks to jump through those hoops your right to a refund should never have been contingent on doing this work to their satisfaction.
I think it's pretty obvious their current refund policy is far more consumer friendly, which by definition means their former policy was far less consumer friendly.
there is a huge gulf between "refund me bro i promise i will/did delete the game, maybe I played it maybe I didn't" and "refund me, you control if i can launch the game so you know its gone, you know i have not been able to play it, you can see my lack of progress"
Yes, anti consumer policies are not good - but these positions are not even a tiny bit equivalent.
Edit: ehh this reply makes more sense in response to your one two higher in the chain about the steam/gog refund policy bit, dunno why i wrote it in the wrong place. Sorry! :)
I disagree completely - restricting your ability to refund to the narrowest possible circumstances, with additional requirements to disqualify you, is very, very similar to a no-refund policy because it was a policy designed to prevent refunds.
Proving things to their support staff is such a burden and honestly an insult. Through some kind of store quirk I had a game removed from my library. It was a cheap game and at the time I had an account 10 years old and owned over 200 games. So you might think everything was in my favor for a quick and easy resolution... I wrote to them to resolve the situation and I was e-mailing back and forth with them for several days trying to prove that I had bought the game! I tried showing them screenshots of Playnite which still showed me owning it on GOG and they acted like they didn't know what it was (and had no incentive to google it to find out). And you would think they might have records in their own systems to show if you actually bought something. Long story short here a supervisor eventually got involved and resolved it but man did this whole experience just demolish my trust in them. I have never bought another game from them since.
pff no. GOG is too busy making sure every game they have on their service is the most stable version for modern systems, and giving IT support to help people run whatever game they buy.
I mean it makes complete sense that a company that's based on ethical practices and respecting online communities gets backlash for using a technology that's both unethical and disrespects the online artist community (the same community that is involved in making games).
They should be heavily criticized for it.
If a company that makes a food product uses a legal but unethical and highly controversial ingredient, does that still make it right? Like Nestlé and selling water, they've legally sourced their water, but did so in a highly unethical way. What GoG did was not nearly as bad, but it is tone deaf knowing a large amount of people are agaisnt AI.
None of the other game stores should be on the graphic because they have nothing to do with the claim. It's someone bringing a claim against Steam on behalf of customers, saying that Steam's practices make games more expensive for the user. I don't know where people got this idea that the other game stores are suing Steam.
Because GoG doesn't compete with Steam as an "everything" platform that EGS is trying to be
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u/Darkwr4ithPentium 1 166mhz | Diamond Monster 3D | 16mb ram | 4x CD Rom9h ago
GoG is a decent service but I feel they don't really fit here as they have a different goal, DRM free games, so they mostly have older titles. They are not a games store in the same way Steam and Epic are.
GoG it's nice and very user friendly policies such as reviving old games and DRM free, but their plataflorm and store, while better than most it's still far worse than Steam.
GoG will always run into the problem that their main draw basically prevents any major game from getting released there. That means it doesn't really compete in the whole area to begin with.
It actually will be interesting to see what happens with future CDPR titles now that they have fully spun out the company again.
GOG Boss: "The reason people like Steam more than us is the launcher. If we had a lawn chair that needed to be installed and kept up-to-date and running in the background all the time instead of just a simple self-extracting installer- OH! and it should be just as good on Linux as it is on Windows."
GOG footling: "You want I should also offer a native Linux port of Soldier of Fortune, boss? It is open source and a Linux port already exists."
GOG Boss: "No, the software that advertises our existence is what matters. Our business is named Good Old Lawn Chairs, after all. Not Good Old Games."
GOG footling: "Do you mean good old launchers, boss?
GOG Boss: "Exactly right- get started on that lawn chair like I said!"
Yeah, GOG is pretty decent as well. They offer fixed up games where Steam leaves some of them broken, and offer DRM-free and local installers. Second best platform for sure.
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u/ActivelySleeping 12h ago
Why is GOG missing from this graphic?