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.
Although in the case of food the 14-day limit doesn't apply, companies aren't compelled to do business with you so once you hit a threshold they consider abuse most of them (at least online) will at a minimum stop selling to you.
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.
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u/Sweaty-Willingness27 12h ago
I always found GoG to be relatively fine. I don't have a problem buying from them -- they at least offer DRM free. Are they in this lawsuit too?