• Log In | Sign Up

  • News
  • Reviews
  • Top Games
  • Search
  • New Releases
  • Daily Deals
  • Forums

Adventure Gamers - Forums

Welcome to Adventure Gamers. Please Sign In or Join Now to post.

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → General → Thread

Post Marker Legend:

  • New Topic New posts
  • Old Topic No new posts

Currently online

apignarb

Support us, by purchasing through these affiliate links

   

Is gog worth the hassle?

Total Posts: 1

Joined 2015-05-22

PM

At some point in the last two or three years I came across gog.com which had DRM free games for sale. And they seemed like a great deal with a lot of the old favorites available and ready to download at an attractive price.

And they had a very attractive money back guarantee. As a matter of fact as of the date of this writing May 22nd, 2015, I find this on their home page. Click the Money-back guarantee link and you will see:

“Whenever you buy something and it doesn’t work, you should feel safe knowing that you can take it back.

We don’t understand why games or movies should be any different, so if your purchase doesn’t work and we can’t help you fix it, you get your money back.

Our Money Back Guarantee covers you for 30 days.”

All very straight forward and above board. And indeed I had purchased 2 or 3 games in the past that would not work right on my system because they were too old and something about the graphics card or driver or who knew what was wrong so I put in for a refund with gog.com and after some troubleshooting they refunded my money. No muss no fuss as they say.

That is until just the other day I had been reading about the release of Witcher 3 which I was keen to play. I looked around on the website, the page devoted to the game and could find no pre-requisites (graphic card memory etc…) in order to play the game but since I had such good experiences with gog in the past I thought I would go ahead and give it a try and indeed I thought it pretty unlikely that I couldn’t play the game because of hardware.

Well I downloaded and installed it, but when I tried to play it it would load in memory attempt to run and then die. So I put in a ticket with gog.com’s support which had in the past been pretty good about response.

I got the typical first response about all the generic things to try that gets sent out to everyone on the first pass. This didn’t really bother me much as it is pretty typical. Basically they were giving me instructions on how to *download* the game, which I had no trouble doing. My problem was the game would not run. So obviously no one had actually read my ticket.

However, it did bother me that the incident had already been closed with their support queue. There was no question of finding out whether I had got the game to work or not. I had to respond to the email with the almost exact information pointing out (again) that I had no trouble downloading but could not *run* the game.

Well I got exactly the same canned message again (?!?). Both times I had sent along a system info file with all the hardware etc… specs of my PC.

But after trying twice I decided to look a little myself. It turns out that there was a link in the generic email they had sent to me detailing the game requirements (which I could not find before) and I discovered that the game *required* a video card with 6 gig of memory. Mine only has 2 gig, so obviously that was not going to work.

So I sent a message to the support (again) telling them what I had found and asking for a refund.

Imagine my surprise when the support guy who had actually read my message this time sent back a response telling me they did not refund for systems that didn’t meet the minimum requirements but that he could give me store credit, which by the way was only good for a year….

Well, I had no intention of getting store credit on a $50 dollar plus game. I wanted a refund, so I again requested a refund which he again responded with the same offer of store credit along with a link to the gog.com web site detailing this unknown provision (at least to me) of the “Whenever you buy something and it doesn’t work, you should feel safe knowing that you can take it back.” policy.

So perhaps I should have taken the credit. But by this time I was adamant that I was not going to do any such thing.

I told him in no uncertain terms that unless he refunded my money, I would never do business with him again. Which I have now determined not to do.

So what you ask? Why am I bothering you with all this sad story?

Just this.

I promised gog.com that I would tell as many people how they treated me as I possibly could so that if someone was thinking of doing business with them at least they would do so fully informed.

I gave him my solemn word that I would tell as many people as I could and I am doing that.

So whether your bored with all this or you are interested or whatever, if you got this far at least now you know.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 523

Joined 2010-02-08

PM

So basically, before you made your purchase, you:
* Failed to read the minimum system requirements posted on the Witcher 3 page
* Failed to read the description of GOG’s return policy

And then the customer support representative offered you store credit, even though the return policy doesn’t even provide you that.

GOG’s games have no DRM. If they had literally no limitations on their refund policy, it would be extremely easy for people to buy a game, ask for a refund, and still keep a fully functioning copy of the game or its installer. That is why the refund is meant for when GOG’s technical support staff is unable to resolve a legitimate technical support issue after an in-good-faith effort by the support staff and the user, not for when the user makes a shopping mistake like failing to read system requirements.

If you compare GOG’s refund policy to that of Steam and Humble Store, you will see that GOG’s policy is better. So I think what you’re really saying with this post is that you probably shouldn’t be buying digital games at all, because you don’t seem to like how digital game stores work, which is fair enough.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 8471

Joined 2011-10-21

PM

justaghop - 22 May 2015 09:04 PM

I promised gog.com that I would tell as many people how they treated me as I possibly could so that if someone was thinking of doing business with them at least they would do so fully informed.

I gave him my solemn word that I would tell as many people as I could and I am doing that.

And all I’m reading is that, apart from sending you a generic response twice (likely due to an insane amount of people all downloading Witcher 3 at once), GOG did absolutely nothing wrong and even offered store credit where none was due.

Yeah, you tell as many people as you can! Shifty Eyed

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

Avatar

Total Posts: 1279

Joined 2012-07-11

PM

In my experience, gog has been far better than Steam and actually have quality control, and like Tim said, it’s your own fault.

     

Recently completed: Game of Thrones (decent), Tales from the borderlands (great!), Life is Strange (great!), Stasis (good), Annas Quest (great!); Broken Age (poor)

Avatar

Total Posts: 2648

Joined 2004-01-18

PM

If you are spreading the good word than you need to at least get your facts correct.

* The Witcher 3 page on GOG has the specs for the game clearly stated on the page. You failure to see them and understand them is your fault.


Minimum system requirements - Windows:

OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3 GHz or AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
Memory: RAM 6 GB
Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 / AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
Please mind that we only officially support full-size desktop graphics cards
Hard Drive: 35 GB of available space
DirectX: 11

Recommended system requirements - Windows:

OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
Processor: Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz / AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz
Memory: RAM 8 GB
Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 770 / AMD GPU Radeon R9 290
Hard Drive: 35 GB of available space
DirectX: 11

Clearly shown on the right side of the page.

* The money Back Guarentee doesn’t cover point one above. Your fault again that you didn’t read the money back policy correctly.

13. My system doesn’t meet the minimal requirements specified on product page, can I get a refund?
Well, there’s a reason why we post the system requirements on each game’s page: so you can see for yourself what you’ll need to have on your rig in order to be able to run the game. If your game doesn’t work because you misread our system specs, all we can really offer is that we’re sorry for you. Frown Please note that we also cannot provide support if you’re trying to run our games through virtual machine software.

Offering you store credit was GOG going over and above what they are required to do.

* The game doesn’t *Require* a 6GB graphic card it requires 6GB of system memory. It *Requires” a GTX 770 as a minimum graphics card which has 2GB. Again a failure of yours to understand basic computer terminology.

 

     

An adventure game is nothing more than a good story set with engaging puzzles that fit seamlessly in with the story and the characters, and looks and sounds beautiful.
Roberta Williams

Avatar

Total Posts: 1279

Joined 2012-07-11

PM

If anything, this has made Gog look great for offering you credit for your own mistake.

     

Recently completed: Game of Thrones (decent), Tales from the borderlands (great!), Life is Strange (great!), Stasis (good), Annas Quest (great!); Broken Age (poor)

Avatar

Total Posts: 2704

Joined 2004-08-02

PM

Yeah to echo what everyone has said, GOG is by far the best digital store for games. The fact that they were willing to give you $50 worth of games when you obviously did not do your homework before checking if one of the most graphically intensive games runs on your machine shows how much they care about consumers. I bet places like Steam would not have done that.

     

Total Posts: 1891

Joined 2010-11-16

PM

Lol.
You promised gog to tell as many people as you can your story about how not very smart you are.
First of all, their policy isnt “if it doesnt work we’ll refund you no matter what”... its if it doesnt work when your system meets the requirements.
The fact they were willing to give you store credit is still leagues better than what other stores would do if you made a really bad decision.
The requirements are right on the store page. If for some reason you cant see them there, theres this thing called google which tells you the requirements if you search: witcher 3 requirements.
Also, the min requirement youre referring to is 6gb of ram for your system, not the videocard. Though im guessing you need a new videocard too.

If you had preordered the game 6+ months ago you’d at least have the excuse that the min requirements had not been posted yet. But when they were announced at the beginning of this year, you then could have cancelled your preorder no questions asked.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 1279

Joined 2012-07-11

PM

You can always use things like “can I run it” too. That gives a great and easy method to find if the game will work on your computer.

     

Recently completed: Game of Thrones (decent), Tales from the borderlands (great!), Life is Strange (great!), Stasis (good), Annas Quest (great!); Broken Age (poor)

Avatar

Total Posts: 1075

Joined 2003-09-30

PM

Lucien21 - 23 May 2015 07:29 AM

* The game doesn’t *Require* a 6GB graphic card it requires 6GB of system memory. It *Requires” a GTX 770 as a minimum graphics card which has 2GB. Again a failure of yours to understand basic computer terminology.

*Requires GTX 660 for min. stable gameplay but playable with GT 840 equivalents.

     

“Going on means going far - Going far means returning”

Avatar

Total Posts: 3200

Joined 2007-01-04

PM

Most PC gamers today download their games and GOG is one of the best sites for this.

I’d take the store credit. Nothing I read in this thread would stop me from buying from GOG.

  Heart

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → General → Thread

Welcome to the Adventure Gamers forums!

Back to the top