GOG.com recently updated their refund policy to extend it to 30 days, enabling gamers more time to get a refund on products they purchased from the digital storefront. Not everyone was happy about giving customers more leeway to get a refund for a product they bought from the e-tailer, though, as some anti-consumer developers were quick to criticize GOG.com for not consulting with them on their business decision.
In an article published on February 28th, 2020 over on Eurogamer, they capture quotes from some developers who were angry that GOG.com didn’t consult with them before implementing a consumer-first refund policy.
Mike Rose, the founder of No More Robots, which is the studio behind Not Tonight made a tweet about the refund policy, criticizing GOG.com for implementing it and not notifying developers first.
I’ve looked through my email and I see nothing from them about it. In fact, I just looked in their developer backend documentation, and their backend still state that refunds are only available for Early Access titles (14 days after purchase)
— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) February 27, 2020
He then lamented to Eurogamer about the decision, telling them that it was “ridiculous” that the refund extends up to 30 days…
“It’s a tricky one, because I do personally agree that places should have refund policies. But because GOG is DRM-free (as they love to shout about), it does mean that whatever refund policy they put in place, anyone can abuse it by simply downloading the game, getting a refund, and then keeping the game. So whatever they choose to do, there’s always going to be some who abuse that.”
[…] “Who needs 30 days to decide whether they like a thing? You could play through an entire game multiple times in 30 days.”
While Rose may have voiced his objection to the policy, some gamers voiced their objection to No More Robots and Panic Barn’s lack of providing GOG.com consumers with the option to buy their DLC for Not Tonight, which is currently available on the Steam store.
The game launched back on August 17th, 2018, but as pointed out in a thread on the PC Gaming sub-reddit by AlexanderDLarge, the DLC was never made available on GOG.com a whole two years after the game came out. If you check the store page the DLC is nowhere to be seen.
Over on the GOG.com forums users were asking about the Not Tonight: One Love DLC expansion since June of 2019, but it’s still a no-show on the GOG.com storefront.
Gaming’s resident indie agitator from Vlambeer, Rami Ismail, also took an opportunity to virtue signal on Twitter about GOG.com’s refund policy.
Well, I don’t know about this one.
30 days is a lot more than I feel is necessary to evaluate a game, and a lot more than almost all games take to complete if you play them for an hour daily.
Young me would definitely abuse the hell out of this. https://t.co/kKVnZpwboj
— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) February 27, 2020
Ismail also took an opportunity to virtue signal his silliness to Eurogamer, telling them…
“They don’t take the risk by taking stock – they’re sales platforms on which the game developers run their stores, and thus take the risk of refunds. Some communication with devs before announcing things would’ve been nice.”
Some gamers also would have loved to have been informed about the GOG.com version of Nuclear Throne being a broken mess that hasn’t been patched in quite some time.
Vlambeer was one of the other studios criticized for not communicating with paying customers about why the game wasn’t being updated, as pointed out in the thread on /r/PCGaming.
In fact, there’s a tweet that points to a GOG.com forum thread where gamers are incensed about the state that Vlambeer left Nuclear Throne on the DRM-free service.
Here was a thread discussing about it on the GOG community forum: https://t.co/V0gMYrJNWK
Not to mention, they have yet to include the Linux version of the game onto the GOG version, despite having it on on Steam for the past 5 years.— Jared Mohammed (@LewdandCrewd) March 2, 2020
Despite the game having released way back in December of 2015 on GOG.com, the game wasn’t updated until after they were paid to bring a DRM-free version of the game to the Epic Games Store
While a lot of people liked the game, the lack of consistent patches have made it an unenviable experience for gamers. User Freniere explained the situation, writing…
“The plan was to finish fixing all the bugs and then release updates for all platforms, but clearly that’s not happening. It’s been over a year since u99 (which wasn’t even the developers’ work) came out, there were barely any bugs left at the time, and yet there still aren’t any news regarding the promised update.
“It’s unfortunate but it appears that this game will never come to GOG, at least not in buyable form.”
Ismail definitely seemed to find time to criticize GOG.com’s refund policy but couldn’t seem to get his comrades to patch the game regularly so that it was actually playable for paying customers.
One might think that the developers complaining most about the refund policy are those who would be most affected due to being anti-consumer in some capacity.
The director of The Long Dark, Raphael Van Lierop, also took a shot at GOG.com’s refund policy after catching wind of it from an article on PC Gamer.
This looks like a desperate way to try to differentiate your digital store at the expense of developers. A “2 play-hour/2 weeks of ownership refund window” is more than sufficient for customers to back out of a purchase for legitimate reasons.https://t.co/ZCKBLbbhnB
— Raphael van Lierop (@RaphLife) February 26, 2020
A store’s job should not be to create an opportunity for people to easily try and finish your product for free, or if it is, the store should eat the cost of the refund, not the developer.
— Raphael van Lierop (@RaphLife) February 26, 2020
Days later, on March 1st, 2020, Lierop then followed up that tweet with a lenghty thread about how they removed The Long Dark from GeFore Now because Nvidia didn’t ask their permission to allow gamers who paid for the game to remotely stream it through their service…
“Sorry to those who are disappointed you can no longer play #thelongdark on GeForce Now. Nvidia didn’t ask for our permission to put the game on the platform so we asked them to remove it. Please take your complaints to them, not us. Devs should control where their games exist.
“There’s really nothing newsworthy or shocking about our decision here. The shocking part is people’s reactions to it. Nvidia admitted they made a mistake releasing without our permission, apologized, asked us if we’d like to stay on the platform, and we said “not at the moment”.
“Today’s world is getting complex for devs, with lots of platform changes and shifts to streaming, so devs have to be able to plan a strategy for how their games will appear and where, as a means of running a business. All the platforms acknowledge this.
“This was purely an oversight on Nvidia’s part. I don’t think we’re the only developer/publisher who has decided to remove their games from GFN for the time being. Doesn’t mean we won’t bring it back in the future. Again, we wouldn’t have any customer services issues right now re: removing the game if they hadn’t included it to begin with. This is why developer agreements are important.
“It’s too bad that the public reaction to our totally innocuous decision will probably prevent other devs from feeling like they can determine what platforms their games are played on. Blizzard, Capcom, etc. have huge legal and community teams who can handle these situations.
“Remember: the most customer-friendly thing you can do as a dev, is run a sustainable business so that you can support your game and your customers into the future. Controlling your own content is key to that.”
This resulted in gamers who were playing the game through GeForce Now being unable to do so, as outlined in various threads on the Steam forums.
As is typical, some game journalists wandered into the thread to voice their outrage, only to be corrected by those outside the mainstream space as to why Raphael van Lierop is actually 100% wrong about the developer/platform relationship shared between Nvidia’s GeForce Now and the games that can be streamed through the service.
Why?
— Erik Kain (@erikkain) March 3, 2020
Not at all. Gamers have their own libraries already. The only thing this service does is allow people to access their own games on a different device they also own. That’s pretty clear and concise if you ask me.
— Erik Kain (@erikkain) March 3, 2020
Erik Kain from Forbes is correct.
GeForce Now is no different than the Steam Link. You can simply stream games you already own on Steam through another device. That’s all it does. It’s a software library conduit, basically.
If you don’t own the game, you can’t play it through GeForce Now.
There’s a really simple tutorial and explanation on how it works and what it does from YouTube outlet ComputerSluggish Tutorials.
So to further clarify, Lierop pulled a game from a service where people could play The Long Dark on any GeForce Now supported device if they already owned it on Steam.
It’s just an added option for playing games you already own at higher specs or on other devices, sort of like the PC’s answer to the Nintendo Switch.
So Nvidia didn’t need permission from the developer to provide consumers with a product they already owned.
It’s like a software vendor getting angry that people are using virtual machines.
Anyway, as you can see, the people who decided to pick their shots at GOG.com aren’t the kind of people who seem to be thinking about consumers first.
(Thanks for the news tip Guardian EvaUnit02)
