Good point, I assumed everyone was likely to already know the deal for their giveaways and how to opt back out of that.Originally Posted by Saracen999
Yep, you can opt back out by unticking the boxes again in the Subscriptions section of the Account Settings.
https://www.gog.com/en/account/settings/subscriptions
Yup. I have it turned off at GoG but personally, I feel two (umm, maybe 3) things :-
- it'll be harder to turn off for CD Projekt and if I need an account to do it, I don't want one. That said, it should be possible to just click a link in the first mail I get to unsubscribe. But therein lies a problem - I've already given them my email address by that point, and I don't particularly want to be on their lists at all, in the first place.
- second, it's not a game I particularly want and I rather feel if I agree to marketing to get it, then promptly turn the marketing off again it's ... a bit unethical. Better (for me) to just not sign up in the first place.
-yes, I have a sacrificial goat email alias for 'junk', but I do actually use GoG and don't want to give them the 'junk' address .... or my main 'proper' address eithe, for that matter.
I guess it comes down, personally, to whether i really want the game or not? It's tempting to say "it's free, so why not" but realistically, I've got quite a few games I actually bought (like a massive Myst collection) that I haven't had time to even install yet much less play, so I probably shouldn't bother with something just because it's free, 'cos the odds are I'll never get around to it. Better to concentrate on the odd (if any) freebie that does really appeal. There's a better chance of me actually using it that way.
The main point of the post was really just that heads-up about marketing mail, though, for anyone that is interesed in the game.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
I've never noticed it on GoG before, so maybe it's a CD Projekt thing? That said, I'm not even sure I've ever gone after a GoG freebie before either. Maybe I haven't, or if I have I just don't remember if .... erm, remember if .... what was I talking about?
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Fair enough, I just remember seeing the Giveaway feature on the front page for years (with it always being made clear that by getting it you're subscribing to the newsletter - so perhaps the wording or number of things it opts you in to has changed slightly in more recent times).I've never noticed it on GoG before, so maybe it's a CD Projekt thing? That said, I'm not even sure I've ever gone after a GoG freebie before either. Maybe I haven't, or if I have I just don't remember if .... erm, remember if .... what was I talking about?
I never really saw it as a big deal to unsubscribe again straight away (although I think I probably used to wait for the first email to hit an unsubscribe link) as it's honestly not something that's going to convince me to buy more games on GOG.
According to my order history on there from the past 8 years, out of the 69 games I own on there, I've only ever actually bought 2 - which were Theme Park and Theme Hospital (which I bought right at the beginning, so they were obviously the main reason I signed up in the first place).
The rest of them have been giveaways.
My Steam library (comprised of purchases both on Steam and from Humble Bundle/Store and similar - although there's probably a few Steam freebies in there too, but I'd imagine it's still a lower amount than my number of free GOG games) has been my main focus for PC games for nearly 15 years as I preferred the idea of having them all in one place.
And as the count of games I own there is over 2,000, it's safe to say I'm highly unlikely to be convinced by a newsletter or something to buy something from GOG instead.
Last edited by Output; 07-09-2023 at 11:07 AM. Reason: Corrected typo.
I'd entirely agree the unsubscribe thing isn't a big issue either way. The reason the marketing thing stood out for me might well be that I haven't paid any attention to the Giveaways .... to the point I wasn't even conscious they were a thing.
My gaming inclination kind-of atrophied about 15 years ago. I don't play anything like as much as I used to. There are several reasons, but a big one is that a lot of my gaming was LAN-based, and with a small number of close friends. And by close, i don't just mean good friends, but geographically close. Sadly, life interferes and that little group has drifted away, often to other areas o the country and in a couple of cases, to other contnents.
Then, Steam came along and the while DRM thing messed up my gaming right proper. I swore I'd never go for Steam and, until a few months (year??) back, stuck to that. Two things FINALLY coerced me into giving in on Steam. One was a change in personal circumstances that i won't bore you with, and the other was Steamdeck. Part of those changed circumstances meant a Steamdeck-type device was a VERY real benefit to me, and that finally tipped me over the cliff int getting a Steam account. So far, though, it's ONLY been used for the Steamdeck. I still don't have any other form of gaming machine with Steam.
For quite a few of those 15-ish years, trying to find (new) games that didn't require Steam was a naffing nightmare, and I got so fed up with getting interested in a game launch only to find, on checking .... yup, Steam required.
And that pretty much put paid to me trying, or even just looking at, new games until several people, most notably Ferral, pointed GoG out to me. So the last few years, if I played anything it was via GoG, but until a year or two ago, even GoG didn't get much attention from me.
All that leaves me with the strange position of having quite a long list of games, including 'top' releases, that I can get, mostly on GoG, and for MASSIVELY less than they were when the came out. So, I had a bit of a Gog-Binge. Over the course of, oh dunno, a month or two, i added 30 or 40 pretty major, 'top' games, all of which were several years old and a fraction of the price. Then with the SteamDeck purchase, I added in a dozen or two on Seam. I think the most expensive game I've bought for probaby 20 years was Doom Eternal, at about £12 or £14, on sale. But also Horizon Zero Dawn, Elder Scrolls v Skyrim, most of the Half-Life collection, and Beneath a Steel Sky. Oh, and a strange one for me - Stray.
So really, i have enough gaming material to keep me going for ages, most of it quite old, but still new to me.
And that is why i wasn't even aware of the Giveaways - I've really paid minimal attention, or less, to gaming for quite some years, despite having been a VERY heavy gamer for many years before that, dating back (see note below) into the late 70's and things like the original v1 Wizardry .... on an Apple II. Until Steam drove me away from gaming.
Note - technically, my "computer gaming" goes back to playing Battleships on a massive IBM mainframe in the mid-to-late '60s, then writing some elementary games, in BASIC no less, on an ICL mainframe. That's certainly where my computer gaming bug came from, but for anything remotely like what people mean by computer gaming today, i.e. 'home' computers, it was that Apple II in, oh, 1979 I think. The mainframe stuff doesnt really count.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Completely understandable.
Until I started bothering with Steam (which involved a few free Valve games via a detection of AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards at the start), I was primarily a console gamer (although there had been a few PC games installed from CD-ROM over a number of years previous to that on PCs I'd owned), but eventually found myself playing very few games on the consoles overall.
As a PC can obviously be used for more than one purpose at the same time however, and the fact that consoles were charging a fee for online play despite already owning the games and paying for an internet connection, it just seemed logical for me to transition to PC (especially given the potential of extending game playability and visuals once completed via mods).
And given how console games are making their way to PC eventually too these days (and even emulation of older consoles happens as time goes on, making it possible to transfer and play those games on the PC too), it seems to have been a smart decision to make that transition and also skip the previous and current console generations.
As is inevitably the case however, the number of games I've actually played out of the number I own on Steam is very small, with a big chunk of the time I've been collecting them not actually playing much (if anything), but I've always had the intent to do so at some point.
As for the Steam DRM, I saw it as an acceptable compromise as it didn't seem to be over the top.
I've actually only recently started giving in to creating accounts on other launchers that don't seem to be going away (as some games I bought on Steam and hoped their other included launchers would go away in time - some did, others haven't) as I've been wanting to actually start playing games again and actually been doing so.
Denuvo is a DRM I'm still opposed to, so while I may still buy and own some games that have it, I'm not going to actually install them until that is removed from them, which does seem to happen as time goes on.
Although there are still some games that despite being years old inexplicably still have it, so it's possible I'll eventually give in on that like I did the launchers if I want to play them.
Last edited by Output; 07-09-2023 at 11:06 AM. Reason: Re-wording.
Jonj1611 (07-09-2023)
I think we've a large degree of overlap in our stances there, Output, but not quite 100%.
One difference is the console aspect. I do have an XBox (360) and it still gets a bit of use but I've never been a huge console gamer. On the other hand, if I stacked the boxes for my PC games one on top of another, it'd certainy be floor to ceiling - more than once, I suspect. So, definite emphasis on PC gaming here. I did decide a couple of years ago to get a new console, but I hit two problems. The first is I couldn't decide between XBox and Playstation, but the second is more serious .... it was mid-lockdown and it was pretty much impossible to find one short of rip-off prices and I didn't want one that badly. That's when I decided to build a new machine, at least partly with gaming in mind. And I promptly hit the same supply shortage (but with bells on, as they say) over GPUs. i'm currently still "getting around to it".
As for Denuvo, that is also one of my main reservations but not quite what stopped me going to Steam. It was several things but mostly, the notion that I could buy a game (or hundreds), pay a small fortune for them and because Steam was often (always??) required to at least install, if not start many/most of them, if Steam (or perhaps, a company that had taken them over) decided for any reason to either suspend or ban my account, or even just to "stop supporting" those games then despite having 'bought' them (yeah, I know, licence to use, etc), I could suddenly find one or all of those expensive games will no longer install, activate or start. In other words, they'd have me by the short and curlies and there was probably naff-all I could do about it.
There was something in all that that i found fundamentally objectionable in that entire business model. I still do.
Whereas the old DRM, with code wheels, activation by key disc, etc, well, everything I needed was in the box I'd bought. Yeah, it was a bit of a PITA at times, and yes, there was the risk of losing the code wheel or a disc failing (hence 'backups'), but it was likely to, at most, affect a game here or there, not suddenly killing possibly the entire large collection, that had potenially cost me thousands.
Tell you what, though. Not playing many new games for years sucked big time, but now ...??? Many of those games that I probably would have paid £30, £40 even £50 for each, are now costing (in most cases) £1 or £2, sometimes just pennies. I'm getting delayed gaming gratification for sure, but by 'eck is it on a good budget. It's saved so much in fact that when I finally buy a desktop gaming PC, that saving will cover something very close to a state of the art system. i'm proud of that bit of rationalising of a self-indulgent expenditure I probably shouldn't make, but intend to anyway.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
I certainly got lucky in that I bought all the parts for my current build a few months before the lockdown, to go with my fully capable PSU and GPU which were only a little over a year old at that time.
That GPU is still just as capable now as it was then, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't choose to upgrade to something newer if something came along at the right price and at the right place and time (EDIT: I've made the impulse decision to buy a Sapphire Nitro+ RX 7800 XT at £539.99. It'll be the most I've ever paid for a GPU, but I intend for it to last at least the same amount of time as I've had the Vega 56. It's on a pre-order expected in stock on the 30th though, so there's still a chance that I could change my mind and cancel it).
Of course, I may not necessarily end up actually using all of the power my CPU and/or GPU is/are capable of, but having it available gives me more options to choose from if I did want to.
...Or at least that's what I tell myself.
I can certainly understand the thoughts on the inherent risk of if Steam were to shut down for some reason or otherwise deny access (which is a risk for competing storefronts such as Epic's too of course).
It has apparently been said a few times over the years that there is a mechanism in place that would mean in such a situation they would make the games playable without Steam.
Whether that has been continuously been updated as necessary for any changes as time goes on is another question.
I'd certainly hope so, but even then I'd guess the depth of integrations that Steam games may also be using could still mean that parts of them would be in less playable states as a result of them relying on Steam features that would no longer exist.
In the end however, the actual actions would be louder than any words so realistically there can be nothing but hope from users that things would happen in the way that has been suggested if it did shut down.
Only each user can decide for themselves if they want to risk it or not, but as you've obviously experienced Saracen, it does make the selection more limiting to choose not to.
As for getting games much cheaper as a result of being so much later than its release, that's certainly a great way of saving even for anyone who was already using Steam (and obviously can also be something applied to other things outside of Steam, and not just gaming-related either).
Even though it wasn't your reason for avoiding Steam until now, that certainly doesn't mean the side-benefit of saving so much by games being much cheaper now that time has passed isn't something to be proud of regardless.
Especially if you're using that side-benefit to convince yourself to get a better rig as a result.
For myself at least, I do prefer to wait later in most cases (especially as they could pop up in a game bundle), but there can be the rare occasion where I want to own a game much closer to release (and thus I obviously make less of saving, if any, as a result).
It may be due to wanting to actually play it closer to its release date, or otherwise show support by buying it (such as with an Early Access game), or possibly both cases being true at the same time.
Last edited by Output; 08-09-2023 at 02:26 AM. Reason: Added edit note about a new GPU being ordered.
This is the reason I don't buy Ubisoft games any more. Their decision to simply turn-off servers for loads of online titles was reprehensible, imho.
It's also why GOG is a great way to buy games, if they're available on the platform, of course.
I'm in the habit of waiting for 'AAA' games to drop in price to around the £10 before buying them too. Partly because I favour co-op games, so I'm buying two copies or more at a time, & also because older titles tend to peform better current hardware, so I don't necessarily need the 'latest & greatest' GPU.
ik9000 (14-09-2023)
The logical thing to do would be for them to release the tools and files for people to make their own servers as replacements.
It would certainly give more reason to keep buying those games, and benefit the actual players.
AGTDenton (08-09-2023)
Crumble (Fanatical - Steam Key) (Credit to Weldobud on HUKD.)
https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/crumble
As stated on the page itself, to get the game you have to agree to subscribe to the email newsletter and that by doing so it also means you agree with their Privacy Policy. As it also says however, you can unsubscribe at any time from the Contact Preferences section of your Account.
It also seems to require that your Steam and Fanatical accounts are linked before it will actually process through the checkout, but once it does you can then reveal the key.
You can also unlink the Steam account afterwards in the Linked Accounts section of your Fanatical Account if you prefer.
Last edited by Output; 13-09-2023 at 10:08 PM. Reason: Added more Fanatical links.
Jonj1611 (13-09-2023)
Truberbrook free on GoG
https://www.gog.com/en/game/truberbrook
Enjoy an adventurous vacation to a 1960's parallel universe! A Sci-Fi-Mystery Adventure Game with handmade scenery.
Imagine yourself on a vacation to Europe in the late sixties. Now, picture yourself as a young American scientist; Hans Tannhauser. Yes, that's your name in this scenario. While you're at it, think of Trüberbrook, a remote village in rural, mountain-sloped and densely forested cold-war Germany. Because, that's where you somehow end up after hitting the continent. But who cares, you won the trip in a lottery! Or at least, that’s how it seems. But don't fear, instead of getting some rest, you could find yourself having to save the world …
Jonj1611 (30-09-2023),MrJim (30-09-2023),Output (30-09-2023),Ttaskmaster (02-10-2023)
Epic free games
Model Builder - https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/...builder-f9b456
Soulstice - https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/soulsticeJoin the latest trend in simulation games, bring out your creativity and make awesome looking models. Assemble, customize and display your creations, whether you’re a veteran or a novice. Get building and get creative!
Explore a dark world brimming with hidden mysteries, master a diverse combat system, and inhabit the dual forces of two sisters in a coming-of-age dark fantasy story with fast-paced action, vicious enemies, and spectacular boss fights.
Jonj1611 (02-10-2023),Ttaskmaster (27-10-2023)
Doom 3 free on GoG via amazon gaming
https://gaming.amazon.com/doom3-gog/...5-24d0c4fd53d6
Jonj1611 (20-10-2023),MrJim (20-10-2023),Ttaskmaster (27-10-2023)
The Evil Within (Epic) - https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-evil-within
Eternal Threads (Epic) - https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/...threads-197169
Ttaskmaster (27-10-2023)
Amazon Gaming games this week has some GoG codes (and Epic games but you need to link your accounts), I have a code for all of these if anyone wants one as I won't use them.
The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia - GoG
https://gaming.amazon.com/the-textor..._S01_FGWP_CRWN
Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp - GoG
https://gaming.amazon.com/monster-pr..._S01_FGWP_CRWN
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters - Deluxe Edition- GoG
https://gaming.amazon.com/the-coma-2..._S01_FGWP_CRWN
AGTDenton (30-10-2023),Ttaskmaster (27-10-2023)
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
