You may have not paid much attention to it, but GOG recently shuffled around things when it comes to Tyranny. New editions and whatnot.

As part of the "reorganization," the announcement promised us free Portrait Pack and a Sword and Armor DLC.

Since I rather enjoyed Tyranny (in fact, think it's a much better game than PoE itself), I immediately downloaded the GOG installers for another go.

Imagine my surprise when the 20 promised portraits were nowhere to be found. For a while, I thought it was GOG's usual "what non-Galaxy users" approach, and the stand-alone installers were not updated properly.

Made a few posts in Tyranny's anniversary thread. Blues swung by, ignored them altogether. So, I sent a support ticket.

Imagine my further surprise when I came around today to check the forum to notice that the original announcement has been since modified.

Instead of the original promise of free Portrait Pack and a Sword and Armor DLC (that I never bothered to screenshot because, no matter how GOG has changed, I'd never expected the company to pull things like THIS!) now it says that ""All versions just received a FREE update which adds two portraits and some cool pieces of gear!"

Yeah... um. GOG? That's not even legal in the US, and I assume similar false advertisement laws apply to EU as well. Even if the original "free DLCs" was a mistake, you don't get to change it without any acknowledgement and cheerfully flip a middle finger at people who did expect to receive the advertised items.

Even if they were a bunch of piddly .jpgs and whatnot.

Sorry. do you have a link to the promise of 20 portraits? I was under the impression that 2 portraits was the thing. Also, "cool pieces of gear" = Sword and Armor, nes pas?

It's right there in the quoted text of the first person to reply:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/tyranny_versions_renamed_gold_edition_now_available_d2401/post2

Portrait pack is: https://www.gog.com/game/tyranny_portrait_pack

Edit: Damn ninjas XDFantastic, I didn't even notice that. Screenshotted in case that post gets disappeared. Nice to have a solid proof, thank you.

So GOG wrote something in a way that could be misinterpreted, clarified it when they realised it was an issue, and you're furious because...?

You were never going to get the existing portrait DLC. Every other store has the same two portraits and swords update as GOG. One of the PR people here just worded it badly and then corrected their mistake, it's not an evil conspiracy to deprive you of jpegs.

Er... no. They explicitly advertised specific free DLCs as part of the update.I don't go around checking other stores. I read the announcement, and acted based on the information presented therein.That's GOG's problem, not mine. It's also called "false advertisement," and is something illegal in the jurisdiction I belong to, and probably plenty more.

Correcting your mistake is to write a correction to the original post, making it clear that the post was incorrect, and explaining directly what has happened. What GOG appear to have done is deny and disguise their mistake. It's a bit shitty, not a new low. GOG have been lower, but I can see why the OP is pissed off - they haven't handled this mistake very well.

It's not just the "mistake" itself - there were two posts from the staff itself after I made a detailed breakdown of the issue, and neither wrote even as much as "we'll get this checked."

No acknowledgement whatsoever, followed by stealth edit.

Again, it's not about the "free content." It's about doing something that's not just morally questionable, but outright illegal.

Edit: By the by, for anybody with technical interest - the federal law governing this type of fraud in the US is Title 15 - Commerce and Trade; Chapter 22 - Trademarks; Subchapter III - General Provisions; Section 1125 - False designations of origin, false descriptions, and dilution forbidden.

Here's a handy link: https://statecodesfiles.justia.com/us/2011/title-15/chapter-22/subchapter-iii/section-1125/document.pdf

Additional state laws apply, they generally improve on customer protection in this respect.

Quoting said federal law: What's your damage? It's not like you purchased Tyranny just because of GOG's erroneous announcement.

Yes, they did. According to the reply linked above, the original announcement said: Which is just a paraphrasing of what the changelog for the game said: And we did receive them. Nowhere is it implied that everyone'll get the Potrait Pack that had been previously released. Not to mention, that one is part of the new Gold Edition, but not the Standard Edition. So I'm not sure why you'd expect everybody to get it for free, when that is obviously not the intention.

Was the original announcement unclear? Yes, because it seemed to imply that both items would be seperate DLC, instead of part of the main game. However, that is also the case with the changelog provided by Paradox. Was it "false advertisement?" Not in my opinion, because, as I said above, we did receive what was advertised.

If the "portrait pack" is in fact just two portraits, I'd call that quite an exaggeration..
On the flip side, they did originally say "a portrait pack". I understand why people might think it was the paid Portrait Pack, but they didn't actually say it was.

Technically speaking, I didn't get the 20 .jpg files I expected.

Which is perfectly admissible an argument in the court of law.

So.. .you're saying that, having an actual DLC called "Portrait Pack" with 20 items, it's perfectly OK for GOG to create a new "Portrait Pack," put two portraits in it, and call it a day?

How about selling "Witcher 3" that turns out to be an emulated version of Pong?

There's a reason these laws exist.

Changelog is not what people entering your store see.

This part has no bearing on the bait and switch whatsoever.

Oh, good. Because I'm damn sure that's not how any judge would see it, especially since you don't use the SAME name for two different products.

Lovely to see all the drones mindlessly downvoting my posts without even bothering to state why, too. "Ermergerd, somebody's upset because a company breached customer protection laws! Quick, downvote, downvote!" smh
They quite explicitly stated you'd receive Portrait Pack DLC.

They also had a listing of a "Portrait Pack DLC," and there was no mention whatsoever that there was another one, much less that the two are different. Oh, and by the by, the SECOND DLC mentioned was exactly the same as the paid one.

Let me break it down for the downvote-twichers out there:

1. Company makes an announcement explicitly stating X and Y item being given out for free. X item corresponds to already existing paid DLC. Y item corresponds to second already existing paid DLC,
2. Company representatives ignore several mentions of missing content based on the wording of the advertisement.
3. Company quietly changes the original advertisement to remove the (mistaken or not) promise of item X, without any acknowledgement of the issue.

Once again, this is not legal, mistake or not.

Downvote away. At least Guanathor has the decency to write their reasoning (one I completely disagree with, but can appreciate being provided none the less).

Assuming that the quoted part is correct, it's quite clear what GOG promised:
"All versions just received an update which adds a Portrait Pack and a Sword and Armor DLC for free."

That really can't be misinterpreted. Now personally I have no idea what that means, as I don't have that game, and I'm not interested enough to study it, but if there are expansions named liked that, then it's quite clear that whoever wrote that meant that ALL versions get those said expansions for FREE.

It can be that it was an error, and those were never meant to be free, but that text is so obvious that it can't be a matter of misinterpreting or wording something badly.


Had the OP bought the game because of that (which I believe isn't the case here...) that would justify a full refund IMHO.


Now if I interpret OP correctly, he didn't buy the game because of that announcement, but already owned it, and didn't actually lose anything, so I think he's overreacting - especially quoting US laws to a company located in EU is not going to make any difference anyway.

This is the big part.

Because if it was phrased the way the changed announcement is, the issue wouldn't even exist. Adding two portraits for free and calling it the same name as an existing 20 item paid DLC is another thing.

Frankly, what pissed me off the most is the way GOG decided not to communicate at all, while doing something illegal. I don't care about the .jpgs - you can easily add customized portraits to Tyranny yourself. It's pure fluff.

It's the silent treatment that set me off, especially since there were two staff posts after I reported at length the perceived issue with missing content (as did other posters), and neither even bothered so much as acknowledge it. It's the lack of acknowledgement of the need to modify the original announcement.

Yes, mistakes happen. The thing is, this mistake was something that falls under existing customer protection laws. It does not matter what your company's name is, you do NOT get a free pass at ignoring those.

Which is exactly why it made subsequent change illegal under customer protection laws applicable to my location.

Actually, this is wrong on two accounts.

I "lost" the 20-item pack (never mind if I cared about it in the first place or not).

GOG does have to adhere to US laws when doing business with residents of the US.

I understand why people were confused and thought "a portrait pack" probably meant the paid DLC, but that doesn't mean that is what they said. Again, as I said in my last post, if it is in fact just two portraits, calling the a "pack" while technically true is rather underwhelming.