hedwards: I think it's interesting that people are suggesting that they failed at their PR event. Sure it did hurt their image a bit, but the amount of traffic and the people coming in who weren't aware of the site previously will almost certainly make up for it.
People seem to be going awfully far to justify hating it; most of us probably wouldn't be here if there were a better option out there.
The normal response is the response that didn't like being hung out to dry for a hoax/pr stunt. You and many others seem to be going out of your way to make apologist excuses for and justify the stunt and attempt to downplay the normal outrage any stunt like this is going to receive from the userbase/customers here.
They went out of their way to provide an excellent service that seemed to give a d*mn about the normal things a gamer would feel strongly about. Getting rid of DRM, cheap prices, awesome selection of many of the best hard to find old games, a pleasant community, a nice comfortable interface on the site, good download speeds, a reliable site with reliable security. A reliable place I could buy from and not worry about access to my purchases.
As a general rule companies shouldn't engage in stunts that endanger the goodwill they have built up with their existing customer base. Using the fears or outrage of their existing community to create "buzz" is pretty outrageous. Joking about it in response to the outrage only adds insult to injury.
As a small company we don’t have a huge marketing budget and this why we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz around an event as big as launching a brand new version of our website and even more important, bringing back Baldur’s Gate to life!
We believe this title was extremely expected by all our users and PC gamers in general. It would have made no sense to announce it in a typical plain corporate way. Our aim at GOG is to promote the greatest DRM-free PC classics ever in a creative way and allow people to escape from the usual boring mainstream marketing. We are also gamers and this is why we played a bit with this announcement.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/22/go g-com-apologise-for-hoax-closure/
It is over with now, time to move on. I am not going to hold some huge grudge about it. I will download and backup any title I buy from now on though, and I won't be touting this service like I used to. How exactly does a company earn back the trust of their customers once they have mistakenly, or cynically, bartered it away? Put yourself in the shoes of your community members/customers, don't do it again, do what made your community/service great and worthwhile in the eyes of your customers. Be reliable and respectful of us, and we will be reliable and respectful towards GOG. Violate our trust , expect to reap the ensuing whirlwind.
