STOP! Those "hidden code" emails (and captcha, etc) are a bloody PAIN IN THE A***

You've put too many steps in place - thus preventing sales. It's too much work so I won't even buy the games on my wishlist that are on sale (or aren't). Getting an email with 1 code so I have to log in and then see the full list of codes on 1 page would be ok. My time and money is worth more than that email implies.

I'm sorry if this hurts someone's feeling who thought it was a great idea - it was a horrible idea to put that email together that way. Absolutely a crap idea.

Seriously, a picture designed to trigger an epileptic seizure, hiding 14 links (according to the source), leading to 14 captcha hellscapes.

Someone took a sales prevention course, because now I'm not going to buy anything.

If you don't like the stuff GOG sends in their newsletter you can always, you know... just unsubscribe?

Yep!, just as idbeholdME has said above. Hover over your user name at the top of the screen, and mouse to 'Privacy & Settings', then click 'Subscriptions' over on the left. In the middle of the screen you should see a small list of 'Store Notifications' with tick boxes, just remove the ticks from the services you wish not to be notified about...

If the hunt and peck was done server side then customers would only need 1 captcha to go through. That would be a better user experience.

Play real time strategy games. You'll get those skills down and get through those promotional emails faster than you can type: there is no cow level.

I'm surprised somebody would complain about a promotion that includes a mini game on a gaming forum. But in seriousness, I can see how it isn't everyone's cup of tea. I personally like them though.

(To everyone: Link is YT clip with sound from Phineas and Ferb)

=====================Agreed/good idea

It looks like 2 people caught the crux of the whole thing...

14 captcha screens - FOURTEEN!!!

This has nothing to do with subscriptions. It's about respecting you customer's time. If you want to have puzzles great. Increasing prospect involvement increases sales percentage. I get that.

The multiple hoops to jump through (and traffic lights/cars/busses/crosswalks/etc to find in never-ending loops) for unknown if any benefit? Too much.

Besides, why use captchas if you're logged in?

More or less you're right, especially with the captcha, but have you ever wondered that this type of marketing is meant for people whose time is not worth so much money, who want to save some money at the expense of time?

If your time is so expensive, save it for your work and buy what you want without this special offer. The discounts are great even without those.

No offence. I understand people who make big money and have no time to waste.

Feel free to correct my English.

I already would be happy when they would restrict the use of captchas to these marketing mails. I can easily ignore these mails, but I cannot avoid the captchas in other places like checking or redeeming gift codes. It would help a lot when you could subscribe or unsubscribe to the GOG mails more selectively.

I don't agree with the OP because it seems to be saying to:

a) remove captcha from the email challenges yet also
b) still keep captcha wrecking many other aspects of the GOG site.

Why should the email challenge get special treatment, whilst captcha ruins many other aspects of the GOG site that do not get the same special treatment?

If they are going to ban captcha - which they should - then they need to ban it 100% off of the GOG site in all cases, period. In fact, they should have done that years ago.

captcha is a major pain everywhere on GOG, and there are much bigger problems with it then the email challenges which can be ignored/avoided. I.e. I've sent a gift code containing several games under one code to someone before, but the recipient couldn't redeem the code because they got stuck trying to solve the captchas, which they were unable to do.

TL;DR: Email challenges don't matter that much and shouldn't receive special treatment; GOG needs to remove captcha from all aspects of its site 100%.

Google's captchas vary their difficulty based on Google's knowledge of your browsing history.

If you log into gmail first, you generally have an easier time getting through the captchas when accessed through a web browser. For those newsletter codes, I only had to complete a captcha for one of them.

This has two implications
1) You have to accept a level of tracking by Google. Unfortunately privacy centric practices give you a worse experience as there is less information to identify you as real.
2) Redeeming codes is a hellish experience through GOG galaxy. You have no browsing history exposed to Google, so you get assigned the slowest loading, hardest possible captcha which a real person is liable to fail.

Maybe Galaxy 2.0 will provide a better solution, but I wish I had a better answer than "let Google track you".

It does seem stupid to send out a marketing email that just makes me feel hostile towards the company. Luckily I don't come accross the captchas very often on here because I stay logged in; if I did I'd probably stop using the website.

That doesn't stop the problem of google and GoG screwing people around.

I just did this.

The problem is I do like getting most GOG emails.

I do hate the captcha ones though.

+1

Recently I read an interesting comparison between Google and the Borg (from Star Trek The Next Generation): sure you get some amazing new abilities, but you are dead if you ever disconnect from the system.