You seemed like a dream come true a decade ago, when the news hit the web that "the new kid in town" would bring us many Good Old Games. So I waited for you to be born, then I watched you take your first steps, and I made my account.

The Dawn of GOG

My hands were tied in the beginning, as I had no credit card and my good old repulsion for bank bureaucracy kept me away from owning a card that I could use for online payments, so there were plenty of offers I missed because of that. But you still offered everyone a few free games, so at least I had something on my shelves. :) Thanks!

Then, after I switched jobs, they did whatever was needed for us to get debit cards for our salaries, so I dodged the bank bureaucracy successfully and I got myself a card. :)) If I remember correctly, I could only make PayPal payments in the beginning, but I could finally get some games every now and then. And I never was a big gamer, but rather the kind that would cause game development to die if they depended on people playing as often as I did. :P

The first game I bought here was Sanitarium. That game alone was enough for me to love GOG. Where else could I have bought this game DRM-free, with the manual and its great soundtrack?

And here I am, about a decade later, still claiming I'm not much of a gamer but getting close to 300 titles on my shelves. :P I'm not much of a collector either, compared to others, but I like indulging myself with some good old games every now and then, even if it takes me some time to actually start playing them. Because it's like music or movies - you must be prepared for when you want to have a good time.

Make no mistake, GOG, it has become a rough love lately. Your clumsiness caused me bumps and bruises from time to time, but even more so recently. Various "good old bugs" still live on this site, for whatever the reason, "good old missing features" bite your ass here and there, and the discounts have become a bit boring because they not as creative as they were before. They've even become annoying for some people, myself included, because when you can't filter out the games you own and you have a large collection, you get to scroll a lot and you can easily miss something that's surrounded by the games you own.

I'd like to have my good old patience, but either I misplaced it or it ran away somewhere, sometime, because 404 - Patience Not Found. And this leads to frustration, up to rage. Yeah, the recent bugs in the wishlist system made me "rage quit" it, clearing it up because I got two different "sale" e-mail notifications for games not only weren't in my wishlist but they were not even discounted. No wonder I stayed away for a while from GOG, right? Maybe my inactivity was a factor in me not getting anything during this "Most Wanted" sale, not even Jack Keane 2. :))

Whatever, I'm still upset with you, GOG. But I love you, you buggy buggers. There's no better shop for DRM-free games out there, and you keep adding stuff on a regular basis, and that's great. I wish you could add more good old games, like Prince of Persia 1 and 2, Warcraft 1 and 2, the Dune collection, the freely released Command & Conquer games, the good old Need For Speed games that EA doesn't seem interested enough to put them on Origin, the old Age of Empires, Lemmings, Dyna Blaster, Volfied, Doofus, Beavis and Butthead, and many other silly fun games that are still great to play.

Your official 10th anniversary comes this September, and boy, how I'd love to see some of these good old games come to GOG. How awesome would it be to have GOG Galaxy for Linux? But I'm still pissed off these days, and I have trouble having faith in such events. But I still love GOG, or I would've hit my ass pretty hard with the door, on my way out.

Take this public love letter and handle it carefully. Awesome things and lots of love went into this site from both sides - yours and your customers'. I wrote you in advance, as a 4 months notice for you to properly prepare for your 10th anniversary. Whatever you do, rock the boat hard when the time comes. Release something as memorable as Duke Nukem 3D 9 years ago. Prepare a site-wide bug-fix release, so we can filter and wishlist the games while browsing them, so we can actually see how many games are there after we apply filters, so we can read the community wishlists without seeing HTML code in the comments, so we can down-vote spam in one click, which would auto-trigger reports after a certain number of downvotes, so we can easily create giveaways like the ones on SteamGifts, so we can publicly see the change logs of games in order to buy them as soon as we notice the much desired bug-fixes, so we can download the game and its content (or go to the download page), and even access its forum directly from the game's store page, so we can do some other stuff that people have asked for years and nothing happened.

Hail to the King, Baby!

Who knows where we'll be in 10 more years. Whatever you prepare for your anniversary this September, make sure it's memorable, not meh-morable. Because you have a lot of supporters here that love GOG, even if they're occasionally pissed off at you. There's plenty of time for many small bug-fixes, there's enough time for one or two new awesome features, and hopefully there's enough time for at least one more Good Old Game that will make more people join GOG because they want their favorite game DRM-free.

And it's an anniversary, so prepare a 10-day nostalgia trip through the years of discounts, bringing back multiple sale mechanisms to reward buyers, to tempt the luck-addicts, to lure the completionists with daily tasks, to draw in the competitive spirit with Experience Points and ranks, and dazzle everyone with a plethora of wallet-crushing discounts. You can even fine-tune the PR machine so you don't announce the big event like the current one generated confusion and other unpleasant reactions. Of course you can't implement all the ideas, but pick a bunch and unleash them on the big day.

Love and power to you, GOG. 4 more months. You can do it.

P.S. Anyone else has fun ideas easily to be implemented? Don't wait till it's too late to handle them. Speak up, 'cause it's our big party too. :)

Thanks for the read, but I'm a tiny bit confused as to what the gist of this open letter is. Is it praise? Criticism? Just general history of your relationship with the store? I don't mean offense here, but it seems to meander and hop the fence back and forth a bit, so I'm genuinely curious what the central point is.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Also, some of those games you mentioned are in licensing hell and are owned by multiple people/companies. Need for Speed for example has music and cars with scattered ownership. That's why even EA can't re-release them.

I don't know what GOG plans for its anniversary. Probably another boring sale. And user profiles.

Seeing the old beta site made me nostalgic for like 5 minutes though. I still remember seeing Blood get released and actually spitting my water all over my desk.

I kinda miss the old look. The current look is ok, but almost... sterile. It's the minimalism you see everywhere now.

Also, I understand it was an important and required change, but adding more price points and new games just never felt good to me. I've not seen a single new game that excited me anywhere near as much as when the Alone in the Dark trilogy popped up. I dunno, maybe that's the melancholy talking.

Damn. I decided to skip the lengthy message and get the gist of it from the following replies... but you are not really helping! :D

The main purpose of this letter is to make sure GOG starts making serious plans for their first decade's party. But instead of briefly telling them I want a good party (useless request), I gave them my story with ups and downs, so they can understand yet another customer's perspective and feelings towards GOG. Then I pitched in with a few ideas for the celebration and I invited everyone else to share ideas that GOG could use for the 10th anniversary.

Quickest switch from "I love you" to "we need to work on our relationship", like, EVER.

Never married? ............

Oh. That's not what I expected, somehow.
While that's an interesting point to make, I honestly don't think there's literally anything we could tell them that they'll listen to in regards to a 10th anniversary bash (if they're even going to have one). Any plans they make, they likely either already have down or will only listen to a committee within the staff in regards to it.
If you want to wager guesses at it, I'd reckon it'll be little more than a sale and maybe a giveaway or two.

There are no guarantees, other than failing if we don't even try to communicate with them. I have my doubts as well, but it doesn't hurt being open (and persistent) about my GOG-related feelings, hopes and expectations. And our suggestions might also help - but only if we try.

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Not alone here

What he should understand is that most of these games are owned by different companies so license is hell to get

Actually, I did the same...... and then I saw where your from and got stoned.

Look at my registration date. I understand the licensing thing quite well, considering the years many of us have been through requests, hopes, wishes come true, and continuous waiting. But either we understand licensing or not, GOG can simply make it a point to release some awesome game(s) on their 10th anniversary, not sooner/later. It's just timing, so it can be done if there's enough time and availability of the developers, publishers and all the intellectual property owners.

So will anyone share their favourite discount mechanisms that they enjoyed on GOG so we can have them again? Any new ideas? The sooner we come up with them, the more chances they can be considered.