vulchor: The money you paid them would have been better spent on hookers and blow.

Maxvorstadt: I know what a hooker is, but what do you mean when you say "blow"? Do you mean something like "giving head"?
Just curious. so please answer!

vulchor: cocaine

srilumpa: In my case it was not informed speculation as I expected Alan Wake American Nightmare to be the 4th freebie, but I saw no need not to hope for Banished to be a freebie until AW:AN appeared as clickable in the Coming Soon section (freebies were clickable there, unlike other games).

Given jmich's sleuthing I'm still hoping to see it in a flash sale before the end, otherwise I'll get it at 50% Monday morning before going to work.

moses2357: If i'm not mistaken on day 1 of the sale wasn't there a mention of some sort of contest? Maybe Banished could be the reward?

Rakuru: There were already some 'guess what games are shown in this video' contests yesterday on GOG's Twitter. The rewards for those were $9.99 game credit.

Also, the reason everyone is talking about Banished is because when people figured out the naming convention of the flash sale images, Banished was one of the unused images that they found. So if it's going to show up, it's probably going to be as a flash sale or flash giveaway. It's possible that GOG or the game's publisher decided not to put it on the flash sale rotation after the image was already made and that's why the image is there, though.

But anything is possible. :)

Grargar: You probably confused it with Shattered Haven or Shattered Steel. Shattered Union is published by Take-Two and, thus, 100% impossible to have ever been available on GOG.

vulchor: They are like the Walmart of gaming. Try to unionize, you're fired. Speak to the media about deplorable working conditions, you're fired. Try to get OSHA involved, you're fired.

Kaylakaze: on GoG because I know it'll be more of a hassle to download and install,

Kaylakaze: Maybe if the people at GoG had pulled their heads out of their butts sooner and provided a proper client that did what Steam and Desura do several years ago, Steam wouldn't be the go to option for most gamers. Many people now won't buy something on GoG and will even spend a few dollars more to have it on Steam. I know I'm hesitant to buy stuff on GoG because I know it'll be more of a hassle to download and install, and then, since I don't have a client which is essentially my central hub of gaming, I'm less likely to play a GoG game that I have installed.

HeDanny: So, no re-appearance of the Omerta Japanese DLC since the freebie? Spewin I missed it at the time.

Telika: facepalm

Lemon_Curry: It's sold separately and therefore wasn't part of the freebie.
Lemon_Curry: Ditto.

vulchor: Very convincing argument. I'd even go a little further with the Games for Windows Live reference. When it was originally being pitched to publishers, mobile was small potatoes, Apple really didn't matter much for gaming, neither did Linux, and Microsoft was very much on top and looked like nothing could ever happen to MS. It seemed like a real real safe bet. If anyone could afford to keep these servers running, surely the richest software corporation in the world could.

However, I really doubt publishers really care about the longevity of their products. History shows that they have always been more concerned with rushing out new products, regardless of quality, for the quickest, easiest buck. That's why so many old games, before GOG came around, remained very difficult to get working on modern operating systems, many times even if the version difference was only one step, like Me to XP, or XP to Vista. There are more examples too to illustrate that short-sighted thinking, which also is evidenced in the incredibly tumultuous nature of the industry itself. It fails to look back, and it fails to look forward, so focused on the immediate profit. EPIC is probably the ONLY independent large publisher/developer that has consistently bucked that trend.

To further argue against the inane idea that Steam has the customer's best interest at heart, and is worth placing blind trust in, I present the fact that you do NOT own your games, you license them from Steam and Steam retains the right to deny you access to them FOR ANY REASON. If you don't like them changing their terms of service, you can't just take the games you "bought" prior and leave the service. No, your account is terminated and you lose access to everything permanently. If your conduct is something they don't like, you lose again. If you even begin to start the process to attempt to sue them for some reason (I know it's hard to imagine that a corporation may eventually mishandle the 'rights' of a customer') you lose all your games.

They are like the Walmart of gaming. Try to unionize, you're fired. Speak to the media about deplorable working conditions, you're fired. Try to get OSHA involved, you're fired.

What if Steam believes that taking a different approach, say leaving PC in the dust to support only the ARM architecture (not terribly far-fetched of an idea a few years from now, although I'd still be shocked) because supporting both architectures increases costs. You think they'll just give you all the games you bought, DRM-free? No. In fact, they don't even have the power to do that. Every publisher of every game that has Steamworks would have to sign off on that, and be forced with paying the development resources to unhook the two. No, instead they'll say "thank you, it has been a good run, you got years of use from what you paid us, and we even gave you free achievements along the way, but we've decided to go in a different direction, wish us luck (and fuck you)".

The money you paid them would have been better spent on hookers and blow.