It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussionKeep store page for removed games (BG, PST etc)(42 posts)(42 posts)
(42 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
This is my favourite topic
Posted April 06, 2017
Voted, I totally agree and asked the same question a while ago. They just should delete the buy options. If copyright issues: only make them accessible if you purchased the game.
Post edited April 06, 2017 by Experiment513
Posted April 06, 2017
avatar
mystikmind2000: Actually i might be a good idea to have a page showing all the games that were removed...

Put a view counter on all the games, so the game rights holders can see how many potential sales they missed out on.
That would be advertising something that would upset potential customers, AND put some of their partners under a bad light. "They pulled Baldur's gate from the catalog, shame on them! Boo, hiss!".

That would become the "wall of shame". Both unprofessional, unprofitable, and a very bad idea overall, I think :/
Posted April 06, 2017
low rated
avatar
mystikmind2000: Actually i might be a good idea to have a page showing all the games that were removed...

Put a view counter on all the games, so the game rights holders can see how many potential sales they missed out on.
avatar
Kardwill: That would be advertising something that would upset potential customers, AND put some of their partners under a bad light. "They pulled Baldur's gate from the catalog, shame on them! Boo, hiss!".

That would become the "wall of shame". Both unprofessional, unprofitable, and a very bad idea overall, I think :/
exactly, there are very good commercial reasons not to do that
avatar
htown1980: I don't but I work every day with people who have somehow managed to get themselves in the shit because they somehow managed to avoid all those safety barriers :)
avatar
mystikmind2000: Those are the people who cause the nanny state to continue getting more and more obsessed with ways to 'protect' people.
And ironically its also those kind of people who often complain about the nanny state, because they are prevented (usually for very good reason) from doing stupid things that they want to do :)
Post edited April 06, 2017 by htown1980
Posted April 06, 2017
I think it's a good idea to keep the store pages of removed games available. Voted.
Posted April 06, 2017
There are plenty of good reasons not to do this, biggest I can see is the wall of shame factor mentioned above annoying the rights holders for said titles.

Some of them, I'm sure, are petty enough that they would remove the rest of their games over the slight.

Also, there's something else to consider. Look at how long it takes GOG's coders to make much of any change to the site or to Galaxy. Now consider the fact that that the pages were designed solely to have a dollar amount attached to them for the purpose of sale. It was probably never even envisioned that the page would have anything else there.

If they wanted to do this they would probably have to redesign a bunch of database stuff to give the option of having a "not for sale" type entry in the dollar amount, and redesign the store page template to properly reflect that option. All the while they'd have to make sure that they didn't break anything else.
That last part is the big one.

If they fuck up the store page for games they actually do sell, then that's lost sales because of people unable to properly use the now broken page to make a purchase. if even 1% of those lost sales don't come back when its fixed, that's wasted profit for GOG.

And its not just a matter of changing one thing. If you just change that one thing you'll also have to go into the coding and make sure anything else that relies on that one thing can cope with the change, and change it if it can't, and then possibly go further in and change whatever relies on the new thing that's been changed.

All of this just to have a "Not for sale, sorry" entry for games they used to sell.

And then what, would you include these items in searches too? How else would someone who doesn't' already have the game find these no longer for sale games if not by using the search function? More importantly, why would GOG, whose sole reason for existence is to sell stuff, waste valuable search real estate on a product they cannot possibly make a sale from?

I can't see any way in which this would not cause more trouble than any added value it may have.
Posted April 06, 2017
I actually love this idea. The very games you mention were previously rated much higher, but now their 'reputations' as games have significantly plummeted (and deservedly so based on the EEs). Currently Planescape Torment is THE highest user rated game on GOG! When the EE is released the rating will fall... and that is a shame because as a game Planescape Torment deserves it's place.
Posted April 06, 2017
avatar
Impaler26: I think it's a good idea to keep the store pages of removed games available. Voted.
Do other stores keep the store pages for removed games, e.g. Steam?
Posted April 06, 2017
avatar
Impaler26: I think it's a good idea to keep the store pages of removed games available. Voted.
avatar
timppu: Do other stores keep the store pages for removed games, e.g. Steam?
Steam does not keep the store page but keeps the COMMUNITY page which has reviews, user content about the game etc. Like Neverwinter Nights 2: Platinum on Steam.
Posted April 07, 2017
avatar
Engerek01: Steam does not keep the store page but keeps the COMMUNITY page which has reviews, user content about the game etc. Like Neverwinter Nights 2: Platinum on Steam.
Ok that sounds a bit like how GOG still keeps the discussion subforums alive for de-listed games, e.g. Re-Volt:

https://www.gog.com/forum/revolt#1487433498
Posted April 07, 2017
the other day i was looking for Guilty Gear X2 / izuka on gog, its nowhere to be found. No info or anything, gog should at least share that info in store page instead in the forum. with the reason of changing old publisher to the new publisher. Not many people who bought the game on gog like to spend time on the forum.
Some people just search for particular game, buy them, then play them all the way without ever step in to the gog forum.

I vote for this.
Posted April 07, 2017
avatar
molerat: There are plenty of good reasons not to do this, biggest I can see is the wall of shame factor mentioned above annoying the rights holders for said titles.

Some of them, I'm sure, are petty enough that they would remove the rest of their games over the slight.

Also, there's something else to consider. Look at how long it takes GOG's coders to make much of any change to the site or to Galaxy. Now consider the fact that that the pages were designed solely to have a dollar amount attached to them for the purpose of sale. It was probably never even envisioned that the page would have anything else there.

If they wanted to do this they would probably have to redesign a bunch of database stuff to give the option of having a "not for sale" type entry in the dollar amount, and redesign the store page template to properly reflect that option. All the while they'd have to make sure that they didn't break anything else.
That last part is the big one.

If they fuck up the store page for games they actually do sell, then that's lost sales because of people unable to properly use the now broken page to make a purchase. if even 1% of those lost sales don't come back when its fixed, that's wasted profit for GOG.

And its not just a matter of changing one thing. If you just change that one thing you'll also have to go into the coding and make sure anything else that relies on that one thing can cope with the change, and change it if it can't, and then possibly go further in and change whatever relies on the new thing that's been changed.

All of this just to have a "Not for sale, sorry" entry for games they used to sell.

And then what, would you include these items in searches too? How else would someone who doesn't' already have the game find these no longer for sale games if not by using the search function? More importantly, why would GOG, whose sole reason for existence is to sell stuff, waste valuable search real estate on a product they cannot possibly make a sale from?

I can't see any way in which this would not cause more trouble than any added value it may have.
As I suggested in my post, they should just de-list such game pages: no finding them listed in the "Games" page, no having them appear as results when searching in the drop-down search bar; the store pages would be accessible only via a direct link (which would mean that people could probably still find the page by googling "[name of game] GOG" or similar, but nothing to be done about that).
This should be relatively painless for the staff to effect -- there is at least one publicly available item in the catalog that is already unindexed in this manner, so clearly that part's not an issue. No idea about the difficulty of implementing the rest of my idea, though.
Posted April 08, 2017
I've seen a few shops do this right with an archive of old products with robots.txt.

Plenty of other sites leave products that you can't buy showing up on search engines which is really annoying.
Pages:
1
2
3
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionKeep store page for removed games (BG, PST etc)(42 posts)(42 posts)
(42 posts)