I signed up for GOG to buy a few cheap good games but by the time I did the games I had signed up for were no longer on sale, I guess my timing was really bad. So now I got some new customer deals offered to me and a timer on them. A little over six and a half hours at time of writing this to decide. Also some black friday deals.

But considering some of the games I am interested in buying are windows only, and I currently only have Linux installed. (setting up a separate windows install on this PC is somewhere on my todo list but kinda far down) Questions about GOG customer service and return policy become important factors in deciding whether to purchase.

Steam has a very limited return policy of less than 2 hours play and I think 48 hours total own time. Now GOG has a return policy of 30 days, but examining the terms of that policy, it is absurdly restrictive to the point of useless. It seems I can't even download the game and still use it. Only exception being is if severe technical issues arise. I mean I can understand some of it, since there is no DMR, just direct download, it could be exploited more than it already is.

But what if I finally get to play the game and it turns out to be a horrible game IMO. Or what if I buy a windows game and it doesn't run on wine and I don't install separate windows till after the 30 days and I find out then the game won't work or is really bad.

Also how responsive is GOG support in general? Please give me an idea of how good or bad GOG customer service and support is.

Also has GOG ever price matched to steam or let someone buy a sale item if they were trying to buy it but they were slightly off in their timing?

Drink two in the morning and thank me later.



And maybe this too, as a chaser.

I did mention wine. But not all games work well with wine.

And none of that answers my questions about GOG customer service.

In my experience (some would disagree) GOG customer service in general is quite responsive if there isn't a sale that might keep them too busy. They are also nice and it is possible to talk with them. Regarding the competence/help level it depends on the reason you contact them. GOG was rarely able to help me with tech propblems but that's maybe because I am quite tech savvy and helpdesk 101 does not help me much. However if we are talking about asking for refund, complaining about things missing or wrong on the website ect - those things do work well.

As for the question if GOG support would help you in the cases you were mentioning I am pretty sure this would have to be decided on a case by case basis. We are talking about refund requests they (legally) don't HAVE to accept - they can CHOSE to offer those however to keep customers. So I am sure it depends on how often those things might happen and how well you are explaining your situation. GOG will try to help you but because of the DRM-free thingy of course they have to be careful when to grant a refund and when not.

Am I correct in my understanding that their official return policy is only if you change your mind after never using it or you had severe technical issues that can be resolved within 30 days? So if you install the game and you find it buggy or find it it a bad/disappointing game, the official policy leaves no room open for returning it a day latter? That's what it seems to say, so with it talking about 30 day return policy as a reason to buy from GOG would be a dishonest claim.

Anyone have any anecdotal evidence that they are willing and able to go above and beyond what their official policy states? Like let's say you download a Windows game and you can't find the time to get it to work on Wine, and now over 30 days have passed, you finally get to play it on windows or on Linux and it's a buggy unfun mess, unlike reviews made it sound. Is it conceivable that GOG would take a return? Please people tell me of some specific encounters with GOG customer service.

Also what about price matching to Steam or if you are just a little late on buying something that was on sale, for getting it still on the sale price. Do GOG employees have the authority and will to do things like that on occasion?

Like I can buy all 3 witcher games on Steam as a package for 10% less than I can with GOG, a savings of $2.25, which is roughly the price of Witcher 1 or 2. And there was the games Din's curse and another game that was on sale that I signed up to buy and then I couldn't find for the sale price after signing up. Matching that Steam price. or still honoring a sale price slightly latter on, is that something GOG can/may do?

I'm afraid you are correct. If you buy something that is not officially supported by GOG on the system you try to run it (e.g. Linux), it's at your own risk, and a game being not to your taste or buggy isn't officially ground for a refund either (unless the bugs are game-breaking and can't be fixed), so you better check reviews and the game's forum before buying, if you want to play it safe. GOG's refund policy is a lot more restrictive than Steam's, but as MarkoH01 said, support is often accommodating even if they don't have to be. I doubt that they would offer you sale prices if you've missed the sale, but I think if you bought something at full price and it gets discounted shortly after, there's a chance they might refund it to you.

Not sure I understand the question about Steam prices. Sometimes GOG has worse discounts than Steam, sometimes it has better ones. But they won't ever change the GOG price to match it with the Steam prices, they price their games independently of the competition.

Anyone got any experienced of customer support outside of technical support they could please share. Maybe some stories of them being accommodating when they don't have to be or not.

Also stories of tech support wouldn't be completely amiss though not as useful.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/25_of_my_gog_support_tickets_took_1_week_to_get_the_first_response

I've requested a refund once for DD:DA due to the pawn rental bug and GOG support (JuriJ) was nice enough to approve my refund even more than 30 days after purchase. It took them a day to send an automated response to my ticket but when I sent a follow-up response, JuriJ took less than 12 hours to respond and approved my refund/cancellation. He was professional and courteous.

BTW the DD:DA pawn rental bug may or may not be fixed yet (seems to be an issue with Capcom) https://www.gog.com/forum/dragons_dogma_dark_arisen/dragons_dogma_dark_arisen_service_is_not_available_when_resting_at_inn_1/page2

I didn't ask for technical support but went straight for a request for a refund. Also, I gathered evidence of the bug in the form of a few GOG forum posts and tried to go for a neutral to slightly testy tone when I submitted my response ;)

I have found that with GOG support, you get more flies with honey.

The three or four times I requested a refund I received it very quickly, and once it was for a working game that I'd owned for a month and had already downloaded.

I think a big part of that is that my request don't involve screaming and telling them off, just politely stating my situation, and then asking, NOT DEMANDING, for the refund.

I know that's how it worked when I was in customer service. When someone was polite I'd bend over backwards for them, even going so far as to make reparations out of my own pocket. When they insisted on being a dick, even if they had a legitimate right to the refund, I would try to come up with/invent reasons not to give it to them.

My GOG refund experiences:
1. Got refund because GOG got the money but did not give me the game
2. Got refund because GOG made a wrong discount of The Curse of Monkey Island.
3. Got refund because many Piñatas gave me duplicated games that I already owned.
4. Got refund because an GOG bundle pack did not work like what it said (Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones Deluxe)

I know it's off topic, but can we talk about you for a minute? Why are you so salty?

Let me take a different approach for you. You want to play games, but you wnt to be able to return them under certain conditions. You don't seem to be focused on the DRM-free aspect, but on customer service. It sounds to me like you want to be able to buy games, get refunds if they don't work on linux, and you want more than 48 hours to do this. You mention windows, but it sounds to me like you're not really going to hurry and get it, and you're afraid that if you buy a game and get windows, that it will take you too long to get windows to evaluate the game.

If the game itself is broken, and severely broken, i've been told that GOG will refund. I haven't had this issue myself, but presumably they will. However,my understanding is that this comes out of GOG's funds when you get a refund, so GOG takes a loss. Therefore, GOG has to be strict and not give refunds willy-nilly like steam can (probably due to pay buffering or something, which i can't imagine any dev would allow gog to withhold funds for 30 days).

Long story short, as much as i like gog and i want others to use GOG and get away from DRM, if you honestly don't care about DRM, i really feel like you're not the target customer. At the same time, i'm not sure anyone will fit the needs you have, really. You may want to rethink your strategy, especially before you mistakenly land on a piracy website thinking they have a great refund policy that happens to be impossible.

Perhaps if you told us more about your situation, we could make a more educated plan.

1) If you are planning to use Windows games on Linux then I strongly suggest you to either get yourself a Windows copy or just forget about any support. By purchasing a game for the unsupported platform you are on your own. GOG does not endorse Proton™, SteamPlay™ or the like;
2) You should probably be quick and cautious with time-limited special offerings. They are known to expire even prior (even days, sometimes) to their declared deadline and there is no way to still get the deal if the offer has expired;
3) GOG (nominally) has no DRM mechanism and can not prevent you from playing or distributing already downloaded games so, as you have to understand, it has to assume what had been downloaded is your's for good. So, GOG needs to protect itself from scammers and reject any refunds of downloaded games. Special cases are present, but they are managed on the case-to-case basis (usually when a developer decides to drop support or the game in question is proved to be broken via previous tech support request);
4) If a game is not to your liking but works, you can leave a negative review and help others to avoid said game. That would be a good thing to do :) and your (as the license owner's) opinion would be considered important;
5) The tech support is rather unresponsive due to being seriously understaffed and you will need some patience, but they are quite competent and helping bunch, up to the point of providing free consolatory games in case they were not able to help (experienced firsthand);
6) GOG tries to match its prices to that of Steam, but it is not possible sometimes (with product owners rejecting local pricing or deliberately setting high prices out of sheer spite towards GOG, like Bethesda® after Interplay's final Fallout™ giveaways);

I hope it helps. :)

Hello all,

Just like any customer service in any big growing company it is normal to see an evolution. I feel like the support has changed a bit since 2011, to my knowledge. Of course, I don't use the refund function much so I may have been lucky some times and unlucky others times.

The last week, I asked for a refund (Vampire The Masquerade Redemption) it felt more like a step-by-step automated resolution chart in each mail. Even if the bug is well known for years on the GoG forum, I had to do every single steps possible that I did multiple times before contacting them. It's not too annoying but I see no communication here and did not find the same friendly attitude I found when I could directly chat and joke with the support years ago.

I still got my refund, so I'm fine, it took two days but it wasn't too much of a hassle. Take note that I had a French support guy, so I suppose that's also a point to take into consideration.

TL;dr : It's fine, take some work on your side, work if you can't resolve your problem.