the forums match the site.. which is uhh yea...

there solution will be too just lock the forums off or remove them all together. which is sad since the community have pretty much ensured that some of the games arent refunded since quite a few dont work from the store unless you follow a community solution.. which sometimes cant be found easy due to the mentioned search not been up to the job.

I had a look at the code for posting then made some code to make posts..

to say it was shocking easy, esp since they have the captcha set to true (instead of invoking it) it was a complete joke.

I really wouldnt want someone to dig deep enough into the code as im sure they could do quite a bit of damage

If you found any forums like that, they were set up to be that way, and it's not something the forum software requires. I've not once seen any "flashing images" on other forums, unless you're talking about animated avatars, which admins can disable (and yes those are annoying). The GOG forums are drastically worse than other forum software I've seen by any objective measure. It's not even close. ...Well, there was something called Lithium a ways back that was pretty bad...it's called Khoros now; dunno if it's any better. I'm also not fond of Discourse, though it's still technically better than GOG. Others I'm personally familiar with: XenForo, Invision Power Board, Vanilla, vBulletin, phpBB. Some are better than others, all are much better than whatever GOG is doing, none inherently have any "annoying images all over the place".

You must have a LOT of fingers. ;) Like, hundreds of fingers. There's been a fair amount of spam this year, sometimes filling up the entire front page if not the first two pages, so I just give up and wait until the next day before looking at the forum again. It's drastically easier if you have real forum software. ...Nah. That's some low standards you got there. It sounds like you've never been on any proper forums, so you don't know what you're missing. And it's not just about the users, but also the moderators. If the mod tools are as bad as the rest, that makes their jobs a lot harder than they need to be, which results in moderators not being motivated to do a good job (since they're unpaid and therefore not motivated by a salary). I wish for GOG to use one of the forum packages I mentioned above (not Lithium/Khoros or Discourse). There's nothing to be scared of.

As long GOG is DRM free I'm happy!

It shouldn´t be that difficult to give users the right to write in the forum (and rate games) only after having spent 1 euro (or whatever) on the store.

Problem: GOG is a small store, situated in Poland. So, a "around the world" solution isn't doable "just so".
Possible solution: their (Polish) employees, responsible for Forum moderation, could start working in shifts - thus covering all 24 hours/day.

Problem with that solution: it would mean a massive investment in additional wages ((night-) shift boni) only to cope with a relative seldomly occuring problem (yes - right now, it's a bit more often - but usually it's not).
And we all know, GOG isn't financially bedded on roses.

And yes: it would need to be GOG employees - not some customers, who get "appointed as moderators".

Because "deleting threads" is a power I really wouldn't want to see in the hands of people who are not contractually and accountability-wise bound to some business standards.

I can already see the web-wide shitstorm, following the deletion of a "wrong" thread, by some "customoderator"...

That argument has been done to death. If you can't post in the game specific forums to troubleshoot a GIFTED game from a relative or good friend, or a "purchased" one from Prime Gaming then GOG has basically effed you over.

There's spent, and value. Unless GOG codes it that gifted games from actual purchases counts (in other words mass giveaways don't), and this includes allowing Amazon codes as well, then it's not universally fair to put a "purchase lock" on the forum.

What I suggest GOG do is increase the number of hoops new accounts should have to jump through in order to get verified in the first place - those which aren't easily automated, and have the account remains locked from posting in the forum until it's complete. The forum itself can stay as it is. I'm no developer, but there must be a better way of making it a much bigger waste of time to create empty accounts just to spam a forum with nigh-useless bait posts.

In the extremely few and rare cases in which such things would happen, there is support to help the users. And 1 euro (or whatever) is not much to have access to the forum. Bots would not appear again and trolls would have to spend a little money to vent.

I think it is the best solution. It is not perfect, of course. I think that what you suggest would end up easily broken by bot users.

And it isn't easy for scammers to use stolen credit cards to buy something, and spam the hell out of the forums until the account gets locked again?

Come on.

I'd like people to have the ability to edit or delete our own reviews or even for mods to be able to do so on request. I understand the lack of such a option is related to the forum system.

I avoid posting reviews in case I might regret it latter, maybe I find a game is better or worse than I initially thought.

Okay, give me some dates. Or are you making the mistake of counting each spam post, where I was talking about major spam events, where many occur at once.

You might think that, but I can assure you it isn't really the case.

The problem with making assumptions, is that they can come back and bite you on the ass.

I constantly use other forums, and yes they are in many ways a huge improvement on GOGs, they also suffer from many aspects.

Hell I have even run my own forum as the Admin, using MyBB software ... and I trialed a few other forum software before settling on that one.

Checkout the AutoIt Forum software some time. I've never come across better than that, and would have used it myself if not for the price.

There is plenty to be worried about.
We are not just talking about GOG using better forum software, we are also talking about a huge transfer of data and many interconnected things. And in my experience things rarely go smoothly, even when just updating existing forum software to the latest version.

GOG at the very least, would have to employ someone, who really know what they are doing, to create a GOG centric solution of migrating stuff from GOG's existing forum databases to whatever new forum software they chose. No easy task by my reckoning and likely to have lots of issues and failures.

Then there is the fact, that if GOG did migrate it will cost them money for every aspect of that and the cost will be ongoing. That cost could impact all of us.

So no it has nothing to do with my standards, just reality. I've already admitted GOG's forum software is quite flawed. But as they say, sometimes it is better the devil you know.

Yes, come one.

One thing is to bypass some little layer of security in a webpage and a whole different thing is to steal credit card numbers.

If facing the choice, to either having to admit defeat in a discussion, or having to make up the wildest (im-)probable case, which would support their argument - some people here will always choose the latter.

XD

Sure that'd probably be a good thing. But I'm not holding my breath.

GOG kind of seems like they're in "glide" mode for now, not making any real changes / improvements and just trying to keep going. Seems like it may have started with the "back to our roots"-type updates at the (iirc) start of 2022. I wonder if Galaxy 2 not really taking off, Cyberpunk2077 release fiasco (assuming GOG's relationships with publishers suffered, even though the state of the game wasn't GOG's fault), and Hitman GOTY backlash (though appropriate imo) played roles. Maybe CDP is waiting until either CDPR's new expansion and games (which are hopefully released in a much better state) bring in new faces here or the number of people who care about DRM-free dwindles to the point where GOG is just closed.

I might make a separate thread about this.

You guys don't understand, gog is slowly transitioning towards becoming an online learning platform. The weird universities spam posts are just ways of testing the waters, but once they're done you'll see, it'll be all online courses from the university of Obong, Adegboyega, and many more exciting places. Of course, there'll be a place for voodoo revenge death spell courses as wells, and also courses from Kagura games too.

You mean like Gonzaga University?
(who here gets the reference?)