I find it ridiculous that someone so worried about the future availability and access to his games that he feels the need to rant here would rather buy arguably temporary licenses at steam and be tied to their client rather than a DRM-free copy. Does not compute.

It actually sounds trollish, if you ask me. I've ranted a lot about my lost saves in Uplay due to poor cloud sychronizing, and I sure as hell when I got the "your game is not available right now" message on steam the first time (and then again when it happened during offline mode), but I don't recall the need to go around acting obnoxiously like this guy.

Guess it was GoG that vouched for CGI federal to design healthcare.gov.

I'm mad for a different reason, the forums are slow as hell, but I understand the slowness. Shouldn't the forums and library be on a different server than the digital store?

It also happens to Steam when they launch major sales.

Things will stabilize soon. Just the early rush of everyone trying to buy Jack Keane. ;)

By "hits like this" do you mean so few? Alexa rankings: gog.com=5302. store.steampowered.com=538.

For those that say Steam is this bad on major sales, upgrade from your dialup connection. Otherwise, please, its laughable how wrong you are.

Reading all the replies so far I would like to clarify one thing and ask one question and then I am out of the discussion.

Clarification: I am fully aware that there is a huge difference between owning a game through GoG and Steam. I have not worried about future access and never mentioned that. That is a whole box of ugly things waiting to be opened another day and has nothing to do with the problems right now...

Question: When has it become OK to fail? Let me use an example: If I in my line of work there is the following exchange:

Boss: "IT Guy! Marketing Guy! Over here! We have people saying there are problems accessing the [Stuff] they bought from us and buying new [Stuff] from us! Why is that?

IT Guy: "It is okay, boss. That is only when we have a sale to satisfy our customers and maybe attract ne ones. So maybe 3 - 4 times a year."

So the possible reaction could be: "Ah okay. Nice to know. Everything seems to be in order then."

Or more likely: [blank face] "WAT?"

So *taking of rose tinted glasses* if I was lucky till now with steam and just now unlucky with GoG: When has it become OK for a business in selling Stuff to fail?

I only ask, because I need to compensate for the wildest things imaginable at work and if there is something happening I could not dream of and there is an Interuption of business, there would be my head on a platter. And I really do not think, that I am the only one who has to take responsibility.

So why is it OK for GoG (and maybe Steam) to fail and why is it not allowed to mention that fail or even be angry about that fail?

Edit: Stupid Gateway Errors everytime I try to post...

That's a tad pompous; some of us don't have the luxury of updating our connection.

This. I mean, I'm an understanding guy. And I can certainly live with GOG being a little busted now and then. It's not like it ruins my day. But what is very puzzling is why this keeps happening. Every year. Every sale. I used to work as a project manager and you can bet that my bosses would not be satisfied with the answer, "Oh, don't worry, it only happens during the periods when we're trying to make the most money."

Just.... truly baffling.

Seems like a nice sale. It'll be good when my log-in on the main page actually starts working again...

And this is why I think a decentralized / mirrored service would be a better option. Maybe they already do that and it's still too much traffic to handle. I'm certainly frustrated. All of the games I wanted are now on sale at prices I'm willing to pay and I was going to buy them all. I didn't even need to download them now, I just wanted to purchase them. I'll check back every few minutes and hope it works.

Wheee!!! We're not helping, hindering in fact!


Not trying to be sarcastic, I just enjoy some good irony.

XD OH SHIT, you're right! Too funny!

I have to agree. I really, really love GOG, but this happens at every single major sale, and it is frankly embarrassing, unprofessional and unacceptable - buy a bunch of new servers, GOG, I'm sure you can afford it!

I second this! GOG, you need better servers. Ever since the sale began, I've been getting nothing but overload errors, bad gateways and have my account login bumped out. I have a fast connection, and understand that location plays a part (I.E, the further you are from GOG's servers, or if they aren't located in your country, the more terrible things will be) But something has to be done. I'd be afraid to buy anything, for fear of purchase errors or duplicate purchases, as the connection goes down while the purchase is being made.

I'm no fan of Steam, but they were never like this.

In the summers, when everyone is running their air conditioners, many major US cities experience brownouts or blackouts. I assume it is similar in other places, though we don't often hear about it on the news.

The answer is not "build more generators!" - there is simply no way to supply overflow demand at times of peak use. A system is not designed to accommodate peaks, it is designed to accommodate averages. If these magic servers that folks are suggesting - and we should all be clear that servers cost tens of thousands of dollars - did in fact exist, how would they pay for themselves during the other 360 days of the year? By GOG raising their prices, adding ads, and cutting back on sales, surely. I'd prefer not to see that happen.

It's irritating to have the site access so wonky, agreed. Obviously they need to make better overflow plans for sales days. However, unless there is a foolish IT botch along the way, this isn't embarrassing or unprofessional - it's just one of the problems of Internet business.

And I've experienced Steam downtime, too. Not recently, but often in years past.