This way they win. Delete all the valid topics and leave the insane one, so you can look like Saint Mary in this whole mix up.

Anyone know how to get passed the Concert part on Botanicula?

Sounded quite good, not painful.

They replaced Zdeněk Svěrák but young Svěrák seems to remain. It's funny he stated they are going to stick with czech dubbers and then use Jeremy Irons as lead dubber.

From what I've heard from following Robert Boyd's (of Cthulhu Saves The World fame) twitter and from some posts on the AI War forums suggest to me that Valve is more than happy to hand of a large pile of keys for something like this (or, to be specific, Indie Royale) for free. As far as they're concerned, if it means more people using the Steam store, then it's gravy. I am also under the impression that the Steamworks suite (of which activating on Steam presumably is a part of) is 100% free, which would help explain its popularity with publishers. Presumably there's now a large enough population of PC gamers who have a "Steam or GTFO" policy for this to be sustainable.

I think that's exactly what's happening. It makes Amanita look like even bigger jackasses to those of us who know what's going on (like you and I). Of course they leave the wacko thread. Where did all the rest go?

I'm pretty sure it is free.

Yeah, it's a smart move. All it costs them is some bandwidth, but they're buying that in enormous quantities, anyway (and indies are usually pretty lightweight). It's an investment that just has to pay off.

Hilarious.

1. I can't speak about video games specifically but such a clause is not unheard of in the realm of digital distribution.

2. I love Gaga as much as the next gay. Still, 8 million sales is only 53% of the 15 million sales of her previous album. That is hardly how I would expect the most anticipated album in at least a decade to perform.

This.

Sounds about right. Valve's given away Portal for free, and TF2 - one of their most popular titles - is permanently free now. I've seen articles that say that TF2 has made significantly more money since going F2P, so it works, too.

1.) It's not unheard of, but if other companies aren't requiring it than GOG can't. Given that we see day one sales on Steam a lot, I doubt they ARE requiring it, and since Steam's user base is so much bigger than GOG's...

2.) You're comparing the sales of an album that's been out for less than a year to the sales of one that came out in 2009. That's not fair, or equatable. It took her first album a year and a half to hit ten million copies shipped / about eight million sold, which her new one hit in less than a year:

http://ladygagaonline.net/2010/02/26/the-fame-crosses-10-million-copies-shipped-worldwide/

...why are we arguing about Lady Gaga, again?

How could Amanita lack the foresight of understanding why promoting a game for $9 preorders then offering it for $0.01 on release day would be a problem?

Either they were completely oblivious or they simply didn't care how many people they'd piss off.

This is on Amanita 100%. I can't believe people are complaining to GOG about this - you should be emailing Amanita to voice your concerns.

I didn't preorder it, but I have to say that this is a pretty dick move overall, especially to those that pre-ordered not knowing that it would be on sale the day of on a Pay what you want bundle. Generally, when I pre-order a game, I expect it to be at the same general price (A bit of difference here and there depending but that also includes sales tax for stuff I buy in store and discounts to compensate for delivery elsewhere). And, to be honest, most games that release stay at their initial price for a while before a sale or even a price drop. What they're doing now is damage control, because they thought they could get away with this and realized that it didn't work.

Not that many (if any) people are really blaming GOG for this just bringing up previous issues. Amanita appear to be trying to do something about this for witch I give them credit.

Is it just me who can no longer see the post on their facebook page anymore?

I think the details are out already - they are offering the full soundtrack, and art book and a free copy of Machinarium to people who pre-ordered on GOG.