RPGWatch - Change in GOG Revenues

Originally Posted by Hurls
Thanks for the clarification. As a donor I'm fine with enabling the GOG banners

Same here.

pibbur who is ashamed to say he became a donor as late as yesterday.

I've enabled the display of the ads banner again for a donor.

OK, I bought Might and Magic 8 by clicking on the banner. Took me directly to my account on GOG. That counts toward RPGWatch I hope

Could I suggest again the idea of setting up a bitcoin wallet for donations? You don't have to set up any kind of processing account like PayPal and such - you just set up the wallet and post the ID, a bit like an email address. Then people could pay into it easily, and the ID is useless to thieves without your private key.

They only transfer once the saved up amount is above €150? Even if it was 8% for all buys, it would still mean €1875 worth of games bought via RPGWatch. Quite significant. I hope it's not an annual thing that gets reset at new years or some such thing.

No, it keeps on accumulating.

That's a great system for generating revenue for you/us!

Just out of precaution though, can I/we be reassured that this wont produce a conflict of interest in the future? Such as anyone finding reason to criticise gog or any related topic off-shoots.

Like when gog becomes GoodNewGames at some point, for example. Or GoodJustAnotherGamesShopGames or whatever.

And any related criticism of potentially revenue friendly titles being released and associated negativity.

I'm not entirely fussed, I'm just clarifying the continued status of the site being truly independent, as it/you has/have proudly stated many times over the years.

I no longer engage in paid ads with publishers and such anymore for that exact reason. There is this situation where we would run a paid ad and we provide a not so positive review, resulting in a discussion where they are disappointed and never will run any ads anymore with us, but don’t want to influence us in anyway as they respect the freedom of the press

Our engagement with GOG is different. They are also not publishers or developers, they ‘just’ sell games.

I wish you could set a preferred referrer when shopping at GOG, regardless of how you arrive at the site. Because I always forget to click on banners. (Impulse buys FTW.)

So…. GOG has decided to terminate the affiliation business. This means that from January onward there will be no revenues from the ads, which basically will mean I can drop the ads as well.

Oh, sad to hear. I am always fine with non-intrusive ads.

Originally Posted by Myrthos
So…. GOG has decided to terminate the affiliation business. This means that from January onward there will be no revenues from the ads, which basically will mean I can drop the ads as well.

Did they give an explanation for the ending of affiliation partnership?

My guess is it's probably not worth their time anymore, or not providing enough revenue to them by referrals. Wouldn't be the first time a program like this was terminated.

That's a shame. Is it possible to set up a annual donation to RPGWatch? It's certainly my most frequented site over the last couple of years, and to donate a small sum every year as long as it's running feels like a no-brainer. I'm ashamed to say I've actually never donated anything, I always forget about it. That's way someting like an annual donation would be a good idea…

Originally Posted by TomRon
That's a shame. Is it possible to set up a annual donation to RPGWatch? It's certainly my most frequented site over the last couple of years, and to donate a small sum every year as long as it's running feels like a no-brainer. I'm ashamed to say I've actuallt never donated anything, I always forget about it. That's way someting like an annual donation would be a good idea…

look here!

(But ask Myrthos , if he needs money)

Thanks @HiddenX. I noticed a monthly donation was possible. We should push a bit for that option, if enough of us donate a small sum each month it would help keeping this site active right? I'm not a wealthy man, but a couple of € each month is perfectly doable.

The worst part is that the banner rarely worked, if you navigated to any other page inside gog, and it def didnt work in Galaxy.

Then no official explanation on their part?

It is 'due to a new and business-oriented direction of the program'.

They have a new content creators group, where we could get keys for games (which we never use), free giveaways (that would be an option) and participation in partnerships and various paid campaigns (whatever that means).

Originally Posted by HiddenX
look here!

(But ask Myrthos , if he needs money)

As to needing money. Currently there aren't enough donations to cover the expenses. We are currently 349 Euro short. I am not sure what GOG will still be paying, but it certainly won't be much, otherwise they would have paid already


I corrected the cost of 2018, as I made a calculation error and the new server is on a 3 month discount. So the actual cost is lower than mentioned before in the overview. The cost for 2019 will be even less than this year as the operational cost are somewhat less and we don't have two servers for a few months.