Cav's Place

I did say I planned to try running again and, unlike the first time, yesterday I actually managed what I meant to do. That didn’t include looking into using the track, since a store where I could recharge my prepaid phone card is next to the park and my number was set to expire on Saturday otherwise, so I went there again to take care of both things at once, but doing almost half a lap around the lake and finishing by climbing out to the sidewalk on one of those little paths felt comfortable enough this time around that I’m quite sure I could have done a full lap as well, at the same speed.
In fact, the speed was a bit of a problem, since I was apparently still too fast, covering the 1.3 or 1.4 kilometers in about eight minutes, so averaging around 10 km/h when an article I read recently concluded that the best pace would be around 8 km/h. Of course, that same analysis sets an upper limit for maximum benefits at three times per week, up to a total of two and a half hours, by which I can easily assume that once and for a mere eight minutes is well below the lower limit, and possibly that even the plan I now have, of around 30 minutes when I’ll actually start doing this properly, will be rather little. However, it’s still better than nothing, and I may work up to an hour or so later, though that will quite clearly be my upper limit.
Also had a chance to see just how light my new shoes are and how well my feet breathe in them, as I actually looked down a few times on the way to the park, because it felt like I wasn’t wearing any. Or, well, not really like I wasn’t wearing any, but the feeling was definitely highly unusual. Not particularly keen on it while walking normally, and that’s made slightly worse by the fact that, while the left is a good fit, the right one seems a bit large even with these thicker socks, but they definitely do their job right when you’re running, so at the moment they seem to have been a decent choice, especially considering the price when compared to other options.

Otherwise, in spite of my recent posts, I did keep my eyes on GOG.com‘s “Double Insomnia” Promo and continue to do so, at least for a chance at a free game. After all, two of the games included in the promo that I’m interested in are regionally priced, so I’ll never purchase them, but if there’s the slightest chance I may get them for free for simply clicking the “buy now” button, it can’t hurt to try, right? And there are a few others I’m not sufficiently interested in to purchase, but which I wouldn’t mind having around, just in case, so clicking those as well, though otherwise I stay out of it, unlike others who seem to click everything, hoping to get something for free whether they’re actually interested in it or not.
Did purchase two games, however, and those are Banished and Children of the Nile Complete, which cleared what was left on the Paysafecard purchased last April, and which would have therefore started having a monthly fee taken out of it as of next month otherwise, at least as far as I understand the terms. Also, as I do each time it’s on sale, again seriously considered Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, but once again, also as I do each time it’s on sale, decided against it, wary of the fact that I’ll give up on it after the first few missions and never try again due to the fact that you apparently can’t save during a mission.

I guess this would be about it for now, since there’s little else to say, other than perhaps the fact that Sunday evening I did manage to finish that Deceits adventure in The Witcher. Didn’t even start the next one though, and probably won’t this week, since there’s the matter of needing to switch to try another antivirus, likely on Saturday, and then there may be a protest to go to on Sunday. Also may not be, or I may choose not to go, as I’m quite undecided at the moment, but I don’t see myself as doing much of anything until next week either way.

Quite unexpectedly even for me, yesterday I got myself some new shoes. More specifically, they’re the running shoes I had sort of decided on when I went looking last month, though there were a few other possibly even cheaper options that would have been better as actual replacements of the ones I have now, and which have had parts glued back on twice and now also need to be sewn in one place. But the main purpose is to make sure I actually will start running once per week, like I had decided last year, so these will mainly be used for that and possibly on hot summer days, since my feet should breathe very well in them, while the rest of the time I’ll stick to these ones, assuming they won’t fall apart completely.

Since I mentioned running, the first plan for March would be to actually try that again, since the weather forecast is definitely good enough until Wednesday. That didn’t work so well the first time, but now the temperature should suit me better and I also mean to see about using the National Arena‘s track, which will be more comfortable than simply running through a park and obviously also won’t involve climbing to cross any bridges.
I definitely mean to do this at the start of next week, especially since I spent money on things specifically for it, but the original plan called for me to start doing it weekly no later than mid-April and then I changed that as well to say I should average one run per week for the warmer half of the year, even if that’ll mean two or three in some weeks and none in others. As such, this will be merely the second test and I don’t necessarily aim to do it again by the end of the month, though if the weather will be good enough and I won’t get any colds it’d be nice if I will.

Other than that, my trial of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2015 will end on March 7, so if I’m to continue this little project at least until I’ll get a new computer, which definitely won’t happen next month, I’ll need to find something else to pair Comodo Firewall 8 with after that, as that one I’m definitely sticking with. At the moment I don’t really know what that will be, and I’ll of course grow increasingly anxious about it over the course of next week and be in quite a state of panic on the day I’ll actually need to make the change, but the fact that things worked fine so far gives me some reason to hope I won’t have major problems then either.
One issue is that I meant to finish the additional adventures included in The Witcher before this change, so I won’t have to bother with it anymore if something will go so wrong that I’ll need to reinstall Windows, but after initially taking a break between the particularly poor first one and the two relatively decent official ones, I’m now stuck at the fourth, namely Deceits. That one tries to do a fair amount, but it’s quite a buggy mess that I couldn’t seem to be able to finish at all the first time, so I downloaded the latest version, as the one included with the game seems to be an older one, and am currently sort of trying again, though being wary of the bugs makes me not be too keen on it and it’s therefore pretty much impossible that I’ll finish all those I have left within one week. Definitely intend to do so by the end of the month, however.

Another plan for next month is to order some more books, starting with Baptism of Fire. What I’ll add on top of it will depend on the amount of money I’ll have available for this, but at the moment the options would be Blood of Tyrants, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s fear, or the four books published so far in the Mistborn series. I may yet change my mind and end up looking for something else though, especially since the only one I really want to read right now is the first one I mentioned.

And since this post is already a bit longer than I thought it’ll end up being, I’ll finish by saying that I should also try to submit a few more things on MobyGames, after somehow ending up contributing over 50 mobyranks recently. Had added next to nothing since the start of the year, so I guess something changed and I should probably make some use of the current mood before it’ll once again leave me completely… Or before I’ll run into the same old problems once again and need to decide between taking yet another break from doing anything and taking yet another break from making proper submissions to put some time and effort into retaliating by making a mess.

Just days after I wrote that long post dealing with the first year since they suddenly decided to give up on one of their two clear, specific principles and allow regional pricing, GOG.com stooped even lower and decided to start blocking people from purchasing games based on their location. More specifically, two days ago the preorder for Hotline Miami 2 was added to the catalog and people from Australia don’t even see the game page, because the game is banned there, while yesterday the German version of the site went live and at the same time people from Germany were no longer able to purchase the Commandos games, the only explanation given being that selling those games in Germany is a serious crime and they don’t want any trouble. Worse, this explanation was only given after people discovered the issue and complained, as initially they once again attempted to keep it quiet.

The interesting thing is that several other games in the GOG.com catalog are banned in Australia, but they have no problem selling those to everyone, and also that it apparently wasn’t any sort of crime to sell the Commandos games to Germany until yesterday, though they were added to the catalog back in 2009. Also, quite a number of games can only be sold in one or both of these countries in a special censored version, but apparently offering the uncensored version is not, and hasn’t been, any sort of problem either. And, at least according to what quite a few Germans posted on the forums, the second and third Commandos games were never banned in Germany to begin with, only the first having that fate.

Not that I’m trying to give them any ideas, of course, but this makes absolutely no sense unless you see it as yet another rotten decision buried under “good news”, and likely in preparation for something worse. After all, first the “good news” of bringing preorders and day-one launches of bigger games was used to attempt to sweeten the blow of introducing regional pricing for supposedly a small number of titles, then the “good news” of multiple currencies was used to attempt to sweeten the blow of extending regional pricing to a significant part of the catalog, and now the “good news” of localized versions of the site is being used to attempt to sweeten the blow of a few regional restrictions. I guess we can now expect to see a large number of such restrictions hidden under some more “good news” in a few months, possibly along with, or after, blocking gifting regionally-priced titles to users in regions where they cost more than the price they were bought for. And then, of course, more and more are expecting some sort of DRM to rear its ugly head once Galaxy will actually be launched.

Sadly, with ShinyLoot also allowing titles with DRM, FireFlower Games adding VAT to the price for users in the European Union, DotEmu and The Humble Store using regional pricing for all titles, at least the latter also applying regional restrictions, and either way none of them offering payment options I can use, I still have no other options to legally purchase games. But, of course, I don’t have to, and I did quite fine without doing so before GOG’s principles got me off “pirating” games completely…

Yesterday marked one year since GOG.com’s “good news” announcement, which promised day-one launches and preorders for big AAA titles and games from major studios and barely mentioned the price for this, namely introducing regional pricing for said titles, in passing. So, after all this time, what did we get as a result of them giving up on one of their two clear, specific, core values, and in fact on the one which made them stand out the most, since at the moment there are quite a few other on-line stores offering DRM-free games, but as far as I’m aware only one, ShinyLoot, left offering flat prices?

Well, the biggest title added during this time is quite clearly the preorder for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. However, being self-published by GOG.com’s parent company, CD Projekt, that would have obviously been sold on GOG regardless of circumstances.
Just like it happened with The Witcher 2, it may have ended up regionally priced as an exception, while the rest of the catalog was not, but one must remember that, when that happened back then, they fought back as much as they could, initially suggested how users could get around the pricing, only closed off that loophole when court orders gave them no other options, and then still struggled to get it back to flat pricing at the first possible opportunity. In case of The Witcher 3, on the other hand, CD Projekt simply signed a distribution deal with the same company that forced them into that mess right away and went forward with this pricing scheme as if it was the most normal thing there is. In other words, at the time of the mess with The Witcher 2, they still stood for something, proving that they were in this business to change how things work, while now they’re acting like any other business, only holding, or pretending to hold, values which generate enough profit to be worth it strictly in that sense.
And while I’m at CD Projekt, The Witcher Adventure Game, developed by a different company but also published by them, should be removed from the list as well, for the exact same reasons stated above. Some things could be said about the very fact that this game exists, not merely about using regional pricing for it, but that’s not exactly the issue here, so I’ll leave it aside.

Other than that, we did recently get LucasFilm titles, through Disney, and even more recently Warner Bros. and older Paradox games, but the first two groups aren’t regionally priced while the third only has the “Russian discount”, and I’ll talk about that later. The sole exception is the preorder for Pillars of Eternity and its increasingly ludicrously priced premium editions, which is published by Paradox Interactive, yet this was not added because GOG.com finally made a deal with them, but had already been added earlier, because the developers had pledged to make the game available on GOG while asking for funds on Kickstarter and would have therefore needed to be here regardless of circumstances. If anything, since that pledge was made back when GOG still held all of its old values, it can quite clearly be said that the very fact that it uses regional pricing is in itself a violation of that pledge and therefore the fact that GOG allowed this to happen made things worse than they would have been otherwise.
And while I’m on this topic, I must mention Wasteland 2 as well, which was in the exact same situation as Pillars of Eternity. It was funded via Kickstarter long before GOG.com gave up on the flat pricing principle, it was promised to be available on GOG, and it therefore would have had to be on GOG, most likely being expected to adhere to the principles GOG held at the time the funding effort started. After all, if we allow a developer to promise to have a game on GOG at a time when GOG didn’t allow regional pricing but also let them negotiate a deal with them to only keep that promise if they’ll get rid of that principle, what’s stopping some other developer from doing the same when it comes to the DRM-free principle at some later point?

So, to return to the question, it can be said that the more notable titles we did get as a result of accepting regional pricing were those initially announced, namely Age of Wonders 3 and Divinity: Original Sin. However, while good games that many, myself included, would otherwise want to play and even buy, I wouldn’t exactly call them AAA titles, and either way they are self-published by studios which already had their other games on GOG.com, with flat pricing, and in Larian’s case those other games also include the newer Divinity 2: Developer’s Cut and even Divinity: Dragon Commander, which was released only a year and a half ago.

And now that we have the specific names and titles out of the way, let’s look at what’s left by the numbers, starting from the fact that there currently are 108 regionally priced entries in the GOG.com catalog. If we leave Age of Wonders 3 and Divinity: Original Sin in for now but remove all those for The Witcher 3, The Witcher Adventure Game, Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2, we’re left with exactly 100. Then we’re quickly left with 60 after also removing the 40 titles which only have regional discounts, with no region paying more than the standard (US) price, as I have a hard time believing that anyone would refuse to sell a game on GOG if not allowed to make such discounts. And if we also remove Retro City Rampage DX, which was switched to regional pricing when the DX edition replaced the original one, we’re down to 59.
Starting from that number, we must look at the situation generated by introducing support for multiple currencies on August 27. It is an entirely different issue and I’d like to keep it as such, so I won’t say much about the 33 games which were removed because of it and didn’t yet return. However, I must mention that 23 out of the 59 titles we’re left with on the list were switched to regional pricing at that time, because of this support, and two more, which were initially removed then, were added back later, also with regional pricing. As such, since these are obviously titles which could be on GOG, and which actually were on GOG, with flat pricing, the number goes down to 34. For anyone keeping track, that’s less than a third of the actual current number of 108.
Then we can look at ShinyLoot, to see which games are also available there, obviously indicating that they may be sold at a flat price. That allows us to also remove Randal’s Monday, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and possibly also The Book of Unwritten Tales 2, though the last two are not DRM-free there and the last one only has the beta available at the moment. Still, especially since those last two are published by Nordic Games and the games they have there show that their problem isn’t flat pricing in itself, but flat pricing when multiple currencies are offered, I’d include all of them and get the number down to 29, since both of those last two have two entries in the catalog.

Now is the time for cleaning up what’s left a little, removing the Special Edition and upgrade for Dreamfall Chapters, as well as Age of Wonders 3 Deluxe Edition and the DLC for Divinity: Original Sin, to leave only base games and DLC released after the original game. That means I am leaving Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition, Mount & Blade: Warband – Viking Conquest and Surgeon Simulator Anniversary Edition, even though the respective base games have either been removed already or, in the latter case, aren’t regionally priced at all. These are a separate later release, which didn’t replace the original one, and two pieces of DLC, so it can be argued that they may not have been added except on these terms.
That leaves us with 25, and here I’m definitely asking for some help, because I think that at least a few more titles should be removed because they’re either sold at a flat price elsewhere, possibly on the publishers’ or developers’ sites, or have been crowdfunded and pledged to be available on GOG before last February.
Later edit: Completely forgot, but Divinity: Original Sin was also a Kickstarter title pledged to come to GOG before 2014, so what I said above about Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 applies here as well. As such, the 24 games left on the list are:

Age of Wonders 3
Age of Wonders 3: Golden Realms
Blackguards 2
Dreamfall Chapters
The Escapists
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers – 20th Anniversary Edition
Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition
Hand of Fate
Hatoful Boyfriend
Infested Planet
Kromaia
Lumino City
The Marvellous Miss Take
Mount & Blade: Warband – Viking Conquest
Neverending Nightmares
Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty
Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms
Spacecom
Starpoint Gemini 2
Supreme League of Patriots
Surgeon Simulator Anniversary Edition
This War of Mine
TRI: Of Friendship and Madness
Wings!™ Remastered Edition

Saying once again that the list above isn’t final and a few titles may still need to be removed from it if we’re to look strictly for games that may perhaps have only been added on condition of giving up on the regional pricing principle, what do we have?
Well, one thing that’s immediately obvious is that, at least according to the information on GOG.com, we have 11 self-published titles, the ten companies involved being 11 bit studios, Bossa Studios, Daedalic Entertainment, Defiant Development, DrinkBox Studios, Infinitap Games, Red Thread Games, Rocket Bear Games, State of Play Games and Triumph Studios. Now, even with what I said previously about Triumph, do point me to those major names and AAA titles that regional pricing was supposedly introduced for, because even after reading that list several times, I still seem to somehow be missing them.
That leaves us with nine titles which once again can’t fit in that category we were promised, as six are indies, or at least listed as such by GOG, and three more are remakes or enhanced editions, and four others that may be different. Those four are Mount & Blade: Warband – Viking Conquest, Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty, Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and Starpoint Gemini 2. Admittedly, personally I am interested in two of these, or I would have been under different circumstances, but do they actually fit what was promised? I rather doubt it. And even if all of them would, and then even if we also add Age of Wonders 3 and its DLC, in spite of them being self-published and by a company who already has the rest of their catalog on GOG and with flat pricing, we’re still down to six entries, at a maximum.

The question that remains at this point, even before others will perhaps check the list more thoroughly and possibly eliminate even more names from it after finding them flat priced elsewhere or pledged to be on GOG before the changes in policy, is whether the titles mentioned above, whether we’re talking about the six or even the full list of at most 24, were worth giving up on one of the two clear, specific, core values GOG.com had. In my view, they most definitely were not, but I’m rather biased, as I always stated that nothing could be worth that and no title that won’t be both DRM-free and flat priced should ever be on GOG, so what do you think?

Yesterday, nearly a month and a half after dropping it off, I could finally go and pick up the replacement for my new mouse, which had failed after barely a month. Even more annoying, however, is the fact that I could have done so as early as January 12, so after only a week, but they failed to notify me of this and then didn’t reply to the messages I sent during this time asking what was going on.

The messages I’m talking about were an e-mail sent I believe on January 20, though I recall it was around midnight so I’m not entirely certain it wasn’t still 19, then a message using the form on the site on January 22, and then a comment on their Facebook page on January 29. Admittedly, the comment was snarky and didn’t include identifying information, but they could have still asked what I was referring to even there, and the first two messages were very calm and reasonable and explaining exactly what I was asking about. In addition, the service sheet is tied to the account I made on their site, so at any point they could have confirmed who I was and checked my contact information.
After that, I didn’t contact them again until this Tuesday, when I sent another e-mail, this time also to their parent company, merely notifying them that 43 of the “no more than 15” days since I dropped off my mouse already passed, meaning that in 30 more the product will be in service for 10% of the total warranty period and I’ll be entitled to other reparations, the least of which being having it replaced with a new one with a warranty period starting the day I’ll pick it up. I also said that a less reasonable and patient person may have done so already, but I only intend to file a complaint to Consumer Protection if I still won’t have it by then.
The result of that still wasn’t a reply, but a call some 15 minutes later. Obviously, I don’t answer if I’m not expecting a call and don’t know the number, but I did make the connection and looked up the number, finding that it belonged to the service. As such, I plugged in my phone, so it won’t turn off after a few seconds of talking, as it otherwise tends to, and decided to answer if they’ll call again. They didn’t, however.

The next day I was woken up at 10 AM by another call, from a different number. Correctly assuming that it was also related to this issue, I crawled out of bed, somehow managed to plug in my phone without being quite awake yet and answered when it rang again, as it had already stopped the first time before I managed to do that.
The caller was the manager of their complaints department, who said they were contacted about this by their colleagues at the parent company as well and he’d like to inform me that my mouse has been replaced and waiting for me since January 12. Those responsible with contacting customers informed him they attempted to call me multiple times and I didn’t answer, but yes, when people drop off items to be repaired they’re told they’ll be contacted by e-mail and SMS and he can’t understand why that wasn’t done, and also can’t tell me anything about why my messages weren’t replied to. He apologized, said he’ll investigate the matter and to ask for him when I’ll go pick up my mouse. As for the warranty for the new one, it will start the day I’ll pick it up.
So I ate something, checked some things on-line, then was once again there at the outskirts of the city at 1:45 PM. Somewhat amusingly, I went through the door labeled “reception”, which was where I was told I should go, and was sent right back to the “service” area, being told that’s in fact the reception, being used both to drop off and to pick up products. Not sure whether the fact that I pointedly stared at the writing on the door was lost on the person who gave me that information or not.
Once in the proper place, I handed in the service sheet and gave the name of the person I spoke to, saying I was told to ask for him regarding why I wasn’t informed that I can pick up my mouse for over a month. Then I received the new one and was told to sign to confirm picking it up, but also that the warranty will continue from the original date of purchase and won’t even be extended with the period the mouse spent in service unless the certificate clearly specifies this, which it doesn’t. It does, however, specify that the customer benefits from all rights granted by the relevant consumer protection laws, and I’m fairly certain this is specified in the law, but I didn’t know the number, year and article to use them against the guy, so I simply waited until that manager arrived.
When that happened, he shook my hand and once again apologized for the issue, saying there may be errors that cause text messages to get lost, but he still doesn’t know what happened regarding the e-mails and the lack of replies. Also said the warranty starts that day, repeating himself and stressing the words when the first person I talked to expressed his confusion at this, then wrote this on the service sheet and signed and stamped it. Obviously, this was something offered to me to prevent further complaints, and possibly also because I was calm and reasonable about it, because the law only requires it to be done once the total amount of time spent in service by a product exceeds 10% of the warranty period. On the other hand, the law would have required an extension, which must be specified on the service sheet, and the first person wasn’t even willing to offer that.

After the fact, when I read that service sheet more carefully after leaving, I found the cause for the lack of an e-mail notification, assuming that one was sent in the first place: They wrote my e-mail wrong twice. The first time, the 1684 was written as 164, but I noticed that on the sheet when I dropped off the mouse and asked for it to be corrected, which I was told was done in their system. However, the new sheet had the 164 replaced with 168, so any e-mail that may have been sent likely ended up nowhere, or perhaps at someone else in the highly unlikely case that that address exists.
Now it may seem that they have certain excuses for the initial lack of contact when you pair this with a not entirely impossible error on the part of my mobile carrier which may have caused a text message, assuming one was sent at all, to get lost. However, the e-mail mistake is theirs, not mine, so that’s not good enough even if you stop there. In addition, as I have stated previously, they could have taken the correct e-mail address from the account made on the site, which is tied to this particular service sheet, and they most definitely could have replied to my messages and notice that mistake in the process.
Moving past that, they could actually have someone tend the chat every so often, as the site supposedly includes one but I kept checking and always saw it say they were off-line. They could have also sent another SMS if I didn’t give any sign of having received the initial notification after a few days or a week, or if they absolutely insisted on calling, they could have waited until the voice mail kicked in and left a message that way. Or I guess they could have nagged me enough to make me look up the number or perhaps even answer earlier, which may require four or five calls from the same number in a day or at least one per day for a full week, which they most definitely didn’t do.

In the end, I’m content with how it turned out, pretty much having the warranty extended by a month or so above what I’d have normally been entitled to, though I’m of course hoping I won’t need it. Whether I will or not, however, remains to be seen, and if this mouse will fail again then I definitely will have quite a number of scathing comments to post about it on the site of any shop I’ll find that sells it.