Hi Everyone,

Occassionally we get an email or comment from our users wanting clarification on what is free on our site and what is not. 

Since I launched the site in 2002, I was aware of the possibility that users could feel cheated by seeing our site name "Download Free Games" but then going to a game page and only finding a free trial.

To avoid this, I always had freeware games (totally free games with no trials or other limitations) available on the site. 

To help people feel that we truly live up to the name of our site,  we increased our freeware total to 101 games last year.  We also added over 200 free online games which also have no trial limitations.  On the shareware (free to try games) pages, we also try to make it clear there is a free trial available and how much time you get for free.

But in an effort to make it easier to understand the types of games we offer at DFG, we launched the following improvements today:

1. We updated the messaging in our header graphic today to make it clear we offer free to try games (shareware) and totally free games (freeware)
2. We have now included icons on our category index pages so you can easily see which games are freeware.
3. We include a link and popup message window on the category index pages helping people understand what freeware is as many aren't familiar with the freeware and shareware terminology.

We are going to continue to try and make our site more understandable and easy to use as soon as we understand where the problems lie and what we can do to fix it.

It is also our desire to list the very best freeware and shareware game downloads on the Internet so you are going to see more of both of those game types this year.

If you have any other suggestions on how we can help people understand what is totally free and what only has a free trial, let us know in the Comments section below.

We value your honest feedback!

Sincerely,

Jim Rosenquist
President

Discussion

Comment by: Charles Sult, June 02, 2009

Why not just say that you recognize that if you were totally truthful about the nature of your site interest would drop off markedly?

Your bogus demo files damaged my hard drive.

Discussion

Comment by: Jim, June 03, 2009

Charles - I had a family emergency and I was at the hospital the last few days and couldn’t get to moderating comments until now - no need to get nasty in your other comments (which I did not approve).  We moderate comments due to the large amount of spam.

We are totally truthful about the nature of our site, hence this post and the changes we made.

You are more than welcome to use most of the other major portals who also offer and use the word “free” but don’t give nearly the amount of 100% free content that we do.

You are also to welcome to use all the other “free” game sites that slip in adware in their games without you knowing it. 

You are also welcome to buy a game at a regular retail store.  But if you buy it, don’t expect to take it back if you have some problem because they won’t take back open software.  On all our Platinum games, we offer a 90 day guarantee, the longest of anyone.

One of our major proivders of games typically uses ads in their download manager to help get back some of the bandwidth costs which is a consequence of offering free downloads.  I personally required them to remove the ads for our site so that none of the games would be seen as adware.

If you still feel I run a dishonest site, you have many other options.

Discussion

Comment by: Jim, June 03, 2009

btw - we don’t have bogus files on the site.  If you had a problem with software conflicting with your computer, we offer plenty of support links on the game pages to help you find a fix.  We only work with game providers who have extensively tested compatibility issues before we even allow the games on our site.

If the game you experienced problems with was freeware, I am sorry about that.  We try to screen freeware as best we can before listing it.  We don’t list anything that has malware or any other negative aspects but we don’t host these files so we don’t have 100% control if a developer decides to change something.

Discussion

Comment by: Mystique, July 22, 2009

Hiya Jim ^-^v

I must admit that I really do enjoy your site (like a WHOLE lot lol), and I’m serious when I mean that I’ve played MOST of the games on here lol; usual game freak I know XP AND I can back you up when you say that your demos AREN’T bogus because of my many uses of your games, so don’t listen to haters and keep up the awesome work because hey u’ve got a life too!

Best wishes, Mystique ^o^v

Discussion

Comment by: JohnG, August 20, 2009

Kudos for being honest about what you offer :)