GOG has curation. They always have. But the fact that this issue is being raised increasingly time and again, means more and more customers are being affected by it.

I like that they have curation. I don't like how picky they are getting with it. It might be that they're pushing they release limitations. Though indie and new games, which are the bulk of their rejections, are a lot easier to release/support than the old games, as it's mostly on the developers.

Thing is, I'm more and more disappointed by their rejections. GOG's business model wasn't about "making money". They would be a drm-store catering to AAA tiles if that were the case. They started as a drm-free store for preservation of classic games as I business model. When noone else thought it could work. It was a gamble. And it worked. As a sustainable business model, but not to "make money". Unfortunaly it seems their not following those same principles towards indie gaming.

And isn't the fact that a game doesn't sell well on steam an opportunity to sell more units here? Steam lacks the visibility that GOG can provide, especially to good indie games that somehow go under the radar in steam.

How many old classics do we have on GOG that didn't sell well back then and then turned into cult gems? So yes, I'm more into releasing quality games regardless of the units sold on steam. That's what your store is for, to help sell those good games.

There is only 365+ days per year,so GoG can only release so much games without making the new release spotlight redundant.

Completely agree. I recently directly contacted half a dozen different developers of games that seem either "GOG-like" or were different or creative enough in some way, asking when they intended to come to GOG. Every single response was "We've already tried and have a DRM free version 'ready to go'. It's GOG that doesn't want us." And some of these include devs like Blackpowder Games (made up of former FEAR & NOLF dev personnel that got a lot of things right when they wrote those games...) No need to swing from one extreme (over-curation) to the other (no quality control whatsoever). It's easy to figure out which games are likely to be "maintenance heavy" simply by flicking through the negative reviews for 10mins. There's a general expectation that old games need GOG-level support / tweaking to run on Win 8/10, but I really can't see why modern stuff like Divinity Original Sin, Torchlight, Don't Starve, Crookz: The Big Heist, plus many more games being rejected "need" secondary support from the distributor when you're far better off posting directly on the developer's forums (Larian, Klei, etc). It's not as if GOG-rejected games sold on Steam all catastrophically fail without lack of Steam level tech support. Nor is it the case where GOG "curated" games work well even with GOG's support (look at negative reviews of Desperado's constantly crashing or NWN2's still unfixed sporadic game-breaking bugs).

And even for old games, I'm pretty sure GOG tech support ends up going to the same developer forums to get answers. Eg, the best support for Thief's / System Shock issues has long been the TTLG forums where the developers who created most of the modern "Tafferpatcher" hacks GOG uses will interact directly. The best support for NWN for me has long come from the Neverwinter Vault. Many old school point & click's run better under ScummVM rather than DOSBox. Doom is also "packaged" by GOG as a DOSBox game even though it runs 1000x better and more stable in every possible way under newer OpenGL source-ports (Doomsday Engine or GZDoom).

So even for "curated" GOG games, you can often find tech support answers (and even entire new engines / renderers) quicker elsewhere rather than wait for an official support response. I don't think it's "support burden" that's rejecting games (further proven by the recent addition of "unfinished games in development"), but rather the sheer arbitrary randomness seems to be what's annoying many GOG customers. I don't see why a "fast-track" tier can't be created where GOG will stock more DRM-free games currently being rejected, for which the developer agrees to support directly in the form of their own support forums or a ticket system (which they're providing anyway for Steam & Humble).

I appreciate lack of infrastructure / personnel may be the cause of not offering a larger catalogue, but then there's no real reason why GOG has to take the entire world's direct tech support burden on their shoulders for literally every single game in their catalogue when GOG tech support themselves will often end up asking the developer the same questions consumers are already asking directly?

Hey, cool! I have just become skeptical of everyone's origin in this forum, as so many like to pretent they are from Easter Islands, or how suddenly many people changed their location to "Russia".

To me, everyone is a liar until proven honest.

Unreal World is a part of Finnish game legacy, it's been around since early 90's. It's honestly very saddening to see a fellow Finn that does not know about the game.

Some people claim to be from the Easter Islands? That's ridiculous!

It really is, nobody lives on land right?
Sea for life.

I'm a Californian, remember? The lawn is still burning, I think my house will go next. Third burned home for me this year.

And even if I was Finnish, I think I've heard/read about the game before, just never downloaded nor installed it. Same goes to many other Finnish indie freeware games.

I bet if I ask ten Finnish people on the street what is Unreal World, they will probably just stare at me dumbfounded. And then stab me.

That's rather accurate, indeed.

*Island :D

And say it together with me: Rapa Nui. Been there (no lie) and didn't hear the term easter not even once ;p
Yup but I'm thankfully far from the poor ol' nation I was born. Nope, I didn't flee to Europe ;D

And a personal note to you: I like you since you care about intel hd graphics. Keep on rockin' my suomi friend pieni rakkaustarina surnu-pekka (sorry bro this and mika hakkinen are all I know about your language ;( uheuehbrrr)

+1

I love GOG but my disappointment in them is bigger each time they reject good games just because they think they won't sell well. As i said few months ago, it's all about money now. To some extent i understand earning money aspect is important but it wasn't like this before and i believe they have some senses left that even though some good games might not sell well at first but may bring them more money later - why not give them a chance?

I used to have a co-worker in the same team at my work who was from Congo (an engineer), he was good in indoors football too. I was kinda half-expecting you were him, but I guess I can't win every time, not even always.

Hello, everyone!

For some reason, my post earlier today didn't send and as I did not save it I didn't have time to write a new one. Now, I'm back with ctrl+c as my helper, so let's go!

First of all - argument about "GoG being DRM because it's require web-browser to download games" is a just abstract argument, we can as well go for "PC is DRM because it's required to play the game". Steam IS DRM, not only because the client is required to download games - even DRM-free ones - but because according to their ToS you're not owning games, you're just buying subscription. And this is one of the biggest problems with Steam. Along with many others...

I understand that leaving curation and going for greenlighting model is a bad idea. Curation might be bad sometimes, and greenlight can be only good sometimes. I've never suggested leaving curation, but there are ways to improve it - for example by giving clear criteria games need to stand for to be accepted. In theory - according to publishing page here - you just need the good, interesting or unique game. But we all know by far it's not true. You need a game that sold in a lot of copies.

The argument about GoG being business is fair. But somehow Humble Store can sell all those DRM-Free games rejected by GoG and at the end of the day, they're still making money. So is it really about "if we want to continue GoG to place everyone like we need to make cash by bringing only milkable games here"? The better argument had a person who said GoG want to make every release special. This, I can agree with or at least understand. But as someone once said, "if you want to do something, you'll find a way". And I agree with it - they could make one day of the month as "niche indie games that only wired people loves". And so on.

About question of my origin country - I'm not, but I've found it one of coolest country names you can use. I'm also going to visit Cuba this year and - hopefully - jump as well to Haiti, British Virgin Islands, and so on! If you're from there HMU and we can meet in a ~half year. :D

About "right store" question - this is my problem. This is why I've made this thread. If GoG will say, clearly, "we won't take those 3 games you like but we're taking other 40" then I'm okey or not okey with that but I can make some decisions. If they're not saying anything then I don't know if I should stay with them, move to Humble Store or just buy everything from developer stores.

I don't like the argument about " the company needs to make cash" because of two things. One - it's very much true, unfortunately. Two - this is very close to "company can act like an asshole because they only care about money". I like CDPR. I like them because they've made GoG or Witcher 3 with LOVE for their users or customers. They could've released another shit game as Ubisoft. I don't want them to become "money-driven" company that care only about digits, but not about users.

It's not completely fair to compare GoG to Humble because Humble has other revenue streams than just it's store (bundles, weeklies and now the monthly). Plus not only that, but many publishers will gladly provide a DRM-Free key to Humble (if available) if they also provide the Steam key because they want traffic to go to where the most eyeballs are for the rest of their products.

Are you willing for GoG to make that sacrifice (steam keys along with DRM-free). Many on here would say no.

I assume you count GOG among those others as they are no different when it comes to that, you don't buy ownership over your game here either.