I haven't found a thread about this, but is it just me or has GOG been releasing less games for a year or so. It happens very often that I see an interesting game or read about an interesting game I look on GOG and can't find it.

Here are some examples:

- Neva
- Keep Driving
- Pacific Drive
- Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
- Animal Well
- Nine Sols
- Sea of Stars
- Cocoon
- Chants of Sennaar
- Look Outside

Is there a reason for this? It's not as if the games should also appear on GOG as soon as they are released on Steam. It's enough for me if the game is released a few months later. But at the moment it's the case that not that many good indie games are released on GOG. Maybe I'm wrong and there are still new great indie games to be found here. But I have the feeling that there are fewer of them now.

The developers/publishers of the mentioned titles simply don't want their games to be sold DRM-free and with the option of offline installers (=true ownership of the downloaded/backed up copy), for the foreseeable future at least?

Would be my guess.

Worth keeping an eye on these threads here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_that_are_unofficially_confirmed_for_release_on_gog_in_the_future_part_3/
&
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/vague_signs_that_a_game_might_be_released_here_not_even_unofficial_confirmations/

Reportedly Chants of Sennaar for instance already has Galaxy-related files hinting at a future GOG release.

I can understand the game being released with DRM for the first few weeks after release to curb piracy. But I can now find every game I mentioned on “illegal” download sites. I think the game developers also know that it can't be avoided that their games will end up on such sites sooner or later, with or without DRM. So why don't they release them on GOG after a while? Thank you for those links.

Gog has been getting alot of games... it just seems like either the ones they are getting is not ones that interest you or you are wanting way newer games.. if its the prior understandable. if its the latter seeing as you have been a member sense 2013 you should know by now that Gog doesn't really often get new release games here that quick .. but in the last year we have had a pretty big increase in Gog getting ''new '' releases here.. And I mention new in quotes because well we have had a decent amount that was either first ever officially ported to pc, a new release or a remastered/remade with also ones that are brand new games in a franchise if not a new ip..

And while to me it seems like the flow of new releases has increased aswell as more noticable games coming to Gog it seems that as a trade off far more delisting's are happening

You give the average game developer - or rather publisher - too much credit. Yes, most of them still believe in the fairy tale of DRM preventing piracy ... even if you throw the pirated versions (mostly Steam versions btw) in fromt of their feet. That's the big problem here. Otherwise we would have countless AAA games on GOG. Management is just too stupid and prefers to pay additional money for additional DRM.

As I said - they probably don't want their games sold on GOG, period.
As for what the reason(s) could be:

Fear of DRM-free/ownership of digital goods (=loss of control on their side, which apparently also is a scary thing)
Laziness/don't want to bother with the additional effort creating and maintaining a GOG-specific build would require
Contempt for the cause (DRM-free, ownership of digital goods) and by association, GOG (as one of the cause's/movement's standard bearers)

This is very often the case in case of smaller devs. Not that there aren't plenty of hardheads of the kind Marko described above, but often it's the bigger devs that stick to DRM, while the smaller ones tend to say that they just want to focus on a single store and not maintain multiple builds, and that store will be Steam since it's the biggest. Or it may be Steam and Itch since on Itch they can just do whatever they want and upload it themselves in whatever form they want.

"The new Ubisoft+ and getting gamers comfortable with not owning their games"

I've messaged a few devs -- some with prior releases on GOG -- and have gotten this answer (or similar) lately: "We plan on a GOG release after 1.0 on Steam." But, in some of those instances the 1.0 Steam release was almost 2 years ago! And in fact one of those devs has even announced their follow-up to that release (on Steam)!

And I still don't understand how a publisher like Curve would pull For the King (and refrain from releasing For the King II on GOG), but keep other titles here? Or why Hinterlands Studio pulled The Long Dark from GOG?

And then there are many of the new Microprose releases that aren't showing up here... (sigh)

Is it because the GOG market is so small? That GOG is difficult to maintain? Or is DRM-free just that unpopular?

I would tend to think DRM-free is unpopular, but when I see indie games leaving GOG, I have to think DRM-free isn't the main consideration.

Nubby's Number Factory, Balatro, Dwarf Fortress, I can think of many recent hits that GOG's been batting 0 on.

GOG market share is just to small for a lot of devs and publisher to care, for example Annapurna (publisher of Cocoon and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes) used to put games on GOG but stopped because of low sales. The devs of Nine Sols had a very bad experience with GOG, but all their games are available DRM-free on their own store.

They are the devs of Devotion? Interesting .. If I remember correctly their game was pulled from here but Steam did the same right ? Yet their next game is on Steam while GOG is the "very bad experience".

Actual data doesn't concur, though this particular year had a bit of a slow start compared to the previous two years (which saw a much higher than 'usual' amount of releases):
2020: distinct games released total: 413; distinct games released before april 12: 101
2021: distinct games released total: 556; distinct games released before april 12: 137
2022: distinct games released total: 602; distinct games released before april 12: 127
2023: distinct games released total: 750; distinct games released before april 12: 215
2024: distinct games released total: 664; distinct games released before april 12: 217
2025: distinct games released total: 130; distinct games released before april 12: 130

including expansions, demos, bundles, etc:
2020: products released total: 952; products released before april 12: 236
2021: products released total: 1290; products released before april 12: 273
2022: products released total: 1390; products released before april 12: 302
2023: products released total: 1590; products released before april 12: 450
2024: products released total: 1572; products released before april 12: 476
2025: products released total: 332; products released before april 12: 332

caveats: this is not counting games which have been removed from sale, includes manual fixups for releasedates which are missing from GOG's API (which could theoretically be wrong), is based on manual determination of what is a distinct game and what is not, and is not counting 9 games where I haven't yet enriched the product data with the missing releasedates, so can't tell which year they're from.

The devs pulled the game themselves from Steam. Here GOG first announced the game and shortly after did a 180 with the infamous statement, that 'many gamers' sent them massages. So yeah, i would call that a bad experience.