Your response above does not address Trilarion's question. You are talking about games planned for release far in the future. He is talking about games planned for release very soon. As he says, do they decide every day in the morning what might be released today? Surely you don't think that's the case. Some planning has to go into a release, and release dates must be agreed upon in advance.

You know as well as I do that GOG releases a lot of games that have already been released elsewhere, often more than 6 months ago, and often DRM free as well. Take Torchlight 2 for example. Do you think GOG did not know they were going to release Torchlight 2 on May 24th until that very same morning?

Release dates are merely commitments, it doesn't mean it will happen. Even people born yesterday know better than to rely upon commitments. Other than waiting until when it actually happens, the psychic hotline is probably the best bet for knowing before.

Though, I did notice Obduction's release date on GOG is in the future, July 26, 2016. In that way it serves double-duty, no need for renaming it.

Announcing only the game release month could be a satisfactory solution, I think. That would prevent eventual deadline delays and would bring some comfort for the users.

...

Okay, seriously dude. You appear to be deliberately misunderstanding or just flat-out refusing to address the specific issue.

Answer me this: Do you think, on May 23rd, GOG did not know (really know, not "think it might happen", not "guesstimate", not "have read somewhere on another website", but know through their own planning and their arrangements with the developer) that they were going to release Torchlight 2 on May 24th?

I'm not misunderstanding anything.

I'm not a GOG employee so I'm not privy to the information they may or may not have known about the release of Torchlight II, nor any NDAs or other legal or word of mouth agreements or negotiations they may have with the publisher of that game. If you have such materials and are not under an NDA or other legal restraints that prevent you from disclosing them publicly however I'd love to see them, and I'm sure others might like to see them as well.

Without any such official sources of information of that sort however, any thoughts or opinions about what they may or may have not known are pure speculative conjecture. Within this industry businesses negotiate with each other and establish legal contracts and other agreements as a standard practice of doing business. Generally such partnership contracts include non-disclosure agreements which may include terms that generally prohibit the disclosure of the private details of the partnership terms and conditions, and any other information that either party involved in the arrangement feels the need to put into the legalese. I've been working in the software development field for about 20 years myself and have had to sign numerous NDAs in that time as well as various other legal agreements that set forth terms and conditions of the arrangement, etc. In almost every case, non-disclosure agreements are always a part of the process, and they generally prohibit the disclosure of the majority of details of the contractual obligations, any material information and other factors behind the deal etc. These agreements are generally mandatory, and once they're agreed upon people generally can't disclose anything that would violate the agreement, but also usually wont discuss the agreement itself except perhaps to state that they are under NDA and cannot talk about it, or to say "no comment" or simply ignore or avoid responding to questions that would require them to violate an NDA to disclose information.

So what you or I "think" about this or any other issue of this nature, is completely irrelevant because we do not know, however it is fairly safe to assume that contractually related details of such business relationships are protected under NDA as per standard practice, and unlikely for anyone from either companies to discuss publicly unless they may do so without violating such an agreement, and they either find value in disclosing the information with little to no risk of causing themselves harm in the process.

Now let's take a hypothetical example of GOG having an arrangement with a publisher in which it does NOT specify any NDA terms that prevent GOG from disclosing information about release dates. In that case, if GOG has such information they themselves may decide to publish it or to not publish it depending on how reliable they believe the information may be, which may in turn be based on the quality of the beta/prerelease builds the partner has given them, or other information. I don't think there will be any golden black or white rules that apply to all contracts/games or none, but that it will be something they look at all of the various factors including legal agreements that are in place, and they will make a judgment call about each individual game title based on the details of that specific title and their own perceptions of whether releasing information that they may be legally ok to release is something they want to release or not.

That - is what I think if you really must know. :)

You seem to be worked up about this issue, but it's really not something worthy of being worked up about. Why put that much energy into it if you find it upsetting. Play Torchlight II and enjoy the game instead, it's a great game. I own it also if you're up for some multiplayer, although I own it on Steam rather than GOG, but I presume MP works through Runics servers so... :)