This release must have a great story behind it
The original composer contacted nightdive for proper music, nightdive flat out ignored him instead released mono audio.. MONO.. in 2022!
They uprendered background fmvs to 60... without taking into account that this makes them play 4x as fast
They used SMAA on a pixel art game (oh.. boy) (You can get way better results with reshade.. *wink*)
They removed audio languages

Just... what happened?

This is certainly topic worth covering, but let's ensure it's not done in this thread. The focus here is the state of the game and GOG's choice to remove creditable, legit, reviews to protect a product in order to maintain it's appeal to unknown consumers. I'm gonna take a deep dive into the 'enhanced edition' tonight, see what we can find out around this little car crash

Add me as friend, there's something I want to show you.

Sorry, I don't do that anymore on gaming platforms. But I did unlock the private messages for the moment.

Deleting my Blade Runner Remaster review for just stating the truth is the last straw with GOG. Ok, it's just a store, and not a good one.
It happened they are just cash-grabbers. GOG is enabling them and has deleted my 1 star review of Blade Runner - Enhanced Edition.

The deletion of all these legitimate reviews is a very serious matter, GOG needs to rectify this immediately and/or make a statement about it.

Ok. With all due respect, I disagree with you. First, if Nightdive Studios is the partial or full owner of the rights to the work (video game) nothing prevents GOG from selling the original version separately from the ''enhanced'' version to the public. And it is not the first time that GOG would unlink a game from a re-release (videogame pack or new release) of that same game. For example, there's The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall and The Elder Scrolls: Arena. And that's not the only example. Here's another, Alwa's Awakening was part of the release of its sequel Alwa's Legacy and by popular demand from the community separated the versions into two products (or video games).

On the other hand, I find it unfair that new customers have to pay for the ''enhanced'' version to get the classic version. In any case, if GOG is going to include the ''classic'' version in the ''enhanced'' version as a free bonus, then make the ''classic'' version a free version available to new GOG users.

However, what is currently selling is not the ''classic'' version, but rather the ''enhanced edition'' of Blade Runner. Therefore, Nightdive Studios is not losing money as we are talking about a completely different version of the ''original'' version of the game. So whoever wants the ''enhanced edition'' should buy it if that is their wish. But knowing, beforehand, which version you are buying. But not excluding potential owners of the game. Or even worse, by eliminating the original game page and its reviews. That is definitely not done. It's an epic screw-up. :(

While I don't like what they have done, that's not the only reason.

There is the relationship with Nightdive who may have requested the review removals, and the impact on other things if they did not oblige.

There is also the case where Nightdive may indeed have promised in private to fix the issues being complained about, and are in fact working on them right now, and almost completed them, and don't want the release marketing compromised by negatives.

As we all know, transparency is thin on the ground these days, so no real clarity.

We've already seen how rushed things can be at GOG. In this instance rushed to make the Summer Sale maybe.

P.S. I'd gotten the impression, because of the long running bad reviews at Steam, and the back story, that Nightdive would be unlikely to address the issues, but now I have read where that might be wrong, and so now I could be really pissed I did not buy the Enhanced Edition when it was 50% off. EDIT - Without the necessary fixes being concrete though, there is still not enough reason for me to buy yet.

Sorry, but you seem to misunderstand what rights GOG as the selling store has, and what rights the rightholders (!) have.

So, no - GOG can not selling the original version separately - IF the rightholders don't want that.

And yes, there have been cases in the past, where the original versions were still available after a remake/remaster has been released...BUT to keep the original version up for sale, was the rightholders' decision - not GOGs.

I understand. Still, GOG is a video game retail shop.
If the copyright holder refuses to sell the game separately GOG can try to negotiate. In any case, the copyright holder will always win if he sells one version and one version separately. Or convert the original version into a free version. The problem is that to get the classic version you have to buy the ''enhanced edition''. And therein is the catch. :(

And maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. We don't know. But whether they did or not doesn't matter.
Because it's obvious that ND decided that they didn't want the original version to be sold separately.
And that's all that matters in the end.

You wrote in your initial post (quote): "Alwa's Awakening was part of the release of its sequel Alwa's Legacy and by popular demand from the community separated the versions into two products".

Now, I have to admit, I don't know whether that is what actually happened, but I'm willing to believe you, that it happened that way.

But - even in that case, the "popular demand from the community" had to be directed at the devs/publishers (here: Elden Pixels), aka: the rightholders (!) - not at GOG.

Only the rightholders can make such decisions.

So, if you want ND to rethink their decision, contact them.

Yes, but all that means is you are forced to reward some awful work in order to get the genuine article.

There is a beautiful review that GOG can't delete because it's on Steam:
"You are the thieves who stole the work of the ScummVM group" (I'm quoting).

One of my favourite examples is this list of eight consecutive reviews on the "We Are the Dwarves" game page (see image). Note how the reviews are all five stars, all by users with a tiny number of games and reviews, all by users with highly convincing user names, and all posted within a period of five days in April 2019.

I wonder why the developers of the game didn't contact GOG to delete these reviews.