We all know GOG do game curation, it's one of their claims they promote.

A little bit of that is mentioned here - https://www.gog.com/about_gog

I do wonder what's involved though?
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As I imagine every game goes through it before turning up as released at GOG.

I wonder how long it takes per game, and how many GOG employees are involved?

Do they have much of a backlog?

Do some games jump the queue?

GOG state the following. I imagine all that attention to detail takes a fair old whack of time. GOG would also have employees working on other things - Updates, Support, Making Deals with providers, Research, etc, etc.

The following is a list of what I imagine happens to some degree. It may not happen in exactly the order presented.

Someone(s) at GOG make and add to a list of potential games.
Providers also approach them, and their game may get added to the list. Perhaps if the game is good enough it jumps much of the queue.

I imagine there is a loose priority order.
So they check the next on the list.
They approach the owner and attempt to make a deal.
If a deal is reached, they then start the ball rolling.
Maybe as part of the deal, the owner provides the game in a certain state.
GOG may or may not have to work on it as well.

GOG test the game, and then make a decision on whether to accept it or not.
If accepted, they then do the installer elements - Galaxy and Offline.
They then start developing the Store page, storage assignment, download links etc.
The store page requires a game Summary and Screenshots and usually a video or three.
There may be required linking to other games and or DLCs.
Pricing is determined for all the different regions.
Then you have arrangements for Library entries for purchasers, including Galaxy and Offline Installer links.

While I imagine they automate some of that, it still seems like a fair amount of work.

How many games do they work on at one time?
How many a day on average?

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Now let's address the thorny issue of refused games.

First off, was the game actually refused, or were they unable to make a deal, come to terms?

Every game would have a priority, and maybe that is part of the deal?

Maybe an agreement isn't reached, because the provider feels their place in the queue wouldn't be suitable enough?

Maybe the provider, annoyed at GOG, but sticking to anti-disclosure in regard to the agreement, just tells some that GOG refused their game. When really it was them refusing to provide the game to GOG under GOG's terms and timeline?

Maybe a game is refused because GOG have a priority or plan, that the game cannot fit into any time soon?

I doubt GOG refuse games without some good reason. You or I may not agree with their reasoning, but they are the ones in charge and have the right to do things their way.

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I can only imagine how hard it would be to curate a game you don't personally like or is in a genre you don't care for.

Do they maybe employ those they see as an expert in that genre, to curate that type of game.

How much autonomy do GOG give their employees?

Are GOG curators picky and choosy at times, based on their own preferences?

I'd bet that day-1 releases from larger publishers get on the store with zero curation. In fact I'd expect most day-1 releases to jump the queue.

I imagine you are right in many cases.

To be fair to GOG though, that type of game probably needs less curation & preparation etc anyway.

And being a day-1 release they kind of have an out if the game ain't perfect.

Discussing the curation process always reminds me of how people threw a fit over GOG refusing Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls and then they accepted it after that and now its rating is 2,8...

I do think they should curate as they see fit, but I do also think, it is ok for them to change their decision if they see some real purchase interest on the forums or so, without anyone pretending that renders the entire curation process invalid.

Totally agree.

Because it costs money to make the contracts and in a long run also to support them and keep them updated for modrrn OS. If you just sell a few units, it might cost more to bring the game here than to not sell it at all.

Ok. But that could be said about lots of games here. The oldest ones in particular. Many of which I don´t think are sold much. Games that are less than 10 years old, for example, shouldn´t have a costly maintenance in the short and middle terms.

I don´t know how those contracts work. I think I once read in the forums that GOG gets a 30% of the total price of every game sold. Which is nice. And even if a contract´s price is as high as to negate benefits to the store regarding one particular game, having a broader variety and quantity of games, should be worth the "risk".

GOG deliberately never discloses anything about how they 'curate' games.

That's probably because if they did, then they'd get rightly criticized en masse for rejecting good games for no good or legitimate reason, and they want to avoid that.

And if they were to be open & transparent about how, precisely, they 'curate,' then that would also publicly expose, and therefore open to criticism, exactly what their censorship policies are, and why they choose to censor some games by way of refusing to give them a platform here (i.e. Hatred, Agony Unrated, Subverse, etc.)

Whereas if they say nothing about how they 'curate' (as they always do, or should I say, always don't?) then their censorship policies remain obscure and obfuscated behind the PR-friendly mind-directing term "curation."

In other words, most customers don't bother to call out GOG for banning games for censorship reasons, by way of how they divert attention away from the act of censorship by re-framing the idea with the word 'curation.'

After the Devotion debacle, that will just reinforce GOG's decision makers' resolve never to discuss how they 'curate,' because that incident showed them a concrete example of how their customer base (rightly) reacts with anger when an act of censorship on GOG's part becomes flagrantly obvious.

Really, they should just renounce curation and let all games onto the platform as long as they don't have any illegal content in them. Doing that would make them much more profitable than they are now.

The problem there is that with no curation at all, you end up with Steam, which has become an absolute garbage dump where a lot of actually good games can and do get lost in the pile.

There needs to be a comfortable middle ground, but that would mean GOG would have to actually hire some competent people to do the job who can put aside their biases and do some actual research into genres they aren't personally interested in, as well as hold some minimum level of standards, like not allowing asset flips and the like...

Freshly-harvested GOGers' tears.

A few months ago we had in another thread a discussion about an interview with a GOG employee that talked about the curation process. It was surprisingly insightful. You can listen to the original or check my transcription.

They talked a bit about their curation process in one or two of the "about GOG" videos... they were linked somewhere here on the forums, but I can't find them right now.

My guess is that a game will have it easier coming here if:

- it's a big publisher
- from someone who already has a lot of games here
- it has been successful before elsewhere
- it's from Polish company
- it's part of a series already here (for the completionists, even if the game isn't that good)

It'll be harder if:
- it's a new IP
- from an upstart dev with no previous business experience
- or from someone with a bad record in the past
- it was unsuccessful on other platforms
- it has technical issues

In the end there are offers they probably won't turn down not to offend business partners, and others where subjective impressions leaned towards "no". And risk assessment - a game that is really good, but crashes on a lot of people's machines and becomes a nightmare for support might not be worth it.

Sometimes the dev/pub and GOG might simply not come to an agreement - regarding price or patch support.
Sometimes GOG probably isn't too sure, and will wait how the reactions on Steam will be. Or they deem the game too unstable and wait if patches will fix it, letting the customers of other platforms do the beta-testing.

In case of day-1-releases (that was mentioned in the video) the game has to have a certain percentage of completion before they consider looking at it, and then they try to asses the quality and potential from there - which obviously can go wrong in both directions, but such is life.

It'd be interesting if the games they rejected and then listed because the community wanted them so badly actually sold well enough.
And many of the (in)famously rejected games like Hatred turned out to be real turds, if you talk to people who actually played them. So GOG often has a point with their rejections. Old games are a part of GOG, it's where it all started. They are an important part of the image of GOG, even if it's not "Good Old Games" any more. That's why GOG spends a considerable amount of time and effort to track down license holders and getting the things to run (I hope they can make Drakensang: River of Time work soon...), even if they don't sell that many units of those oldies.
And - as you wrote - once they are up and working the maintainance costs are assessable (unless the next Windows update breaks things again).
Thanks for the links, that was what I was looking for. There was at least one another video (NoClip?) where several GOG employees explained the process.

You say that, but on what grounds do you base it? Once again, to my mind, you are making an assumption on limited factors.

Surely you know that deals with providers have non disclosure agreements. That means both parties are free to say things that aren't a disclosure, even to say things to coerce, put pressure etc. And its not just about keeping knowledge from the buyer, it is also about deals with other providers or potential ones. Hell No!
I don't want this being another cesspit like Steam and Itch.io. Both have many great games, but it can be real hard to wade through the crap to find them, especially at Itch.io.

I like it that there is some kind of quality control, even if flawed at times ... or seemingly so.

I kind of covered that in my first post.

Could be any one or more of many factors.

How good a game is, is subjective too. And at the end of the day, it would likely be about projected sales.

If GOG are busy, and I suspect they are, very busy in fact, and probably understaffed, then they may need to concentrate on higher selling games while also making sure they regularly release golden oldies (one of the attractions to come here).

If they have a huge backlog of games waiting to be released here, then they would need a very good reason for some game to jump the queue.

Curation all takes time and costs. And like PaterAlf said, they would look at effort & cost versus return. toxicTom also makes many great points.

It would only be natural for GOG to have multifaceted plan of procedure.

Certain old games here, may not sell well or make much profit, but they can be part of a promotional image that GOG foster, and so work collectively.