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General discussionGOG refusing to host good games(83 posts)(83 posts)
(83 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 30, 2023
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Pax-Christi: People like to think that a free-for-all approach is better by default, but it really isn't. Because for every decent game released on Steam, there are about 200 other subpar games released alongside it.
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clarry: So? Don't buy them. Just ignore them.

A game store with 200 games I don't want for every 2 games I want is better than a game store with 20 games I don't want and none I that want.
You're missing the point. What results from this oversaturation of games is the obscuring of genuinely great games. They get lost in all that white noise, and that means you are more likely to stick with brands you already know and games you have already played. Ironically, more games often means less choices for a lot of people.

That's why it's better to have less games, but better curated ones.
Posted April 30, 2023
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clarry: So? Don't buy them. Just ignore them.

A game store with 200 games I don't want for every 2 games I want is better than a game store with 20 games I don't want and none I that want.
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Pax-Christi: You're missing the point. What results from this oversaturation of games is the obscuring of genuinely great games. They get lost in all that white noise, and that means you are more likely to stick with brands you already know and games you have already played. Ironically, more games often means less choices for a lot of people.

That's why it's better to have less games, but better curated ones.
No, I'm not missing the point. I just completely disagree with it.

Quantity of games is irrelevant as long as the store makes an effort to make it easy for people to find what they like. And when you disagree with the store's "featured" selection, you can still buy all the others and let the community curate for you.

Quantity of games is only a problem with shit stores that give you shit metadata and shit tools for filtering, sorting, etc.

We're already past the point where GOG's catalog is far too big for me to browse through.

EDIT: I'm kinda tired of arguing this point over and over but it seems to be necessary again.. here's a thought experiment for you: GOG adds a genre/category/tag called "curated." Only curated games get a front page spot upon release. If you filter by curated tag, everything for you looks exactly like before; nothing changed. But things change much for the rest of us who may prefer games that don't get the gog curat's seal of approval. Win win.

If we wanted to go from thought experiment to reality.. here it is: https://itch.io/t/161841/how-do-you-get-to-the-front-page

Now if you browse "featured" games on itch.io and see things you consider trash, it's simply because you don't agree with their standards of curation. Exactly the same as the situation on GOG. But on itch.io, I can find other games.. for example, Chilla's Art are among my favorite horror games, yet they are not "featured." No problem, I can still get them!

Now itch.io has other problems, e.g. the fact that it's used as a dumping grounds for amateur doodles and gamejam trash with literally zero profit potential (games so bad nobody would ever buy them). But that's not an inherent consequence of allowing uncurated games. An entry fee would already stop the vast majority of it.
Post edited April 30, 2023 by clarry
Posted April 30, 2023
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Ancient-Red-Dragon: That has already happened.

In fact, the majority of GOG's catalog is already crud.
That of course is your own personal biased determination. It certainly isn't mine.
I certainly don't deny there is some crud, but you are missing the point of what I wrote - measured amounts that they can keep up with.

I think it is totally unrealistic for GOG to open the floodgates.
To do that they would have to give up any oversight at all. That would mean no checks even for DRM.

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Ancient-Red-Dragon: Those who are saying GOG curation should be abolished are 100% right. GOG will be full of crap games with or without curation (just as it currently is with curation).
So you would be happy to have the mess that is currently on Itch.io and Steam, here at GOG?

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Ancient-Red-Dragon: So the only thing that curation actually "accomplishes" is to keep good games off of the GOG store. Therefore there is no sensible reason to keep "curation."
And what evidence do you have that GOG curation accomplishes that, other than hearsay?

No curation might seem okay in theory, but it doesn't stack up in reality, despite all the filters in the world.

P.S. It's a bit like leaving your front door open 24/7, even when you go out and aren't there. You have no control over what happens in your house, and yet you can be held accountable for much of it ... certainly until proved otherwise, which might be damn impossible.
Post edited April 30, 2023 by Timboli
Posted May 01, 2023
Very few "indie games" have proven themselves to be half enjoyable, with good reasons.
Posted May 01, 2023
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SargonAelther: I have always said, and I will continue to say that GOG's curation should be scrapped.
DRM-Free is NOT the standard, so the few DRM-Free stores that do exist, should not act as gate-keepers. Every game deserves to be preserved DRM-Free. What is good or bad is for each player to decide. No one else can be the arbiter of that.
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Timboli: In the end GOG are somewhat responsible for what turns up at their store. Look what happened with Hitman GOTY. I personally think that was rushed and not curated properly. GOG certainly did a backflip after the backlash, and I bet they don't want that to happen again, so they need to curate more carefully, even from AAA and AA game providers.
The reason for Hitman 2016's removal is very different than what's being discussed here and I would prefer not to conflate the two.

I specifically said "Every game deserves to be preserved DRM-Free." That means that while I want subjective curation to be scrapped in terms of some random GOG employee judging which games is "good" and which one is "bad" or "too niche", I do very much want the DRM-Free stance to remain hard and clear.

Hitman 2016 was not booted because it was shovelware asset flip. It was booted because many features needlessly required an online connection at all times in order to work. At the some time, GOG plasters "DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play." on every game page. Hitman 2016 was violating the offline play advertisement. Hitman 2016 is a very good game and I want to see it return to GOG, WHEN they remove the online requirement and bake those online challenges and rewards into the offline client.

On the other hand, we already have some asset flips here, further increasing the inconsistency of GOG's curation. Just stop it, GOG, focus your curation on the presence of DRM and leave all other matters to each individual player. Heck, those asset flips that I mentioned may still be enjoyable for some people and it's not for me, or anyone else, to bar them from DRM-Free preservation.
Posted May 01, 2023
You could play it offline with no problem. Playing online wasn't required at all. You'd just be missing a lot of unlockable things if you played offline. Why missing all of those things would be good enough for GOG is another story. That's why I've been saying I don't think they were aware of just how many of those could only be obtained from playing online.
Posted May 01, 2023
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DoomSooth: You could play it offline with no problem. Playing online wasn't required at all. You'd just be missing a lot of unlockable things if you played offline. Why missing all of those things would be good enough for GOG is another story. That's why I've been saying I don't think they were aware of just how many of those could only be obtained from playing online.
You only missed basically 90% of the game.
You could not unlock new weapons, gadgets, entry points to missions, etc.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think, you also couldn't save?
Which means you have to start at the first mission (Pret-A-Porter, Paris?), each time you want to play (mind you: I might misremember this one).

I agree with Sargon above, I'd love to see it return to GOG - but only after the online requirement crap is completely removed from the game and it's playable 100% offline (with all weapons, gadgets anbd entry points available - I personally don't care that much about the "Daily Challenges, etc).
Post edited May 01, 2023 by BreOl72
Posted May 01, 2023
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Timboli: As I said in my previous post, GOG clearly release games here in measured numbers. In other words, only so many at a time. Presumably that is all they can keep up with. It would then be necessary for them to have some kind of priority, which in many cases could only come from curation.
Keeping up with is a matter of having enough workforce and developing the tools and processes that minimize effort per title. This is easy to scale: one employee "keeping up with" a set of game doesn't prevent another from doing the same with a different set of games. Grats, you have found one "embarrassingly parallel" problem which can be solved just by throwing more "cores" at it.

The more titles you have, the cheaper it becomes to develop effective tools (per title); so the more titles you have, the more efficient you become.

We certainly don't want all the crud turning up here, and the majority of that would be DRM-Free. I don't want GOG to be another Itch.io or be the mess that is Steam. While DRM-Free is not the standard for AAA or AA games, it mostly is for Indie Games, and there are an awful lot of them.
"We." Yeah right. I also don't want one-weekend gamejam trash and amateur doodles of similar quality, but a simple entrance fee for the titles that did not pass curation would trivially curtail all of it. Nobody is going to pay 500 bux to get their made-in-three-hours unity game tutorial game hosted. And if for some reason everyone all of a sudden did, then it's easy enough to solve by increasing the fee. Also I don't see GOG wanting to host freebies in general, so that is already cutting out a lot of the crap.

So while I agree in a theoretical sense that only gamers should be curating for themselves, GOG have to deal with the reality of the real world and running a store and making enough profit etc.
LOL. You do realize that there are stores out there that manage to turn out a profit with a catalogue consisting of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of items (including physical items that require complicated logistics and storage, unlike digital media which is dirt cheap to host)?

And do you think itch.io is a charity, hosting 700k products out of the goodness of their heart without making a profit? Lol no.

Generally speaking, more product = more profit unless you're doing something really stupid or found a really good niche. In the case of a platform for hosting digital media, there's a very easy solution: make the publisher who wants use your platform pay for the privilege. Entirely standard model in the hosting business.

As usual, economics of scale apply: cdns and other hosting providers give you better deals the more data & traffic you have, so cost per title goes down as you get more titles.

In the end GOG are somewhat responsible for what turns up at their store. Look what happened with Hitman GOTY. I personally think that was rushed and not curated properly. GOG certainly did a backflip after the backlash, and I bet they don't want that to happen again, so they need to curate more carefully, even from AAA and AA game providers.

So every potential game for GOG needs to be investigated properly. And of course that takes a lot of time.
If you think GOG curates games "more properly" in general, you are very wrong. Their playtesting, if any, must be very brief and basic (they have released literally and 100% reproducibly unfinishable games).

But that's no problem, because GOG engages in a business-to-business relationship with the game's publisher, which means they can negotiate the terms and offload responsibility to the publisher (i.e.: game must be drm free according to the criteria set by GOG, and if it turns out not to be, then that is a breach of contract and GOG's customers are eligible for full refund & the game may be pulled from the store if the problem is not fixed within reasonable time).

Publishers only stand to waste time and money if they try to sneak in DRM-laden games onto a platform that requires them to be DRM-free. So of course there are going to be a few slip-ups where DRM is accidentally left in or there's some misunderstanding/miscommunication about what exactly is considered acceptable with regard to online features. I suspect both GOG and IO interactive together were testing the waters here only to see so much community backlash as to revert the decision. There's no fucking way GOG didn't know what kind of online functionality Hitman had.
Post edited May 01, 2023 by clarry
Posted May 01, 2023
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BreOl72: I'm not 100% sure, but I think, you also couldn't save?
I'd have to check but I think you might only be able to save between missions.

Would also like to see it return while still being able to unlock all of those things offline, but that might be too much to expect. Providing a save or a patch with everything already unlocked might be acceptable by some but I'd really rather not do that, if I can avoid it. Having to earn those things would be preferable.
Post edited May 01, 2023 by DoomSooth
Posted May 02, 2023
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clarry: Keeping up with is a matter of having enough workforce and developing the tools and processes that minimize effort per title. This is easy to scale: one employee "keeping up with" a set of game doesn't prevent another from doing the same with a different set of games. Grats, you have found one "embarrassingly parallel" problem which can be solved just by throwing more "cores" at it.
You make it sound so simple, when the reality is it is far from that.

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clarry: The more titles you have, the cheaper it becomes to develop effective tools (per title); so the more titles you have, the more efficient you become.
Really? I'll believe that when I ever see it.

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clarry: "We." Yeah right. I also don't want one-weekend gamejam trash and amateur doodles of similar quality, but a simple entrance fee for the titles that did not pass curation would trivially curtail all of it. Nobody is going to pay 500 bux to get their made-in-three-hours unity game tutorial game hosted. And if for some reason everyone all of a sudden did, then it's easy enough to solve by increasing the fee. Also I don't see GOG wanting to host freebies in general, so that is already cutting out a lot of the crap.
Once again you make it sound so simple, when it is far from it.

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clarry: LOL. You do realize that there are stores out there that manage to turn out a profit with a catalogue consisting of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of items (including physical items that require complicated logistics and storage, unlike digital media which is dirt cheap to host)?
You misunderstood what I wrote, and you cannot compare GOG to other game stores. GOG focus on DRM-Free and that adds many complications and considerations. In short they have a limited business model.

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clarry: And do you think itch.io is a charity, hosting 700k products out of the goodness of their heart without making a profit? Lol no.
Dog I love it when folk try to put words in my mouth I never said or insinuate I meant the same.
I never said no such thing about Itch.io nor did I insinuate it.
And Itch.io making a profit or not had nothing to do with what I did actually say.

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clarry: Generally speaking, more product = more profit unless you're doing something really stupid or found a really good niche. In the case of a platform for hosting digital media, there's a very easy solution: make the publisher who wants use your platform pay for the privilege. Entirely standard model in the hosting business.

As usual, economics of scale apply: cdns and other hosting providers give you better deals the more data & traffic you have, so cost per title goes down as you get more titles.
Once again you are oversimplifying things, and I get the feeling you don't really know that much about how businesses work.

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clarry: If you think GOG curates games "more properly" in general, you are very wrong. Their playtesting, if any, must be very brief and basic (they have released literally and 100% reproducibly unfinishable games).
Investigate properly, can be somewhat subjective, and of course they wouldn't play the whole game, just a small portion, they'd also not doubt go by reputable reviews from elsewhere, so it would be a mix of research & play I suspect.

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clarry: But that's no problem, because GOG engages in a business-to-business relationship with the game's publisher, which means they can negotiate the terms and offload responsibility to the publisher (i.e.: game must be drm free according to the criteria set by GOG, and if it turns out not to be, then that is a breach of contract and GOG's customers are eligible for full refund & the game may be pulled from the store if the problem is not fixed within reasonable time).
Once again you are oversimplifying.

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clarry: Publishers only stand to waste time and money if they try to sneak in DRM-laden games onto a platform that requires them to be DRM-free. So of course there are going to be a few slip-ups where DRM is accidentally left in or there's some misunderstanding/miscommunication about what exactly is considered acceptable with regard to online features. I suspect both GOG and IO interactive together were testing the waters here only to see so much community backlash as to revert the decision. There's no fucking way GOG didn't know what kind of online functionality Hitman had.
I agree with the first part, but that last bit you are purely speculating over, based on your sense of things, which is quite different to mine. I would not dare make such a bare faced claim without some kind of factual proof. They could have done as you say, but they could just as easily rushed things without checking properly ... maybe in releasing such a popular game at GOG they got carried away with the excitement. Who knows really, none of us.

GOG from what I have seen for quite a while now are understaffed. That impacts everything, including quality and quantity and service. I also get the impression they have budget constraints and hiring issues.
Posted May 02, 2023
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SargonAelther: The reason for Hitman 2016's removal is very different than what's being discussed here and I would prefer not to conflate the two.
What is being discussed here by most, is curation, and the situation with that game was curation.

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SargonAelther: I specifically said "Every game deserves to be preserved DRM-Free." That means that while I want subjective curation to be scrapped in terms of some random GOG employee judging which games is "good" and which one is "bad" or "too niche", I do very much want the DRM-Free stance to remain hard and clear.
And I said in theory I agreed with you, but in reality real world matters impact.

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SargonAelther: Hitman 2016 was not booted because it was shovelware asset flip. It was booted because many features needlessly required an online connection at all times in order to work. At the some time, GOG plasters "DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play." on every game page. Hitman 2016 was violating the offline play advertisement. Hitman 2016 is a very good game and I want to see it return to GOG, WHEN they remove the online requirement and bake those online challenges and rewards into the offline client.
I likewise would like to see the game return in a proper DRM-Free form for GOG customers, but I have no idea why you brought the specifics up, as they don't change anything I said, just confirm it.

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SargonAelther: On the other hand, we already have some asset flips here, further increasing the inconsistency of GOG's curation. Just stop it, GOG, focus your curation on the presence of DRM and leave all other matters to each individual player. Heck, those asset flips that I mentioned may still be enjoyable for some people and it's not for me, or anyone else, to bar them from DRM-Free preservation.
You've lost me. If a game is DRM-Free wherever you can buy it or obtain it, then it will be preserved. It is not the sole responsibility of GOG to preserve every DRM-Free game.

And I will say again, I for one, and I'm not alone in this, don't want GOG flooded with a games, just because they are DRM-Free. Leave that to Itch.io and others.

Not every game has to come to GOG and be available at GOG.
GOG's criteria should be about more than just DRM-Free.
Posted May 02, 2023
Well, looks like GOG's forum doesn't want to accept my big-ass reply to the previous response that's full of "you're wrong you're wrong but I'm not going to lay down any arguments or facts" followed by a hilarious statement of the "I would not dare make such a bare faced claim without some kind of factual proof" kind.. and now I remember why I (almost) quit posting here altogether.

I'll let them live in their fantasy universe where GOG and DRM-free are such a special snowflake thing that basic economics and business logic don't apply to them.
Post edited May 02, 2023 by clarry
Posted May 02, 2023
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clarry: Well, looks like GOG's forum doesn't want to accept my big-ass reply to the previous response that's full of "you're wrong you're wrong but I'm not going to lay down any arguments or facts" followed by a hilarious statement of the "I would not dare make such a bare faced claim without some kind of factual proof" kind.. and now I remember why I (almost) quit posting here altogether.

I'll let them live in their fantasy universe where GOG and DRM-free are such a special snowflake thing that basic economics and business logic don't apply to them.
You may have had a quotation formatting error. If you still have the original text, try redoing it, or skip the overly-fancy quotations.
Posted May 02, 2023
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EverNightX: Making games is challenging. And anyone who successfully releases one has my respect. However...

Donut Dodo is not exactly a game I'd be crying over not getting.
I have to agree with that assessment. The creator has my respect for making a game and it's important not to judge a book by its cover, but that being said, the cover doesn't exactly get my pulse racing.

Unless it was sold dirt cheap (like a dollar or two), I could see the number of sales for a game like that being rather low.
Post edited May 02, 2023 by Magnitus
Posted May 03, 2023
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clarry: Well, looks like GOG's forum doesn't want to accept my big-ass reply to the previous response that's full of "you're wrong you're wrong but I'm not going to lay down any arguments or facts" followed by a hilarious statement of the "I would not dare make such a bare faced claim without some kind of factual proof" kind.. and now I remember why I (almost) quit posting here altogether.

I'll let them live in their fantasy universe where GOG and DRM-free are such a special snowflake thing that basic economics and business logic don't apply to them.
You mean conflated mega greed, 3rd layer merchant, price gouging ? No, that's not what DRM is about.
DRM is about blocking consumers from OWNING their own PURCHASED software.
Do whatever the hell you fucking want with "freeware" but the stuff I purchase must be 100% MINE.
Not locked behind codes & launchers.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionGOG refusing to host good games(83 posts)(83 posts)
(83 posts)