Believe what you want. I've seen a lot of the developer responses and it seems GoG leaves it rather vague. They quite often use the phrase "too niche". What does "high enough production value" really mean? You may consider that GoG saying exactly their issues; I don't.

I think the real question here...
Should Gog bring this Dungeon Master/Legend of Grimrock-esque game at a $19.99 price point when this game does not have the fanfare either of those games did? Personally, I think its a judgement call. I like the looks of the game and it gets great reviews so its not the typical pile of crap Steam game, but I can certainly see why GoG might not think it belongs in the curated catalog at $20. Only 13% of games on GoG are $19.99 or more and most of them are from established arguably AA publishers.

The bigger problem is that the reasons provided are so arbitrary. Shmups have been rejected because GOG didn't "think there was enough of an audience outside of Japan." As opposed to what? Some generic indie roguelike that nobody in the world has heard of? It's silly.



Edit: And look at what they just launched today. I mean, come on. The bottom of the barrel has officially been scraped clean.

I agree actually with you and with Chacranajxy. It seems reasonable. Let's just hope GOG also thinks along these paths soon.

A good balance between curation and just a free market is probably the best.

A bit like Kickstarter - they don't even hope to find all the pearls, but the ones they find, they feature while giving all others at least a chance.

Basically it would require two classes of games here (how they can be found, how they are featured, how they are advertised, ...). I think one could design it so that it kind of fits and blends well. Of course it also may go wrong.

I don't see the point of giving out personalized rejection letters in the first place if they didn't mean anything. They could have just one e-mail to send to everybody and be done with it. If the price was a concern, it would be in their best intetrest to let the dev know so they can re-submit if they decide to go lower.
I won't argue that!

And today I like to think about the following question: Does it really help (increase profits) for GOG to have more games in the catalogue?

For me maybe not so much, because I already buy quite some games every year and my limiting factor is actually playing time. I have only limited time on GOG.com and I have only limited playing time, so I will only spend more money in total if, they achieve to tell me about games that interest me in the short time I'm here. If they manage to do that I might buy them. But if they are of low quality, I won't buy them anyway (most probably).

Therefore I guess it is better to concentrate on a few, really good games that actually sell a lot instead of collecting many games of low quality which do not result in many sales.

Of course everyone is different. So they need games that also interest others and not me, however they have to be clever and do show these games not to me but to the others.

And there are new customers which never have heard of GOG before. They might get attracted to GOG because of such a small game, although probably Witcher 3 brought more new customers than a lot of other games here combined.

So, what should GOG do:

- Understand their existing customers better with regard to what they want and help them identify games in the catalogue that interest them and that really gives them an enjoyable experience. Surely automatic filters, better reviews, ... could flank that.

- Get as many high quality games as possible. High quality translates to: large sales volumes (number sales times price per item) and happy customers that would do it again. (Example of high quality game: Kings Bounty) Try to improve high quality games further if possible.

- Advertise outside of GOG to attract new customers, maybe offer special discounts for people who never had a GOG account. Let more games be on GOG but take a cut that is higher for the first XXX units sold to compensate for the fixed costs.

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/accept_more_indie_games_but_take_a_higher_cut_for_the_first_xxx_units_to_compensate_for_the_fixed_costs

You basically say that GOG does not act rationally, that they reject good games (that would sell well) and accept bad games (that won't sell well). I guess that if this would be always true, they really would not need to bother to give reasons - the reasons would anyway be wrong.

But what if they actually have a plan and truly believe that the games they reject wouldn't sell? If then they would also tell their reasons in the rejection it would not change that the game would be rejected. This discussion here would have happened regardless.

It would be nice to give better (less arbitrary) reasons when rejecting if only for getting better games next time (maybe), but the real problem is that they may make mistakes. They may just not know what the consumers want. After all nobody does really knwo that, except the consumer itself.

The only way out is accepting more games. But this inevitably also means a large pile of chunk games in the catalogue and additional fixed costs (support, ...). They could compensate by increasing the cut they take for small units but this is not really good for the devs either (takes away even more). The best would be if GOG would automatize as much as possible as well as smartly filter their catalogue and not showing everything to everyone (also during sales), so that they can afford a large pile of chunk games without higher costs and without boring the customers with it.

I think it is a great shame that GoG have turned this game down, really do/did not want to buy via steam which I have done with games in the past only to find them on GoG at a later date.

So this is a positive NO from GoG ?

If so I will have to go elsewhere to buy this then :(

Yeah, I wish there was a DRM-free version on Humble, but it’s also Steam-only. I somehow get the impression that the number of DRM-free releases on Humble has been dwindling lately.

Thank you very much for that link, off to buy me a copy :)

I just wanted to toss a reply to you thanking you for pointing out those two games on Steam which I've now wish listed there. I'd like to buy them here if I could and consider it unfortunate that GOG would classify games like these as niche considering the store's history and at least a still substantial part of their customer base I would think.

Whatever notice they may have gotten elsewhere really isn't important when it would not be difficult to give them a little spotlight here as something new and worthwhile with wonderful historic gameplay roots.

I came here for classics and games like them and I am still here for those more than anything else although I am now leaning towards some newer titles too that I'd rather have DRM free when possible if the Mac version also makes it here too which sadly is not always the case but that's a different topic for a different thread and something I do understand the reasons for I think but naturally it still makes me sad sometimes.

Anyway, good discussion here although I skipped a lot given its length and me just finding it today. I am very glad to learn of both those games which would be right up my alley and at least the first one does seem to distinguish itself with the trinity of classes mechanic like is common in MMOs. Given the time I've spent in those games like EverQuest, that really appeals to me a lot actually.

I don't have a lot of faith in the GOG wish list thing myself aside of the games with the highest votes getting some consideration but those historically have been no-brainers anyway. The real issue was always whether or not it could be obtained, not whether they'd do it if they could. In other words, I doubt they ever needed to hear from us that selling the System Shock games would be a good idea. So how important was that voting? I am thinking not at all really. Maybe I am wrong but I don't put a lot of stock in that especially when they so easily seem to miss the boat on titles like these. I mean, if they are selling the old Might & Magic games, Gold Box games, etc. why wouldn't they sell these? I also don't get that.

Yeah, this crossed my mind too. Some weeks ago I was looking for a DRM-free copy of Hero Siege and read somewhere on their steam page that they had been rejected by GOG as well. Sad.

The dev has stated elsewhere that he might do a DRM-free version for Humble Store once updates won't be as frequent. It might be a good idea to drop a line about it in the website. In fact, I'm personally going to stop asking Indie devs for GOG releases and start asking for DRM-free releases in general. Since getting into GOG is so far from being guaranteed, even if the developer would be interested, it's just better to make it clear that the important issue is having a DRM-free option, not the store itself.

I also have the impression there has been less DRM-free games in Humble Store lately. So which store is the best alternative to GOG? Desura?

itch.io, and FireFlower Games seem like good (but smaller) possibilities. ShinyLoot seems good, GamersGate seems okay; does GMG do DRM-free?

As far as I can tell, Itch.io is on the rise, and I've personally begun asking devs to consider it, along with GOG. Itch.io provides a whole bunch of tools for devs that most other storefronts don't (or at least don't seem to) like the ability to make your own bundle at will, and it takes a smaller cut. Plus you can include a Steam key with your game, if you wanted to.

As far as I know Green Man Gaming is purely a key reseller, but I could be wrong.

Did ShinyLoot ever improve their download speed? I remember a year or so ago that it took well over twenty minutes to download a game that was only around two hundred megabytes, on Steam or GOG it would've taken about a minute.