I guess you missed my thread about Hegemony III. Basically gog declined the release of Hegemony series since the games are supposedly "too niche" for them. Eitherway I do hope if people vote for the games we might get them on gog one day.

Yes, its a shame. Would be good to all their games on here as a package (although I already brought the first two from their store).

As I've said before, ain't critizing GOG's decision, but I'm the living proof that if any dumb man (that's me, in this case :P) can understand and "apply" the steep learning curve of Hegemony: Philip of Macedon, anyone can!

Hi, missed it. indeed I was on a business trip that week.

On the other hand having another message couldn't do any wrong.

Fun to see GOG making considerations about games being "too niche" for them. As if GOG hadn't been about niche market from the start. But clearly that attitude explains why GOG remains very poor in some clusters of the market.

I came to the conclusion, a year ago, that gog is ignoring certain genres on purpose. Fact is that it was known since Dezember 2014 (Kickstarter for Hegemony III) that Longbow wanted to release at least Hegemony III here. Eitherway its a big loss.

And I came to the same conclusion. Now the purpose is somewhat mysteriously nebulous... At the same time they seem very eager to add pieces of ... like the (grossly regionaly overpriced) Telltale things they just released

I agree, some dubious releases, and rubbish like hatoful boyfriend and stuff. Am afraid the excuse its too niche is rubbish, there must be other reasons.

Been wondering about this too niche stuff.I mean GOG has been partly about niche since day one i would have thought?. Plenty of adventure games could be arguably more niche than wargames etc....
Red shirts would be another very niche type of game (im sure there are ton others too)...

As much as I could extrapolate their only criteria at the moment is how much revenue a game (especially indie game) will make in their store. They do have a tendency for releasing adventure games though, not that's bad but its starting to limit their catalog a lot, especially with newer games. Big publishers of course are not bound by that.

I wonder if we are going to see Stars Beyond Reach from Arcen Games on release (21st October) since its also a very niche game :)

My bet is that they will. Turn based seems to be popular seller/many games here offer.
get the feeling they think wargames are more niche than niche. Games like Distant Worlds do themselves no favor however - the price of that in particular might turn people off. Having said that, some of the indies sold here think better of themselves than they are (some of the pricing in my eyes is a tad over the top...)

I get about the same feeling. Except that I wonder whether their dismissive approach is based on "prima facie" rejection of wargames or on an actual examination of the games. Hegemony games are not wargames in a purely conventional sense. I can understand they would see Ageod games or the like as "niche of the niches" ( beside there is already a dedicated overpriced retail platform for that : Matrix ) .

But Hegeomy is far from sharing what makes those "wargames" so difficult to approach : it has good graphics, doesn't have a learning curve that starts on the 30th floor, skyrocketing, doesn't need reading a manual half the size of the holy scriptures nor to have spent 4 years in a military academy to understand what's to do. Actually is rather a "boardgame" than a "wargame"...

And even so, there are wargames, even at Slitherine, that are pretty good, follow a more attractive approach, and not so niche - or wouldn't be so niche if the army of the blinded gamers would be to open their eyes - like Battle academy or Conflict of Heroes.

That said, it's shame we don't have on GOG any good classic wargame. They too were part of gaming history, and at a time they even sold pretty well. Remeber Age of the Rifles ? Tanks! ? Fields of Glory 1815 ?

While the Hegemony games are absolutely not my cup of tea i still wonder why GOG rejected them.

They sell Great Battles Collector's Edition which is a wargame and there are also a bunch of WW1/WW2 themed games like the Blitzkrieg games etc.

So i doubt that they rejected the Hegemony games for being wargames.

I doubt it has to do anything with Hegemony being a wargame or we wouldn't have gotten Act of War, World in Confict, and other wargames lately. It has definitely more to do with the personal tastes of gog producers then anything else. Hegemony definitely is a very accessible game series with very easy introduction in to game concepts. Especially if you start with Hegemony Gold. Sad thing though is that the new Hegemony game brought real innovation in to the their genre (let's face it there is no similar game in existence) with city improvements, real time money production/usage in comparison to the old system and off course production site improvements. At the end it would have been epic fighting with Greek hoplites against Etruscan troops or against the Gallic hordes from the north of the Italian peninsula.

But then what ? I sincerely hope it's not just that, them being a genre of their own getting them filtered when the level 1 decision maker can't find in which category to fit them.... (Grin)...
The sad thing for me is that they don't intend, for the time being, to have a drm-free version on H3 on their own website.