There may be cases where that may be overestimating a dev's skillset, especially when using engines and editors made to make everything as easy as possible (at the expense of any optimization and what not)...

In the case of someone who wrote their game, yeah it is. In the case of someone who used RPG maker, it's a little more believable.

Are those games made with RPG maker and other drag & drop editors as a majority the ones who don't keep parity with Steam? I'm legit asking because I don't hold much interest in those titles. But whenever I think about long-term abandonment with versioning I think of games like Dex and Seven Enhanced Edition. Dex is Unity and Seven is Unreal 4... not what I'd call comparatively easier to work with than an API.

Furthermore, OK let's assume for a second that the skillset of these creators is so low they can't work with GOG's API... then why did they even release on GOG in the first place? If you're going to release a game on a platform to make money, then at the very the least you should be expected to keep your game updated even if it takes a bit longer to work it all out. And I'm sure GOG staff would eventually help you out if you didn't understand something. Still a cop-out.

While developers/publishers certainly deserve some blame, the biggest offender is gog itself. It is this way because gog CHOSE it to be this way. No developer/publisher, NONE, can sell their game here unless gog agrees to. And if in that agreement, better known as a contract, which is a legally binding instrument, there is not language that says "If your games are sold here, you must support them as you do any other retail outlet" or something similar, it's because gog has CHOSEN to not include that language.

Does that mean some may decide not to sell here? Sure. So gog (or any retailer) is left with the CHOICE, do I sell their products here even though they may not support it later or do I just not offer them here.

And, to beat that poor dead horse some more, in the long run not having some games here is better than having them without committed support. If a customer comes here for a game, sees it's not offered, they may come back. How many will come back if they buy it here, only to discover Steam owners got all the updates two years ago and they still don't?

And for fun, just ask yourself this: Do you thing Steam would put up with it if were reversed? Or, do you think any competent business organization would put up with it?

I'm not questioning gog's competence (okay, sometimes I do), but I do often wonder whether they really care about their long term viability.

Then, with that language in a contract, if customers discover Steam owners have several updates/add-ons etc; and gog owners don't, gog can refund their customers, and get refunded from the publishers, through legal means if necessary.

The bottom line is that this is an issue because gog allows it to be an issue. Period.

This should probably be GOG's #1 concern. Maybe GOG really should be giving the boot to devs who don't update. Maybe hire a some minimum wage employees to consistently (without being spammy, if possible :P) contact devs and request the patches. shrug

Was actually referring to Unity when I said that.

And they release on GOG because they can, and know that GOG's so desperate to just have games here that they won't do anything about it.
Why would they bother when there are users who do it for free... And also users who rise to defend their inaction over the matter, saying that having more games here trumps all else.

Of course, I'm not saying every game benefited from this, and there were certainly games that were rushed out to an unreasonable deadline, but most of them were able to pull of something that was playable, beatable, polished, all the way up to the PS3 era when it became more profitable to release now and patch later. Now a lot of games are released barely finished, with the promise of completing it later.
Keep in mind, this continued all the way to the PS2 and Gamecube. Many of those games I dare say still hold up. Not to mention SNES and Genesis games, as well as many NES games are re-releasing on GoG these days for good reason. They're still good enough to sell, and not all of the games back in the 90s were so simple. There were certainly more 2D platformers than anyone would ever want, but also RPGs, simulations, Bullfrog had some gems on the SNES and Genesis with complex AI.

Perhaps you should keep in mind that you aren't even comparing like things. You are comparing games that targeted a specific console hardware config vs PC games. It's not the same thing.

The game might run perfect on the developer's machine, but that doesn't mean it will run perfect on your wacky ass system. With a PS2/GameCube you could test on the exact same machine every user had under the exact same run conditions. You can't do that for PC.

What makes you think they haven't already tried to address this issue, or that they have much pulling power to do so?

GOG likely have to tolerate such crap to survive.

Those who provide decent games to GOG would not care in reality to do anything more than they can be bothered with, conscience aside. None of them are reliant on sales at GOG .... just a bit more pocket money profit for them, on top of the huge major profit made at Steam etc.

And at the end of the day it is about cost versus profit.

While many providers embrace GOG and DRM-Free, it would be to varying degrees ... and of course many don't at all. I suspect that much truly good stuff that comes to GOG is often borderline ... just made it here. So for many or some going beyond that for updates is like a bridge too far.

i.e. We'll provide to GOG, but not if we have to put much effort into it.

Heh, what was I saying a few posts above...

I'm not talking about how well games run though. My point is that games were actually FINISHED before release then. Consider No Man's Sky, a game that was released so bare that it dominated gaming news for awhile, and finally added substantial content to it, what, a year later? Not to mention many games today are rushed out with very little content, and a "roadmap" promising more over time that may or may not be delivered after they've milked that release date revenue. That's not something that would have happened on the PS2 or Gamecube because they didn't have the option of releasing and patching, they had to create enough content for as complete an experience as possible, THEN release, and what resulted was some damn good games that were that good on release day.

Agree. People tend to see the past throught pink sunglasses.
Most games back then had a playtime of only a few hours (or had continuous playing without an ending).

Even adventure games were not THAT long and consisted mostly in the player running around trying things. But once you know what to do ... I am no speedrun freak, but I can complete DOTT in 40 minutes, Indy4 in an hour and there is an achievement to finish MI2 remaster in under two hours.

And about polished games or unbuggy releases ... who remembers Lego Star Wars 2 TOS which could not even be installed?
The installer required a certain CD name, but the CD was renamed for the release. That were a lot of returns/refunds in several toy and game stores. Sure, experienced users would download a fixed installer from the LEC page, but most parents with disappointed children were just angry - and rightfully so.

Doe games have problems at release these days? Most don't really have noteable problems. When they do of course and it's a known company or franchise, then the outcry is massive. Apart from some performance problems with specific hardware and mostly in combination with games playing in a big open world, most games really don't have big problems at all.

Not true, there are a wide range of play times today (which I would argue is a poor metric for a game's quality), and back then, there were a wide range of play times. Right off the top of my head I can recall at least one PS1 game with roughly 140 hours of content. I just finished FF7 again which even without going for the post-game content ran between 30 and 40 hours. Ape Escape is solid. Smackdown Here Comes The Pain on PS2, haven't actually measured how long it takes to beat but it's up there, not even counting the alternate story content you can do on repeat playthroughs.

But again, we're not talking about play times here. Consider also Cult of the Lamb, a modern game, simple, short, but rushed to release, and as a result, it was released on GoG and Steam with a game-breaking bug that prevented you from actually completing the game. They patched the Steam version quickly, but for a long time, GoG was stuck with the broken version until they could be arsed. This is a game that could have been made for Gamecube or PS2, easily, and yet was rushed out for release to its detriment, until we finally got the patches that allowed us to finish the damn thing.

And I haven't even gotten into games being carved up with DLC and microtransactions. I could give examples for MONTHS on this one.

A 30-40 hour RPG, how quaint. Look, the average game today has more content than ever before. If for some reason you can't see that, fine, whatever.