It's no secret that some games on GOG have (or have had) a problem with being outdated compared to their Steam versions. However, I've now seen two recent examples of games not being updated even after GOG has been sent a new version.

Example A: Wuppo

Wuppo's developers sent GOG an update early-mid December, and by late January it still hadn't been released. The devs didn't even seem to know about this until they saw it on the game's GOG forum, calling it "a big unhappy surprise".

Source: https://www.gog.com/forum/wuppo/updates/post6

Example B: Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight's GOG version contains a nasty bug that can prevent players from receiving important rewards from the first two arena trials. This is already fixed in the Steam version, which has been 1.0.0.6 since release day compared to GOG's 1.0.0.5. A forum poster reached out to the developers, who responded with the following message: Source: https://www.gog.com/forum/hollow_knight/bug_in_colosseum_of_fools/post6

I have to wonder, how often does this happen? Are there other outdated games on GOG where the latest version has already been sent by the developers, who then assume GOG has properly distributed it? It's bad enough that we have to worry about missing updates because of developer neglect, but it's very concerning to have multiple instances where GOG is to blame.

My question for GOG staff: What's going on? What's causing these updates to not get properly distributed? It's starting to look like there's a problem with how updates are being handled, and I really hope whatever it is gets fixed as soon as possible.

This is a well-known issue that's happened with several other games as well. The basic difference is that with Steam, there's no middle man involved in patching and updating.

With Steam, the developer fixes stuff, creates a new build, submits the new build to the Steam servers and all users have their game patched the next time they boot up Steam.

With GOG, the developer creates a patch executable and submits it to GOG who then have their own team do an internal quality control session and if that process passes, the patched game and external patch are made available to the user. This is a slower process, so it's fairly common for GOG to be lagging behind Steam in the updates department.

Especially early on, when daily updates are common, it's not unusual for developers to not even bother submitting a patch to GOG since a newer one will be available before the first one made it through GOG's QA and roll out one big GOG-update once everything's stabilized a bit. Occasionally this is a good thing, since early on developers sometimes use the Steam base as Guinea pigs while working out bugs.

Over time, the GOG versions usually catch up.

I'm aware of why GOG is often a little slow with updates, and it's understandable. That's not what I'm talking about here. In this case, we have a game missing an important bug fix for a week despite the update being sent to GOG, and another where over a month passed without the sent update being distributed. Plenty of games on here get updated within the same day as Steam, or with a 2-3 day delay at most. A week or a month is not acceptable, and shouldn't be happening.

Had this with Dropsy, had to tell the dev on Twitter.

version we had had a bug that prevented progress at a certain point, quite gamebreaking.

The Linux version of Dust was submitted to GOG about 6 months ago now, still no sign of it (there was some "red tape" holding its release up, no idea what exactly or why it's taking so long to sort out though).

Still waiting for the level editor for Turok on GOG, Steam version has it since December 22nd. Tried to contact Night Dive through their website and Steam, no reply. GOG support offered this vague statement when I inquired about it (around February 10th):

"Unfortunately we don't have an ETA for the level editor to Turok in GOG release - there are some technical issues and we are still working with the publisher on fixing them. It will be released as soon as possible.
I apologise for the inconvenience."

I asked about games left outdated in the Reddit Q&A.
I hope they'll give us an answer and address the issue..

Personally I gotta agree with that, unfortunately. Others don't mind, though.

I am really sad about it but nearly half of my library different than Steam version . Many of games even content compelete ones , still old on GOG . There won't be a lots of people like me . Nearly buying all games from Steam too for checking . And genrally sending a lots of tickets to the developers and GOG about updates and generally many of them ignored .

Hollow Knight has been updated. I will say, in GOG's defense, that the update may not have been as important as we thought. I don't know if it prevents the arena bug on new save files, but redoing the first trial on my existing one still didn't give me the notch. Having it take a week (depending on when they were sent the update) is still not good, but it may not have been the super important bug fix I thought it was.

EDIT: Of course, if the update does work for new save files, then it is a super important bug fix. I've got a 20+ hour save file right now that I can't get 100% on because I did the first trial on 1.0.0.5. I can only hope that a future patch fixes this, but it would have been really nice to have 1.0.0.6 from the start and not have this problem.

If the price to pay for owning a game DRM free is getting updates later, or in some rare, extreme cases, never at all, i would gladly pay it. Not having a client-hound to go through, connections and stuff like that, is worth almost any sacrifice.

Besides, some updates break things and make games more unstable, instead of fixing/repairing things, or creating new issues. Or even worse, like those updates in Steam that an increasing number of games get lately, which cause removal of content...

A coin has two sides, maybe three. We got to inspect them all and thoroughly.

That's not actually a bad advice.

The only time I have encountered a bug that prevented finishing a GOG game, was when I played Broken Sword 5 that was just recently launched.

Yes, there was an update that fixed it, and AFAIK it wasn't delayed on GOG more than it was elsewhere. But if you want to play games that are at least mostly patched, then waiting for a while is always a good idea.

GOG has had inner management and development problems for years. Every time they try to fix it in the same way and every time it fails the same way. They'll never change. :P

Yeah, we still don't the Turok 1 update that adds a level editor. That was weeks ago.