I fear you are wrong here. The bestselling list is about units sold. The "Popular" list on the mainpage is about dollars spent. You can see it when two games enter the catalogue at the same day. Almost ever the more expensive one is in front on the "Popular" list, while the cheaper one is in front on the "Bestselling" list.

Also Spacechem regularly sells for £0.79... that's why it's sold so much. I bought it for a whim at that price in a sale a while back. I wasn't disappointed, but I doubt either party have actually made much money off that. According to gogdb TIS-100 goes for about £2.50 in sales, so a bit more but still cheap.

I would actually say Spacechem is the worst of all their games I've played (which is all of them bar Infinifactory and this new one) and doesn't deserve that best selling spot based on quality.

"I hate how Steam doesn't curate! It's loaded with crappy games!"

"I hate how GOG curates! I can't get X game there!"

The endless repetition of pointing out you can't win on the internet.

The problem with Steam's lack of curation is it's loaded with shovelware. If there were no shovelware, there would be no problem.

This game is the polar opposite of shovelware. It's better than probably 90% of GOG's catalogue, and it's way, way better than crap like Magna Cum Laude or Lula: The Sexy Empire. I cannot fathom why any curation process would filter out this game.

"Strict curation" and "no curation at all" are not the only options, you know?
All extremes are bad. We need something in between.

Who decides what's "strict" though? Why would you assume turning this game down is "extreme"? Seems like a weird way to put this thing.

Are you sure? Because free games do not move at all. Guess they don't count. But if that's the case, then the recent Zachtronics games are more successful than the chart appears since Shenzhen has never been discounted more than 25%. TIS no more than 50% off and are competing against titles that have been heavily discounted.

I can't be 100% sure, but I spent quite some time with monitoring the bestselling and popular list and try to find out how they work. And everything I saw points to the direction that the Popular list ist a short-time list about revenue, while the Bestselling list is a long-time list about units sold. I never thought about the free games though, guess they always stay at the end (which makes sense in my eyes).

But I agree, judging from the list the Zachtronics games are not that unpopular or slow-selling that it would make sense to not sell their new game here.

Different people.

I smell a false dichotomy.

There are basically infinite ways a shop could present a curated storefront while still allowing people to dig deeper if they want to find their shovelware (or good games that just didn't pass the arbitrary curation on a given day...)

This could be done with full transparency too, and with user tags & community managed mixes/lists people could do their own curation when they (inevitably) disagree with GOD. Heck, everyone could pick their own curator (and, indeed, become one themselves).

This is a feature with which GOG could distinguish them from Steam, other than the DRM-free (which relatively few gamers ultimately care about).

I agree with you, but that would be too much work for gog. They can't even fix simple bugs on the site or forum.

I'm all for curating. But it should be done based on the quality of the games, not based on the expected sales. Even from a business point of view it can make sense to include a game, which is good, but does not sell too well, because the lack of certain quality games in a shop may harm the reputation of the shop as a whole.

They make subjective decisions, yes, but that's what curating is. Again you're making it out like they are "extreme" in some way just because they have turned down a game you wanted, but tastes differ. There's no way for curation to ever please everyone 100% of the time, yet for many it's worth it not to drown in shovelware.
The solutions you're listing are exactly what Steam does, so not sure why you think it's a way for GOG to stand out? I'm not even saying Steam's approach is wrong mind you, I'm just saying it's funny how you make people mad either way. Internet screamers really should just be ignored.
First off as a business it's both sites' job to be focused on sales and return on investment. Second off who decides "the quality of the games." That's my whole point, unless they're gonna sell everything under the sun like Valve does now, they're going to make decisions some people disagree with in the curation process. Quality is subjective, especially with indie games.

Well there must be reason people are complaining about shovelware on steam. Maybe they're just complaining for the sake of complaining. Or maybe the curation there doesn't work exactly like I envision it. If it worked, those who don't want to see the uncurated/shovelware just don't opt in to it, and don't ever see it, and thus don't have reason to complain.

I mean, complaining over minor annoyances is practically a world cup sport at this point. As a Steam user though I can tell you it's pretty annoying to search for new RPGs and be faced with 10 pages of random RPG maker and phone port crap before I get to something interesting. You just can't use Steam that way anymore, for better or worse. You have to learn about the game elsewhere or have Steam highlight it for you based on what you own.