Darvond: I don't think anyone feels challenged; rather that a large subset of regulars feel this is at best, a confusingly scouted pick that only a very small subset of people would be interested in.

So let's try a logical approach:
There's dating sims. The audience here tends not to skew in favor of them.
Then you add the factor of being old. And not fantasy old or hot old. But just reality old. Video games are a form of escapism. People want to escape being old.

So these in mind, the question asked is: Who is this for? What is the internal direction of the team that decided this was the game that would be right for the audience? The demographics may sweep upwards a bit compared to a normal chart, but I'd have to see proof of this.

These discussions for game approvals could take weeks. At some point, an agreement is reached; but what is the stamp of approval reading?

There are obvious signs of favoritism, (anything made in Poland, no matter what) but after that, there's absolutely no rhyme or reason. I feel that Patrician Havelock Vetinari was right: What most people want in their lives is a resemblance of order; for tomorrow to look mostly alike today.

Unfortunately, there is neither a resemblance of order or even a benevolent dictator, we've had to resort to dowsing rods & divining the stars in the vain hope of attempting to figure out what the auditors are thinking. Even followers of Blind Io have more guidance than this!

Darvond: There are obvious signs of favoritism, (anything made in Poland, no matter what)

Breja: (…)

ReynardFox: (…)

Darvond: I don't think anyone feels challenged

vv221: I love how you’re the ones complaining about a given game being made available, but I would be the one with the negative message, the destructive mindset. Please go on, your despair is the nectar I came for in this thread ;)

rjbuffchix: Agony is still not here (yet) and until recently wasn't suspected to ever come here. Relevant, as that is a game I've wanted here when GOG was busy accepting other "artistic indie games".

rjbuffchix: Agony is still not here (yet) and until recently wasn't suspected to ever come here. Relevant, as that is a game I've wanted here when GOG was busy accepting other "artistic indie games".

Frank_Booth: I think this game looks like fun. I Hope the gameplay will not be too limited.

ReynardFox: I'd say you are absolutely spot on with this assessment.

This is after all a company who fired an employee for a harmless joke because a handful of adult children from Resetera screeched about it on social media.

Magnitus: That must be exactly how it works. GOG must say they have a quota to accept X games and then they just pit the games against one another with the publishers/devs just fighting over themselves to be integrated into the GOG store.

It can't possibly be because the 'artistic indie game' you dislike has a low barrier of acceptance while some other game you want are more of a hassle to get in for various reasons (perhaps deep Steam integration in the code, perhaps dev reluctance to do extra work to integrate with the GOG store overall, perhaps skepticism about the DRM-free model, perhaps disagreements over the revenue sharing distribution, etc, etc).

lostwolfe: this is derailing this quite a lot, but no. his joke wasn't "harmless."

rjbuffchix: However, in this particular instance, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I was pretty sure I read the Agony studio had expressed interest in releasing on GOG and may have even submitted it multiple times. If that's the case, it indicates to me there is no such hassle with this case and the rejection was simply GOG's own prerogative.

Breja: It was in fact possibly the most harmful joke since the work of Ernest Scribbler.

lostwolfe: again. it was more harmful than you think it was.

here's the whole situation, from beginning to end:

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/gog-transphobic-joke/