My understanding is that GOG tries to ensure that non-new games do not have bugs when GOG releases them, as they undergo testing prior to release.

Is that accurate?

I ask, as I am hopeful someday (like many others), that Skyrim will be available here; however, when I looked online about the game itself, many complain about how many bugs there are, which necessitates the downloading and installing of a third party patch.

Admittedly, I find that annoying. If I pay for a video game, i expect it to work, and not have to rely on others to complete the final product.

Just wondering if Skyrim is in fact bugged, if GOG would be able to patch it prior to release.

its unlikely theyll apply a community patch before release (these things are often down to the publishers / contract).

applying the community patches for skyrim is actually very easy (and accesible without the likes of steam workshop) though.

Yes, but AFAIK they only do the bare minimum of testing(they only have so many test PCs and people to test them)...as in making sure the game starts/runs on each OS/etc.And I would like to see it here as well(not for me, I have it already)....as for the bugs, they likely only affect a small subset of players so you should probably be fine without them.

Still, even if you DO need them, it's better imo to have a DRM free GOG copy (even if it has bugs one can patch) than a steam one with DRM & which is locked to an account.
=================================In this case(this dev/pub), most likely, but if the game won't run on GOG's supported OSs the dev/pub has to make a patch for it, and if so that's likely what they would do if need be.Most of the time, yes....on a few occasions an unofficial patch has been added to games AND been a good thing....like the Newdark patch for SS2.

Of course, it's bugged and no matter what Gog could add would fix it as there would be still bugs. Either live with it or leave it.The End.

I thought it's more a case of "they should work as developer intended". Being a Bethesda game the developers always intend that gamers finish making their games for them (reality check - the modding community is still patching up Daggerfall (1996) and Morrowind (2002) so unofficial bug fixes for Skyrim should just about be finished by 2040...) ;-)

All Bethesda games come with the implicit need to have users finish the game, fix the game, or pad the game out. It’s why there is such a large modding scene around the games.
GOG should not try to fix things (unless they want to start with their own website), they should provide the same base copy as everyone else so fixes and mods can be universal.

For what it's worth, the GOG versions of Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion are still buggy,

I have fallen through the floor many times while playing the GOG version of Morrowind, and blindness still increases your accuracy, for example. (This is without mods, as the Morrowind Code Patch, in an option that's enabled by default, makes blindness lower accuracy instead of increasing it.)

(To be clear, they will work on modern systems, but probably only as well as the original release with the last official patch.)

Also, remember that GOG recently released Arabian Nights, a PC game that was made famous by its appearance at Awful Games Done Quick, and would probably not have obtained its notoriety if it weren't so buggy.

What GOG tries to ensure is that the old games they release work as well as they did "back in the day" on new machines. So all Skyrim bugs present in the last available official patch will probably still be there. GOG does sometimes apply 3rd party patches if the game is bad enough without them, but this is rare. If you already own the game on Steam the GOG version probably wouldn't be much different (I imagine).

Doesn't really matter if it is you who installs the bugfix mega-patch or GOG. You are going to do it anyway because it is a Bethesda game that has at least several hundred bugs in it even with the latest official patch.

An example of a game with a pre-applied patch on GOG would be Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. So nothing ground-breaking.

I've never installed an unofficial patch, and never had a problem. Bethesda's "buggy" reputation is highly exaggerated IMO.

Yes. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is a nightmare to unpatch at this level.

Not all bugs are so obvious or game breaking. Just take a look at this:

Link to fixes in just the latest release of the patch.

We are talking about bugged scripts, quests, items, weapons, conversations etc. I consider a bug anything that behaves the way it should not. Not just game breaking bugs.

There are similar patches for Fallout 3 and Skyrim too.

Depends on your criteria I guess. I too would not say that Bethesda games are broken (you can finish them after all) but they definitely are full of bugs, noticeable or otherwise. And that is not an exaggeration.