as much as i want to buy grimoire here, i could see them refusing as cleve seems like a bit of a liability, at least from a business standpoint.

What Dawg is saying is that Cleve is erratic and insane - not that his political views need opposing. Entering into a business arrangement with an insane man can become a liability.

so are big corporations and publishers
don't see why one are approved while others are blocked, lack of subtlety or PR lying? Who knows

yeah but big corporations (as much as i dislike them) are far less likely to jump on gog's forums and go total scorched earth on everyone after someone made fun of their nipples. cleve loves people making fun of his nipples because he loves going scorched earth. as sardonically hilarious as some of his rants seem to be (at least in my opinion) it's just bad business all around.

personally id absolutely buy it if it came here, and frankly ive been looking forward to it myself, but after seeing him torching steam reviewers and pretty much everyone else he crosses paths with, i see why they would consider him a liability.

Maybe insane, but usually not erratic. Big corps are usually "Lawful Evil".

If GOG feels it's not worth the hassle to deal with a "complicated" dev/pub, even if the product is good, it's entirely their decision.

Since when do big corporations usually play by the rules?

I've always thought of Lawful Evil as using the laws to their own benefit. Technicalities for the win!

They usually make the rules, so...

That's for sure but they are breaking the laws more often than not.

I don't understand how this game is too niche for GOG. Wizardry, Wizards and Warriors and similar games are all here. A fan base for this type of game absolutely exists here. The "it's too niche reason" is a pile of bum poo. More than a few GOGies have been waiting for its release here (650 votes the last time I peeked at the wishlist), and while its rejection is annoying enough, the reason for its rejection simply......grinds my gears.

It's rather simple, actually. A curator, who replied (and apparently judged) about Grimoir rejection, was Dr.Cat - a developer of Furcadia game. His game is not on GOG, probably because it's too niche (you know a pixelated isometric MMO about furries is hardly mainstream), so I thnk he just decided that any game that he consider not as good as his, shouldn't be on GOG too.

Essentially, it all comes to what was stated in some comment earlier - as long as there are no officially stated clear defined guidelines for what games are accepted and what are rejected, the curation on GOG is essentially based on curators' taste.

perhaps they think it is niche because they have "Wizardry, Wizards and Warriors and similar games" - and found that they did not sell very well?

It's difficult to know how well any of these games sell on GOG. Grimoire has more community wishlist votes than more than a few games that eventually made it here, and there is a stir about it not getting accepted to this platform, so there is at least some interest, but all that doesn't mean it will sell well. I think the last two games most similar to Grimoire on GOG were Bard's Tale IV and Mary Skelter: Nightmare. I have no clue how well they did here. I doubt though that GOG is never going to put another blobber-type dungeon crawler on their service. Another one will come. Then the question will be: if these games don't sell well here then why did that one make it here? And then the next question will be: why isn't Grimoire here?

I hope another curator takes a look at it.

The way I see it:

-The number of votes in the community wishlist means nothing. It's a mini-game for the community to have fun or, at most, a tool for GOG to negotiate deals when they want to bring a game here, not the other way around. It is not a contractual obligation for GOG, and there is no "threshold" number of votes which assures that a game will be released.

-"Too niche" is just a generic excuse to reject a game. Even though in this case they also gave a second not-so-generic excuse, "a bit too low in production values". Pitching a game to GOG is like trying to sell a novel: you can get rejected if they don't think the game/book will sell well, but nobody will give you more than a polite rejection letter and in no case a detailed list of things that you should fix (that's what editors in the writing world are for. I guess the equivalent in gaming would be Q&A).

-Having similar games in the store doesn't mean anything. A publisher won't buy every single epic fantasy novel that falls in their hands because they already sell similar books. And although GOG is technically "only" a store and not the publisher, the same happens with games, because each game sold on the store implies an investment from GOG in manpower, economic resources, time and future customer support.

TL;DR: GOG will make their own business decisions and won't explain them publicly, like every business.