Smells like defamation lawsuit.
Lost my interest in the game (if true).

Gog is nice. I wouldn't even look for the email.

Sometimes the right thing to do is to pick up the phone and give them a call and if there are things that need smoothing out, it would be even better to meet up in real life over a glass of non-alcoholic beer.

I don't know whats worse, a developer who lies about being rejected by GOG or the fact that GOG's curation is so haphazard that almost everyone took the developer's word that they were rejected.

- Watches folk condemn GOG for not responding to e-mails -

GOG: 'We can't find the e-mails.'

- Watches folks condemn the Subverse devs for never sending the e-mails -

Yup, nothing was learned here. This could easily turn out to be a simple mistake from either end. Maybe the Subverse devs failed to go through GOG's game submission page, or GOG actually lost the e-mail. It's not healthy to immediately assume malicious intent.

I dunno, but we don't know(afaik) that they lied. They might've just sent the emails to the wrong address/etc and mistook no reply as gog rejecting them. As for how they handled such a mistake: They probably did it to generate PR....this, to me, is neither bad nor good. It's simply another marketing tactic(which some might also see as shady, but that depends on the context of how/why such is used, imo).
+1

So if/when GOG finds the emails and/or if the devs send new emails to the right people, then is GOG going to finally stop dodging the issue of why they don't allow AO games to be sold on GOG, and instead directly address the issue?

Or alternatively, is GOG going to provide a fudge response that avoids addressing the issue of GOG's ban on AO games?

On a similar note, PC Gamer should directly ask GOG this question: "is GOG's policy to ban AO games from its platform? If so, why?"

This. I find it funny that GOG allows CDPR to sell it's Witcher Series(full of sex and uncensored) here, but not other company's AO/mature products(with some classic game exceptions).

Yeah, I know CDPR is part of the same company/etc, but if they're doing it for puritanical reasons then they should be more unbiased(correct term?).

or HuniePop or leisure suit larry games or other AO games gOg actually sells.

Lol, this might be the only rejection I would agree with, considering is Ascendant is absolutely awful.

As others have said: Huniepop is censored in the gog version, and so are many of the VNs.

As for Larry: It's a classic and I guess the sales draw from having such outweighed their usualy business model/op. procedure.

That statement is misinformation. Those games aren't AO. Larry aren't AO at all. HuniePop has an AO version, but GOG doesn't sell it. Rather, GOG sells a censored version of HuniePop.

You claim that GOG sells AO games, then provide a link to a store page where a GOG game has been rated AO by the ESRB? There are none, as far as I know.

But there are plenty of AO VNs and some AO games, all of which GOG refuses to carry (or else GOG only carries censored/non-AO versions of them), which seems to strongly indicate they have a secret policy to ban AO games.

they are still classified as 18+

In many countries(including the US where I am from) there are two ratings for 18+ games.....M/R rated(fortitles with adult content that isn't pure smut), and AO/MA/etc(which is media with pure smut/sex in it). Gog could(and probably is) be banning/against the latter but not the former.