I doubt its the Galaxy development, because we haven't had any substantial updates for a very long time. Can't be the forums either, as I don't notice any substantial updates either. Securing new titles? The website? Cyberpunk refunds? Or are there no resources to speak of? Share your takes.

Hookers and blow.

I don't know anything about Galaxy. This was CDPR's last report - https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/media/news/68668/

I believe it goes to the staff and current infrastructure. Outside of the Cyberpunk release, I don't think GOG was doing very well for a bit. Just breaking even as it were from what I understood.

This can't be easy is for sure.

The bears eat it...

No, seriously... preparing and releasing games is certainly more work nowadays, with new releases this frequently. But that's one team,
"fix-old-games", web development (Galaxy) and legal are different teams.

My best guess it: They're preparing another big overhaul of the site, including reviews, wishlist and... the forum. All intregrated into Galaxy too. That alone would be a tremendous task, justifying months and years of radio silence.
I also suspect that they're understaffed in the engine room: https://www.gog.com/work

Which is not that surprising, because a lot of Polish talent is probably looking for greener pastures in the West, and who can blame them - apart from the wages being probably not that great, Poland is a very conservative country with has already been blamed for "democratic and state of law deficits" by he EU. I guess it's less bad in big cities like Warsaw which I expect to be more cosmopolitan, but in general I suppose it's a reason for young Polish talent to leave the country. And of course also a reason for foreigners to be reluctant about moving to Poland, apart from having to learn the language and logistics.

So I guess they have a large project, and not too many people to make it happen - it simply takes time. Rebuild of parts of the site from the ground up, we won't see any of it until it's done.

Where do I think GOG's resources go?

#1. The CEO's pocket.

#2. Subsidizing pirates who buy games from GOG officially, then download the games, then claim refunds solely so that they can get their money back whilst keeping the games for free (of course, these pirates don't actually say that that is what they are doing in their refund requests, even though they surely have been doing that ever since GOG opened that loophole up to them the other year via their then-new overly-lenient & highly exploitable refund policy).

#3. GOG doesn't have that many resources in the first place because they keep making bad decisions that alienate their customers, and because they never fix ancient problems that prevent GOG from being a fully viable platform (i.e. they make no investments nor improvements so that more GOG games will have Crossplay functionality, and so due to that inaction/negligence, GOG forever remains an unviable platform for multiplayer games).

You picked a good day to ask. It certainly isn't going towards checking the listings of new games.

Today's release, No Longer Home contains a request to wishlist the game on Steam.

CMiq captured a screenshot for posterity

Into the pockets of Shareholders and CEOs. What? You think they should invest resources into improving GOG or, inconceivably, into improving the forum? Dream on!

It does not go on the website or to the offline installers.

Gawd.

You do realize they keep tabs on people who claim a refund and how often.
That means it would not be a viable way to do piracy.
And from what I have seen from refund claims posts, GOG are very slow to do them anyway.

Maybe you should test your claim ... just saying. :)

It goes here

... along with all the porridge. :)

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@OP - But to be serious, I bet it is a range of things ... profit making, being snowed under due to lack of staff or staff of a certain calibre, plus slowly doing some updates or quick fixes here and there, when not helping out with CDPR games.

They've lasted for over 12 years, so they must be doing something right, especially as they appear to make a lot of sales, and have a lot of sales, are bigger than ever, and give away free games reasonably often.

No doubt due to COVID, certain aspects have become tighter or harder to do, despite no doubt selling games aplenty.

GOG looked to be in a bad way, in the last few months leading up to the release of Cyberpunk 2077, and magically looked much better afterward, despite all the flack they copped and related issues.

Every single person here is 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% correct in anything they wrote

That power consumption... XD Seems to depend - if you refund through the Orders list (which only gives you store credit afaik) and are not flagged "trouble" in some way, I heard it's actually really quick.

I guess refunding to real money, or having a history of frequent refunds, might make the process take more time.

Also, anyone who has their mind on pirating a Gog game doesn't need to go to all that trouble when they can just open their favorite torrent website. Why risk a refund denied and wait a long time for their money to make its way back to their pockets when it is so much simpler to pirate the usual way?

I agree with ARD on #1 and mostly on #3, tho.