Published by Annapurna Interactive. Publishers that are already here have a little more weight in determining if their games are accepted by GoG.

That a dev tries to get on here shouldn't be a criterion for acceptance. Everyone who gets on Steam wants to get on Steam.

Sorry to drop the truth bomb on you: The actual quality of the game means jackshit to the "curators" once they made their choice.

One Finger Death Punch: Overwhelmingly positive on Steam at 10 000+ ratings, refused by gog
Detention: Best point&click in recent memory, Overwhelmingly positive on Steam at 6000+ ratings, not sold on gog (the jury is still out on who is to blame for that)

Those two aren't just ok games that would make for good filler on a slow week (of which there have been quite a few recently). They're among the best of the best. Considering gog fancied themselves as the archivists of great games, it's a shame they refuse great games for bogus reasons.

The only hope you got is to pull an "Opus Magnum" by druming up enough outrage among the community about gog's bizarre "curation". If this leads to some games "journlolist" picking up the story and writing an article, then you hit the jackpot. Gog will cave in within hours of these articles appearing. Other than that, good luck!

Yah, I think you nailed it

Steam reviews are not a good measure of quality for small games that are not bought by everyone and their dog, because only owners can publish reviews.

City of Brass sounds fun. thanks for the heads up!

fronzelneekburm nailed it. Thread can be closed.

And the sale goes toooooo... Steam! ;)

But yah, it's a quality game from ex-BioShock developers

Wait, how is that a bad thing? That sounds like a positive to me.

City of Brass looks very boring and generic.

Donut County seems to be a lot of fun. I'm glad it's available on GOG.

You need to remember that you can get a refund on Steam if you play less than two hours. It can therefore be assumed that those who absolutely hate the game will choose to get a refund, don't have it in their collection, and don't end up writing reviews about it. But those who like the game and have it in their collection, can review and rate it, so the whole system automatically favours positive views.

Having said all that, GOG too should have the policy of allowing only verified owners of a game to post reviews about it. As GOG doesn't have such a crazy refund system, those who are disappointed with their verified purchase would more likely end up writing about all that, therefore the reviews would overall be more neutral.

Anyway, that all aside, GOG should have some public and open guidelines about their inclusion/exclusion policy with games. Although quality is subjective, there have been cases where it really hasn't been the lack of quality, at least when compared with other games in the same genre, that has been the problem that lead to GOG turning the game down.

When a game is bought only by the small target audience (by fans of this or that developer, this or that gameplay feature, etc.), reviews by owners are higher than for a game that is more known and is bought by a wider audience with different expectations. It doesn't mean that the quality of this game is better. It means that this game is unknown and is bought only by core supporters. Or even that the lack of quality of this game is so apparent that most gamers who happen to see game page do not bother to buy it to write negative review.
So, for the extreme number of small games on Steam even with the positive reviews the scenario for the average gamer (like myself) is
1) I had no idea that this game even exist;
2) now that I know about it I would call it trash but I can't because of Steam review system.

Edit: typos.

* checks both games on Steam *

tag " rogue-lite "

Great detective work