Followup from a conversation I had on a news forum:

Apparently, back in February, Chris Park of Arcen Games said that GOG "only wants games that will not be expanded in the future in the form of paid expansions or DLC." Considering that that was about a week before the Shadowrun DLC was added (and that was hardly the first), I'm somewhat confused by this statement.

Is there some detail being omitted? The linked thread derails into steam and DRM, though later in the same thread the same dev said that it wasn't tied to the client and didn't have the DRM. Anyone have a line on this?

Unfortunately it's not the case anymore. I hate to buy games without all content so I loved this policy, but times change.

lolwut?

Where did they get that idea? Maybe Arcen's idea of "paid expansions" are micro-transactions?

I don't like how GOG changes the rules but then doesn't retroactively sign on or notify all of the people they've rejected that now qualify.

there is a difference between silly little DLC that every game seems to want to tack on nowadays and actual expansion content.

I dont mind paying for additional content if it actually adds something meaningful to the game, Take as an example Baldurs Gate. I would happily pay extra for the ToSC had it not been included, what i would refuse to pay for is a little DLC that adds a minor area to a game and has absolutely no purpose other than to add 30 minutes play time and take $10 off me.

I have not read into this specific case so I do not know if the content this developer wanted to add is actually worth an expansion or just another little tack on to get more money.

I suppose the short version of it is that if I feel a DLC is worth paying for and is value for money I wont bother, im assuming that GOG's refusal of this title on the grounds of DLC is very similar.

Just because GOG make an exception every now and again does not mean that any previously turned down title on the grounds of the number of DLC should automatically come here.

I trust in GOG's judgement on what they bring to the site though I do admit that trust is slipping after some of the recent releases, I know a lot of people are happy about the new games and the indies but for me most recently added games have not been of any interest in the slightest.

The above is just my opinion, I do not expect people to agree with it but I felt that its important to give another point of view in the discussion.

I can understand them accepting proper expansions.... pretty much all the dlc sold so far on Gog imho adds decent content.It maybe games that only have dlc like skins or anything cosmetic or just money cheats like you see in both borderlands 2 and sleeping dogs as example (although both do have handfulls of story based content addons as well) which they will not sell....

Yes, proper expansions are better than DLCs, however they are still evil in some ways. For example there is no place anymore who sells Dungeon Siege I & II's expansions. Or Diablo Hellfire. This is one of the reasons I wound up preferring to buy games which include all possible content.

That's why you wait for the inevitable Gold edition, which comes for just about anything ever. I for one love expansions/DLC/whatever, so yay!

One more annoying thing about DLCs is the current trend (like Dragon Age, or the Mass Effect games), where the DLCs tie in to the game, so if you finish the game once, and a DLC comes out, you have to finish the game again to play that DLC. In that sense I prefer proper expansions which continue the original game.

Dragon Age and Mass Effect are also the worst handled DLCs I have ever seen. Feel free to sell cosmetic crap and guns shaped like american flags or whatever, but do NOT sell multiple DLC needed to play continuation of the series properly (applies to expansions as well, I always liked them as a supplement, side-stuff, not part of the main plot - sequels exist for that)

Nonetheless, I love the idea DLC represents in general. I love the fact that content can be released in any magnitude and any price a dev wishes - then it's just up to them to make this worth while.

Oh come on, I loved how Bethesda handled DLC (and Obsidian. Holy crap, Dead Money!) Games by Bethesda are inherently very replayable, and they do have history with creating expansions that then fall into the base game - which is the only way they can make them if you think about it, with Bethesda's approach, DLC would not work very well stand-alone.

At any rate, the reason why I love DLC by Bethesda - at least for Fallout upwards - is that vast majority of it are actually fairly significant additions, which do remain side-quests regardless. But they're big side quests. It's not like they'd add a single location or something, it's always far more complex, with various NPCs and often enough a theme which is completely different from the rest of the game. Love that, some real effort has been put into most DLC for Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim.

Not to mention, all of those games do have gold editions by now :-P And Dead Money was friggin' awesome.

The add-ons for Fallout 3 were pretty good. It almost made up for them inventing the modern DLC market with that bloody horse armour.

I don't say they aren't good additions, but I wouldn't want to start the game again just to play some DLCs. I have little time to play games thus I have to make the most out of it and that means that I usually play any game only once.

Someone missed the Omerta DLC disaster? Justified or not, it's easy to see where they did get that idea.