It's not, what Gonchi quotes are messages from the devs themselves, this one from 21 hours ago, in the Kickstarter update comments.

I would love to hear GOG reasoning behind this... For ASA there were some resolution and compatibility problems, I believe... So, what's wrong with this one?
I would be fine with 'episodic and too risky at this moment, send again when more is finished'. Don't see any other reasonable reason.

Well, we don't have LA or MS at this point, so it's hard to say whether or not this applies to them.

But yeah, when it comes to smaller publishers and indie developers, it's probably a real mix of people that see DRM as something they have to have and those that realize that DRM is probably more expensive than what they'd make by forcing people to pay.

If you click the pre-order link they list all their pre-order options. They're offering the same tiers from their Kickstarter, minus the limited ones.

A speculative release date was given by Christopher in the backers forum, but not publicly.

If memory serves (trying to find where I read it), IGS was confirmed for a DRM-Free digital download a while back. And I think they also spoke of having their game on Gamersgate at some point.

Yeah. Plus there's always a chance that Himalaya demanded certain conditions that made GOG instantly dismiss them and they didn't share information about that in their announcement (or weren't aware that that may be the reason). I mean, seriously, let's take a look at GOG's indie catalogue and at the game they just refused - it seems extremely unlikely that GOG refused the deal because the game itself just isn't up to GOG's standards, I think there must have been something else about the game or proposed deal that made GOG dismiss it.

I thought pricing might be the issue, which was the reason behind Xenonauts being rejected here as well. They're asking $16 for game+soundtrack right now, and likely more on release. Or perhaps they offered only the game and GOG wanted some extras.

Maybe I'm too much of a fanboy of AGDi/Himalaya, but if they're saying they didn't even get that far in talks with GOG, I'm inclined to believe them, if only because they're not just giving me a pre-written automated reply.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...e/posts/743266?cursor=5989861#comment-5989860

"Ah, no, Mage's Initiation is definitely NOT episodic. We made certain to mention that in the opening blurb at the top of our Kickstarter page: "An enchanting Adventure/RPG set in a magical realm. Master spells, battle foes, and quest forth in this full-length game."

I've always wanted to steer clear from making any episodic games, as my personal opinion is that their structure makes the narrative too predictable. Sales dictate that every episode has to end with some kind of cliffhanger, and the episode usually follows a mini "Hero's Journey" story arc. This pattern became evident in TellTale's earlier games, where each episode would follow the same structure as the ones that preceded it, and aside from slight deviations in the story and puzzles, it really felt like you were just playing the same episode over and over. I'm guessing this is why they started offering advance season passes, because after the first episode, the sales/interest level would decline for subsequent episodes when sold individually. Episodic works for a television series (and to some extent, works better with a game adapted from TV like The Walking Dead), but I think adventure games in and of themselves are a more interactive medium -- since they're less passive than TV, they make the player more aware of the steps they're personally taking to advance the narrative. When you make them repeat something over and over, they become more aware of it. By using "Acts" in Mage's Initiation, it's just our way of breaking up D'arc's three trials into sub-quests. But the game probably won't flash up an intrusive title saying "Act 2", "Act 3" etc. The end of each act will be punctuated, more subtly, by cutscenes that segue into the following act. However, the story (and the product itself) is, and always has been a self-contained title.

Also, to be clear, GOG didn't outright reject the games. They gave us that dismissive line about "not accepting at this time", but that's meaningless. For Al Emmo, they did throw us a line about the cutscenes "needing some work". That was a true WTF?! moment, because we just spent thousands redoing them in 2D and the feedback has universally been that they're a huge improvement over the old 3D ones. We're not working with the budget of Deadalic here! When I pointed out that GOG have accepted other indie titles with "questionable graphics" - their logic, not mine (i.e. Richard and Alice), they just gave an evasive excuse that they don't discuss the acceptance of other games. I asked them if they also requested AAA game developers from the 90's to make fundamental and expensive changes to their now-dated graphics, or if they simply sold them as digital antiques, quirks and all - products of their time? This question was also duly evaded. I couldn't quite grasp the logic of expecting boot-strapped indies to spend thousands and thousands more dollars redoing work to be given a chance at a "maybe", when GOG routinely accepts titles from the 90's that are filled with flaws and graphical anomalies. Case in point, I'm betting they didn't ask Activision to fix the dated, clunky 3D models in Mask of Eternity before accepting it. Overall, the thing that worries me the most isn't that they didn't accept our games - it's the erratic and inconsistent decision-making behind the process and the fact that I know any games we submit won't be given a 'fair trial'. It's even worse if the people making the decisions aren't aware of how valuable a mutual relationship could be, and wish to tarnish that and all future prosperity by being obtuse about 1 or 2 titles in there here and now. GOG requested us to put those banner ads on our AGDI site, so you'd think they'd be able to put 2 and 2 together. It makes me just not want to deal with the headache of GOG's review process at all. Greenlight's taken enough of a toll, and there are more productive ways to invest our time (like developing Mages!)

At any rate, we'll be on Steam, and that's what truly matters. And of course, we'll be offering DRM-Free versions elsewhere for players who prefer it. We'll probably just offer the DRM-Free version from the main Himalaya site and remove the DRM version altogether. The Humble Bundle widget that we have on the Al Emmo page at the moment covers that pretty well."

...

You know, we only know Himalayas side of this story and even ftom that only very vague things. We don't know what kind of a deal they wanted to make. For all we know they wanted a deal that they though was fair, but GOG didn't. Or that people at GOG didn't think the game as of now showed promise.

Of the why Infamous is in, well, they have a publisher now. Phoenix Online has taken on some people to handle publishing deals in order to take other devs under their wing and apparently the peple they taken are old industry veterans, which translates into connections. And that translates into an answer.

Far as I'm concerned having it at the Humble Bundle site is good enough.

GOG is inconsistent and flip-flops on their decisions? Who knew.
(same thing happened with The Cat Lady btw. ... oops, mentioned before, my bad)

And Xenonauts, apparently due to too high selling price demanded for an indie at the time (20-25$). I happened to stumble into a discussion on twitter that had other rejected indie devs discussing about it (only game I recognised was that weird call center game I had seen featured on some gaming sites). There are apparently more of them out there too.

The Cat Lady (and Unepic) devs took it in stride, though.

I have to ask : isn't there some rules against that ?
An account being personnal, it is not because it is free that we are allowed to create multiple accounts. I am really just asking.

Bottom line is : why would you pose as 'longtime customer' when everything tells us otherwise ? (Edit2 : if you really were a longtime forum lurker, you would know most people would still listen to you without knowing if you are new here or not :)

Side note : I know I am 2 days late in the discussion but still.

Edit : I find it amusing how people start saying "wtf ? gog is rejecting indie developpers ! What is wrong with them ?". We certainly weren't reading that some time ago. Would we prefer to see another 'dark matter' (was that the name ?) instead of a delayed release ?