It just part of this new mentality: that games are a service. You know, I liked them better when they were toys.

No worries. You got a Plus from me, in addition to the OP.

I find it so sad that the digital world has become this uncontrollable beast of DRM, spying and horrible business practices. GOG is an oasis in the desert, and I hope they never dry up.

It has been so sad to see Humble Bundle, which at one point in time was pretty darn great, turn into a subsidiary of Steam (spit). I hope something like that never happens to GOG.

I still see games as digital toys, and they should be sold with all basic parts working. Extras ought to be true 'accessories' and not missing wheels that should have shipped with the wind-up car in the first place.

Huzzah for GoG - they definitely understand this principle :)

Yeah lately I've noticed most games available for purchase on Steam are early access games and it has been pissing me off. No, I do not want to purchase unfinished games and having them shoved into your face is annoying. Yes, the Steam store shoves them into your face. Would I go to IKEA and buy half a dish if I needed a dish? No. Then why would I go to a store and buy half of a game? I will stop respecting GOG if they start doing this shit too and most likely after that, I will probably quit buying new games. That is how annoying I find these early access alpha version games. They don't belong in stores. They belong on kickstarter.

Thank you so much for your kind words!

As for GOG, I have to say I have a good feeling they will stay true to their roots, I'm not overly worried about them becoming yet another faceless corporation of out-of-touch sellouts. In fact, this is what you read in the job description for Brand Director, one of the job offerings GOG is making: Is this a sign of hope, or what? I think it sure is. :P

I do NOT think Early Access nor Kickstarter are the problem, instead I think they are exposing something that was already there.

I can go online and with enough searching about any book I could possibly want in whatever genre I feel like reading. If I want it, someone probably writes it.
The same goes for music. I can search around and find just about any music I feel in the mood for with enough digging.
I usually don't have to worry about it being popular enough to exist and I generally don't have to worry about the current fads dictating what I can and can't have.

I still cannot do this with games. It largely depends on the current fads and what is popular enough to exist that dictates what I can get.

If you think a store like Steam lets through too much stuff then you should see stores for what in my opinion are "sufficiently diverse" art forms like books and music. In this case by "sufficiently diverse" I mean doing a good enough job at providing something for everyone that the above doesn't become such an annoyance.

Gamers take risks buying games that may or may not be finished because they are not satisfied with what they can buy that is finished now. (Yeah I know that sounds so boringly straightforward)
Early Access and Kickstarter projects are a very popular right now because they're finding opportunity filling in gaps that nobody has bothered to fill as gaming grew in popularity so rapidly. Eventually those gaps will be filled and the demand for those projects won't be so high.

Personally, I haven't heard many arguments for more "quality control" or against Early Access and Kickstarter that don't also in some way translate to "I wish I could limit what you can buy because I don't want to have to think too hard about my purchasing decisions!".

Maybe these early access games are really just an insidious way of getting gamers used to a future where all games start out as early access games and only reach a final and polished state if the game is popular enough? This way, publishers can make more money and never have to fear losing money. They can see how popular a game is or unpopular a game by the number of licenses sold and if a game is unpopular, they can just ditch the project and leave that game, forever in an alpha or beta state. I remember the game Medal Of Honor Pacific Assault. Right after it got released, the game was abandoned. Imagine how much money the publisher could of saved if they put the early access version up for sale and then decided to abandon the game. The douchebaggery in this industry knows no limits.

The bulk of the games on Early Access don't have publishers, AAA titles don't use Early Access, and a lot of developers who have games on Steam still deliberately choose to not even use Early Access (at least not Steam's process of it).

I'm not saying it's impossible, but considering the above I find that this scenario requires coordination that at this point I find a bit unlikely.
If it does result in that, it seems like it would be more likely to be due to gamer culture and not by deliberate engineering attempt by a single group or individual.

Lack of distinction between early access and released games is, imho, major problem with Steam's early access. I personally think regular and early access stores should be entirely separated on their own pages and early access games should not be featured on regular store page (they'll get featured when they exit early access).

If GOG ever jumps on alpha/beta funding/early access bandwagon, I do hope they'll make separate area for it with it's own game catalog, forums etc. But then again, it may too late to jump on that bandwagon as steam has pretty much sucked the market dry of such games and sites like dusura are left with steams leftovers, games that could not pass steams greenlight.
Were there actually beta's where the regular testers were paid something? I sure don't remember any. All you got was free access to the game and in some rare cases, the game it self for free upon release. I was under the impression that only internal beta testing teams and QA staff got paid and I'm sure major studios and publishing houses still have those. And small indes most definately did not pay, heck most of the time the testers were family members or close friends.

This! I loathe DLC. I can live with 1-2 proper expansions. But small and mostly pointless DLCs are awful.

"Vanilla game has 5 music tracks but don't worry, we offer you more music tracks as DLC for with great bargain of 2€ per 2 tracks!"

"Yes, the vanilla models are low quality and generic but listen to this: we offer you nation specific unit packs in high quality for 4€ each! Now isn't that a bargain?"

"Horse armour. Now that's should sell it self!"

"Game offers 80 unit types, 20 of which come with base game and you can buy 60 more for 1€ each!"

;-p

I never understood why people who like alpha's and beta's should not be allowed to buy them and support development. For those who do not like it, the answer is simple - don't buy it.

Personally I feel gOg is missing out. With games like Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 (games more or less being confirmed to appear here) - those who like early access have now bought it from a different vendor, they had no choice. So for each of these lost sales - it is gOg's loss. Not the player, nor the developers, only gOg's.

Game comes with 7 tracks, but you can pay 40% of the base game cost for 7 more. If you really enjoy them, we have 2 such map packs.
Game comes with 2 cars, but for an extra 40% you can get 2 more cars. What more do you need?

Test Drive 2, circa 1989.

Case in point - Tower of Guns (http://www.towerofguns.com/)

This is one of the most fun games I have played in the last 20 years. It is being developed by a single person, who quit his job to start up as an indie developer. He is partially financing this via alpha/beta sales, if he did not it is not sure how far it would have come.

It is now about 80% complete, and even if he stopped development today, it would still be one of the most fun games I have played in the last 20 years. I like to have been the opportunity to both have this experience, and to support what I think is a great game.

edit: and it is now verified that ToG is coming to gOg, which is great, but I already got the game in alpha from two different vendors before, and not sure if I am going to get it yet another time. Which is 1 lost sale for gOg....