What some of you may be failing to realize is that games coming to GOG or not coming to GOG is not solely because of embracing or not embracing DRM. There are plenty of games out there that are perfectly happy to be DRM-free on Steam and not necessarily interested in GOG for reasons that are completely orthagonal to DRM. Even games that /do/ use DRM might embrace DRM-free simultaneously on GOG as well, and there are examples of games that contain DRM on Steam and elsewhere but are DRM-free here. So based on DRM alone there is no evidence that Torchlight II could not show up on GOG because it uses DRM on Steam since there are other games that do this already.

The fact is that Steam offers many advantages to game developers and users alike whether some people choose to believe it or see it themselves, or choose to see the particular things as advantages for /them/. I've talked to some developers and also witnessed developers discussing some of these things in their game forums around the web and some of the things that game developers prefer to deal with Steam for as their primary or even sole distribution method instead of a distributor like GOG are:

- Easy ability to provide updates using an advanced update system that handles deltas, and easily control when updates get pushed. Steam provides the update system so they don't have to write one themselves also.
- Steam provides a built in multiplayer matchmaking service so they don't have to write one themselves and run their own servers.
- Steam provides a built in system that shows how many people actually install the games and how many hours they've been active, which are useful statistics.
- Steam provides a variety of features that can potentially enhance the game experience for users who desire the particular features such as achievements, cloud based save game and configuration storage, in-game voice and chat, screenshot (including cloud uploads) and a variety of other stuff.
- Built in game specific forums/groups and other social features.
- Workshop: A content creation and sharing community/marketplace where users can create and share mods and other game content with each other, directly accessible in-game with many games.

Of course many people reading this will say "I don't want ANY of that crap!" - but the point is that the game /developers/ _do_ want all that "crap", and they want it because their widest audience is comprised of a majority of people that do want it too even if a small number of users don't want it - they don't have to use it, but having these features makes their games that much more interesting to the people who /do/ want these features. A platform that doesn't provide such features ends up just being less attractive to developers that have decided they want these features to be a part of their game experience, and that means a platform like GOG becomes a secondary platform "me too" and for some developers it becomes a "sorry, your platform doesn't offer us features that Steam does that we need and don't want to or don't have the resources to implement ourselves for the smaller market size your platform would provide us with".

People can be angry about that but there's no point to do so really. It's just a hard reality of game companies trying to stay alive in an over crowded highly competitive marketplace where every feature costs money to implement and if someone like Steam can make that easier for them and someone like GOG can't, then more of them are going to gravitate towards Steam either exclusively or with a stronger emphasis.

GOG Galaxy from what little we know about it appears to be aiming to bridge this gap and provide these features that developers want, and that many gamers want as well, but to do it in a way that can be integrated into games as a set of [i]optional[/i] features rather than how they are sometimes mandatory on Steam (depending on the game). Having the update features, achievements, and other features I outlined above as well as many I'm probably forgetting gives developers these options on the GOG platform without having to write it all themselves from scratch and have to test a custom GOG build that differs in all these aspects from their Steam build. For example, Larian had to implement their own custom delta update mechanism for Divinity Dragon Commander just for GOG because GOG's update system is inadequate for the updates for that game. Many other developers feel the same and some discuss it publicly not in terms of complaining or flaming GOG but just stating what their needs are and that GOG's existing platform makes it very difficult to provide the experience to their customers that they'd like without incurring great expenses to do all kinds of extra work themselves which the Steam platform does for them.

Once Galaxy provides these features however then that argument starts to go away and it becomes far easier for them to consider GOG without having to be concerned about resource commitment if GOG's Galaxy platform can step up to the plate with comparable features.

So games like Torchlight II very much do have a higher chance to be considered for GOG in the future if the Runic developers look at the new Galaxy platform and think that it provides them with something they thought was necessary but missing here before, assuming they're willing to embrace DRM-free for the game as well, and we don't know either way whether they would. The thing is that it is possible and it is more likely with Galaxy available than without it. Galaxy doesn't guarantee anything at all, but it is a negotiating tool that will have merits that many developers already publicly state they want from a digital distribution platform.

Whether we get Torchlight II here or not we can't know unless someone official can tell us that. We are however likely to see a lot more newer games that demand modern features from their distribution platforms though and Torchlight II very well could be one of them.

Saying that Galaxy has no effect whatsoever in the equation is overwhelmingly short sighted and IMHO out of touch with what developers expect from a modern gaming platform.

Just had a brief exchange of comments with Running With Scissors developers and mentioned GOG Galaxy to them and got some comments in return to the effect they are very interested in this and talking to GOG about it now. I'm sure many other developers are going to really be interested in that also. Hopefully Runic ends up being one of them.