Now as a gamer, there're few things worse than reading of a publishing company ripping off game developers. One such company would be Strategy First. The reason why, well from what I've read they don't pay the game developers a single cent. (one guy who works for one such developer even said so himself on the Steam forums, plus there is the whole "Uplink: Hacker Elite" incident) So with that, I'm not gonna buy anything published by Strategy First, I recommend that no one do so as well, and I ask that GoG remove SF from the game catalogue (but make it so those who bought their games are still able to download them of course) and encourage the game developers to add the games to the game catalogue themselves. (in a way so that people who already paid for the games once still have them of course)

So some guy on some forum said some things. Now you want GOG to remove one of the oldest and most substantial catalogues they have or cut out the legal rights holders and send the money direct to the development teams? Yeah, that's going to work...

Can you give me the links to the full story (if one exists)?

Well, game developers actually cannot add their games to the catalog if their publishers hold the distribution rights for the games. As much as you want this to protect the game developers, understand that it is their job to secure themselves when signing contracts with the publisher, no matter who that would be. The customers are pretty much not helpful, no matter what they do, if the developers don't do their job how they should.

I have a feeling we are looking at a complete misunderstanding of how the gaming business works and what kind of legal contracts/arrangements SF has made with its respective developers. It sounds to me like somebody on a forum somewhere was trying to explain a business arrangement in which money from sales is not funneled back to the developers. This is actually not all that uncommon. In some cases, developers are hired on contract to simply develop a game and once that is done, they are paid their contractual fee and their involvement is finished. The publisher ends up holding all the rights to the end product and gets all the money from the sales, a large chunk of which goes towards paying off that money they laid out in the first place to get the game developed. There is nothing wrong with doing this, especially when the developer agreed to this contractual arrangement in the first place.

This scores pretty high on the narcissist scale. Also, you have completely misunderstood how rights to a intellectual property, such as a game, works in this case.

I think it's that simple. Alternatively, another interpretation could be that the developers may not have been paid for their work at all. But I'm sure such controversies would have come to light by now.

I do beleive there is some sort of ongoing legal bullshit about strategy first not paying what they where contracted to do. I think it was in a pcgamer but I really cant be arsed dragging out old copies. But I really dont see how us not buying the games would do anything other than deprive you of a few games you may have liked to play and GOG of some sales. If strategy first have not fulfilled their contract it -should- be a relatively straight forward court case for the devs.

Read the conflicts section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_First
In addition, they didn't pay the developers of Slam-it Pinball, which caused the developers to go under and not produce a patch to what apparently is a very broken game. They never paid the developers of Alien Shooter any of the proceeds they were contractually obligated to get, which caused the developers to force Alien Shooter off Steam and re-add it without Strategy First as a middleman.
Not necessarily. First of all, it's an issue if they're in a different country than you. Second of all, most of these developers don't have enough money to hire a lawyer, seeing as how they weren't getting paid at all. There are legal fees as well. Anyways, if patterns are to be believed, SF would probably just declare bankruptcy if they're being successfully sued.

They're also holding Robin Hood I believe... and we really need that game :O

I've been calling BS on these recent claims of SF ripping developers off for some time. Take Team Sigma for example. They made all their claims via their website (or at least an admin who may or may not have been a Team Sigma employee did), those claims were then quickly removed from the forums...
But the gist of their claims is that they weren't paid for over 2 years. Who waits 2 years to get paid *before* raising objections? No, that just doesn't seem right to me. They may very well have had a disagreement with SF over publishing or their contract expired, but I don't buy the reason they give -- there is simply no supporting evidence.
The same with SlamIt Pinball. An admittidly "broken" game, with promises of patches that never turn up and then suddenly claims that they aren't being paid - not even posted on their own website as that doesn't even exist anymore.
While it's obvious that SF did have problems paying developers in the past (pre-2005), I don't think there is enough substantial evidence to say they are doing it again; in fact, I think it might just be an excuse being branded around by failing developers (and those eager to break a contract that they didn't understand), much the same way that publishers use piracy as an excuse for poor sales....

I don't think GOG's business model revolves around this. All they want is money and community love. They don't bother dabbling in the other stuff.

Um, what Strategy First did in 2004 was a loophole in corporate bankruptcy. The same loophole Bush closed for consumers but opened wider for companies, the loophole of 'bankrupt yourself so you won't pay creditors'. At the point if you look it up SF had the money but bankrupted it so they could take off with the profits.
And yes, they aren't paying their clients again.

Source please?