...while filters, prices, and releases there are overall better for many categories of games, I was tired after looking at the store using the Search tab for 2 hours.

Post post edit: Correction here: Not all game prices are better. Some regional prices are way better on GOG.

You see, I have not bought any games on Steam for more than 3 years now and, by only using GOG, I got kinda sad of how releases here take so long to actually happen in a satisfactory way that it is not necessarily worth a wait, because we're just not sure if they will come here ever, which makes it understandable for people that just buy their games on Steam and apply any means to 'make them DRM-Free'.

But when I came back there, just to look and experience their launcher again, I was surprised by the feeling I had while navigating through their store.
Im really grateful for GOG's curation now, again, albeit Im certain they NEED to improve in many areas for other indie games and good releases to come here.

There are so many games that we could categorize as shovelware there that its almost impossible to filter games by quality without a video or article review.

There are many (more than 3 thousand games), in the first page of a search without entry (clicking the search button without writting anything) with less than 100 positive reviews as low priced indie games that its just not worth to check them out without recomendations, because of the sheer amount of time that is needed to find (with all due respect to indie developers) 'good' games.

After this weird experience, without buying any games there, I think I matured a bit more on how I view the DRM-Free world. There are many DRM-Free games there that we must not condemn people for buying, because we do not know if they will ever come here in the first place, but the experience there as a custumer is also so bloated, that Im grateful we have GOG curation team to reveal us some actual GOOD indie games and releases.

But GOG, please, listen to your community on their requests about some Indie games and other games that could be here already, but arent yet, apparently, by your curation team fault.
Still, with this experience I say: Thank you for existing, keep up the good work, but never stop improving and hearing your customers.

I'm moving between GOG and Steam quite a lot and I've got to say "going Steam" is worth it for people looking for more social interaction focused around video games, as other stores either don't compare on that front (GOG) or are simply ignoring it by choice (Epic). Of course the quality of said interaction is highly variable.

Other than that it's just a graveyard for all kinds of mostly simply dumb shovelware, as you called it.

Still, even with Steam being like 900% the size of GOG, I think a healthy approach is to mix and match a bit to keep the competition running.

Now, after this personal experience, I completely agree with you.
I wouldn't before, though, as the banner "drm-free without launchers" mentality was stronger in my conscience.
We mature, I guess. :)

I've also learned a bit of steamcmd to escape the launcher when necessary, albeit it has its own learning curve, but since I use lgogdownloader, it's nice to learn it too.

And like you said, there are many drm-free gamers there too and community groups which help us find drm-free games and how to turn others drm-free. So this is nice too.

Steam is omni-present. If you want competition, you need to get tenthousands more gamers to GoG :)

I think GOG is a monopoly in the drm-free scene and they are getting complacent.

They could definitely use some competition there.

The DRM-free scene is small and it's not important to most gamers. In order for GoG to sell well and grow it just needs more gamers and bigger library of popular games.

That actually makes no difference to his affirmations.
GOG still is a monopoly for DRM-Free games, even if not many gamers care about DRM-Free games.
To the ones that care, GOG is their drm-free store of choice, most of the time.

Most games that are drm free on GOG are also drm free on Steam, I think. Still, it's hard to find some of those games under the sheer amount of shovelware. I learned to use curators for that.

That being said, personally I plan on purchasing on GOG whenever possible from now on, and Steam only if not possible, like with Assassin's Creed games. Absolutely, that's why I said "mix and match >a bit<". That being said, I believe purchasing directly from the devs is the best possible approach anyway, whenever possible.

That's true, yes.

I hear you. Valve does need to curate for at least the big sales... During their summer sale the Co-Op tab was full of asset flips and other irredeemable garbage.

Im just like you now, but, unfortunately, one thing bothers me greatly.

And that is that many GOG releases are treated as 'second class citizens', with outdated versions, glitches, not updated game contents, and many indie developers giving up to update their game versions here.

So there's a necessity to double check games bought here and always the risk of buying a game that might be forgotten by their developers here in the future.
Don't even get me started with Linux, Windows and Mac versions disparity that are many times present on Steam, while here, we have mostly only Windows versions, because of the problem explained above.

Some games that I own with this problem:

Cyber Hook (Outdated, missing DLC and many community maps in Steam Workshop)
Children of Morta (Outdated, missing Free online coop update)
Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen (Outdated, missing Photo Mode, a language pack and Dark Arisen DLC game content broken glitch on Bitterblack Isle)
Deep Sky Derelicts (Outdated)
Legrand Legacy (as far as I know, GOG version is outdated)
Mount & Blade Warband (Outdated/Broken Linux version)
Terraria (Updated but missing an Infinite number of mods/skins/maps/seeds because they are tied to Steam Workshop and TModLoader, which can be used with GOG version, but this is not explained well here.)
and so on...

Plus many missing free community content mods because of the absurd that is Steam Workshop.

And many games are missing their Linux ports, which are available on Steam, so yeah, theres also that to consider when buying games here. This is a shame and I hope GOG is able to convince developers to update their games here too.

I think that's because GOG gets releases which none of the other DRM-free stores get. I don't know about others, but given my disillusionment with the direction I perceive GOG going in over the last several years, if a release is available on another DRM-free store, I lean towards getting it at said other store.

I think the problem lies in the fact that GOG does not have any protection against piracy and the developers do not like that. Anyone can buy the game, download the offline installer and re-distribute the game for free to people. It's not GOG's fault of course.

Definitely I do not agree with the premise that GOG has "good curation" and/or a low amount of shovelware.

On the contrary: I'd say that the vast majority of GOG's catalog consists of low-quality games.

Im not gonna say you're wrong, nor right.
But Im gonna say that it seems you have not seem Steam shovelwares yet.

And I have not said that GOG's curation was 'good', but that now I understand better why a curation is neceesary in the first place. You can read that In the original post: Thus, what Im saying is that having a curation is good, but that GOG's curation have a lot to improve on.