Digital Leisure on the Dragon's Lair series and Space Ace: "We had tried in the past to release the games on GOG, but it never worked out. Given the interest, I will have our team reach out again to the folks at GOG."

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/dragons_lair
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/dragons_lair_2_time_warp
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/space_ace

Lets get the splinter cell games on gog, Dark Messiah, Rainbow 6 vegas 1 and 2, Max payne 1 and 2, Hitman Blood money and many more 'classic' games that should be here.

When I asked Mike Bithell about releasing THOMAS WAS ALONE on GOG, he replied:

"unfortunately, they refused to sell TWA"

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/thomas_was_alone

My understanding is 50% wholesale price of suggested retail is very typical on any average "good". Different products may have different margins. I've heard clothing, for example, is marked up even more than that. But one does have to remember that in a "box" store, the wholesale price is the price and sales cut into the profit margin. I'm not sure digital goods works the same way.

From all accounts, Steam's cut is typically 30% of sales and some old posts by GoG made it appear they use the same model. There was some talk of GoG offering advances where they took even more of the profit until the advance is paid off.
But seriously, Thomas Was Alone has been bundled to heck. Who doesn't have a copy on Steam that they paid less than $.25 for? And I'll say the same for One Finger Death Punch where I've given away multiple $.25 bundle copies...

You'd be surprised. There's been a number of indie games that have been in bundles and still have gone on to sell quite well on GOG. We're talking about the store that specializes in selling games well after release. It's never too late.

Alabama.

I'd go with Wyoming. Seriously, what the Hell is in Wyoming, except despair?

Buffalo.
Buffalo are nice.

Buffalo left to despair that their glorious past is replaced with their sad present.

Yellowstone is there. That's a nice place.

A nice place that's overdue to blow up huge...:)

Except for the fact that GOG's business model is intentionally to not just allow all games in the store sight unseen and let the customer decide, more or less like Steam. Don't expect that to change much any time soon if ever as it's a conscious business decision to act as a game filter/curator. One has to also keep in mind that adding games to the catalogue is not without associated costs either. Each game requires work to package and test, and to provide technical support etc. that GOG as a store does that most other stores do not do. That doesn't scale well to allowing every single game into the store to let the customer decide. That's not what they're even trying to accomplish here.

People's opinions will vary widely about what is crappy and what is great. There are endless games here that I personally think are crappy, such as probably 80% of the new Indie games coming out for example. Almost all of the platformers and shmups and pixelated retro crap, not to mention almost the entire list of anime type games. That's all "crap" to me, but there are huge numbers of gamers out there that would violently disagree with me on that and they're obviously big enough to sell in sufficient quantities to be a viable business target despite me shaking my head in bafflement as to why such games could remotely be popular.

So there are always going to be games that someone thinks are crap here, that multitudes of others will go batshit crazy to buy.

They've chosen a business model to draw a line in the sand though. It's their line and their choice where to draw it, and the algorithm they use for drawing it is unpublished and will vary depending on what their business perceptions are from game to game, and the entire methodology may vary and evolve over time as well.

But people out here in the wild don't see it that way. People want to try to draw up a set of static rules that get measured against every game every single time, and then say "this rule applies to game A, why not game B" while ignoring other factors that influence decisions at the same time. There are no such static well defined unchanging rules however, none that are published for us to see anyway. If there are any rules, GOG gets to make them up based on what they think is best at any given moment and they may loosen or tighten them at any given time if they think it makes the most sense for where they're trying to go. This will almost certainly produce visible inconsistencies in their selection criteria as viewed from outside, but the full details of any decision are rarely if ever going to be provided publicly, and to be honest I don't think they have any obligations to justify their choices to anyone either.

Let's put it this way...l
There are games that have been bundled just once and then there are games that seem to show up all the time or have been being given away for free.

I saw above how you listed Afterfall: Insanity which has been free many many times. Thomas Was Alone and One Finger Death Punch constantly appear in bundles.

One Finger Death Punch (11 times)
Friday Special Bundle #27 by Indie Gala
Every Monday Bundle 86 by Indie Gala
All Stars 3 Bundle by Bundle Stars
Friday Special Bundle 13 by Indie Gala
Action Bundle by Green Light Bundle
Extra Credits Bundle by Humble Weekly Bundle
Monday Bundle 16 by Indie Gala Weekly
Mixer 4 Bundle by Indie Royale
Indie Capsule Bundle 2 by Bundle Stars
The Indie Ordinary Gamer Bundle by Bundle In A Box
Be Mine X by Groupees

Sure looks like GoG made the correct decision not to try to sell this given how easy it is to get for next to nothing...

Thomas Was Alone (6 times)
PC and Android Bundle 11 by Humble Bundle
Humble Indie re-Bundle 8 by Humble Bundle
The Speed Gamers Bundle by Humble Weekly Bundle
The Bundle of Love for Brandon by Humble Bundle
Hosted by PewDiePie by Humble Weekly Bundle
Humble Indie Bundle 8 by Humble Bundle

If it was too costly to bring excessive amounts of new content on board, and they had to rethink the way they were running the business after doing so, then yes, they'd have to rethink it to not bring excessive amounts of new content on board which is the strategy they use now, and it works because they're running the business efficiently now and growing steadily and successfully. Why break a business strategy that works.


And yet, GOG is the #1 most successful growing gaming distributor (and now publisher too) online second to Steam only, in a marketplace where other distributors are struggling and some even going bankrupt (Desura and Shinyloot as two recent examples). This suggests very strongly that GOG's current approach not only works, but it works better than what any other storefront out there is doing (ignoring Steam from the comparison). Their decisions are leading to their extreme success and confirming their business model. They will continue to evolve it over time in ways that they perceive are good for business and their customers, and if they do so as awesomely as they have in the past then they'll continue to be the biggest growing online distributor as competition to Steam.

If they simply let all of their customers make their business decisions, I'd put my own money on the table to bet that they'd end up like Desura or Shinyloot before long, because customers just "want what I want when I want it period" and don't actually care about running a business and being profitable, nor do they see what it takes behind the scenes to make that happen. So people can be angry about these things if they want, but even that itself is a sign of success.

There's a saying I will paraphrase that says something like ... "If everyone loves what you do, then you're doing something wrong." The crux of the meaning of that, is that it's easy to get a small number of people to agree with you on just about anything, by seeking out like minds or having them come to you or whatever. As you scale up the number of people however you start to encounter more and more dissenting minds. This is true in politics, business, youtube video comments, web forums like this one, anywhere that people come together. The larger the number of people, the more likelihood of contention on given topics of discussion, business decisions, political decisions, etc. The bigger you become, the more visible that contention will be essentially. Success can be measured in the growth though, not by trying to resolve all contention.

The contention is a force that just exists in large groups of people naturally. Trying to make the contention go away by listening to every single individual voice in the crowd and resolve to satisfy everyone's individual needs and desires is not only a waste of time, but it is impossible. It's impossible because different people in large groups generally have polarized desires. Consider a big room that fits 1000 people in it and it is 21 degrees Celcius. 300 people in the room form a group to confront the decision makers and tell them that the room is too cold, please turn the heat up to 25 Celcius. Another group of 300 people form another group to tell the decision makers the room is too hot, to turn it down to 19 degrees Celcius. These two groups of people argue with each other vociferously in the room about what the temperature of the room should be, and some subset of both groups feels that the decision makers never listen to them and don't care and if they'd only change the temperature of the room, all the problems would be solved. So, if the decision makers raise the temperature of the room, the people who wanted it lowered and perhaps even some of the people that were neutral or never joined either group or expressed an opinion may now be upset too. Same thing if they lower the temperature. No matter how they decide to do things, keeping things the same, raising or lowering the temperature - not everyone is going to be happy, and some people will be downright upset.

Another cliche that summarizes this is simply "You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time." That may be a cliche, but it's also true. When someone realizes that and is trying to be productive such as growing a business, if they really want to move forward they have to stop worrying about pleasing all of the people all of the time which is an impossibility, and start trying to simply do the best they can do at pleasing as many people as possible while simultaneously meeting the goals they wish to achieve successfully.

GOG isn't perfect or flawless by any measure and they'd never claim to be, but they can't please all of the people all of the time with their decisions either. Nonetheless, they're doing an awesome job despite some mistakes along the way to do something that it seems no other small gaming distributor has been able to do as successfully as they are, which is successfully grow their business. This doesn't mean we should all just sit silently and let it happen either however. Rather, we should actually speak our voices of what we would like to see happen, what we like and dislike, etc. They are watching and listening, and some of the discussions out here will shape their decision making in various ways, but every single thing every single person wants to see happen is just not going to happen either because as a whole we not only want contradicting things, but we want things that would also be great for us as gamers, but bad for GOG as a business. It's their difficult job to try to find the common ground where they can provide us with some of the things that we want and do so in a way that is a successful business decision, and to avoid the things that might be great for us on the surface but bad for their business model and long term longevity.

If we get what we want and they go out of business as a result, nobody wins. And while many of us might think we have the best armchair politics out there, none of us really have built a successful gaming distribution service before either and our personal desires don't necessarily mesh with what it takes for GOG to make a successful growing business.

They're the ones that are not only in the best position to judge what is best to do for their business, but they've got the most at stake if they get it right or wrong too. They seem to be doing quite well, so I'd say they make those judgment calls on various issues far more right than wrong in the end, even though none of us (myself included) always can understand or agree with their decisions.

Me: "Is there any chance of #140 coming to @GOGcom? (gog.com/indie)"

Jeppe Carlsen (of LIMBO fame): "I hope so! I reached out to them recently with no luck. Will give it another shot! Cheers!"

Vote: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/140

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