While GOGs internal workings are beyond my knowledge online stores who sell online products don't have the over heads that traditional retail and publishing do, I'd say they have a very low expense rate to get new games on gog especially if those games are done in a more downtime and not a number one priority. (Working out conversions and technical issues to get the game running.) If it makes a profit and people want it I'm of the opinion it should be on gog however there are plenty of people that want the more boutique gog store front and I guess both points have good and bad positions.

Some updates do in fact take their sweet time getting here, either on GOGs and the developer's side. That's far from being non-issue and factors like GOG man power, developer continued support are in no way easy to address.

Account security seems to be a little less of an issue since the passing of The Witcher 3's release period. It's still pretty awful in regards to options to keep one's self secure. This issue seems less difficult to address, however it still hasn't been addressed for whatever reason.

Galaxy has definitely caused problems before, especially for those who have had left over files from early version, as well as people who don't use it at all. Some games would not run because of the left over galaxy files, and I know of one game at least that they fuffed up the DLC so it didn't register if galaxy wasn't present. That's been resolved, though. I haven't used it for a quite a few months, so more recent problems would be unknown to me.

GOG has explained why it's taking so long though... and Galaxy will be better for it when the next major update drops. I can honestly say Galaxy is mostly stable for me, that's not to say I haven't ran into issues because I have... but I can say it has improved with each patch even if a patch introduced new issues.

Not necessarily. Maybe they haven't done that exact promotion again, but they have done various discounts and deals to launch indies they originally missed the boat on. It's not a bad way for them to play catch-up.

What was their explanation?
I've got games in which some are ridiculously outdated. There are threads on this kind of thing such as the one from fronzelneekburm.
Some developers just drop off completely, and some have to be nagged from GOG due to complaining customers. Windforge was a prime example of this.
Or let's look at the Breach and Clear: Deadline team. Before their major Unity update, I had asked them if the newest version was showing up at any point and their response was 'oh, it's not there? we thought it was. Guess you need to wait for us to finish our Unity update now'. There was months between that period. Now, there's been an update since November 24, which is still missing from here.
Possible scenarios are that GOG is just sliding things under the rug and hoping nobody notices, or because developers don't quite like the reception from GOG they'll just abandon it.
The reason I'm putting this across is that I'm not just 'loving to hate', and I'd really like things to get better. I'm tired of being a devoted fan, and I need to start thinking like a smart customer.

Well I was referring more to Galaxy but they are redoing the back end to and re-doing a large part of the code base for Galaxy to be support more games in the future. It's taken a while, but I believe there close based on what they have stated. They have stated the next major update will include compression and delta patching, which would be nice and make updating a lot better. They also said soon developers will be able to push out updates themselves like they do on Steam, so we should get updates faster, and so if we don't get an update after than then it's the dev's fault in my view. They are rolling this out to developers slowly.

From GOG's indie submission page:

"Every time we release a game on GOG.com, it gets a dedicated cross-media marketing campaign. It becomes our site's main feature, with an extra-large header banner and a frontpage news article. We'll also promote the release of your game to thousands of our social media followers (on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, etc.). We'll post your game's trailer on our YouTube channel and feature it in our weekly video editorial.

We're also eager to work with you on other special events and actions to make your game's campaign unique. We love to go a bit crazy with our marketing, and we hope you'll get on board with our ideas."

Some of us like the fact that GOG maintains also the offline installers and updates in some coherent form, and not the Humble Bundle model where the installer is just something the that the publisher slapped together, with various naming and versioning conventions, different installers, sometimes there is no installer at all but it is just a zip file you uncompress yourself etc. Whenever I download my DRM-free HB games to my local archive, it is a messy pile of... some files. For many of them it is very hard to even tell from filename what game it is, the name of the installer can be something like setup_IGHSS.exe. And of course they are not neatly put into subfolders, like the GOG installers are. Or installed similarly across all GOG games (under a GOG.com folder in the Start menu etc.).

I could be wrong, but I am pretty convinced GOG staff has to do most of that work themselves, which is also why they want to get games they believe will sell relatively well. GOG has to maintain them.

So when you say GOG should rethink how they do business, what do you suggest then?

- Go the Humble Bundle way, ie. minimum effort from themselves to maintain the offline installers and such, just releasing them as the publishers have sent them.

- Forget the offline installers altogether, and delivering game installations only through the Galaxy client. This would probably make it less laborious to maintain the games and maybe even some developers would be willing to do the work themselves, like they do on Steam... or maybe not, considering Pony Island developer was complaining that implementing Galaxy API stuff is too much work and a wasted effort, he just wanted to send the same DRM-free installer to GOG that he had probably sent to Humble Store and other indie outlets. Maybe they feel that if they have to do all that work, they only do it for one service, Steam. If GOG wants some of that too, fine, GOG has to do it themselves for each game. Back to square one.

I agree.

Should GOG start doing their own indie bundles? Obviously they shouldn't overdo it like Humble currently is, but they could have one every two or three months as a way to play catch-up on the best of the best the genre has to offer. I know they're all about giving every release its chance to shine with their full court marketing press, but maybe some indies, especially ones that have been around the block a few times, might shine brighter as part of a bundle. Being featured at the top of GOG's front page as part of a bundle for a week or two might be preferable to a standalone release that quickly gets buried by other releases.

Vote: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/gog_indie_games_bundle

Oh yes, I vaguely heard about it. Let's hope it all makes the needed difference.
As you said though, it still wouldn't solve poor attitude.

Nope, but I have a feeling it's more about having to go through GOG than anything else. On Steam they just have to log in and push the patch out. On GOG they have to contact GOG, wait for them to test it and package it, etc. GOG gets between them and their customers. A lot of devs like how Steam takes a backseat to this.

For GOG to "slide things under the rug and hoping nobody notices", GOG would first have to be aware there is a new update or DLC or whatever that the GOG version is missing.

I would be surprised if GOG really was constantly tracking whether there are new updates to all the existing GOG games (even just those that can be expected to be still semi-actively updated by the developers), except for maybe some of the most important games in the catalog, whichever they may be. Heck, I am 100% sure Valve has even less idea what updates are supposed to come to all Steam games.

GOG is most probably expecting the developers to be proactive, ie. send them updates or at least notify of them, and not so that GOG has to constantly crosscheck against e.g. Steam versions whether there is any new stuff missing.

Unfortunately many publishers/developers don't seem to be so proactive, so sometimes someone has to bug them about it. Quite often it seems to be GOG users, but it seems many GOG games get updates also without our vigilance. As long as someone has noticed, many games seem to have received the missing parts after awhile.

For Valve it is easy because Steam is the biggest digital gaming store on PC, so it would be kinda unthinkable there would be an update or new DLC for some PC game but the Steam version would be lacking behind. Unless it is one of those old classics that first appeared on GOG, and GOG has made their own fixes to them.

Do you reckon that includes also the offline installers? Will the developers maintain them too?

Or then GOG will change they way "offline installers" are distributed, ie. they are something you get through the Galaxy installation (like the installed files compressed together, and some script which adds any dependencies etc.), not a proper installer anymore. Depending what kind of solution it would be, either I would be fine with it, or not.

And as a customer who uses offline installers, I've liked this approach so far, over e.g. the Humble Bundle approach where the installers are a messy pile of files that the publisher has slapped together without any rules.

I don't think they have stated either way... worse case they get the files as there uploaded to Galaxy and package them as they do now. Meaning the patch comes slower to standalone users but packed and probably tested by GOG.

Best case they automate the process so a program packages them as they are sent to Galaxy and automatically places on the site at the same time. I doubt they will leave this to developers to do though, I don't see GOG trusting that to them but I could be wrong. Developers would probably rather everything go through Galaxy if they had there way.

thanks, it was an extreme example that just popped into mind.