Honestly, telling GOG anything accomplishes nothing.
We've had games come here with sweet shit all total ratings on steam. We've had games come here with mixed, even bad ratings. We've had Hybrid Wars come here with one of the most offensive middle fingers along with it.

I absolutely understand why people have to ask 'what curation?' sometimes. Not because of low-budget popular stuff I may not like... but just some of the choices overall. Not as 'carefully curated' as they used to be.

To proceed, can you point, say, 10 such crappy indie games lately? Just so that we get something tangible for this argument. I just want to check if those games really are universally panned, or is it simply that you don't like them?

Yeah I was also surprised by all the praise that e.g. Shovel Knight got, by the screenshots I just dismissed it as some cheap indie platforming game with shitty graphics, but since so many people seem to like it, even without playing the game yet I have to admit maybe I was wrong after all.

Also, are there some great indie games that GOG should have released, in your opinion? Is your complaint mainly that GOG lets "bad" games in, or that it keeps good indie games out?

As for how GOG's curation works for indie games, as far as I can tell it goes something like this:

- Games which have lots of prerelease hype and recognition probably get a pass right away, if the publisher is willing to release it on GOG at the same time as the Steam version, and not postpone it. No Man's Sky (with its disastrous launch) is probably a prime example of this.

- For less known indie games, GOG makes a quick decision if it seems like a game that would sell relatively well on GOG. Like is it just a cheap clone of a clone, has it already been sold for years on Steam and $1 Humble Bundles etc.? Note, there may be lots of other reasons too why GOG may refuse to take some game, publisher not agreeing on some things with GOG (pricing, no DRM etc.).

- Afterwards GOG may change their mind about some refused game, if they see it is selling well on Steam and receiving good reviews. There seem to be quite many games which GOG has apparently first declined for a reason or another, but it has appeared later to GOG.

Unfortunately this is not true for people who only buy drm-free games like myself.

On that note... I didn't realise Warlock of Firetop Mountain had a Humble version. Good times ahead!

Maybe because the thread didn't spread yet. You know as well as I do that the forum ways is usually bashing games in their release thread just for the sake of it. The "poor" OP is just generalizing that habit.

On the other hand I don't see any problem with no buying games I might not like. That is of no prejudice to me. What might be a prejudice to me is not releasing games I might like. Or trying to convince GOG not to.

Neither did I. Thanks for the heads up.
Unfortunately, of the 99 games I have in my humble wishlist, only 30 are drm-free.

Yes, I know that but unless gog eliminates the curration system and goes with "open all the flood gates" Steam concept there will never be all the games we wan't to play on gog. Sad, but unfortunately true.

Which ones ?

If the games YOU want to play aren't available here look for the alternatives - direct from the developer / Humble Store / itch.io / Steam etc.

In the end GOG can decide to sell what ever it damn wants - and they'll probably base those decisions on what they think will sell and make them money.

Stores aren't a charity service for every 2 (or 8) bit developer wannabe - and nor should they be.

Imagine how much crap would be released if GOG wouldn't curate them :).

Are you suggesting "Kill the Faggot" is crap. :P

Would you believe there are still people in here who are irate at GOG for not selling it?

The great thing about Indie games today is that they can reach almost every niche and sub-niche there is, and thus a much wider range of gamers than triple-a titles can.

For example, do you like classic RPGs but feel tired of replaying the old ones over and over, ... well ... try modern ones like Underrail, Serpent in the Staglands, Krai Mira, Lords of Xulima, Avadon 3, Legend of Grimrock etc.

Aiming to keep older genres and sub-genres alive should qualify as 'curating' to me.

The diversity that Indie games offer today is not that different from "triple-a" PC gaming in the past, where you could get all kinds of quirky and innovative games (Creatures, Sacrifice...) alongside more traditional ones.

So 'curating' in this sense, means ensuring we have the same or similar diversity in PC gaming that we had in the past, that we get 'all kinds of quirky and innovative games, alongside more traditional game design.'

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It is for me.^^^^^^^^^

I haven't really played a classic 2D platformer since Sonic 3 on the SEGA Mega Drive back in the 90s and I really sucked at that. Still do. But ever since I saw a Let's Play for Shovel Knight I've been tempted to give it a try, that's how good it looked. Carefully modernized gameplay, classic graphics, respectful humor...all seems to come together in a perfect blend of nostalgic fun in the absolute best sense of the term.

All that's holding me back is, well, I suck at 2D platformers and don't particularly like them. So, if Shovel Knight gets me excited, that's really saying something...

I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I see a lot of indie games I don't care about, and some I care less than that about. In particular the pixelated eye bleeders, platformers, roguealikes. But then if you do the math (or wait for JMich to post the math) the ratios are about the same for different game categories all along over time however we get more total games in a given week/month now than a few years ago, so the raw number of games we might see that we don't care for might be double but moreso because there are twice as many games being released than there being a higher percentage of them per se.

On the other side of the coin, the games must be popular enough and sell well for GOG to bring them here too. Ultimately they need to be growing their revenue stream well enough in order to maintain revenue levels and growth rates to convince new big name publishers to come on board and bring more AAA games here.

So while I bite my tongue and rub my sore eyes at some of the games showing up, if it pays the bills and brings games like Mirror's Edge, Spore, Dying Light, Metro series, Saint's Row series, etc. here over time then a certain amount of eye pain is acceptable. Plus, we can always grumble about it still anyway. As long as they sell well, our grumbling wont hurt anything. :)