I'll work with you. They don't even have to hire me, hell! Just give me access to the email server and I'd answer all those emails myself, for free!

You think I'm joking? My inbox used to have hundreds of emails a day from record labels. Their vetting inbox can't be that big and it's also pretty self-explanatory what makes the cut these days.

Satire, right? Honestly, it is hard to tell anymore.

Oh, and let me also tell you that I wasn't paid for the work. Nope. When I covered albums from major and indie label acts across the world, I was often given a physical copy of the CD, but never received any digital payment, nor any kind of check. I literally worked for free, for over ten years.

There were a few gigs where I did earn some money, but rounding that off would be approximately $200 for ten years of work, which is quite silly in the long run. I had covered thousands of records, as well as other types of media and even conducted interviews.

So yes, I am used to working for free. I have a day job too, of course.

I think there is something more to just replying to email. You need to get a pre-approve from your boss, then sign a contract with Legal Team (3 days up to 2 months), get game materials from the publisher for forthcoming game card, write some text (trying to be smart and funny), and give it a go to moderators to create respective forum entries, news section and store page. Imagine if one person should do all that work alone (I have no idea, maybe this is exactly how it's done), imagine if there are ton of other pending requests from established publishers (same but much less work), human factor might affect the process in favor of less work with onboarded publishers then having extra hassle working with completely new entity with *niche* game no one heard about. Since GOG Curation team will never communicate with us one way or another, let's speculate even more, what IF each approved game will affect the bonus payment for that responsible person? That might explain that mysterious part "Due to big interest in the indie games program, we may not be able to reply to all submissions we receive"

@GOG It's your doing, the less we know, the worst we might imagine.

Telling you would be in violation of CoC (the Code of Conduct). But seriously I thought it's too obvious.

hmm every one I see is just a minimal effort ugly eastern kawaii style meh, those good ones must be hiding somewhere
oh sure i bet these have fans just like nearly everything else gog should stick to pc games
the thing is I think, hmm think is too weak here , so lets use certain, these visual novels are not games
they are like manga with way fewer pictures and worse style, and on top of that it wants you to spam space or turn on auto scroll
these shouldnt be on gog

Agree to disagree. They seem to sell well and that's all that matters. Plus, I have bought quite a few myself. And worse style is definitely subjective. Manga is in black and white, visual novels are in full color. For me, full color always trumps black and white artwork. That's why I never gravitated towards manga and prefer western comics.

I don't think we have a problem here at all at least not with curation

Consumers need to have a voice? Are they shareholders or managers in the company? nope
then why would they need to have a voice? they dont
Thats not how things work , consumers can say they like this or that and companies just ignore it (gladly) as most of those are just whining from self entitled people(Karens)
If consumers don't like the company , they are free to choose another store.

I love how gog didnt open the floodgates to all games out there, who wants to see another store with 90% garbage fugly minimal effort games like steam. Just go to steam and check out new releases and experience the flood. I dont miss that here at all.
Hope they will keep this , even if it means a very few maybe okayish games end up outside.

Maybe they looked at this game and thought it doesn't worth it for them.


btw could we not talk about covid ,i can hardly believe an online digital only store got a huge impact from it , other than
they got more customers

Yes, I'm sure that's a big factor in why Steam is much more popular. Nailed it.


So what's your theory? They know their sales figures, they know what kind of thing sells here and what doesn't, and they actively choose the stuff that sells worse for funsies?

Pretty much this. Add to that that they have currently more releases than ever - I guess they are pretty much swamped atm.
Which means, additionally to having to walk a new dev/pub through the ropes, it's easy to imagine that games are dropped rather quickly if they don't make a favourable first impression at first glance - even if it's not justified, because the game is actually pretty good. "Here's your stack of 10 new games to check for today..."...

I guess the best way to make GOG curation see the error of their ways is to create a wishlist entry and bang the drum on the forums for the game. Has worked before.

A Wishlist game entry? If yes I don't know, there were cases with new game releases with just 4 votes in Wishlist and a complete ignore for a game request with several hundred votes. It's almost look like if they are paid to accept some games without a question.

But I agree, the amount of new releases is quite high. Given that GOG hinted several times that they are understaffed the Curation Team might be swamped indeed with lots of requests.

Don't tempt me. CDPR stock is only $164 a share right now. You want me to become a stockholder in order to have decision making power? I will.

But aside from that, you are the only one who doesn't seem to go with what I'm saying here about customers having a voice (try working retail and then get back to me, buddy). Customers definitely have a voice. Customers are what business is built on, not the shareholders. Now you can be mad about the anime novels all you want, it doesn't disprove my point about the power of the consumer in a market.

Of course, yes I can go somewhere else. But sir, that is the worst thing that any storefront EVER wants to hear. That's called a lost sale and lost sales hurt the front-end quite a bit. Businesses exist to make money, and people like you and me give them money for products that are in demand. Supply = Demand. Don't make me start posting Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" series in here, or the audiobook of Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics. You'll learn the power of the customer soon enough.

And let me tell you something about Karens. You can get upset at these people all you like as well, but statistics show that while women in the west make 18.5 billion dollars a year, they spend 28.5 billion dollars a year. Karen spends more than she makes, which is bad for her, but good for the global marketplace. Because of these complaints, things get remedied and those remedies equal out to a better shopping experience for all. GOG is a store, after all. It has a checkout page and offers receipts. So if I'm making a product complaint, just like any customer I have dealt with, it should be remedied in the best way possible. And in the quickest way possible.

No one likes an angry, unsatisfied customer. They tend to not come back, like our fellow and his sour grapes over Groupees. Those were the complaints of an angry, unsatisfied customer. Nothing they can do will bring him back, he's lost their business. A good business means keeping a strong consumer base all of the time. Find what your customers like and keep giving it to them. They'll keep coming back and recommend your business to others. That's how people actually make money. It keeps the shareholders happy, the publishers happy and all those other people in the middle happy. Because what do they want?

Well, they want MONEY. So if you can keep their pockets stuffed with cash, they'll usually be as quiet as a church mouse.

And how do you do that? By giving consumers what they want at a fair and reasonable price. And by providing great customer service each and every time. You want them coming back. Those customers have a voice and everything they say should matter. If someone is not happy in a comment section, big retail stores will work to rectify it. If you bought some candy and it tasted horrible, the company would either refund your money and/or they would give you a year's worth of free candy coupons.

Now, that's not what I want. I don't want free candy coupons. What I want is more transparency regarding games here on the site and I want to know that the consumer's voice is respected. After all, if no one bought any games on GOG, then GOG would not have a business. So we're just as important as anyone else you've named, if not more so.

Tell him to try Zoom Platform instead.

Btw, I am also quite curious about GOG's vetting process, when they allow a game like P.A.M.E.L.A. on here, which looks like it is clearly unfinished and has been abandoned by the developers.

I did consider this.

We don't even have the Arcane Edition of Anima Gate Of Memories yet. It's been out for years now.

We don't have the other games in the BlazBlue series, just the one.

We only have two Guilty Gear and they're both ancient.

We don't have the sequel to Ori and The Blind Forest yet. It is absolutely bizarre that we have the first entry of several games here, though not the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on titles. This pretty much forces gamers to go elsewhere if they want to continue the series. Terrible business model just in that alone.

I think you are very wrong with all of this
you sound more like an consumer activist than someone who works in this field
a company has to balance customer retention with its costs, its possible future spending and new customers all the time
a company can go minimal with retaining old customer in favor of new ones like gog does atm :) guess why galaxy is pushed, even if many here hate it

while companies care for their customers at least for their money they don't care for forum complaints that much or at all and that's good as most customers dont even know what they really want and would just leave if company would obey their crazy requests

"You'll learn the power of the customer soon enough." what does that even suggest?

You did indeed, and probably missed the bit where I didn't mention anything to do with GOG's profit.

Staffing of course, is not always directly related to profit, and it seems GOG have this crazy notion that potential employees should be prepared to up-sticks and move to Poland .... during COVID.

I'm not sure why they seem to have trouble getting enough suitable locals. You'd think they would have plenty dying for a job ... well not literally dying.

Anyway, speculate away.

P.S. Maybe you haven't seen the threads about this?

I can't see how they couldn't get enough employees if they pay fair in Warsaw, it is a large city and i bet most of the support roles don't require specialized workers other than being able to read/write in english