I agree that he does go overboard on the accusations a bit and is quick to jump to conclusions, but the "too niche" thing wouldn't even be a near meme at this point if it didn't get used so often as an excuse for rejections, and as it is vague as hell/blatantly a generic copy paste response it leaves the door open for any number of theories due to giving us and those devs that were rejected so little to go on.

That is good news.

Don't take this too harshly or the wrong way, but why are you seemingly so quick to defend/provide excuses for Gog's rejections? To me that is nearly as bad as thinking every game is being rejected for the same reason.

Obvious by objective standards or your own views? What metric are you basing that on?

And again it wouldn't be so well known if Gog didn't use it so much(on other games, not this one per se).

If Gog has them under contract why not sell the games and make some extra money and then dump them if they get out of hand or don't do well? Or do they dislike money and not know how to negotiate a contract and handle problematic partners when needed while using them for profit while they can?

They had windward here up until recently and from what was said it sold very few copies and it stuck around a good while. Other games also likely sell very little, and Gog brings them here, so they can bring some of the rejected ones here as well.

Remember, their profit margins(minus CDPR money) aren't nearly as big as steams, and every dollar counts.

Because there is no profit to be had...
Look at Grimoire, it still has just 424 reviews. No one is buying it. It has a "Mixed" 67% user score that was manipulated up by the dev who claimed "SJWs" were tanking it...when the median review score for any game on Steam is 81. We are talking a bottom 25% title that no one is buying...9 players yesterday on Steam

We have Fall of the Dungeon Guardians which was even bundled with only 404 reviews. At least it's above median with a 84%...5 players yesterday on Steam.

You will lose money with these titles. GoG already has a good idea how many brigaded wishlist scores become sales. Judas said back in the day that GoG does take the wishlist into account but GoG also looks at whether that vote count has been artificially manipulated through such brigading too.

Then you have games like One Finger Death Punch which is a great game, but is in EVERY bundle for years and can be had for a quarter. It's sequel came out and was bundled within a week of release.

One can go through the list of these rejections...it's filled with games no one has heard of; games that are getting no traction anywhere else; games from developers who can't find a bundle they don't like; games that are greatly overpriced on release; games from developers whose other games are poorly reviewed and undersold. Leaving maybe 1 in 10 that are actual judgement calls.

But inexplicably we keep talking about games like Hatred, Agony, Grimoire and this Wizardry title. Hatred which wasn't very good. Agony which was horrible out of the box but may have been improved (but now without release sales), Grimoire which objectively sucks and this Wizardry title which is a console port of a not very favorably reviewed PS3 game in the first place...

Yet these people act as if these are "great games" that will sell a lot which they pretty clearly won't. And if they don't sell, GoG loses money just from the review, preparation and maintenance costs. It's like saying the new Terminator film is making money when it ends up with a $70 million domestic box office but the truth is after production and marketing costs, it will lose about $100 to $120 million overall. Everyone loves the Terminator, so that somehow means even horrible 5th sequels deserve to make the catalog on quality?

Prove that Scheme reviews and the Scheme audience is representative of GOG user feedback and GOG audience.

Yet they kept windward here even though it netted them maybe a few hundred bucks every year. And they keep many other low selling titles.

I am a bit skpetial by nature with other viewpoints, so I have ask: What do you have to backup the rating manipulation claim?

Also that number seems low, but sitll likely higher than the current player of windward on Gog....also what about other sites selling grimoire? How are their player numbers?

Not to be overly mean/criticcal, but:
I don't believe in review bombing or brigading claims every time as to often people use it to cast aside claims(of something good or bad happening) they dislike or choose not to believe in. Also we wouldn't know if we'd lose money until we tried bringing them here.

That is still 1 unneeded game rejection(out of every 10) too many.

Again, let the market decide and let Gog earn a bit more money.....just make the devs do a good chunk of the work to bring them here, than all Gog has to do is test/host the files.

Read the dev updates! The developer made two updates literally claiming SJWs were bombing his game and asking every user to review it and rate it highly right on the Steam page. He was begging people for positive reviews.

Edit: As to Windward, it was already here. They took a chance on it and it failed to live up to expectations. The initial review costs/testing, contract lawyer fees were already paid for. And they are still on the hook to attempt to keep it updated for modern systems.

I'm not saying GoG is flawless. They clearly do make mistakes. I just think people don't give them enough credit for what they do bring here and the deals they have managed to cut. Whoever thought we would get Disney? Or 2K?

Prove it doesn't...I'm sick of you burden shifting fools...

Your argument is bullshit. Most everyone realizes that games tend to get equivalent ratings based on their quality.
It shouldn't take you very long at all to compare games between the two platforms and see the positive correlation.

5 games off the top of my head:

Witcher 3 - 4.9 stars 97% positive on Steam
Daikatana - 2.7 stars 64% positive
Vaporum - 4.3 stars 90% positive
Lords of the Fallen - 3.4 stars 61% positive
Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption - 4.5 stars 89% positive

Was anyone b*mbing his game's reviews, though? And if so why weren't said reviews removed?
Many times, but not always. Also are we talking about user scores or the paid reviewer's scores(including those who get paid to review on Yt/etc), because one is not like the other.

If Daikatana is 64% positive shouldn't it have a slightly higher star rating?
It is still one of likely more times Gog took on poorly performing(sales) games, and if stuff like that can come here than so can other games they rejected(of course not all).

I agree Gog has done a good amount of good things and brought us some amazing games....I just wish they'd let a few others slip onto the store....maybe make a sort of poll for some cases and let the user base decide from time to time? It'd certainly be good pr if they did such a thing.

Not that I could see. I looked hard to find these "SJW" reviews, I didn't see them. Cleve seems to have some sort of persecution complex. Since he thinks his game is so great, somehow those who don't see it that way are deficient in some way I guess. Let's face it, he's not the only creator who has had a problem with criticism. There have been a few movie directors who have tried to blame their "fans" for failure to understand the brilliance of their movies that bombed too. The truth is there just weren't enough reviews to say it was bombed in any way. At least until Cleve's update asking for positive reviews where people started reviewing it again for a couple weeks before they dropped off again. Even then, the rating grew a little bit, but again, not enough people really cared enough about the game to make much of a difference.

Sounds like a real piece of work.....still, i'd rather we have such games here to decide for ourselves, for those who want such DRM free/on Gog/etc.

I disagree. With over 30,000 games on Steam, taking a game like this that is probably the middle of the bottom half means GoG takes in 22,500 of these games as "deserving". Even if half of them would not release DRM-free that's still quadrupling the catalog to justify taking in a game with poor sales and user ratings.

Give me games one expects to see get a 85% "thumbs up" Steam user review score or the GoG equivalent which should leave plenty of options that people appreciate more.

Because if they took in this game then they MUST take in all games that have better rtaings that we don't have on Gog already. Great logic there.

No, they don't have to take all games in to take a few more in....not every dev applies to sell on Gog, and Gog could likely find ways to make sure there is interest before deciding to let another game onto the store(Like the stuff I mentioned about polling the user base on some titles).

Ratings are not always a good metric. They can be influenced by things like nostalgia and fanboyism, among other factors.

Let more games come, and give em a trial run. If they sell then allow the dev to sell more games here, and if not kick em to the curb after enough time and chances have occurred if need be.

Sorry, more b.s. logic. This isn't just a mediocre rated game. It's horribly rated. 67% where a middle of the road game on Steam is 81%. How does one justify not taking an 81% middle of the pack game (over 15,000 on Steam right now) when you are taking a game that far below average.

Why when taking in a "few more" would you take in garbage that no one is buying and virtually no one is truly recommending? As I said, if even half the games won't go DRM-free, that still leaves over 10,000 that would with better user ratings. GoG reviewed it. GoG rejected it. Steam users have rejected it. Why does it belong here again?

Trial run? There is no such thing. A game comes to GoG and GoG pays the costs for it into eternity. You clearly don't understand their business. They test it, make adjustments for OS's as necessary, make installers and draw up contracts. They also try to maintain updates even on games removed from the catalog for OS changes. The majority of costs are borne up front unlike certain storefronts where all the support is up to the developer and they at best check the installers for viruses.

There is no "kicking games to the curb" in terms of their expenses.

Funny you complaining about my logic when yours leaves so much to be desired. User ratings are a metric of popularity both in their numbers and results. Arguing that they aren't always perfect doesn't change that. Clearly the educational system is failing the world. Too many people think all they have to have is a poor counter-argument and act like that settles it.

It's not hard to review games with a track record...like Grimoire, or this Wizardry game....
We have past reviews, user ratings, estimated sales numbers available. It should not be that hard to correlate this data based on it's genre into estimated sales. If a game isn't up to snuff, it gets rejected.

Much harder with new releases where all you have is social media activity, press, popularity based on wishlist numbers, success of that developer's similar titles, etc. None of which necessarily takes into account the actual quality of the game itself as determined by the masses. Instead you are stuck with a few internal reviewers trying to guess how it might be received. Those are true judgement calls.

Rejecting the likes of Grimoire, Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls is far easier and more accurate and GoG knows better than to just listen to the same handful of GoG users who seem to think hundreds of games (or pretty much every game ever rejected by GoG) deserves to make the catalog. Polling the true "user base" is impossible. These same handful of people would just rile the same people up to vote for every game that would not sell stacking the poll and GoG knows that.

It would sell and they would make money.....that's why.

Also 67% is bad? Since when? I remember the days when 67% meant above average, and below 50% or so meant bad. People these days are spoiled by mags setting most scores to 8-9.5 out of 10 for anything they consider good.

Thing is i'm not talking about this one game specifically, but a good number of titles Gog rejected that likely would sell. Also, if it doesn't belong here by whatever standards you picked then what about all the games we have here that sell hardly any copies? Why keep them under that logic?

Gog likely can drop devs and games(for future sale) if they so choose. All they'd have to do then would be to host the latest versions for those that bought it so they could DL it if need be of they dropped a dev from their store.

I at least am willing to admit when my logic is flawed, but so far a good part of your argument seems to boil down to "these games are bad because I think so(plus unsubstantiated reasons) and Gog shouldn't sell them because they are bad".

Also reviews and ratings can be manipulated, which is why I take them with a grain of salt.


Or allow them and see if they sell...tell the devs they are on a trial period and see if sales are good enough to persue a longer deal.....easy peasy lemon squeazy.

(And again, such data can be manipulated and falsified...how do they know what is true based on that data alone?)

Then let the people's wallets be the true judge of a game's worth and either sell such on a trial basis or allow pre orders for more games and see if people put their money where their mouth is.

I've actually been on a bit of a Wizardry binge lately, and have played through the following games to varying extents:
* Wizardry Gaiden 3
* Wizardry Gaiden 4 (used cheats to skip the 3 major dungeons that are accessible from the start)
* Wizardry DIMGUIL (around midway)
* Wizardry: Llylgamyn Saga (PSX, completed #1 and well into #2, currently playing this)

And I am thinking of maybe playing either:
* Wizardry: Story of Llylgamyn (playing "Wizardry 3: Knight of Diamonds" (which is really an arrangement of Wizardry 2, and is a remake of the version that was released on the NES)
* Wizardry: New Age of Llylgamyn (maybe try Wizardry 4 Arranged Version, which I haven't played before (and which unfortunately doesn't have full English; I have plated the Classic version before, which does have full English).

Anyway, there are a few thinks I am wondering about Labyrinth of Lost Souls, in case anyone has played a previous release of the game:
* How is the difficulty curve? Is it reasonable, or does the game suffer from long periods of being way too easy (a problem with the Wizardry Gaiden series; 4 is easy until the post-game dungeon, while 3 is easy for a while until it isn't)?
* How is the treasure distribution? Is it like Wizardry 1 and Wizardry Gaiden 3 where it takes a while to get anything interesting, or is it more like Gaiden 4 and DIMGUIL where interesting treasures start appearing right from the start? (To put it another way, is it good to have a Thief and Bishop from the start, or does it make sense to wait a bit?)

Sorry, I have to ask: Is your reading comprehension a bit underdeveloped? RWarehall now explained time and again, and in simple words, that they won't and why. Those games would probably have make GOG a net loss over them, because GOG has considerable costs putting them up and maintaining them, costs which the few copies they would sell would probably never cover.
It's a simple business decision. Also, though digital, there is something like "shelf space" even in online stores, and low-sellers clog those up. No sane store manager will fill their shelves with products only a few people want and hide the cash-cows between them.

And nobody claims that GOG have always been right in their decisions to run or reject games. And sometimes a rejection was corrected. And sometimes, when begging the devs to keep their version up-to-date (which also costs time -> money) an acceptance was corrected too.

And to turn the argument around: If the devs of those games wanted to make money (or were serious about supporting DRM free), they could simply put a DRM-free up on Humblebundle or itch.io and could cash in from all those DRM-free enthusiasts who boycott Steam and co. Easy money, no? Then why don't they do that?