I tweeted Jonathan Blow about ([url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqtSKkyJgFM]trailer, , [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdUyHi1i2h0]longplay, soundtrack) coming to GOG and this was his response:

"@Barry_Woodward Yeah, I have been talking to them about it but it doesn't seem to be high on anyone's priority list."

7 Apr 2013

Six months later, I asked for an update:

"@Barry_Woodward Discussions just sort of stopped. I think they are a lot more interested in The Witness than Braid."

12 Oct 2013

So, maybe GOG didn't officially reject it, but it doesn't appear they're interested enough to release it here, at least so far.

I don't understand why people are acting like this is a binary decision. Either you're like Steam and open the floodgates to an endless mound of garbage, or you take GOG's approach and have next to no relevant indie games.

There is, as it turns out, a middle ground. Remember Steam circa 2010? There were a lot of indie games there, and they'd started getting a bit more choose-y with the games they'd allow onto the platform. Their solution was the problematic Greenlight, but at least there was a steady flow of good content and enough restriction to keep the bottom of the barrel crap out.

Why can't GOG take that sort of approach? There is no good reason why Thomas Was Alone, or more competent visual novels like Steins;Gate, or any of that sort of stuff should be shot down. Ever. Not when GOG's still letting shlock like Mr. Bree or any number of generic-as-all-hell indie strategy games in. On the contrary -- they should be inviting the good, reputable indie devs in.

I get why GOG struggles to bring some of the bigger publishers on-board, but indie games are the lowest of low-hanging fruit -- these games should be easy to bring over. We shouldn't have games like Super Meat Boy or Nicalis' games or WayForward's content relegated to being aspirational titles in the Wishlist section of the site. These are games that we should, by default, expect to be readily available on the platform.

And yet, that's not the case. We're not even close.

I stopped bothering devs about releasing their games here a while back, didn't need to read that thread to know a lot of them are frustrated with GOG.

Not enough interest compared to what? I'd really like to know how GOG gauge interest. Sure isn't the wishlist (Dex has nearly 700 votes btw).

And don't get me wrong the wishlist is a nice feature, but the vast majority are not going to go dig through that thing to find games they would buy. So it's far from an accurate representation of what we would want even if they did use it to compare interest.

GOG needs to be more open... simple as that.

GOG is fairly new to gaming market and is in direct competitor of steam.
It's fair if they don't take chances with few games. Most of game seller are steam keys resellers so a new DRM-FREE ONLY store have to see the flow of market and make their strategy accordingly.
We dont want to suffer one more store as fate of desura.
And if we want a game then we have wishlist feature too.


What if someone from that thread is looking to this thread?

Rex Rocket -> http://store.steampowered.com/app/288020/

Dex -> http://store.steampowered.com/app/269650/

I also thought he was talking about Dex.

Honestly, GOG hasn't been looking too great for me. I like the idea of DRM-free, but GOG is seemingly going out of their way to exclude me as a customer. Without the games that interest me, I cannot justify spending my money on GOG. I want games to be free of DRM and censorship - but that requires having access to those games in the first place.

Without developers and the customers that they entice, GOG is apt to go the way of the Dodo.

There is kind of a trade off. The more games GOG brings here the less coverage they can give each one in the release messages and the higher the chances that many of them do not actually sell well or are buggy and cannot be tested and then the fixed costs and support costs will increase relatively.

What would be a middle ground?

- Different levels of release news maybe. Like they release almost everything but announce only those which they think are worth it for guys like me who don't want to be bothered with every game in the world.
- A cut that is dependent on sales numbers like 50% of the first 100 units, 40% of the next 1000 units, 30% of the next 10000 units, 25% of the all the units beyond - to better map the fixed costs related to a release.
- A game that does sell below a certain amount within a certain time frame (say 500 units in six months or whatever) is delisted again and support is minimized.
- If a publisher repeatedly releases buggy games he is blacklisted to avoid frustrated customers.

Not sure if Indie devs would like this much more. But at least GOG could try it and could see if just accepting more Indies increases their revenue. They should also really think about adjusting their cuts and make them dependent on volume to reflect fixed costs. If they do they could afford to release many more things. However they have to be careful on which products they focus the limited attention of their customers.
They'll see that GOG customers are kind of fair and want the best for everyone.

For example if GOG thinks they can predict the potential success of a game they are wrong. They can't. Not even the market itself can (Greenlight) unless you really try and sell the product.

So they should change. They should allow many, many more games.

But they should still pick the ones they like and think that they have potential and give them a better treatment so lazy people like me still have an overview and do not get lost in a multitude of bad games because, let's face it, not every Indie game has half a million owners on Steam. The example in the OP of this thread was rather untypical in this regard.

Then everyone should be happy.

Hah, thanks for pointing that out. My bad.

Wasn't gauging interest the point of the wishlist? If not, what are they using it for now, if at all? I think if releases on GOG reflected what people are voting in the wishlist many would make the effort to dig and vote. I mixed up Dex and Rex Rocket, but Rex still has more activity in its wishlist than most of the indie releases on GOG's this past month.

I definitely agree about GOG needing to be more open.

Actually, there used to be heated arguments in GOG forums about "Why on earth GOG releases (indie) games that have been sold elsewhere already for some time?". Seemed like some people were angry towards GOG for releasing games they already had on e.g. Steam, because apparently in their minds GOG should have rather released some old obscure DOS game that Steam doesn't sell. So, I guess at least those people are happy with GOG rejecting games for being released too long ago on other stores.

I don't share those sentiments though, I'm personally fine with GOG releasing games that have been released elsewhere already awhile ago, as I don't tend to buy (let alone play) games on the release date anyway. Like Metro 2033 Redux, it is already a year old remake, but now that it finally appeared on GOG, insta-bought.

Anyway, it is GOG's business, so up to them what games they want to allow or reject from the service. It is not like they owe me or anyone else to release, or not to release, something in their store. Certainly good if they listen to wishlist etc. though.

This is in lline with what I was thinking: we don't know the costs involved in getting a game here. GOG does. If they figure the costs are going to outweigh the sales, then they'd (rightly) reject the game.

Having said that, let's hope they at least lend some weight to indie devs whose previously passed on game sold well elsewhere and that GOG considers signing these devs on for their next release, if possible.

Another game that fell on GOG's chopping block was AntharioN. Considering that it is an isometric, turn-based, open-world game inspired by classics of yore (which get a lot of attention of the customer's here), I was surprised that it was rejected. Funnier even, is the fact that visually similar games like Eschalon and Spiderweb games have been here for quite a while. So yeah, GOG's decisions on which games to bring on and which to reject is sometimes skewed strongly in the direction of "does not compute."

This entire discussion is pretty much pointless- we can only guess on all important details (costs, sales, projections, GOG's capacity for new releases etc.), and therefore cannot really arrive at any worthwile conclusions. Right now only GOG has all the data needed to judge how viable bringing in a given game is to them. Assuming we know better simply becuase our taste in games would dictate different choices, or because we want GOG to have some vaguely defined "cred" among indie devs is rather silly.

The only things I know for a fact is that GOG has a lot of popular and well regarded indie games, and they keep releasing new ones often. That suggests they are doing well enough with their approach to the indie scene.

Well if GOG's market share for indies is only 5% then it's more of a reason for them to curate the hell out of indie releases. Releasing and maintaining costs money, which 30% of 5% might not cover. On top of that they would run the risk that indies overwhelming their old games, which I imagine is their biggest steady income. Personally I would prefer GOG not become another Desura. Also, it's not like people don't already complain that too few old games are released compared to indies.

GOG is also lacking in the heavy hitters department, like Skyrim, GTA, etc. Sell a few million copies of CoD and you can afford to release a ton of indie games that would cost you money instead of making you money.

So yeah, curating will miss some good games, that's bound to happen. I don't get why folks are surprised. Curating is done by people, people make mistakes, and it's hard to really judge the impact some indies will make.