Craft the World

Steam version has been updated to 1.5.000

https://www.gog.com/forum/craft_the_world/changelog/post24

Spoke with Vince D. Weller, dev from Iron Tower Studio, about the possibility of adding achievements for The Age of Decadence and Dungeon Rats on GOG and this was his reply:

"We didn't have this option when we released The Age of Decadence and now it's too late. While it's not rocket science, it's not something that can be done in a few hours either, which is why the Witcher 2 has achievements on Steam but not on GOG despite being their own game. I apologize for the inconvenience and can assure you that all our future games will have GOG achievements."

While i have no clue how difficult would it be to add achievements, i know it is possible for sure cause they used Galaxy SDK which is necessary for Cloud Saves.

Jut got a lengthy reply from the executive producer for "The Inner World" in German. Basically he said that it's harder on GOG and Humble to update and since the bug is not that crucial and they are only a small team they decided to prioritize things and did not update it. Since the game already is 5 years old they also will not invest additional work in the game for the same reason. I told them about the situation on GOG and that this thread even exists and that it's not good to be on the list neither for us nor for them - I also told them that imo it is just unfair to treat customers different but still taking the same money. I closed my (also lengthy reply) with the words that I do understand their situation but that they should also think about their customers and how they might react to their decision regarding future sales. Anyway: the game won't receive an update.

If you want to google translate the gist of it

"zunächst einmal ein gutes neues Jahr für dich und sorry, dass du solange auf eine Antwort warten musstest. Wir sind nur ein kleines Team ohne extra Support- oder QA-Abteilung. Wir geben unser Bestes, allen zu helfen und zu antworten. Dabei müssen wir aber priorisieren und die fehlerhafte Anzeige von Endcredits ohne sonstige Auswirkungen auf das Spielen an ist dabei einfach nicht so kritisch, ich bitte da um dein Verständnis.

Wie du selbst schon schreibst, ist das Spiel mittlerweile über 5 Jahre alt. Während es auf Steam relativ einfach ist, Updates auch für kleinere Fehlerbehebungen einzuspielen, ist bzw. war es das mit den Versionen, wie sie auf Humble oder GOG zu finden sind, leider gar nicht. Auch hier müssen wir ähnlich wie beim Beantworten von Spiel-Fragen abwägen, was ist wie wichtig und in welchem Verhältnis steht Arbeitsaufwand zum Ergebnis. Und hier sind wir an einem Punkt, an dem dieses Verhältnis zu unausgeglichen ist, als dass wir den Fehler der Credits zweifelsfrei für GOG und Humble beheben können. Denn nicht alle Spieler haben das Problem auf diesen Plattformen, es tritt nur bei manchen auf. Ohne diese Entscheidungen und Priorisierungen wäre unsere Arbeit nicht zu schaffen. Und glaub mir, wir haben damals wie heute unglaublich viel Mühe in "The Inner World" und die verschiedenen Versionen gesteckt. Alle Probleme lassen sich leider nicht verhindern."

Tossers!

I would understand if the bug wasn't already fixed on Steam, but if even uploading an already existing patch to GOG is too much effort for them then maybe putting in my payment details for their benefit is too much effort for me.

EDIT: Just something worth adding, the black screen bug doesn't just affect the end credits. It also seems to crop up frequently between some chapters, although not every single time like it does at the end of the game. I had to replay the last couple of actions of one chapter several times before it successfully loaded the next chapter. It's possible they never fixed that particular problem even on Steam, but it seems like a very similar bug (black screen immediately following a cutscene, just music playing).

tl;dr: I think the bug has a wider reach and is not as inconsequential as they seem to think.

Most devs still don't seem to know that GOG now has an easier way to update files. This is probably the case here -- they think they need to submit it manually.

This makes me angry.
People should boycott such devs until they'll release the same existing Steam fix on other stores.
Such behaviour should be always discouraged, otherwise this will happen again in the future.

Maybe you should tell them
http://www.studio-fizbin.de/

(I contacted Tobias aka Tobi but hello@studio-fizbin.de should also work)

Thanks, I'll do that.

If GOG keeps selling games that are not up to date, they should at least distinctly specify it on each game page.
Aren't the games sold here carefully chosen by GOG themself ?

They are but that does not guarantee us unlimited and quick support as well. Apparently there's a clause in GOG contracts (don't know if it is new) that devs here will have to update GOG at least 48 hours after they have updated Steam. Recently GOG also stopped selling some games that weren't updated so at least it seems as if GOG is trying to change the image they got here.

btw: The Inner World Devs replied to my reply today and tried to explain extremeley detailed (again in German) their point of view. It's not as if they just want to brush this off. Since the answer is really lengthy I uploaded it and you can read it here.

Regarding the problem with not updating GOG because of "small team" and "not much time" you can read what an actual developer (who is the opposite of this list btw) says to it here.

Thanks for posting that. I read it through Google Translate but I think I got the gist of it.

I sympathise with their small size and limited resources, but I really don't understand why they think that uploading the game to GOG is such a huge undertaking. Is is possible that they think we're asking for them to add Galaxy support?

That's also an interesting read, and in that case they're even talking about rebuilding the game with Galaxy achievements, which is definitely not something I'm asking for from the Inner World devs. Perhaps it is extra effort to put out an updated DRM-free version now 5 years after the fact, but that's just a good reason for why they should have done it 5 years ago, not an excuse for not doing it at all.

:(

Good one. It's amusing how some small developers (like that one, or the one from Stardew Valley) have no problem keeping up-to-date versions, or even implementing crossplay multiplayer, but others, including big ones, claim it's too much work. I guess "it's too time consuming" is the "too niche" equivalent go-to excuse of developers.

I'm getting Daedalic flashbacks here. Can't help but think that putting an up-to-date DRM-free build up on Wetransfer (let alone gog's dev portal) would take them less time than it took them to write all that.

I suggested something like that many, many moons ago. At least make the changelog accessible from the main page. Should be fairly easy to implement.

Sheltered is a nice example how user reviews are a less than ideal format to let potential customers know about out of date games. Unfortunately, the folks at gog think otherwise.