This is the main reason I was thinking of, but +1 for broadening the perspective.

I fully understand why for oldies, but do they do that for the new indies as well? Doesn't seem like a productive use of time in case of games that already have several reviews out, and the Steam forum showing what kinds of issues the players are having.

ah, i get it... true thats the way it also seem to go on steam but they blame the greenlight thing, which was rumored to be removed when i was googling for it a long time ago, there were rumors the greenlight thing would disappear.

about niche? what is that? i assume it means there's no real 'market' for it , that it might not sell well?

the sites that always tell there users that the gamedevs decide what games will come to the site to sell?
i think gamersgate works like that, i dont know for sure, but its been a while since the last new casualgames arrived, and i know from a developer thats also on steam there are more games, and these arent released on GG, so it might be that the companies decide which games will be available to which sites, and if it will be a steam version (keys) or a drm free product.
Like i said i use GG mainly for casualgames, new ones that arent released yet in dutch drm free and on a retail cd/dvd.
And sometime they have nice old 3pp games drm free like the ones i mentioned a few times: secretfiles 1 is drm free at least i could buy it, maybe its not available in all regions, i dont know.

The fact is that if certain old games from a publisher are available DRM free on only certain gamesite(s), and that publisher is also at several other gamesites, all these games should be available drm free aswell on any other site, to any gamesdistribitor cause why would they make a differnce?Why would GG and steam get them and why would they only offer limited games on the others?
So i think the owners/distributors of these drm free games are the ones to blame, and not GOG.
Sometimes these grownup distributors/gamecompanies who create/develop or sell these games look like a bunch of kids and act like 5 year olds, and that is stupid.

But then again if yoy wacth some videos at youtube of our governors, ministers and other people who are 'leading' our country you would see how childish these people behave.

I guess the dutch/belgian members already seen the many videos of our ministers rutte and the other ones who are 'fighting' with words like babies, saying they wont take back things they said unless the other member acts first, pretty childish people.
There are clips were some guys in the government were punching eachother on the face, very funny to see.
If our government already act like kids what can we expect from simple companies who develop games?
These simple people are the boss and they decide what will be released to each site that sells games like
gog, steam , gamersgate and others, and i guess that aslong as its drm loaded anyone can sell anything.
So the main blame is not at GOG.

Yes, that is what niche means. And if it's GOG's only argument to refuse this game (there might be others like the quality, technical issues or the price), it might very well help, if a lot of people vote for it on the wishlist.

true, but... technically spoken, who guarentees 100% that the votings are 100% 'reliable'
i mean, more ofthen then not you see when a voting is possible, many users are asking in forums to vote for this or that game, basically ,most users will do that.

I myself dont mind voting for a game that i cant play (3d/motionscikness etc etc) because i always think: maybe other people would love the game, and if i can help them by voting for it, there's nothing wrong with that :D
Ofcourse these votings only apply to games/movies, i will never vote on things that involve politcial views that i dont support :D

But whats the harm if everyone who loves 3d also vote on the 2d games? and vice versa? :D
so from that point of view , there is also no guarantee that these votes will also be 100% accurate.

Anyway, steam is like that all the time: i do it myself there aswell :D
I see many replies in the greenlight: " i dont think or i wont buy the game, but the game itself looks ..blablabla
so therefor i ..blablabla , so i voted.
These things make the greenlight very very inaccurate , so basically greenligyt is a hoax...
Even the button that reads that you (might) buy it when released at steam is no gurantee and will only give incorrect information, cause steam cant force any user to buy that game when its greenlit just because a user clicked the button, that would be a joke if they could deduct from your cash because you press that greenlit button :D hahaha

My point of view regarding games that are "more of the same, but with a differnt story and background" is this:

if i love games like classic fallout, jagged alliance, baldurs gate, command and conquer , redalert (please NO 3d / FPP)
and more like these, then i dont mind buying games that have the same way of play, ie: same graphics, no 3d/motion turning or zooming panning like all modern games have (motionsickness).

Often reviews were posted in magazines and online telling the game was okay but it was "more of the same"
i like the secretfiles and yes these are all more of the same, only another story and other graphics, but the absic engine was the same no zooming, no fpp... so i got them all

i saw many other games like these same engine, only differnt chars and graphics and story, and yes i would not mind having 100 secretfile type games , if only the story and graphics are differnt, cause if i like the way of how one of these games played, i want more of it much more, i dont mind 'repetitive game looks' my casual games are absically all the same look, only with other 'clothes' tree and otehr stuff, but i dont mind :D

I dont feel or have the need to have 1000 games that are all totally unique and differnt from another, yes i love the leftovers from yestrday that are nuked in the microwave and eat it all with a smile .
Thats what kind of a gamer i am: "never change a winning team(game), and dont be afraid to recycle old stuff :D
but please dont remake classic in 3d cause thats a nono and no buy.

"Too nieche" is the most silly argument I can imagine around here.
I could understand "too unpolished", "too expensive", "too much content resembling DRM", "missing English translation", etc... but not this.
GoG has become moderately successful by being nieche without being obscure and doesn't stand a chance against Steam when trying to be more like them, even with the DRM-free argument and Geralt on their side.

One of the main reasons why GoG had more customers than other small shops at all was probably that it appealed to older gamers, like 30-80 years old and although I understand, that there isn't as much money to be made than with easily hyped teenagers, it's still no reason to not get those customers they already have for a long time what they obviously want (= classics like Hovertank and games resembling classics).

Yeah you'd think a niche site would have a better understanding of and the need to support niche titles.

You did see the developer's post that "too niche" are his own words, paraphrased from GOG, right?

@JMich,
"niche" is the exact word they have used ; and it's the only word I didn't change because I don't know a synonym for it which would not have lost the strength of its use, especially as I was surprised they'd say that (a bit like many people here :) ).

@Everybody,
1 additional note : a few years ago, I got a game refused by Steam (before Greenlight) and in that time Steam had the policy to not reveal the reasons of the refusal.
At least, GOG gave me one (even if it feels a bit like a strange one ;-) ), so that's already not too bad... :)

Thats the reason why I own more games than GOG do.

I'd be surprised if they really do that to newer (also indie) games too. I thought that QA part from GOG is mostly for those older titles where GOG has had to do some compatibility work themselves. GOG has to extensively test the changes and implementations they have made themselves on those old games.

However, I think bringing games to the store does cause some extra work to GOG staff, as GOG doesn't operate similarly to e.g. Humble Widgets or Steam where the publisher is apparently supposed to do it all themselves. To me it would appear that GOG staff has some involvement in making the GOG game installers (for the main game, updates and DLCs) uniform, maybe they are creating all the installers themselves? At least I presume it is not the game publisher who adds ads of other GOG games to the installer etc.

Alternatively, GOG could require the publishers to do all that work, but then I presume many publishers wouldn't accept that extra work for the GOG version, but require that GOG simply accepts the same generic installer file that they have brought to e.g. Humble Store. That would mean the same mess in GOG as in Humble Store, game installers with various different formats, naming conventions etc.

I am just guessing there the best I can, of course.

This is exactly how it works for the Linux builds, at least. Once installed, all the games have the same directory structure, with the main game being located in a sub-directory called "game" and a launcher script named "start.sh" at the base directory of said structure. Since this script is clearly created by GOG, I am to assume that they at least check whether the game starts at all.

So yeah, I'm sure there must be some costs involved in adding a new game to GOG's collection. But at the same time, I assume this is not the sole factor taken into account before making a final decision.

After reading about the Evolved Combat System I can understand why this game might be even more niche than your usual dungeon crawler.

Alpha Polaris dev told me the exact words (reason) why they were rejected and the same phrase "too niche" was used by GOG.