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Indie Devs! Join the DRM-free revolution, reach more people, get an advance on royalties.

GOG.com, in our continued efforts to bring you all the best games in history for PC and Mac, is looking to make it easier for indie game devs to submit their game to GOG.com. To that end, we have launched a new portal on GOG.com today, containing the essential information on the way we work with our indie partners, and an easy entry form providing direct contact with our team. All this, and more, found under the URL:

www.gog.com/indie

For those of you who are fans of GOG.com the service, this doesn't mean much of a change, except that we hope we will have ever more exciting indie games to release while we continue our schedule of regular awesome classics as well. For those of you who are developing games, though, we hope to make this a painless process where you can be sure that you will hear honest feedback from us about your game and where we want it on GOG.com.

We are also disclosing our revenue share--a 70/30 share, as is industry standard--unless we offer you an advance on your royalties, in which case it's a 60/40 share until we have recouped the cost of your advance. There's been some speculation on the part of developers in the past as to what it is that we offer indie devs, and we wanted to make sure that was clear up front. We've invited some of our indie dev friends to talk briefly about the experience of putting their game on GOG,com, and here's what they had to say:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oqIc7vix2YU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

If you're a fan of classic games, brace yourself for a thundering great RPG on Thursday. If you're a dev, fill out the form today, to join the DRM-free revolution, reach more people with your work, and possibly get an advance on royalties!
Post edited August 20, 2013 by TheEnigmaticT
Is GOG going to make these submissions public?
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tfishell: I suppose GOG wants to known now as an overall DRM-free digital download service (although we haven't really seen any new AAA games, have we?)
This didn't start only now. For a while GOG is working on competing with major distributors like Steam. You can say even since rebranding to GOG, rather than explicit "Good Old Games". So this is well in line with their on-going efforts.

I suspect it even goes beyond just downloads. GOG wants to seriously compete, so I'm sure they'll develop incremental update service, not unlike Steam has, but they'll preserve the DRM free nature of the service in whatever way that would be (for example offering patches packages for each update as well as updated standalone installers and etc.).
Post edited August 19, 2013 by shmerl
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shmerl: Is GOG going to make these submissions public?
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tfishell: I suppose GOG wants to known now as an overall DRM-free digital download service (although we haven't really seen any new AAA games, have we?)
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shmerl: This didn't start only now. For a while GOG is working on competing with major distributors like Steam. You can say even since rebranding to GOG, rather than explicit "Good Old Games". So this is well in line with their on-going efforts.

I suspect it even goes beyond just downloads. GOG wants to seriously compete, so I'm sure they'll develop incremental update service, not unlike Steam has, but they'll preserve the DRM free nature of the service in whatever way that would be (for example offering patches packages for each update as well as updated standalone installers and etc.).
Well, then, hopefully they'll be able to convince more big publishers to bring their AAA games here (and their classics), if they expect to compete with Steam.
So called "AAA" publishers are still mostly infested with DRM, I think it's the reason GOG doesn't get many of these games and mostly focuses on the smaller publishers and developers who have more common sense and aren't obsessed with DRM. May be this will change with time.
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tfishell: Well, then, hopefully they'll be able to convince more big publishers to bring their AAA games here (and their classics), if they expect to compete with Steam.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
But in general, GOG is already beyond a niche distributor if someone didn't notice. They are competing with Steam directly:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/Defenders_Quest_By_the_Numbers_Part_2.php

So expect GOG to match and exceed Steam in features with time, and beat them with being DRM free.
Post edited August 19, 2013 by shmerl
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shmerl: So called "AAA" publishers are still mostly infested with DRM, I think it's the reason GOG doesn't get many of these games and mostly focuses on the smaller publishers and developers who have more common sense and aren't obsessed with DRM. May be this will change with time.
Well, my understanding is that, based on a recent interview, DRM-free is becoming less of a problem for publishers. The bigger problem is figuring out who owns what rights and who at said company will help GOG figure out re-releases.

Also, it should be mentioned that TET has claimed that GOG is not competing with Steam, but with pirates. This sounds kinda silly, though; it seems inevitable to me that GOG and Steam are competing since they're both going after the same market more or less.

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tfishell: Well, then, hopefully they'll be able to convince more big publishers to bring their AAA games here (and their classics), if they expect to compete with Steam.
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Crosmando: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
I don't know what to say.

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shmerl: But in general, GOG is already beyond a niche distributor if someone didn't notice. They are competing with Steam directly:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/Defenders_Quest_By_the_Numbers_Part_2.php

So expect GOG to match and exceed Steam in features with time, and beat them with being DRM free.
I think GOG will need to create a serious optional framework similar to Steam's client if they really expect to beat Steam, as not everyone is bothered by Steam's DRM. (autopatching, social features, achievements, easy click/install/play list of games, etc.) I don't personally really want any of this, since I think GOG's success came from being identified as "Good Old Games", but if they do want to be thought of as a DRM-free Steam and try to take on Steam's marketplace, they'll need to present some amazing reasons for people to come here.
Post edited August 19, 2013 by tfishell
Well, I hope DRM is gradually going away, GOG helps a lot to eliminate it. But many publishers still seem to be very sick with it.

GOG is competing with Steam, no doubt.
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tfishell: I think GOG will need to create a serious optional framework similar to Steam's client if they really expect to beat Steam, as not everyone is bothered by Steam's DRM. (autopatching, social features, achievements, easy click/install/play list of games, etc.) I don't personally really want any of this, since I think GOG's success came from being identified as "Good Old Games", but if they do want to be thought of as a DRM-free Steam and try to take on Steam's marketplace, they'll need to present some amazing reasons for people to come here.
It's rather simple. In order to compete, GOG has to exceed Steam in convenience, while avoiding the downsides of it. Incremental updates save the hassle of installing new packages from scratch. Many users find this to be a big plus of Steam. GOG will have to develop some sort of service and client that would allow such functionality (I only hope the client would be open source in order to be more trustworthy). But they need to avoid Steam's main fault - DRM. So they can do it like Desura, simply keeping the standalone download for installers as an option (that's what they have now already anyway). Or if they want to be even more user friendly, in addition to full updated packages for those who have previous packages downloaded, they can offer downloads of the incremental updates as patches packages, to reduce the download time).
Post edited August 19, 2013 by shmerl
I'm always happy to see more games here, and considering how much I'm enjoying Giana Sisters:Twisted Dreams I'm saying: BRING IT ON! More indie games for meee!
Awesome news. I really like to see and hear how forthcoming you are towards your indie partners. That's why I'm buying every interesting indie game without Linux version here. :) Now where is Cognition and pre-order button for Blackwell Epiphany? :P

Oh, and by the way, the initial post didn't interpret iframe tag properly.
Post edited August 19, 2013 by Mivas
Hmm, can free games also be submitted to GOG.com/indie? I'm developing one, and having it officially featured on GOG.com after it's finished would be really nice (and hopefully by that time GOG.com will also be supporting Linux :) ).
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Zeewolf: I think he means that it's a much better deal to buy indies through Humble Store. Or of course he could mean that he comes here for the classics. Both are valid reasons not to be all that excited.
But neither reason is all that interesting.

Now the mantis shrimp, that's something I find very interesting.
Excellent.
Now i hope that more games like Gianna are joining GOG (BASTION wink wink)
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GreatEmerald: Hmm, can free games also be submitted to GOG.com/indie? I'm developing one, and having it officially featured on GOG.com after it's finished would be really nice (and hopefully by that time GOG.com will also be supporting Linux :) ).
That would be interesting. GOG already offers some classic free games like Beneath a Steel Sky. New ones would be good to have too.
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Zoidberg: Unfortunately for gog and indies, I find it way more interesting to NOT buy those games through gog.com. :/
Why is that?
Yeah, we definitely need more indie games, not old games. Who on earth would prefer old games instead of 2d indie platformers with pixelated graphics for retro feeling (in fact, they just couldn't afford a good graphics designer)

Hurray!

Summertime is almost over and there is no "shower" of classics on GOG yet. Meanwhile, more and more love is shown towards indies.

Why? Who cares? Indies can be bought anywhere, usually DRM Free.