Hi, this is Catacomber. Let me try to clarify about our content. The HD version of our expansions have been available on Steam, in the Apple store and in Google Play for Android for quite awhile. I am still porting more of the old Classic versions to HD and also making some new ones.

I have a website at www.catacomber.com for help. The old Zarista Games website was and is maintained by my partner Dr. Vlad but he has family and work responsibilities and no longer really maintains it.

The old Classic version of our expansions do not work as far as I know on GOG (or Steam for that matter.)

Now about GOG. GOG does not have a workshop like Steam, so I can't put our expansions up here so that GOG collects the money and pays us. Redshift does not want to add our expansions to their DLC content. We are given the choice of selling them to you via email and something like collecting the money on paypal.

I do not feel comfortable nor do I have the time to do that. I am only one person and it could get really complicated in many ways.

So until GOG has a workshop, our expansions are available on Steam's workshop.

And one more thing. I did not know The Quest was available or going to be made available on GOG until after the fact. It was more or less dumped on me that I had the one possibility of selling the expansions for it any way I wanted to. I was caught totally by surprise.

Steam has a perfectly functional workshop where someone can put up an expansion for a game and get paid by Steam. Redshift gets a share, Steam gets a share and we get a share. It's not a billion dollars but it's efficient and safe. I can put up an update to correct something anytime. And anyone on Steam gets the update right away.

How can I responsibly sell our many expansions by email and keep track of everyone who should get an update? I'd never have time to make a new expansion.

If GOG had a workshop like Steam does, I'd use it.

Thanks. :)

Sorry, why do GOG need workshop? Why in fact does steam need workshop? Or do you believe that hiding content behind certain company monopoly is in some way good for the consumer. Workshop has done its level best to ruin modding, and now the likes of Bethesda are trying to further destroy it.

As for your content, it would be a simple matter of one time, zip all the files up and send to gog to distribute (in most basic format as one package for all), and they would then pay you. In slightly more effort, individually. There are no platform dependencies, no difficult update mechanisms for this specifically.

while i'd still like to see your expansions here (either by releasing them as a whole pack or otherwise) i totally respect your decision and appreciate your response on the forums. thanks!

I just wanted to thank you for your continued responses! That is much appreciated. You have went above and beyond what most developers do when your product isn't even sold here. I'm very glad to hear you clarify it's not about the DRM-free aspect now. Please know that if somehow your expansions were available to be sold on GOG DRM-free, I would buy them all.

I could be wrong but have speculated in a topic in the main forum that the main logistical problem to get your expansions on GOG is that GOG doesn't (to my knowledge) sell third-party expansions/paid mod content. That seems to me why you and RedShift have mentioned Scheme Workshop so much...it allows for that. Maybe it is the case that in GOG's system, the developer of the main game has to be the developer of the expansions too...not sure.

I respect both of your decisions but it seems as a customer looking in, the best arrangement may be to have RedShift sell your expansions here. I do not know how that divvies up the money, but maybe it could be so that you get the majority of the money from it, while RedShift gains future sales since your expansions keep people coming back to the game and keep it fresh on people's minds/in the overall sales list.

As for the issue of direct purchases, I wonder if any other developers have a model/advice on how to streamline that. That is, there are quite a few developers that let customers buy direct from their site, and I'm not aware of any of them sending out emails with every update. I think maybe they maintain a download page, so if a new update comes out, it is on the customer to learn of that, and to go to the page to re-download. This is not my area of expertise but just figured I'd mention since you do bring up an interesting concern about how to deliver the updates.

Anyway, thanks again for all of your engagement with the GOG community, best of luck, and here's hoping somehow someway your cool looking expansions arrive here someday.

Redshift did not want to sell our expansions here as DLC. I understand that as they are they and we are we.

If GOG gets a workshop, I'm all in. It's worked perfectly on Steam.

I'm just one person. I don't have the capacity or time to manage our twenty expansions via some upload or email system. I'm sorry. And I do not like collecting money on the internet. I just don't.

I think if you tried our expansions, you might enjoy them. It was always a community effort. Many people had input into our expansions and they benefited from that.

I will put our expansion Mithril Horde I up on Steam for free as soon as I can get it tested. Just got the graphics done.

That's mostly to thank our loyal Steam users because it is so hard to find our expansions there. .

I hope you will try and like our expansions too. But right now on Steam is the only way I'm willing to do it until GOG gets a workshop of some kind.

You are the best. Thank you. : ) Meanwhile, I'm going to put our expansion Mithril Horde I up on Steam for free as soon as I can get it tested. I just did the graphics for it.

I have always released our expansions one at a time to give people a chance to play.

If you ever need help with our expansions, you can get it here:

https:\\www.catacomber.com

I go there every day.

Thank you for your understanding.

I don't have the time nor capacity to do that. I'm only one person and I concentrate on making new expansions. I'd have to handle sales, returns and taxes and updates are not that simple that way. I do a lot of updates.

It's just not something I signed onto when I started making the expansions. I hope you can understand.

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me. I do understand, its just a real pity as quite a few of us don't use Steam, so will not get to play the additional content.

I'm sorry but you will get to enjoy The Quest and Ice and Fire. I worked on both with Stewe and Sylon. Sylon taught me how to use the editor for which I am grateful. I remember naming day in The Quest when we named the ingredients.

EDIT: I have censored all this information, because I have a bad feeling people are going to be able to exploit this to pirate the mods.

well for me its not a problem as I use both steam and GOG, I have over 100 games here on GOG and countless in steam as well... If there are services in steam that accommodate you and not here in GOG it is not your fault. I have already bought this game on steam and I am going to download all your dlc's as well on Payday... I really don't see the big deal I mean c'mon guys it is the year 2020 GOG is not the only game in town if you know what I mean... I also use epic and Uplay as well all it takes is an email along with games already on there platform to sign in to, it is not the stone age for crying out loud, if you only use GOG I feel real bad for you as you guys will be missing out on some great stuff not offered here in GOG.

why can't you just take the selling part and sell all mods from zarista as "dlc" here on gog? this would be so easy! then we wouldn't have to own your game on steam and we wouldn't have to deal with steam at all!

since valve bastards forced this ugly unusable cluttered ads-infested ram-eating BLOATWARE fisher-price "ui" for mobile phone kiddies on us in october i'm not willing to buy anything on steam which gives fckng valve any money!

That's up to Redshift. : ) Meanwhile, trying to make some stuff available for free here. By the way, thank you for betatesting. You were so thorough. It was a pleasure.