There are people that think that a relaxed curation system might hurt GOG as a business, because some other companies failed when trying that approach. I, on the other hand, think those companies tried that because they were already losing to GOG, though it didn't work in the end either.

I'm also more of the opinion that GOG's curation might hurt them on the long run. What I've been observing lately is that less and less people care about DRM-free games. There was a time when Double Fine kickstarted kickstarter, when any project not drm-free would failed and get a serious backlash. Nowadays nobody cares. And for the project that have a drm-free release, it's always first and foremost through Humble Bundle, as they were more proactive on that front and made things very easy for developers.

Keeping different versions in different stores is hard work, and I'm noticing that many projects are happy with steam and some other store for the drm-free version. That's what I think indies are tending towards. GOG's curation is quite discouraging for many of them, which drives to Humble. And Humble's grownth as the DRM-free alternative will unfortunately work against GOG.

(Sorry for the somehow offtopic rambling)

I can guarantee you that releasing a game on GOG (any game) needs at least 20 manhours. After the fiasco with Dark Matter, a game is played through to the end before it's released, so they don't have another surprise like that game.
So no, the "minimal work" needed to release a game on GOG is quite a bit more than just packing the game.

What? That pretty insane. And unrealistic in this competitive market. No wonder they almost don't have 0-day releases. I think it's actually cheaper as a company to have the occasional Dark Matter -and the blame goes mostly to the developers- than to lose competitiveness due to having to check each game to completion. I guess that'll not be the case with games from known developers/distributors.

I guess they should mostly release P&C adventures. Those are short and easy to finish with a walkthrough. And that'll work to my advantage :P. On the other hand, RPGs...

In 2015, GOG had 308 releases. Of those, 94 (31%) were Day 1 releases, with an additional 23 2015 releases that were not Day 1.

The part about testing releases is about older ones actually, not sure about Day 1 (yet), but GOG is the one doing the support and having to do refunds if the games' don't work, not the developer. So the "minimal effort" is not so minimal. Quite a bit goes on behind the scenes that we don't get to look at, or at best glimpse at through the forums. It is quite more than just package the game and release it.

They do at least level 1 support, dealing with refunds, bank issues, web issues, download issues and advice on running the games . And that scales with game numbers. But that's the name of the game. And it's still a lot easier for new games (where bugs and patches are dealt by the actual developers) that old games (where it all falls back into GOG).

The money return is better for new games, they're easier to carry, you don't have to deal with pesky licensing issues and the pool on offer never ends. Hence why it was imperative to move from old games to any game.

You seem to be the only one insisting that carrying a game cannot possibly cost GoG money. I'm sure it costs far more than you can imagine. If you want to believe that GoG was primarily responsible for the losses at Desura or Shiny Loot etc, don't you have to give them credit for their business model? Instead you are somehow also saying GoG will die if they don't become like Steam. To me, that is how they die, when they bring nothing more to the table than Steam, why shop here?

As to Unreal World, people were not being sarcastic it wasn't here. Or Fall of Dungeon Guardians and its 4,000 copies sold on Steam or every other game that no one is buying on Steam but they are complaining about it not being here for GoG's rejection. To me what makes GoG is their curation. There is a basic level of quality where even the worst games don't completely suck and make my eyes bleed.

I never said it doesn't cost GOG money. I'm just sure that new indie games were the hardest part of the support is dealt by the developer in the form of patches costs far less than you imagine.
I don't hold GOG responsible for the demise of Adventure Gamers and ShinyLoot, because it's not their responsability. I do, though, considerer the growth of GOG to be the main reason for it. And I even posted snippets of the closure statements from both were they explicitly stated competition and the existence of better stores as a reason.

I also never ever ever said I want GOG to become steam. So there you go. I don't have any use for drm. Nor a client. And I don't even have, nor intent to have, a steam account.
What I did said, is that there are also dangers to curation. The danger to alienate your game providers. Which right now are mostly the indie developers. As available old games are scarce and distributors could dismiss drm-free, or at least third party stores, at any point, with their own platforms running.
And for indie developers, it's much about ease. Steam plus one platform for DRM-free seems the way many want to go,at least to begin with. So it's important to be that one drm-free platform.


There are several games on GOG that didn't sell anything on steam either. That doesn't mean they're bad. Nor every game GOG rejects is bad either. Although many are. That's why I'm not against curation, but in favour of increasing the number of releases -with a really rough estimate of 2 a day to take care of most rejection complains-.

There are several classic games that bombed commercially. Starting with Grim Fandango, a game some people consider the beginning of the end of adventure games for the way it underperformed. Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, The Last Express, The Neverhood, Omikron: The Nomad Soul, NOLF2, Vampire The Mascarade: Bloodlines (it even killed Troika)...