Having just read through the thread, I think these two responses seem to fit best with my thoughts on the subject. Hopefully GOG can find a way to be a bit more transparent and explanatory with this process. And thanks, Barry, for all the effort you put in to raise awareness of some great games that belong here. I see your posts all the time and have probably put in votes on the wishlist for 50+ games I've seen you mention.

My question is, is every indie developer "great"??? My clear answer is no.

This means that GOG only publish "great" games? Well maybe mostly, but even if definitively we also have here some not good games, the quality standard is pretty high (but this also depends on your tastes).

GOG is more curated, STEAM more open minded, I like both approaches, I like GOG now as an alternative to STEAM, and that's good for us. We own or own personal market and pockets, for example: Last 2 years I was almost exclusively buying games here, recently some changes made me turn back to STEAM (To be too focused on Galaxy, killing the Library, the old good aspect of the website,... these things made me feel not so welcome as a collector here anymore, but make me feel the site is becoming something more similar to STEAM) but GOG is still keeping wonderful parts bringing old franchises to life, publishing mostly GOOD indie games, giving me not so many problems to buy games from different parts of the world (I travel a lot and i know this could appear a small issue, but I had my problems with STEAM rejecting me games I bought being temporally in other territories, and this is REALLY annoying...) and taking much care than VALVE to make old good games work properly in our PCs. So actually I buy now in both places again.

GOG take their own decisions, STEAM their own, and we can decide who does better for us..., actually I think is better to have both of them ... so this is the market, welcome to it... if you do not like something, just show it to the channel or platform with your consumer behavior, if you are an indie developer that thinks STEAM is doing better, go there, simple.

Do you think these games are "shovelware":

http://store.steampowered.com/app/310970/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/246760/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/293160/

Because GOG rejected all those games.

When some game gets rejected, it is easy just to go on other sites which sold this game and read reviews and forums to see why it could possible be rejected - there are usually quite solid reasons for that.

One of such games (I won't name it to avoid game bashing) featured VGA graphics (which were a thing in 1990-1994), it was locked at 30 fps, it didn't have that much happening on the screens, fine, retro-style, but it could put quite solid PCs on their knees, causing overheating.

Surely people want such games?

Maybe they are, maybe not, I didn't tried them, GOG probably did and took a decision, is a BD decision that could be related to MANY things, not just that the games are good or bad, but also that they have limited publishing windows, or "space" and these games could be out of their interests not for being bad, but for have better options.

There is nothing WRONG, NOTHING wrong choosing what you publish in your own platform. Even if I defended that HATRED has no real reason to not be here, as POSTAL 1 or 2 are sold here, there is also no reason for GOG to publish it, if they decide to not do it.

Frankly, the first one is garbage. Second is good, third is decent, by MY standard.

Regardless of my opinions, Steam have made cash from those titles. And that's where Steam really shines, they attract people to buy.

GOG simply does not have the capacity of monstrous userbase number like Steam has.

If GOG rejected them because there's not enough interest, it IS GOG problem to begin with. They don't have large userbase, so yeah.... That's like pointing out own weak point.

Absolutely, GOG's perfectly reasonable and infallible criteria are setup to know exactly what is and is not shovelware.

To make matters worse, what does Indie even mean anymore? Some of those "Indie" companies have gotten rather huge and some of it is artsy crap, but some of it is the same sort of dreck that the publishers were making.

Since GOG does actually do some QA and Steam doesn't, they're going to have to have fewer titles, it's just not possible to compete for size with somebody that does no QA if you're doing QA on the titles.

IMHO GOG is doing a VERY GOOD JOB in the titles they are choosing in general. My two cents...

Yes, and I would like to add that games GoG add every month is already larger then my budget, so it matters not missing one or two worthwhile games.

I don't think GOG has any cred in the "indie dev" community to be honest.

I really don't get GOG's "curation ". Whoever is in charge of accepting/rejecting seems to be EXTREMELY biased towards and against certain genres and graphic styles, sometimes it feels like GOG has an autoaccept and autoreject mechanic based on what genre you list your game as.

Yes, they are not infallible. Some things get through, hatoful boyfriend and "enhanced editions" of bg/iwd spring to mind. But overall they are doing a pretty good job. £3.99, a bit steep, 50%+ discount, might be ok.

As for those games, well, the first is a LOM clone. Doesn't look great TBH.

The second looked ok, typical hex battles, then open land exploration, would wishlist and get on deep discount. £30, oh how I chuckled.

The third however is the most interesting, quite old looking. Again, would hold out for a deep discount. Say the price £13.59, hahahaha! Maybe £1.

Overall, it shows what the whole early access/indie set on steam is producing, and how, given a vast enough user base, you can sell sand in the desert.

I'm frankly more surprised about GOG actually releasing older and cheap indie titles that had already been bundled (like VVVVVV), than I am about GOG rejecting them. I can't imagine they'd make much profit off those. Apart from a few exceptions, it seems sensible to concentrate on day one releases, as far as indies are concerned. Not that GOG is doing the best job in this regard, but it seems more profitable than releasing games that everyone and their grandmother except for a few GOG fanatics already own from other sources because GOG is lagging behind. I doubt many people come to GOG for Good Old Indie Games from last season.

Speaking of bundled games, what about classic indies like Braid, Cave Story+, Limbo and Super Meat Boy? Why aren't they available here after all these years? Did their developers all turn GOG down? Is GOG not bothering to acquire them because everyone who would ever be interested in them must already own them? As well-known and beloved as these titles are, do you really think they wouldn't make enough profit to justify the cost of releasing them?

I like at least number 2 and 3 and number 1 looks not worse than many other games here. GOG should have taken them on, although maybe with reduced coverage.