micktiegs_8: Part of being a business is taking customer criticism in any form. This place is no exception.
Absolutely, and they do every day. But receiving and processing customer feedback doesn't mean that you should "let the lunatics run the asylum" metaphorically either. You take feedback and assess it along with various other business inputs, data and details and you make decisions. At the end of the day some customers will like some of your decisions and think you did the right thing and others will dislike your decision and think you did the wrong thing, and when the particular decisions are A or B type decisions (which include A or not A), you can't have both and you have to choose one way or the other to do A or not to do A, or to do A or do B, etc. and naturally the people who feel strongly towards one side of the decision or the other are going to agree or disagree with your decision based on which one of the choices you made. In the context of this specific conversation as a case in point, GOG has made the wrong decision in the eyes of the OP or anyone who agrees with them, and they've made the right decision in the eyes of people who do not think that particular game belongs here (such as me for example). There business is not going to cave into the ground over this decision, nor over the decision they make tomorrow.
Feel free to disagree with their decision and to express it here of course by all means. Sometimes based on such customer feedback GOG has ended up reviewing these discussions and decided to change their mind from time to time. Meridian Squad 22 for example, or Braid. That will occasionally happen too as customer input is part of the process.
But taking in customer input doesn't mean that because one person says "I want ABCD" that if they decide to not provide ABCD that they are "not listening to us". It means that they are listening, took that input, put it together with other input/data and made an executive decision, and the decision might be "no".
micktiegs_8: To say they can do a better job than 'us' is pretty stupid. I never have or will want to run a business of any sort let alone sell games digitally simply because I enjoy buying games digitally.
It's not stupid it is a fact. GOG not only "can" do better than us, they
are doing better than us right now in the present moment in this reality. They are running a successful and growing video game business where they have been more successful than any other company to try to run a business even remotely similar to what they're trying to do here. Other businesses trying to tap into a similar market with some degree of overlap have mostly been only mildly successful at best, and more and more of them are going out of business. 2016 has claimed the lives of Desura and Shinyloot as two examples. GOG is not only successful and growing, but their financial data is public information and proof that whether anyone disagrees over whether or not Tyto Ecology was declined, their business is moving forward successfully regardless of that.
Nobody else here is doing what they're doing and doing it better than they are, or we probably would be having a similar discussion on that other person's video game storefront. So critique, criticize, give feedback positive or negative all you will, and everyone else will too by all means. That's all fine and dandy, and GOG reads a good portion of it and it influences their decisions to some degree, and we've seen that happen many times where GOG has changed something based on feedback, including decisions about certain games that have previously been rejected. They have to look at games with a variety of criteria and make a decision that they can't know in advance 100% if it is the best possible decision or not. There are risks involved, and they will make good calls sometimes and bad calls other times in terms of what is good for their business and in their own eyes. Individual people will think they make good and bad calls sometimes too, but in the eyes of how it affects that individual or group of individual customers with potentially very different metrics making that determination.
I'm not telling people "go create your own store if you don't like it". What I'm saying is that no matter how passionate any one of us is in love with some particular video game, it doesn't mean that game is a good fit for GOG's overall business model and profitability, nor that it doesn't carry any risk. Often GOG puts up a fair deal of cash to bring games here, essentially bankrolling indie developers with an advance betting they'll get a ROI off the back end over time. If they bring every 2 bit game here, they're going to be taking on a lot more financial risk than might be viable. There are a lot of other factors other people do not consider as well.
At the end of the day, complain away by all means. It may be 3 part harmony or it might be a choir the size of a city. If it's 3 people whining about some shitty indie game that sold 30 copies on Steam that they think is cool looking, GOG is probably likely to yawn and turn the page. If it is something that 1000 people are going on about for weeks at a time and is popular out there and all the other important criteria is compatible with their business model, and they originally said "pass" on it, they may say "hey, maybe we were wrong on that one, let's have another look". That's what listening to feedback is all about, re-evaluating, not letting your customers unanimously run your business via a web forum.
The way I see it, if there is a game I'd love to see come to GOG and the developer has offered it to GOG and GOG has rejected it, then speaking for myself alone and not anyone else - GOG probably knows more than I do about whether that game will likely be a profitable addition to their store than I do. It's entirely possible that someone else, may know much more than I do about this sort of thing and more than GOG does too. If they do, then I hope they apply for one of the perpetually listed careers at GOG listed on their jobs page.
In the mean time, I'll enjoy GOG making decisions that keep the number of shovelware indie games that are burning my eyes on the front page to a bare minimum and fraction of what shows up on Steam on a given week.
Is that "stupid" too? Either way, I'm ok with that because it's ultimately reality, and this particular discussion on its own isn't going to change anything fundamental about how GOG actually runs their business really. If this is stupid, then it is the stupid inconvenient truth of the matter.
