ZaineH: Vague statements like needing to implement an
SDK before launching on GOG don't help with that rumor either.
I think it really boils down to whether one has made pre-baked assumptions in one's mind and is looking towards any new information they can find to put a spin of confirmation bias on their already made up assumptions, or whether one is looking at things from a point of pure objectivity and rational explanation.
When I read the linked to statement, what my mind sees is that this is a new game coming out and as is the common case with new games coming out whether by indie developer or AAA studio, they tend to use pre-made tried and true APIs for various purposes in their games rather than unnecessarily implementing all of those things with their own standalone code themselves and increasing development time. Naturally such a game planning to release itself on Steam for example would most likely use the Steam APIs for things such as multiplayer matchmaking and achievements, or other such functionality that the optional Steam API provides to developers if they decide to take advantage of using it at their own option. Likewise, GOG now provides the Galaxy API to developers which implements a subset of similar functionalities to developers who wish to use them rather than writing their own code completely from scratch.
Now, if you're a developer who purposefully chose to use the Steam API to do multiplayer/achievements/etc. then you probably did that because you don't want to write it yourself, and that means you probably don't want to write that code yourself if you release your game somewhere else either, including GOG. Naturally, by extension of that, if a game developer wants to have as much feature parity with Steam as possible and they use the Steam APIs (a reasonable assumption for practically any game being developed these days), it is not a stretch of the imagination to assume that they will decide also at their own option to use the Galaxy APIs to publish their game on GOG. They would of course be free to not use Galaxy APIs, and to develop all of that code themselves, but that's a lot of additional work to do to release on a platform that you might get only 0.1% to 10% or so of your market. They'd be free to release on GOG and just not provide those features also, but then you end up with a neutered GOG version like that game from last month that labelled itself "DRM-Free" edition - not something too wise for a developer to do either.
So, while nobody can know for sure what the details of said statement actually are without asking the developer to clarify it, it isn't difficult to push bias aside and make
reasonable assumptions about what they might mean by it without resorting to things that have potentially highly negative connotations.
Truth be told, companies like Valve and GOG don't even remotely need to try to
force developers to use their APIs any more than they need to force them to use their storefronts at all. Developers
choose to use the APIs and storefronts because they are extremely convenient, save them tonnes of development time, manpower and monetary resources, and are the best way to get their games to market and provide a variety of highly desirable conveniences to customers.
The storefronts and their APIs completely sell themselves - without any handcuffs.