Because GOG cannot sell games without the publishers. If we want GOG to keep selling games and to keep increasing its catalogue, it needs to be viable for the publishers. Otherwise they will delist and leave. Paying GOG alone does not incentivise publishers to start working / keep working with GOG in any way. They BOTH need to be paid.

I am not saying everyone should start buying games they don't want. I am saying that, if people have money to burn on this patrons program, they should instead spend it on buying additional games / gifts. It is a far better use of their money and it is better for GOG in the long run.

What is GOG without the publishers? A mod maker & mod aggregator with a Patreon account?

You’re welcome!

The GOG forums are much nicer to use once the accounts of a couple very prolific trolls are blocked. In the current thread I think I ignore two of them, it’s enough to make the interesting parts of the discussion stand out much more ;)

oh my god, you people... :D

someone asks about our thoughts about this program (it's the name of this topic), so I've added my thoughts

one group of people starts to high rate me, while the other starts suggesting me what I should or shoudn't do...

when I'm at my wits end and want to end the discussion of two people who simply don't agree with each other (which is fine!) in a calm and hopefully funny way, it still triggers someone to disagree with me :)

ok then, let's not call it death... but the fact that your body stops working eventually and turns to dust, would that be acceptable? :D but if you believe you'll be here forever to nag about something, I don't stop you :)
yep, they both need money and our support... for me personally the activity of preserving my favourite games (and MAYBE bringing in more here) is more important than paying any particular developer at the moment - which I still do :)

can we please agree to disagree? point has been made several times, we now know our thoughts on GOG Patrons, they don't match, and that's okay

Just learned about it. Can't say that I particularly like this but will remain cautiously optimistic. There are no companies which have introduced monetization that haven't devolved into worse practices. Maybe this one time it won't turn into a slippery slope of a paywall?

I've not checked yet, but is this sort of program also on Steam and Epic? If not, this is a blunder on GOG's part. Particularly since the platform is nowhere near parity with the former.

I'll only support this if I see evidence that a) it didn't evolve into some sort of monetization nightmare and b) that the platform is doing better for it for everyone.

Again, they can't preserve or bring in anything without the publishers. It's the publishers that own the IPs, not GOG.

"But but but they said they will keep patching up Warcraft 1 & 2 despite the delisting."
Yes, so they have said... It means nothing to those that can no longer buy that game from GOG.

Sponsor publishers and GOG, not just GOG.

Run by Valve and Epic themselves? Certainly not.

If you include Humble Choice and Amazon Prime Gaming, then you can subscribe to get "free" game keys monthly for Steam and Epic (and GOG).

GOG should have cloned Humble Choice and Prime. That would have been sensible.

Just think about that query for a moment.

"Would the private company that owns 90% of the PC gaming market take donations?", and "Would one of the owners of the sudden rising sun of a franchise that has made billions in a few short years with paid skins, take donations?"

Also, one of them has an incredibly lucrative demi-legal trading card system.

As for the initial query, are you really going to trust anyone at a company that is listed for public trade?

Read again carefully, that's not what they asked.

Can I be part of the cool kid's club? Pretty please?

Of course you can. For 5€/month.

If only it worked like that in high school.

It did! Just...nobody told you :)

Here's my thoughts (literally):

I think GOG should push for more on par updates from the original developer before adding their own tweaks.

Many games are abandoned on GOG: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_that_treat_gog_customers_as_second_class_citizens_v2/page1

As a customer I don't think I should be the one chasing devs and publishers to get their patches here.

As long as theres no linux support i don't see a reason to donate.

^ This. Also, many games launch on GOG with broken or no support for basic features such as achievements, overlay, cloud saves, etc. To be fair, the blame is mostly on the developers for not willing to support or in many cases, fix their games on GOG (see the Tomb Raider remasters and how the latest patch is still not available for the GOG versions, months later). I love this platform and want it to succeed, but many games are just inferior (DRM-free aside) from the versions you can get in other stores.

I don't care if I still have access to offline installers and new games still coming in the future. Also, I don't panic like the others over nothing - I still have my games backed up after all - but I do agree this is annoying.