Just to make this clear before the work day starts at GOG HQ: We're not just talking about Team17 pulling this stuff on GOG. There are numerous developers/publishers who just flat-out abandon their games on GOG after a while and I hope I speak for everyone here when I say: We as customers expect you to deal with this problem on a makro scale. So getting Team17 to update Yoku's Island will be a good first step, but it means nothing if we're forced to go through all this again with the next dev/publisher one month from now.

Here are just three recent examples that come to my mind of developers/publishers openly stating that their games will not receive updates on GOG to achieve parity with other stores:
- Villa Gorilla / Team17 for Yoku's Island Express: As per OP's post, a Team17 employee explicitly stated that they will not bring the recent Randomize update to GOG.
- Aspyr for Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel without a Pulse: Someone on the Discord explicitly stated that there are "no plans" to release the MondayVision patch on GOG.
- Gears for Breakfast for A Hat in Time: A community contact on the Discord stated that the "minor improvements" of the last six (!) Steam patches do not warrant an update to the GOG version.

It's not unheard of these days for games to receive new features or content years after the last updates. Also, the release of the patch did coincide with the EGS handing out the game for free earlier this month, so - just speculating here - maybe Epic gave them some financial support as part of that deal? And then Steam got the update too, because Steam actually has the guts to demand version parity between stores and the monopolistic power to enforce it. We saw the same thing with Nier Automata: The Game Pass version received an update which Steam was not scheduled to get - and then a short while later, the developer announced they were also working on a Steam patch.

I'd also like to take a moment to mention the laughable excuse that the developers of Slime Rancher stated; that (paraphrasing) the "GOG Build is unable to support the DLC" which just sounds like incompetent coding; which would be equal to having to run the Loopy Landscapes expansion of Roller Coaster Tycoon in a separate program.

There are also several other games I can think of that have withered and died in terms of support or existence on GOG. (Though I don't have a definitive list compiled. And since the forum search is so gonked up as to break on inserting basic spaces, a search wouldn't be of use.)

I sent a link to this trhead to the publicity people at Team 17 through their website. Let's see if that changes anything.

Well, that's just not good manners. Happy I am not a fan of Team 17 games.

Just for info (added the message link)

Discord server link:
https://discord.com/invite/team17

Discord message link:
https://discord.com/channels/364415195386216448/370224574589173760/887338017134628875

Small update:
"Hi folks, thanks for your feedback on this. Whilst there are no plans to bring the Randomizer mode to other platforms right now, we'll pass your feedback onto the dev team. In particular the comments about GOG"

Thanks for the update. I have to say though that it still sounds as if they have a choice in the matter of updating other platforms or not ... so my opinion about them (and similar publishers) did not change a bit.

all you need is a few blue checkmarks on twitter ranting about this and i bet most of the companies will instantly fix this

For what it's worth another mod just told me that they are trying to get more information:

https://discord.com/channels/364415195386216448/370224574589173760/887628702052130876

"The purple names in here are all Community Managers, so we're here to share information and pass feedback on, but im afraid we don't have any say or control over those kinds of decisions etc. I've contacted our team for some clarity on this and will share an update as soon as I have one.
I know it's frustrating, so trust me I do understand where you are all coming from. I'll give an update ASAP"

There is a simple solution for dealing with publishers leaving GOG users with outdated versions:

* GOG should mark the game as "Outdated" in their catalogue and on the game's product card;
* the game should go on permanent sale (say 80-90%).

The second option would almost certainly require GOG to revise their publisher contract (if they haven't considered this already) but would also provide a significant commercial incentive to publishers to keep up-to-date, or risk losing significant future revenue.

It seems like GOG clearly needs to include a clause in its publisher contracts that games released on GOG will be expected to receive adequate support and timely updates, or they will be removed from the store. Is this really so difficult?

Imo, GOG really needs to start playing harder ball with many publishers and actively remove games that: have been updated to include DRM-like features/fall below a certain level of quality/aren't being updated. RIght now, they seem happy to let devs/publishers get away with doing whatever they want.

In other words: it's time for GOG to 'grow a pair'

wonder how many publishers would leave gog, 95%?:O

In an ideal world it should indeed be the case.
Unfortunately - in the 2021 reality - GOG risks alienating more and more publishers.
Let's face the facts : GOG is getting less and less leverage for negotiating and DRM is getting more aggressive and intrusive. And to make things worse, the gaming community is more and more acritical. It just takes some minutes of browsing gaming news sites to know that the vast majority of gamers are just interested in the next shiny new thing, regardless of where it comes from. The success of stuff like Xbox game pass, looter shooters, online gaming, etc is a proof that gamers are more and more focused on online gaming and quick fixes, rather than owning a solid product.

Even the GOG community seems to have more people who WILL immediately buy game X or Y on steam if it takes some time to reach GOG.
If GOG decided to stop selling Team17 games here, while many people here (including me) would stop buying their games, I'm sure many from this community would still buy them elsewhere.
I'm not in favor of supporting publishers who have no respect for the GOG store. But everyone knows that - for a very long time - GOG has been known as a place where companies dump games when they're no longer profitable on the bigger stores.
And if GOG online provides 10% (or less) of steam sales profit I don't see how publishers would bother.

It's a complex issue. The publisher is obviously the guilty party here, but the gaming market is also to blame in the long run.
IMO things are very bleak for "old-school" gamers and I think they'll get even worse.

Just my 2 cents.

Yep, that is my take as well. That's why I'm backing up a game collection that should last me the remainder of my life.

Last piece of the puzzle I need to solve is ramping up on emulation and/or gpu-passthrough virtualization to be able to run increasingly old games (I know there are options for that on Linux, I just haven't yet invested the time to get familiar with them).

At some point, some of the larger game stores (Steam, Epic, or maybe some other mainstream contender that will pop up) will go offline and a greater proportion of gamers will realize the real implications of paying like its ownership without it being actual ownership, but I can't wait this long.

By that time, I'll just be playing games from my backed up collection and tell some of my friends "I told you so".