From what I remember, the devs never wanted to release the game outside of steam at all. In the past years many potential customers asked for a drm-free version, both gog bound or not, but they refused to do so.

As far as I know there are only 2 Elminage games on PC. The last was released on 2017 on Steam.
Unfortunately it seems that GOG is selling the worst of the two.

I wouldn't say that it's the worst of the two, as the 3ds ported version has less features or removed stuff (albeit there are some additions too), but the lack of another entry of the series on GOG doesn't help for sure.

I agree there's no reason for rejecting Wizardry, but don't say this game is better than Maui Mallard as an objective fact. Maui Mallard was an instabuy for me, and I think I wouldn't buy this Wizardry at all (I do like dungeon crawlers and the Sir-Tech's Wizardry series, but this one doesn't appeal to my taste).

But again: you are right, this game should belong to this store, for being a Wizardry game, an Xseed game, and a dungeon crawler RPG (a "good old genre") well executed.

If Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar and Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls were a rolled up newspaper, I would smack GOG with it. Please assign the person at your company who is currrently overseeing the dungeon crawler genre to a bathroom stall so that they can curate themselves to full content without blowing their horrible decisons onto your customers.

the senran kagura games i saw a glimpse about seemed to rely a lot upon numerous cosmetic DLCs
and for many publishers and devs, use (and abuse) of DLC requires sole kind of DRL to be sure to sell them all and milk the customer off their money for it

of course, they could try to sell some deluxe versions of it with the dlc already in and see if they sells or not (thus it would require them to either reduce the price/cut/margin they make on all those cosmetics OR shamelessly display the accurate total price for them and let people witness how far the DLC abuse went on their games)

now that's said, i still am happy to see other xseed games here, and despite this kind of dungeon crawler games aint my stuff (i used to like dungeon crawlers, just not much this substyle) i still see the appeal for the related audience for it and as such, i am rather disappointed that it is not coming here

Plus i feel the whole gog curation system lacks logic, common sense, consistency and coherence. I would expect the curation system to be at least partially explained publicly, with some disclosure of any grid-appraisal items or with guidelines to understand it... but that wont happen because it's not done in a rational, equal and consistent way... it's rather semi random, depending on the face value and some personal bias and whatever.

This policy is the main reason why I'm not supporting GOG anymore. They can bite the dust for all I care, even though they have the best policy among other stores which is DRM-free.

Modern GOG is about western indie trash (which includes movies too), not about old good games.

(late at night so my arguments aren't terribly well thought-out)

I guess when GOG was starting they wanted anything that gave them an edge over Steam, and since Steam wasn't selling Postal series at the time, GOG gladly brought the series aboard. But things change and as they've grown they're having to navigate the hedgemaze of "progressive"(?) gaming outlets like Kotaku, and of course GamerGate (as Postal series' devs were involved in; maybe that's why Paradise Lost took so long to get here) and tweets and politics leaking into everything and everyone at each other's virtual throats online and whatnot, so they want to avoid as much negative press as possible. I'd prefer they just sell whatever they think will make a profit; Hatred has over 4k votes, which suggests to me if it was released at the time of the controversy GOG could have made a profit but who knows.

This Wizardry is an interesting case because it is an RPG and RPGs seem to be the most consistent to sell well here, so I do think the rejection has to do with (what can be perceived as) the lack of animations and maybe too-simplistic environments. But I say if GOG can make a profit off it, bring it. (I guess one can argue GOG doesn't have infinite time so they might want to focus on things that bring in a bigger profit.)

What about a section of GOG, called something like GOG or Blastoff or Orbit something related to space (keeping in line with universe/galaxy theme), that's more like itch.io but some minimal curation? Maybe you forfeit some support or refund by buying a game there but GOG is willing to accept far more games for that section of the site. *shrug*

Well yes, that would be one option. There are lots of option that would be better than the current "curation" system. But GOG doesn't care. They love their random number generator telling them whether they should accept a game or not.

I would counter-argue that the post-curation process should be mostly automated and/or done by the developer themselves (just like Steam!) and should not take up any of GOG's time, therefore allowing for more smaller and niche titles to be on the store and make a profit.

I have not much sympathy for this incarnation of Wizardry. It looks a cheap JRPG.

What I feel is due, is some additional comments from the curation, on what are the reason of rejection.
They should clarify what GOG user base wants.
Perhaps they relly know...

True is that my expenses here are dropping week after week.
Most of the games that are being added are of little to no interest to me. The one I was interested in, mainly I already own.
The few games I still buy is due to my completionism syndrome, and in this case I wait they become extreemely low price, before buying them.

Also, filtering too much games at the source, casuse a spiral of lost interest from customers:
the store will be visited less and less, to the point that even interesting publications will be missed (and not bought).

P.S. I realised I have this game on PS3. LoL

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/have_wishlist_votes_actually_matter_and_taken_into_account_during_the_curation_process

"Because as it's been proved time and again in the past (Opus Magnum) and just recently again with Grimoire wishlist votes clearly do not play the role they should (as an indication for demand and potential sales) when curation decides whether a submitted game is rejected or not."

Since you already have a version of this game, how is it in practice? Does it play like a cheap JRPG, or does it not?

Both games have different publishers. The first one is partner with GOG (although much of it's catalog is still missing here), the later one has no games here at all.

Seems like we are skrewed here, as the later publisher seems not to be interrested in GOG/DRM-free releases at all. I doubt GOG would reject titles like "Onechanbara" or "School Girl Zombie Hunter". They are campy trash for sure, but they would be very good sellers none the less...

This is it exactly. I'm not interested in this particular game, but it's the constant drip-drip of terrible decisions on GOG's part (not just over curation, but many other things) that's gradually wearing down my patience. When your most loyal users start to openly speculate that someone is deliberately sabotaging the site, you know you have to have screwed up somewhere.