We're getting Silksong today. (Servers getting overloaded is a bad thing but could also be a sign it's selling well.) Edit: sorry, I'm kinda repeating myself.
I'd also suggest checking out Zoom-Platform, FireFlower Games, and itch.io for more DRM-free installers.

Precisely. The number of games released per year may have increased, but quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality. A large majority of the games released so far this year seem to be low-quality shovelware titles no-one has ever heard of, or VNs. I.e. games that are hard to consider either 'good' or 'old'.

I don't have hard data, but the number of notable, big ticket releases seems to have dropped off sharply in the past couple of years.

This is something I've thought about doing a few times in the past, for a couple of titles at least, but I never went ahead as I wasn't sure how to do it, especially what to write. I would have liked a template of sorts... is there any available somewhere? I seem to remember finding something like that in a thread here in this forum, I searched for it in the past but couldn't find it. Or maybe I'm dreaming? But maybe I don't really need one, something simple like your example could be enough.
Also, I've always thought that publishers are those who decide in the end... is contacting developers really useful, too?

That is the problem. I think some very popular games are pretty much junk.
You can also ask "What is shovelware"? I have seen some fantasy games, which to me looked like the textbook example of Shovelware, get a pretty big fan following before they were released.
Fact is crappy product sometimes sells very well, and what i consider to be quality games fail when it comes to sales.
Gog is gong to sell whetever it thinks will sell. They won't last long if they don;t.
I think GOG should be honest about this, and don't buy thie whole selfless curators of games routine..which I consider a PR move,. Windows 8 is pretty much a dead system; I don't blame GOG for not supporting it.It does evenhave the kind of fanbase that Windows 7 does.
The GOG old game selling model is making old games playable on modern systems. Problem is Modern Systems change all the time. If the changes to make a game playable on Windows 10 or 11 means making it difficult to play on older Systems, GOG will make the changes since the huge bulk of their customers use the more recent Windows systems.
I don't get why people here don't get that simple fact. But hen a lot of posters here are off living in their own little computer world, where XP still rules the world.

One Problem is that some major gaming companies like EA and BLizzard have decided to manage their own classic game libraby. EA has been really agressive here. I am sure GOG would love to have the original SIMS and the C and C games, but that is not going to happen.

I know what you mean. Maybe we should be using terms like 'popular', 'mainstream', 'big-ticket' then, rather than 'high-quality', as those terms are probably less subjective. Ultimately, GOG needs to attract bigger, more popular games that are well-known among mainstream gamers, if it wants to attract more business. Relatively obscure indie titles (even if they might be decent and 'high-quality') aren't going to cut it.

Yes, this is the rub, isn't it? Most of the bigger, more popular game franchises that aren't already on GOG have been bought up by large corpos that tend to be more pro-DRM and/or have their own stores. So, GOG is indeed in a bit of a bind.

Imo, they should probably focus their energy on bigger publishers that they have had some success with recently: i.e. Sony, Capcom, Konami.

Here's my 2cents (GOG staff may have different ideas, and sometimes might be iffy about people making contact, but I think if you go about it correctly - again, basically just be polite and don't spam the dev or pub - it can be a good thing):

If the developer is still in business, yeah I think it can help. But I suppose contacting the publisher is more important (of course assuming they're still in business too. ;)

As I said at the top, main thing is to be polite and not spam the dev or pub, because you're effectively representing GOG (though of course don't pretend to be an actual employee).

I don't think you have to say much more than what I said at the top, other than to please tag @gogcom if you're posting on X/Twitter. It wouldn't hurt to mention previous games on GOG you bought from the developer or publisher, if you've done so.

"Hi, I want to buy (game title(s)) from you on GOG please! I've previously purchased (game a, game b, etc.) from you, and I'd like to be able to buy more from you on GOG. Thank you!"

The above might be a little too wordy, but hopefully it gives you a good idea of what to go for.

(Stating the obvious you already know and some you've already said) While that's absolutely true RE Win8, the userbase of a specific old OS doesn't even really matter that much to GOG. What matters to them is that the market has long since moved on - Microsoft doesn't support them, and progressively other software companies don't support them, so GOG moves along with them in not supporting them beyond vestigial legacy products; GOG is dedicated to making games work on new systems, so you've got to keep your favoured version yourself if you can't keep up.

That being said, GOG's annoying habit in altering games in the Preservation Program and not keeping the alternative pre-preservation version in the extras (not even temporarily), is frustrating when their immediate new versions bug out on specific hardware (see DAO). When challenged on these problems support's solution is to "use Galaxy", a measure of GOG's service which is meant to be optional, and doesn't work well for offline gaming rig fans. Had these customers with older setups been warned that the next patch would have effed up their favourite game, they may have opted to download the existing older installers asap and avoided replacing them with new ones.

GOG's biggest failure has been and always will be the lack of communication with its customers and community, but other failures are beginning to catch up in the scramble to desperately extract money from new customers.