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JMich: Assuming you are talking about the forum users, we are not the user-base. We are a minority of the user base.
Of course we are.

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JMich: The wishlist for Opus Magnum has less than 600 votes. Even assuming all of them are different users and everyone would be buying 2 copies of the game on release, that comes out to ~1.5K copies. If that is the number of copies a Zachtronics game sells on GOG, then yes, it may not be worth it, no matter the game's quality.
But like the people which use the forum also the people which vote on wishes are a minority. So these votes very likely represent a much larger buyer base.
Wow! The whole thing looks like the tantrum of a spoiled brat: "I don't like your game so you can't sell it here!"
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ElPrimordial: Wow! The whole thing looks like the tantrum of a spoiled brat: "I don't like your game so you can't sell it here!"
well... that's exactly what human curation is...
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RWarehall: 600+ votes on the wishlist in this short a span of time IS significant...
Indeed. About 20 votes per day. Significant numbers indeed.

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RWarehall: And throwing out misleading numbers trying to outright dismiss this thread while implying that forum users are just insignificant and should never be listened to constitutes cherry picking.
True. I assumed there were 150 different people that posted in this thread and that 600 different people voted on the wishlist. True numbers are probably way lower than that, tell me if you'd like me to go for the lower number (which would be dismissing this thread).
And I never said that minorities should not be listened to.

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RWarehall: How else does one measure such a silent majority anyway?
By seeing how many people actually buy Zachtronics games? I don't have those numbers though, so I can only guess. If you do have the numbers for the silent majority, please, do post them.

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RWarehall: I really don't see the point in your post "raining on the parade".
If I see a group of 5 people saying "We are over 1000 people", I would question their numbers. Hopefully, they will be able to prove me wrong. I do enjoy being proven wrong.
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eiii: So these votes very likely represent a much larger buyer base.
Ah, true. Forgot to take that into account. Thank you for correcting me.
So, what would your estimate be for how many copies a Zachtronics game would sell on GOG?
Post edited January 06, 2018 by JMich
Yes, that's a miss. I've been playing since day one and have more than a day of playtime.

I look forward to every new Zachtronics game and more exposure is a plus.
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RWarehall: 600+ votes on the wishlist in this short a span of time IS significant...
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JMich: Indeed. About 20 votes per day. Significant numbers indeed.

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RWarehall: And throwing out misleading numbers trying to outright dismiss this thread while implying that forum users are just insignificant and should never be listened to constitutes cherry picking.
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JMich: True. I assumed there were 150 different people that posted in this thread and that 600 different people voted on the wishlist. True numbers are probably way lower than that, tell me if you'd like me to go for the lower number (which would be dismissing this thread).
And I never said that minorities should not be listened to.

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RWarehall: How else does one measure such a silent majority anyway?
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JMich: By seeing how many people actually buy Zachtronics games? I don't have those numbers though, so I can only guess. If you do have the numbers for the silent majority, please, do post them.

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RWarehall: I really don't see the point in your post "raining on the parade".
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JMich: If I see a group of 5 people saying "We are over 1000 people", I would question their numbers. Hopefully, they will be able to prove me wrong. I do enjoy being proven wrong.
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eiii: So these votes very likely represent a much larger buyer base.
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JMich: Ah, true. Forgot to take that into account. Thank you for correcting me.
So, what would your estimate be for how many copies a Zachtronics game would sell on GOG?
I just love the way you are completely dismissive of all the other users on this forum.
"talking about the forum users, we are not the user-base. We are a minority of the user base."

I guess "the great JMich" is just completely special and no one else can possibly disagree with anything he or GoG has to say.

I have, in fact gave estimates of this game on GoG, at 2800 copies in the first week if accepted at launch based on 10% of Steam sales.

Furthermore, you seem to be neglecting the first Tweet implying GoG rejected it because someone there thought it looked like a mobile game. But I guess you know better than Zachtronics in that GoG really meant that their other games didn't sell well enough.

I guess no amount of wishlist votes are good enough for you because the forum doesn't matter to GoG at all...
I don't remember now if it was the first time I heard about gog's curation-constrained indie program, or if it was the first time we had one of these things were a developer comes out that gog rejected them, but whichever case it was, at that time I thought gog'll have to be careful not to have this eventually turn on them.

sure enough, it's building. we see more of these all the time.

I haven't played magnum opus. I know it's done pretty well on steam. I'm glad it's another successful indie game. thing is though, gog isn't just approving based on whether or not a game is good. I think that's a touchy concept. they'd probably sell every game under the sun if they could manage that. I really think gog is very concerned with selling stuff they know they can sell. I think in their mind, it's worse if they don't sell a good game, as opposed to not selling a bad one. so I think they're talking as little chance as they can. and while I'm not weighing in on what the right thing is here, I just wanna say that that seems to me like gog is looking after whether it can sell your game or not. again, I don't know what the right thing to do is here, but I doubt it's because gog is being snobby.
GOG's Mysterious Curation Process Rejected Opus Magnum (Kotaku)
Zachtronics' excellent Opus Magnum isn't on GOG, and nobody but GOG knows why (PCGamesN)
Acclaimed puzzle game rejected by GOG.com for reasons unknown (Polygon)

And this GOG's official statement...
As for the official statement - the only thing we would be ok with sharing, is that Opus Magnum did not pass our internal curation system - we rarely ever want to share any details on the actual system and how it looks like and what it means, because it's just too individual; we take into consideration many other factors than just the actual game itself - the reviews we provide for example do not review the game in general; so like an objective game review like on PC Gamer or what not - but we do it from the angle of our entire user-base.
"We take into consideration many other factors than just the actual game itself"?
"We do it from the angle of our entire user-base"?
WTF?!
Post edited January 07, 2018 by Frozen
Let's throw some more data out there:

Gog's Bestselling order (note: different from Popularity)

As has been discussed in the past, the consensus seemed to be that this is based on dollars spent and covers all sales from a specific point years ago. So should be a good measure of actual GoG profit from a particular game:

There are 2184 distinct titles for sale and I looked up where every Zachtronics game ranks:
SpaceChem = #393 (82nd percentile)
TIS-100 = #791 (63rd percentile)
Infinifactory = #1267 (41st percentile)
Ironclad Tactics = #1296 (40th percentile)
Shenzhen I/O = #1379 (36th percentile)

All the games within the top 2/3 of games sold and while Shenzhen I/O is "merely" in the 36th percentile, it has yet to even see a sale larger than 25% off and has only been on sale for the last 14 months. So it's clear from the "Bestselling" metric which is based strictly on GoG sales, that Zachtronics games are all doing rather well here. At the very least, none of them are complete stinkers.
Post edited January 07, 2018 by RWarehall
I'm not a fan of black box curation, but I'm even less of a fan of Steam's non-existent one. Hopefully, this incident will encourage GOG to be more transparent about their criteria.
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Frozen: And this GOG's official statement...

As for the official statement - the only thing we would be ok with sharing, is that Opus Magnum did not pass our internal curation system - we rarely ever want to share any details on the actual system and how it looks like and what it means, because it's just too individual; we take into consideration many other factors than just the actual game itself - the reviews we provide for example do not review the game in general; so like an objective game review like on PC Gamer or what not - but we do it from the angle of our entire user-base.
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Frozen: "We take into consideration many other factors than just the actual game itself"?
"We do it from the angle of our entire user-base"?
WTF?!
You don't remember the entire user-base clamoring for Clustertruck? It had 6 votes, clearly indicative of what the entire user-base wants to see here.

XD
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RWarehall: years ago. So should be a good measure of actual GoG profit from a particular game:

There are 2184 distinct titles for sale and I looked up where every Zachtronics game ranks:
SpaceChem = #393 (82nd percentile)
TIS-100 = #791 (63rd percentile)
Infinifactory = #1267 (41st percentile)
Ironclad Tactics = #1296 (40th percentile)
Shenzhen I/O = #1379 (36th percentile)
Very surprised to see TIS-100 in second (out of Zach's games). Either way, Opus Magnum seems to be more similar to SpaceChem than it does to the more esoteric and abstract ones like TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O

I wonder whether they dislike the fact that it's been on early access on Steam? They might feel that Steam has gobbled up too many of the potential sales already for it to be worth their time. =/
Quote from https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/6/16858740/opus-magnum-gog-rejected: "curation means crap doesn’t get on the site"

Funny they should say that. Just this week I got a refund from gog for a game called Perception. I got said refund because this game passed "curation" despite being completely broken. But I guess the "curators" couldn't know that from looking at the screenshots. Same as they couldn't tell that Clustertruck is missing half its content by looking at the screenshots. I honestly believe this is the problem: They have one guy doing "curation", he's flooded with submissions, so he doesn't have time to check each game in great detail. So instead, he checks the screenshots. Looking good? Ok, let's check the youtube video they sent. Looking good? Ok, it's a pass!

Either hire more curators (ones without quotation marks around their job titles) or gog Greenlight now!

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RWarehall: One Finger Death Punch had been bundled a dozen times already.
I'd still buy it. It's a good old game by now. Include Galaxy implementation and you got a reason to sell it right there. Previous DRM-free builds were lacking online features.
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SirPrimalform: I wonder whether they dislike the fact that it's been on early access on Steam? They might feel that Steam has gobbled up too many of the potential sales already for it to be worth their time. =/
That's possible. Maybe the whole EA thing throws off their metrics and they didn't expect more sales at release.
I would like to point out that GOG rejected another (really good) game: Unexplored

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/unexplored_a_realtime_roguelike