metricfun: Thing is, some people came here to have something different than Steam, and DRM-free is the biggest difference (for me) between the two. The way I read your post, you hope GOG will relax its views on DRM so developing for it (and offering a "better" experience to the player) would be easier for you (developers). Right now there are plenty of consumers here that don't want what you envision. I bought Gremlins not to encourage DRM, but the fact you (devs) took time to make a DRM-free offline experience of a game I might (or might not) like. While you like the online aspect for data collecting and "enriching" the experience, "we" / I don't. Because when developers or publishers or the store pull the plug we just don't have a game we paid for anymore for some "arbitrary" reason.
Thanks for the feedback (and for the purchase). I won't speak for GOG here but let me split the situation into two parts, as far as I can see it:
(1) there are games that depend on online servers; if the game is unsuccessful, the server cost is too high, and the game dies; you have played it for while it lasted but that's ultimately it.
This risk is similar to supporting a game on Kickstarter, or in Early Access. What if the game is never shipped or finished? Some of my friends are now developing a remake of Pathologic. They are years late. I would imagine that some of their backers are quite frustrated.
Steam makes a choice to allow Early Access with some awesome results, and GOG now allows this too (ref. Factorio). I think (to me) this is a proof that the early access risk is worth it. Some games won't be finished but some will be great.
Let me also bring another example, which is sadder. There's a game called Mad Games Tycoon. It launch rout of EA, great product. Then the updates stopped coming. Some players in the community were complaining and being angry. But the reality is, one of the developers died unexpectedly, and so the development was put on hold for moral reasons, his brother needed some time off. Can you protect against that? Not really.
So if GOG made a step from "games finished years ago" to "games still in development" (curated), is it possible that a further step will be made towards "games that offer online experience"? Let's imagine FTL multiplayer with a persistent universe. Is this a product that does not belong to GOG, which has 2K+ positive reviews for the original game?
(2) there are games that depend on the servers BUT they also offer an offline edition that's going to work regardless of the server side.
So what's the problem with offering these titles on GOG? You do have an offline version which is going to be there in 10 years from now, and you have the online experience.
The problem I see here is actually emotional, not reasonable. There is a version of the game that is going to be safe form anyone paying or not paying for servers. And there's additional online content as a bonus. Why people are up in arms to remove that bonus content, then? And why any feature that exists in the online version "must" be in the offline version, no matter the dev time spent on this?
If this were a barrier to jump over, then I see a lot of teams just not finding the time to launch on GOG. Would anyone be happier? I don't see how. Because these teams will not wake up and think "OMG, I need to change my dev concept because of the GOG community". As harsh as that may sound, but if the game is successful, then extra revenue from Humble or GOG or Sonkwo will not matter much, time is more precious. And if the game is not successful on Steam, then the potential sales on GOG will not justify the effort anyway.
I remember how years ago we spoke to Firaxis about DLCs for Civilization. The local publisher wanted to know, which DRM the game will use to protect the DLCs from pirates. Firaxis said: the amount of dev time spent to create DRM for DLCs, will yield maybe 5% extra sales due to less piracy; the same dev time spent on new DLC, will yield 100% extra sales from the loyal audience; so we prefer to create games, not protection.
The same happens with devs and GOG. If the amount of time needed to meet some requirements from GOG become untenable, then the devs will just create new content for the other platforms/focus elsewhere.
To me, GOG is first and foremost the curated store that was good for discovery. If this changes and the difference becomes purely technical (e.g. there was an idea for a "Unity Store" or "Unreal Store" based on the engines the games used, I don't know if anything actually shipped) then it's a limitation that's not going to age well, looking into the future. This is just my feedback from the outside.
We'll see how GOG evolves, of course, and the primary indicator will be the sales data. A healthy platform grows with the market, and maybe has a chance to take a bite out of another platform. The opposite would be a steady or declining revenue due to lack of content. It is the interest of dev community as well as platforms like Steam, that GOG keeps growing.
Executer: Our hope was, if we make GOG financially successful, people would make games for us, that could be preserved and be sold on GOG. Instead GOG turned its back to us and has choosen growth and to do what every else does.
(...)
Please consider adding as much of what makes your game Gremlins Inc. so unique.. and benefits the gameplay itself.. into Gremlins. Automatons. It might be all that can be interactively revisited in the near future.
1) GOG has to follow the wind, so to say, because the market is so big and fluid... This War of Mine sold 500,000+ copies in China via TGP; I would imagine that the sales on GOG are substantially smaller; as a developer, 11Bit would be right to focus on how they can do 1M units with their next game in China, which has a higher priority to them than 10K units on GOG (I'm using 11bit as an example here, I don't really know their minds). Why? Because sales = revenue = opportunity to make the game of your dreams with the funds that you receive, which is every studio's dream.
2) Of course, and this is the point which motivated us to invest in creating GvA in the first place. Every night we have a chance that something may go wrong with the servers and people would be unable to play. It happened 3 times over 2 years, but still. So crating GvA for us was a way to ensure that players can play regardless of what's happening with the servers. In features and single-player content, GvA is 1:1 Gremlins, Inc., so the whole experience of this digital board game will be there in 10 or 20 years. Which is also the reason why we update both products when new content or s/p features ship.
