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Indie Devs! Join the DRM-free revolution, reach more people, get an advance on royalties.

GOG.com, in our continued efforts to bring you all the best games in history for PC and Mac, is looking to make it easier for indie game devs to submit their game to GOG.com. To that end, we have launched a new portal on GOG.com today, containing the essential information on the way we work with our indie partners, and an easy entry form providing direct contact with our team. All this, and more, found under the URL:

www.gog.com/indie

For those of you who are fans of GOG.com the service, this doesn't mean much of a change, except that we hope we will have ever more exciting indie games to release while we continue our schedule of regular awesome classics as well. For those of you who are developing games, though, we hope to make this a painless process where you can be sure that you will hear honest feedback from us about your game and where we want it on GOG.com.

We are also disclosing our revenue share--a 70/30 share, as is industry standard--unless we offer you an advance on your royalties, in which case it's a 60/40 share until we have recouped the cost of your advance. There's been some speculation on the part of developers in the past as to what it is that we offer indie devs, and we wanted to make sure that was clear up front. We've invited some of our indie dev friends to talk briefly about the experience of putting their game on GOG,com, and here's what they had to say:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oqIc7vix2YU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

If you're a fan of classic games, brace yourself for a thundering great RPG on Thursday. If you're a dev, fill out the form today, to join the DRM-free revolution, reach more people with your work, and possibly get an advance on royalties!
Post edited August 20, 2013 by TheEnigmaticT
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timppu: Exactly. So, HB obviously doesn't really care to maintain them themselves, like GOG does. All the more reason to suspect that maybe they go full "keys to other services only" at some point, and closing down their own download servers as obsolete (or at least not adding more games to them).
I wouldn't say they "don't really care" - I think it's more likely to be due to the fact that they apparently take a much smaller cut than other distributors, so it's not really surprising if they pass more of the responsibilities for things like this onto the developers/publishers as a result.
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tfishell: Well, then, hopefully they'll be able to convince more big publishers to bring their AAA games here (and their classics), if they expect to compete with Steam.
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Crosmando: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Dum-du-du-dum
Du-du
Dum-du-du-dum
Du-du

Du-du-duuuuu
Du-du-duuuuuuuuuuu-DU!!!

Du-du-duuuuu
Du-du-duuuuuuuuuuu-DU!!!


(No, that is not the theme song from The Terminator, but Baldur's Gate...)

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timppu: Exactly. So, HB obviously doesn't really care to maintain them themselves, like GOG does. All the more reason to suspect that maybe they go full "keys to other services only" at some point, and closing down their own download servers as obsolete (or at least not adding more games to them).
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adamhm: I wouldn't say they "don't really care" - I think it's more likely to be due to the fact that they apparently take a much smaller cut than other distributors, so it's not really surprising if they pass more of the responsibilities for things like this onto the developers/publishers as a result.
Or, eventually, pass the whole thing to e.g. Steam, by offering only Steam keys also to HB indie games. After all, the indies have their Humble Bundle games already on Steam, so offering the standalone DRM-free installers on top of those is kinda obsolete, especially if the claims are true that very few people even care about the DRM-free installers on HB.

That would allow HB to cut down its own expenses even further, a lot.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by timppu
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timppu: Or, eventually, pass the whole thing to e.g. Steam, by offering only Steam keys also to HB indie games. After all, the indies have their Humble Bundle games already on Steam, so offering the standalone DRM-free installers on top of those is kinda obsolete, especially if the claims are true that very few people even care about the DRM-free installers on HB.

That would allow HB to cut down its own expenses even further, a lot.
I doubt it. They sell more games than just the ones in HIBs and many of those games arent on Steam yet/don't provide Steam keys - if they decided to start selling Steam keys only then they'd lose out on a lot of games. Indie developers would have a *much* harder time finding somewhere to host their games & process payments before they can get them on Steam. (edit) Well, possibly aside from GOG, but it's not guaranteed as GOG might refuse their game for whatever reason and even if they do accept a game they'll refuse to provide the Linux version (if the developer makes a Linux version too)...

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Humble_Store
Post edited August 20, 2013 by adamhm
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keeveek: I hope this "shower" term doesn't mean after that classic releases will be dried up for another few weeks...
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Trilarion: But that's the whole idea of a shower. A bath of classics that would be something extended. A season of classics would be even longer. But a shower is over after some minutes (in the bathroom) or hours (outside). I am prepared for the worst. :)))
Not to mention if it will be a quick cold shower.
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Trilarion: As long as there are at least one or two classic game releases every week I'm perfectly fine with everything else. (Not so interested in new games.)
Fixed for you ;-p. Personally both are fine by me as long as it's a game I want to play.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by Petrell
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adamhm: I doubt it. They sell more games than just the ones in HIBs and many of those games arent on Steam yet/don't provide Steam keys - if they decided to start selling Steam keys only then they'd lose out on a lot of games.
I've heard of ancient stories of HIB games where there was no Steam version available (yet), but frankly I don't recall buying a HIB bundle with missing Steam keys. And I've bought pretty much all of them this and last year. So I am unsure how many games they'd really lose by offering only keys to other services, like Steam.

Oh wait, maybe Canabalt was one such game without a Steam key? But it was a freeware Flash game anyway. But it seems apparent HB is not that keen on selling games that either aren't already, or coming shortly, to Steam (or some other third party service).
Post edited August 20, 2013 by timppu
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timppu: I've heard of ancient stories of HIB games where there was no Steam version available (yet), but frankly I don't recall buying a HIB bundle with missing Steam keys. And I've bought pretty much all of them this and last year. So I am unsure how many games they'd really lose by offering only keys to other services, like Steam.

Oh wait, maybe Canabalt was one such game without a Steam key? But it was a freeware Flash game anyway. But it seems apparent HB is not that keen on selling games that either aren't already, or coming shortly, to Steam (or some other third party service).
They're more than just a bundle provider and they host more than just the games provided in bundles, many of which don't come with Steam keys - check the link I posted to see a list. Most "direct sales" of indie games go through the Humble Store... they're more of a basic hosting & payment processing service than a proper distributor really.
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adamhm: They're more than just a bundle provider and they host more than just the games provided in bundles, many of which don't come with Steam keys - check the link I posted to see a list.
Hmm, is that list up to date? It lists e.g. Braid and Dear Esther not including a Steam key.
I can only speak for myself, but for me there are too much Indies here on air. There are certainly a couple of nice titles as Trine or some Deadalic adventures, but I would prefer a mixture of many classic titles and some great AAA games as BioShock or Batman etc. without DRM.
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timppu: Hmm, is that list up to date? It lists e.g. Braid and Dear Esther not including a Steam key.
I think so. It's easy enough to check just by following the links to their Humble Store widgets (and looking at them it seems they don't provide Steam keys for those games). There's also http://calvein.github.io/humble-games
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Trilarion: As long as there are at least one or two classic game releases every week I'm perfectly fine with everything else. (Not so interested in new games.)
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Petrell: Fixed for you ;-p. Personally both are fine by me as long as it's a game I want to play.
Actually this is not what I wanted to say. I'm really not interested in the overwhelming majority of indie games on GOG while I also bought newer, not classic games on GOG that aren't Indies, like the Daedelic adventures for example.

So as long as there are sufficiently enough non-indie releases I'm fine. Currently it could be a bit more.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by Trilarion
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Trilarion: Actually this is not what I wanted to say. I'm really not interested in the overwhelming majority of indie games on GOG while I also bought newer, not classic games on GOG that aren't Indies, like the Daedelic adventures for example.
I second that. :)
I'm glad that GOG has done this. Yes, there can be some dire indie games, but out of them all there are some real gems that have had alot of thought and effort put into them.

I look forward to seeing what gets released in the upcoming months. Let's hope we get a few "gog exclusives" that can't be obtained anywhere else.
Great news.

Like a huge electro-magnet being turned on, all my gaming needs are slowing coalescing on to my favourite part of the internet :)

Keep up the great work GOG
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timppu: Hmm, is that list up to date? It lists e.g. Braid and Dear Esther not including a Steam key.
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adamhm: I think so. It's easy enough to check just by following the links to their Humble Store widgets (and looking at them it seems they don't provide Steam keys for those games). There's also http://calvein.github.io/humble-games
But... I have e.g. Braid and Dear Esther on my Steam account, and I got them from Humble Bundles. So what gives?

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RS1978: I can only speak for myself, but for me there are too much Indies here on air. There are certainly a couple of nice titles as Trine or some Deadalic adventures, but I would prefer a mixture of many classic titles and some great AAA games as BioShock or Batman etc. without DRM.
I would also prefer more recent DRM-free AAA titles here (e.g. a couple of years old, can be newer too of course).

But, I am not unrealistic with my expectations. Seeing how EA and Valve has some standing issues with releasing some EA games even on Steam, it is obvious the publishers would rather see people buy their games from the publishers' services directly, not Steam or GOG.

But one can always hope, and sometimes a bright spot comes. I was quite delighted to see e.g. Alan Wake games appear here, and DRM-free The Witcher games were the main reason I originally came to this site anyway, not so much to get a digital replacement for Fallout 1-2 and Baldur's Gate 1-2 retail CDs I have, albeit that's a nice bonus too.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by timppu