Sit down, take a breath, this is going to be one of those.

TL;DR (lazy git): Meh, I'm rambling on about GOG.

I really like GOG, it's one of the, if not the main reason, I abandoned piracy. And admittedly and shamefully, I rarely buy games here (exchange rates and lack of more payment options makes it somewhat hard and unappealing) this place business model is what I believe should be the go-to model for gaming. A relationship of trust with the user/public/gamer/consumer.

And that's why I find odd that out of so many titles ignored for reasons unknown, and a wishlist that feels ignored most of the time, a AAA title comes in with all the rumpus.

Not because of being a AAA game alone, GOG should and deserves more attention of the industry. And especially on the PC gaming community. Steam needs competition and all that jazz.

Bear in mind, I'm aware that GOG are a relatively small team effort. I'm sure that a lot of people are frustrated with the state of affairs around here, but that's not what I'm into with this. What I'm rambling on about is:

It feels like GOG is more keen to serve the "big guys" rather than their community nowadays.

And the problem is that, rather than putting a relatively equal focus on the community itself, allowing it to grow along, it gives a feeling of "we can do that too" when it comes to the presentation.
It's great that some major publishers are coming around, but not so great that GOG becomes the place when people looking for the AAA experience, so it feels a Good job! You guys have big budget games too! Isn't that awesome? (Yes, aware that this is more like on the publishers part aswell, but still).
It's great that GOG still maintain their pro consumer attitude, but not so great when we talking about what the community looks forward to, so it feels frustrating.
It's great that GOG is also a place for indies and still on the old games, it's not so great when other indies and other old games get ignored for seemingly no reason (arguable on the old games case because of legal reasons and stuff).

It's great that GOG grows, but not so great when the community around it doesn't.

Reiterating, not at all because of games (No Man's Sky? Dying Light? Awesome, can't wait for more!), but because of "mah feelings".

Also fully aware that maybe (read: definitely) I am talking out of my hairy arse, but it feels strange to me. Not bad, could be worse, still odd.

I went ahead and +1'd for posting your honest feelings.

I'm not exactly sure what you're taking issue with, though.

GOG ignoring the forum community? Yeah, as they've grown it's become harder to get responses from the "bluetexts" here at times, because they're so busy in general. (Props to Judas for making time to "complete" the wishlist entries I sent him.) I wish they'd hire a community manager or two, but... (On a side-note, they have 20+ job openings available, especially for Galaxy.)

GOG ignoring the wishlist? Depends. In some cases like Hatred they'll avoid getting the game, often because the game may be buggy or seems low-effort or has been bundled to hell and back. But they're definitely shooting for games high up on the wishlist, especially Good Old Ones not already on Steam, because they represent $$$. BUT often it's AAA publishers who don't want to deal with GOG for one reason or another. GOG got lucky with Dying Light because it's technically an indie! (Both dev'd and pub'd by Techland.)

Good Old Games? We'll be getting Uprising 1 & 2 tomorrow (unless something changed), so if you're interested, check it out.

Some o' my advice: try not to get emotionally attached to this place, it's ultimately a business. ;)

And I think that's precisely where people are mistaken. Steam is Steam, GOG is GOG. And, let's face it once for all, GOG will probably never be big enough to be a serious competitor to Steam.

GOG needs to stay GOG: no-DRM oriented, handpicked games as releases and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I can understand (and sometimes agree) and some people's feathers can be ruffled because one indie game they're waiting for here isn't picked by GOG. That's annoying, I agree.

But I don't care. I happily buy from Steam (well, "rent" is more accurate, that's why I only buy games during sales there) and GOG. Hell, I even buy games on those clusterfucks that are Uplay and Origin!

No, I don't want GOG to become a competitor to Steam. Because what alreay happened will inevitably amplify:
- "early access"
- "regional pricing"
- "permanent sales"

That's already happening on GOG and that's sad, I think. GOG needs to stay GOG.

That was lmy rant, sorry for hijacking a bit your thread.

I know we like to think GOG cares about us and all, but when it really comes down to it, they're a company. And a company is a company. Their prime objective is to make money, like everybody else. It's only natural that they'd try to follow in the footsteps of Steam and others, because guess what? These guys are making millions upon millions of dollars! Yeah, we whine and complain about them, and yeah, we hate DRM and all that, but when it comes down to it, those are the facts: They just make more money, whether we like it or not.

What's to stop GOG from following this model if it's been proven that it brings in the big bucks? You could argue that they should fear losing their community, but you have to remember that this "community" isn't really that big at all. It consists of, what, maybe 500 or so regulars? And on top of that, most of the people here already own a good chunk of the entire GOG library. In terms of integrity, yeah, these are the long-time loyal customers and should be listened to. But in terms of finances? Financially, they make more money off of new customers, and I'm going to guess that the majority of people purchasing here have never even clicked on the "community" tab at all. I know that I'd been a customer here for some 3 years without even knowing there WAS a forum. It's probably similar with Steam.

Long story short, we'd like GOG to cater to all of our hopes and dreams, but they're going to follow the money no matter what we say or do.

I think that a lot of people have tended to ignore the fact that GOG is a company. They NEED to expand itself and make money, like any other business. Yes, GOG community used to be a hugely tightly knit and easy going bunch that would almost literally give the shirt of its collective backs. The GOG community also grew quite a bit, as things like System Shock 2 happened, then LucasArts titles, then the Witcher 3 promo.

With that expansion comes a shifting focus for them and for us too. It's unfortunate that a lot of the people that made the community what it was: (comfortable, inviting, etc) have since left us, due to those very expansions bringing in a slew of new faces, not all of them quality replacements, but it's just how business works.

It doesn't mean the service is bad, nor does it mean that the people behind GOG are bad or slipping either. It means they're human, and they're trying to expand their business model to make the core principle of GOG, DRM-free, more palatable to bigger and bigger audiences.

Make no mistake. When you wish for things like DRM-free to be mainstream and "the norm," this is a facet of that. More people will be exposed to it when it's advertised, directed from large websites and given attention from the gaming media. (Such as THAT is.) With it, a much large cross-section of every walk of e-life comes along for the ride.

I admit I didn't quite get what your issue was. So let's try it this way:

What should GOG do (instead of e.g. releasing Dying Light)? If it was something about serving the community better, how exactly?

I am happy for Dying Light to appear on GOG with DRM-free single-player, so to me that is the kind of "serving the community" that I want. I could care less if GOG fixes forum search or brings back flashy forum colors instead of grey (I guess those are on the top of the community wishlist, right?), but none of that matters if GOG doesn't bring games I want to buy here.

I am here mostly for the games, even if hanging around in the forums is sometimes nice too.

What makes you think that? Of all the DD stores, gOg has probably the largest number of staff... They have what, over 40 people employed now? And opening offices in the U.S. as well.

If we're going to buy AAA games from somewhere, wouldn't we rather have them here? I think it's great that GOG is becoming competitive in a slice of the market dominated by Steam. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to stop selling small-budget indie games. Why would they? Indie releases sell like hotcakes.

What pains me personally is the fact that more and more titles are released with DRMed multiplayer. Dying Light is another one of them.

And before you say that multiplayer needs DRM, because you need internet connection to play (unless it's split screen or shared screen), this is wrong. There are many, many, MANY examples of games (many of them with online components) without multiplayer DRM.

I like to ust Diablo 2 as an example, because it offered open battle.net (user-made servers) in addition to closed battle.net (external servers, but guarantees some protection, since characters are stored online). Not to mention it albo offered LAN and direct connection options! That should be the standard for every multiplayer game - no DRM at all, the game will be playable in multiplayer even if Blizzard pulls the plug.

But what will happen to Dying Light multiplayer (and many other games) wien GOG pulls the plug and is shut down? Well, the multiplayer aspect of this game will be gone forever. Is that what you call DRM-free?

I never buy DRM-ed games and so I won't buy DL either. Unless I find some multiplayer crack that allows me to host multiplayer sessions with no need for connection to GOG servers (via galaxy), but that would be pretty ironic. Pirating a game I bought DRM-free.

If only Dying Light on GOG had LAN play. Oh, wait, it does.

In the particular case of Dying Light, it can be multiplayed LAN-directly:
https://www.gog.com/forum/dying_light/multiplayer/post6
https://www.gog.com/forum/dying_light/multiplayer/post10

My bad. I went with what was written on the store page (that you need galaxy to access multiplayer), but my Point still stands for some games (which don't have LAN at all). Though it's not on topic anymore in this thread.

I want GOG to serve the community by a) sticking to the DRM free principle and b) giving us quality gems old and new. As long as they continue to do that they could shut the forum down tomorrow and I'm not going to shed any tears.

Would it be cool to have an actual nice, new, functioning forum? Sure. But the end goal for why I'm here is the games, and being able to comfortably back the ones I value up with the knowledge that I can play them years down the line by just double clicking an icon.

However, I don't really want to sound like I'm discrediting these forums completely, there are a few members here who actually helped GOG acquire some of it's games, and the threads that focus on upcoming games, contacting people who own game rights, the game update thread, things like that are highly appreciated c:

I wholeheartedly disagree with all the GOG's a business so they'll follow the money ways.

There are music labels that cater to specific niches and will never make loads of money. Indie and small movies are still being made. There are all kind of books to be found. And there are people making the games they love.
Some companies care about the craft. And sorry, but I like to think that that's how GOG started. Going for the good old games inexisting market at the time would never give them loads of money, and Steam was already big back then; so the model to follow for the big bucks was pretty obvious.

So no, money isn't and shouldn't be everything. That's why GOG's drm-free and still distributes old games that not a lot of people will want. Self sustainability is enough for some companies. And I sure hope it keeps that way, because dying of success is a thing, and losing your ground and why you started this in the first place might well be the path to it.

I've read the OP three times by now and I still don't get what you're complaining about. Is it the fact that GOG sells an AAA game once in a while (it doesn't happen very often), that we don't get enough classic games (we will get two of them today) or the fact that GOG is a curated store and we won't get certain indie games?