Gekko_Dekko: GoG is a nice place for old/finished games, but when it comes to ongoing titles that still actively receive updates - there come issues.
I've used to talk with some indies and they said that there are 2 problems - slow patches acceptance and overall old infrastructure: each patch require manual upload with FTP (I dont know how it happen on steam, I cant compare. But they said that steam's update system is WAY easier and faster to use), then It takes about 2 weeks to get manually verified by one of few gog's employers.
I understand, that manual verification was one of things, that made GoG popular back in times - guarantee to get working game, all that. But it simply dont mix well with games, that receive updates monthly, if not weekly.
Imho, GoG should rather manually verify only original uploads (release versions without any patches) of new games (to something, released years ago, current policy will still apply well) or, well, decline their "improvement" plans and come back to original concept of "good
old games"
This seems to be the big issue. The logical conclusion i've come to, though is "unsupported updates." While an update is getting reviewed, or is waiting to get reviewed, you can have it live as a "beta" or "unsupported" update. That is to say, the QA team is the only one that hears the request if anyone does. The reason for QA is so GOG can support the game, which is a service we pay for at gog, and apparently one we take for granted. With "unsupported updates" we can limit this.
The NDA and Galaxy questions still remain, though.
kohlrak: If you're on gog, you're likely very different from normal. Normal has a habit of not questioning things. Different people have a habit of questioning things, which is usually what makes them different. Different people would likely question those things he mentioned, and said that they're not up for those kinds of shenanigans. We use GOG because our standards are different from normal: We don't like DRM. It's safe to say we don't like alot of other business practices.
amok: so, yes then, message to devs - don't bother with gOg, it is too much hassle
Well, that is precisely what the devs are saying when they're being vague, so... Looks like we finally figured out what that means.
and no,. most users of gOg are 'normal' (what-ever that may be). You have a few oddballl vocal users here in the forum, but they are far from being representative of the median gOg user.
Not just the forums, the reviews often reflect things, too. If there's anything funky going on, it's either in the gogmix or review, which the dev's going to see long before something on these forums. I see alot of overcritical reviews for some games, undercritical reviews for others. This is a thing all over. GOG doesn't seem to let devs delete reviews like steam does, though. Surprise, another major difference.
EDIT: 3 out of 5 on votes alone. What do the reviews say?
2 star:
Game is just too fast paced. All you do is click your axx off. Might be OK if you had time to think about it.
2 star:
From side game looks exactly what it should be some software tycoon. Uses a lot of proper and fancy words, mimics different problem areas & so on. But after trying to explore it you understand, that there's no any depth in game beyound this words. Advanced levels do not differ from the beginning except in terms on numbers.
You get some abstract programmer, which creates "portion of work". Hire sales manager, it takes contract for specified number of such "portions", and close contract with profit once you have enought count of it. That's very simple. Very exploitable, within hour you won't have any money limitations. But this infinite cycle is so explicit & so short, that it ultimately kill all the process filling.
Once you have enought money, you can play with another model - "create a startup". But here you just invest work into some profit-generator tool. Not really different, nor interesting.
Developing software (and especially startups) is a risky & interesting thing, know it myself. But game does not bring any of it.
The other 3 reviews are in german, which are 4 star, 5 star, and 2 star.