Posted April 18, 2018
low rated
Gekko_Dekko: 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"
A lot of this is being replaced by https://devportal.gog.com/welcome if devs integrate Galaxy. The problem is you still have to log into a website to upload a patch, from what I gather there is nothing like SteamPipe which basically allows developers to automate all of this without having to talk to someone at Valve or without having to access a website. And from a few devs I spoke to the Dev portal is buggy and they had issues with it. Apparently Galaxy's SDK is "weird" compared to Steam's but is essentially a clone of it. 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"
But building infrastructure like what Steam has takes a lot of time, but apparently they are working on it somewhat now.
EDIT: It was confirmed by GOG that they DO have a SteamPipe type feature.
kohlrak: 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.
On Galaxy? There is no logical reason to have a Q/A for Galaxy patches if that is the case. I can understand needing Q/A for classic installers, but Galaxy has a role back feature for this very reason. The NDA and Galaxy questions still remain, though.
If GOG is still requiring a Q/A for Galaxy patches using the dev portal I can understand the dev frustration. That's just stupid.
Post edited April 20, 2018 by BKGaming