That is nice. Although I wonder how it was done legally. What if the funds would have been already exhausted? Did the publisher only get the money much later? Or simply: where do they take the money from? I rather doubt it will become standard although it would be a good thing.

You make a valid argument there. I only know what it was from Jim Sterling, and yes, the article does seem to rely on the fact that the reader actually knew about the game, or the issues with it, before hand.

OTOH, Gamespot didn't really do much better, though there is some footage of the game. Still, there is little explanation of why the game itself was broken, as opposed to, for example, simply being in alpha.

Gamespot Link

Probably not really broken, no. It's the only one off the top of my head that may come close.

I just remember reading a lot of complaints and members having a lot of trouble with it. One in particular that I recall was having to resort to the software renderer.

It's been a while since I looked. The impression that I got was that you can't run it as optimally as you should be able to, and that that's probably not going to change. It was enough for me to stay away from it and I haven't checked up on it since then.

Lacking this information I can only surmise. However, I imagine that Valve is refunding from their own pockets and will be seeking financial redress from the developer on their own.

Just speculating though.

Both work. As in they won't crash (all that often) and there is nothing that will prevent you from playing the game, other than possible poor design choices, broken features and a general lack of quality. MOO3 does at least have quite a few nice mods, and it is actually quite fun in multiplayer. M&M9 feels like a game that is here because the rest of the series is here.

True, I phrased that post badly. It should have said "Not a good example". The fact is that however poor those two games may be, many people would complain if they were not here, simply because they are part of series which are here.

Daikatana may not be the best example either. Personally, I think it belongs here due to its history and "notoriety" if you will. Many people who never tried it will buy it just to find out what it's all about, full well knowing the history behind it.

Be that as it may, I was actually only criticizing your example rather than your argument. I just phrased my post very poorly.
Here you go: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9075-Salt-Of-The-Earth-A-Steam-Fail-Story

looking at metacritic scores , gog does have quite a few bad games as well but this earth 2066 took the cake when the dev had a meltdown on the forums over his scam being exposed , never had seen anything like it since that war z scam
it was so bad that valve wiped the forums clean for that game.

the only games personally i have seen broken on gog are the atlantis games

At least GOG doesn't have Game Tycoon 1.5 (which was released on Steam rather recently, though that game came out years ago). I know because I have the retail copy that was sold back in 2006.

That game is literally broken in various places. In the U.S. English version, parts of the game aren't even completely translated (may even encounter cases where it is entirely in German). By broken as stated earlier, I mean it is literally buggy. Good luck trying to follow the tutorial because that is one of the parts of the game that gets bugged.

When I originally got the game, I was initially excited to play such a game. Unfortunately, that excitement died down quick when I found several problems with the game.

Looking at metascores I love quite a few bad games. :P

I've almost given up looking at the scores themselves. I will read or watch a review before buying a game, but in the end I prefer to just know what some of the good and bad points are before hand and then make my own mind up after.

Metacritic, IMO, is now a bit like Rotten Tomatoes, where it almost feels like the reviewers are sometimes trying to outdo themselves to tell you how shite a game is.