Gog early access or Steam early access. They are the same to me. Early access is bullshit, no matter who's selling it. It's a ridiculous market option for gaming releases. Just make the goddamn game and then sell said game when development is complete. Remember that old game world term 'GONE GOLD'? There was a time when a game's gold release status actually meant something. Without development deadlines and release windows you can basically toss QA out the window. Anything added beyond release windows should be limited to compatibility patches. No need to offer up some screen caps and a glitched tech demo for the low price of $29.99.

As an aside, I wonder how many early access games were released to paying costumers years ago that are still in early access dev. I would imagine that the number would be a bit higher than we'd think.

I'm not trying to make GOG like Steam. I don't like Steam, I have only like 10 games on Steam, whereas my library on GOG as of today sports 970 titles. But just because I don't care for Steam doesn't mean there aren't worthwhile aspects that can be copied. And this wouldn't be an "open the floodgates" situation either. It at most be opening up a new tiny little stream, slowly trickling in one game per week. It still wouldn't change the GOG idea of a boutique approach, but it would be a boutique approach with direct user participation. I don't see how that would be a problem.

Most games that are rejected are new games that work natively on current versions of Windows, so reparations shouldn't be necessary. And if it's a new game that's fundamentally broken GOG might as well just not enable the game to be voted for at all until it's fixed. And profitability would be all but ensured with only the most voted for game being released each week, thus ensuring a game that many people have an interest in. So while I hear your concerns, but I do believe they're largely unfounded.

NO, please! We don't need tons of shovelware here. There's kickstarter for backing good ideas and if you want tons of crap, there's Steam for that. On GOG I would like to have only running, finished and complete games.

Greenlight and Early Access both have huge potential, however in both cases on Steam it's used as a cheap way to get easy money for very low quality products. Digital Homicide is a good example, but the sheer number of asset flips and low quality stuff makes me just shake my head and I'd prefer the whole thing blow over before they are considered again.

So.. no.. the votes are probably as good as they need to be.

Also to note. Somewhere I saw a blog or entry saying that GoG had a huge lineup of games to release but are limiting the trickle to a few at a time so they don't over-saturate the front page, and give people a chance to have money to actually buy games they are interested in when the games come out

I think that a Greenlight equivalent should work like this:

People vote with their wallets. They can pledge 75% off that game's price and up, however much they want. The money isn't charged up front.

Devs get a report of what users are willing to pay. The devs can choose what level of payment to accept (for example, 50% off and up). Users aren't told this. This can change at any time.

When the sum of acceptable (to the devs) pledges reaches a predefined level that's acceptable to GOG, GOG adds the game, and everyone whose pledge was accepted is charged and gets the game.

Sure, Gog already have a Steam-like client (which is as bad as Steam), so why not steal more from Valve huh?

We already have one in a form of Community Wishlist. As for quality control, GOG already has one. Even thou sometimes is a bonker, like, following how many people buy this game on Steam ignoring the quality of it.

I'm only talking about games that has already been rejected by GOG, and that number is already well in the several hundreds. Voting for games that dev don't want to released here is a bit pointless, which is another reason why the wishlist doesn't quite work.
And in the case of the average GOG user being able to wait for a full release... Well, that's great, I don't mind doing that either, I can wait years if need be even. But if it's already been rejected, with a rare few select exceptions (Hi Huniepop!), you'll be waiting for that full release forever. I think forever is a little bit too long a wait.
There wouldn't be a tons of shovelware if only one game is released per week. Most of the time I'm assuming really good game would be released, but even if every single game released through this process was bad, at most we'd get one bad game a week extra, and that would hard make up a ton. In fact, nothing I said would indicate that we'd end up with nothing but terrible games. I'm pretty sure you didn't actually read what I wrote.

Yea, because it's a damn business. That's why most users that come up with these kind of ideas do not understand. GOG or Steam do not work just to make you happy, they are working in order to generate profit. Quality of a game is subjective for us, gamers. But for retailers, it can be quantified in number of units sold/profits generated. There are expenses with every game put up in store. If that game can't cover up those expenses through the number of units sold, that game shouldn't be in store and it was a failure to put it there in the first place. As user it's easy not to care about these things, and it's easy to say "GOG should do that" or "GOG should sell that game", but we don't know the full story.

Haha!

So are so wrong. We need moar crappy games on GOG, new-wasyuki style. =)

PS
you don't need translator to understand. =)

So you are arguing that GOG users are as gullible as Steam users then ?

I've updated the video, possibly you didn't get the sarcasm =)

What's an "ideal" flow? The proposal is talking about adding 52 games to the catalog, assuming they can be released at a steady one-per-week rate. How many titles were added this year? Are another 52 titles going to solve one person's perception of a release pipeline problem? They already released far more games this year than many of us will ever be able to play over the next 5+ years.

As to the rejection thing: it's their business. I turn down business periodically, too, because reasons.

But I'll add this positive: it might help spread DRM-free, as that would be built-in on these new releases from the get-go.

If they could add this program without screwing up other, existing site / store features in the process, and if it didn't otherwise cause more problems than it's supposed to "solve", then it might be okay. Don't think I'd participate - I treat a game as vaporware until it actually shows up for sale in a working state.

Which is why I think that the "put your money where your mouth is" method I suggested is the best way to go.

308. Full stats will be posted in a couple of hours, just before I go for the celebrations and all.