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Comment by 0cf8612b2e1e | Hacker News Reader

Any chance of making it onto GOG? I prefer to pickup games from there whenever I can.

It's unlikely. We do have a DRM-free version of Kaizen on itch.io, which also includes a Steam key so that you can enjoy the best of both worlds:

https://astralogicalgames.itch.io/kaizen-a-factory-story

Can you extrapolate a bit? Why is GOG an undesirable platform to be on, especially as you seem to be fine with DRM-free releases elsewhere (which is awesome, btw)

Finally, thank you for SpaceChem! Still great, even after all these years

My understanding is that GOG is not necessarily undesirable, but they are very selective: Unlike Steam or Itch, you have to convince them that it's worth their while to sell your game. And their choices of what (not) to sell are not infrequently baffling. Lots of developers have gotten burned by that, including Zachtronics

I have a hard time believing that GOG rejected a Zachtronics game. They're popular, high quality, and a good match for the GOG audience. An GOG already sells several of them (I own SHENZHEN I/O and Spacechem on GOG).

Well, it has happened before:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/confusion-surrounds-gogs-rejec...

Really weird decision. Though it was added to GOG about 3 weeks after that article was written.

And GOG has its share of slop (e.g. a dozen Whale Rock Games which have obviously fake reviews).

The rejection of Opus Magnum got a lot of attention at the time, which probably caused GOG to reconsider. But most developers don't get that kind of attention, if a game of theirs is rejected. I've seen multiple developers of games that I like, saying that they've given up on GOG because of the curation

The Turing Complete dev was pretty unhappy with them and ended up leaving again despite having been accepted and making it onto the GOG store.

What were they unhappy about? Do you have a link to further information?

I'm not quite sure what the expectations of semi-privacy are here, but he's talked about it on the TC Discord, in the #development-branch-feedback channel (a search for 'unprofessional' should find it).

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