Like who cares for those pennies the games are sold, pretend to purchase games for the sole purpose of owning them and be glad those same games don't end up on the shelf where you will see them every week when your wiping your shelves to remove the dust

200 bucks, OMG! I would regret pledging much less for the unfinished game. I wonder what do you mean by the first part, I was able to reach the first the city (the only one?), is that it?
I was expecting much more from a game with *latest fixes*, and for some reason whatever I choose my avatar looked and sounded the same. But I must admit that the game had potential, it could have been a spectacular mix of Thief and Dark Messiah if only enemies models and animations weren't so meh.

Do people really believe there's any "curation" here? After gog shovelled Capstone shit on the store? Operation Body Count and Corridor 7 are the type of digital shit that should've been left in the past. Two of the absolute worst FPS of all time.

There's no curation, except that the owners of gog have a very twisted view about what people would want to buy and what they don't, leading to games that people have an interest in, not being allowed on the site because of shit arguments like "uuuuuh, sports game don't sell" or "That's too niche" (like The Quest, Grimoire, i think even Stardew Valley got originally rejected at first by the doofuses), while worthless crap like Magna Cum Laude, Body Blows, Supreme Ruler 2010, Master of Orion 3 or Bubsy got "curated" onto the store

For me, because the stories behind a lot of them are far more interesting than the product themselves, but would not exist without said product to act as a cultural touchstone of the events that proceeded and surround the development and release thereof of said product. I can't speak for everyone, but it IS part of that experience. So, by preserving the game, you preserve the story, by having context. It's fine if you don't, but there's strong evidence to present that a lot of people DO feel that way. There's entire youtube careers dedicated to the stories of these games, guys like LGR, Matt McMuscles, AVGN, and many more, who have dedicated their angles, or at least some of their content to covering bad games, bad or odd hardware, or failed products. Things like Daikatana, Big Rigs, Ride to Hell still generate interest.

That said, I wouldn't purchase them, but the preservation, I think is an important part of their individual "legend."

What's wrong with Corridor 7? Wolfenstein 3D was a masterpiece, Blake Stone was an interesting and in some way an innovative game. Corridor 7 has its moments with morphing enemies, animated walls and overall horror-like atmosphere.
I mean what's wrong with having a Wolfenstein 3D clone game based on the same engine? For me personally Rise of the Triad game is much worse.

Conservation / Preservation of old games / movies / music is VERY important for me. Either if they are good OR BAD.

I had much fun playing nonsense like "Last Rites" (completed it without cheats in the 90s) or "Fortress of Dr.Radiaki" (failed, because it went far to difficult later on) or the "Isle of the Dead".

Last one is pretty unique, because it has parts of an ordinary point-and-click-adventure in it. Unfortunately not enough, but anyway. The shooter section is partly garbage, because of the re-spawning enemies. It IS doable, but only with save-scumming. Either way, it is kind of funny, with nice cutscenes (but not enough of those, either). :(

Good / bad is in the eye of the beholder. I HATE many of the pretty games from AAA Studios of today, would play NES/SNES/C-64/AMIGA or "shit" like the Capstone games instead of them.

So yeah, there is a market for everything, so if GOG makes okay money with "bad titles", they should bring those, too. Nobody is forced to buy them.

You have fallen for a common misconception. GOG is not a vault, an archive, a public library or anything else. It is a business selling a product. It’s not going to have games that make no money, it’s not doing this for your benefit or the benefit of humanity.
That’s the point though, they are here to make money. If something doesn’t sell, then they lose. If they don’t think they would make money on something, then there is no point putting the effort in getting it working, having storage to deliver it, getting all the required permissions, adding galaxy functionality, creating and updating the installers etc. You have to as a business, not an archiver, evaluate cost against perceived profits. That is how business works.
If you want an archive or something like that, then it needs to be a not for profit or otherwise funded project, like archive.org. It’s not the domain of business.
Cool, I had forgotten that. 1995 cyberpunk open world game, and it’s still better than cyberpunk 2077!

I'm not falling for anything, I'm just stating what I would like GOG to be.

Would I prefer for oldies to be freeware instead of products with a price tag, yes.
Am I ok with someone making sure oldies work on modern systems and asking a small price for it, yes.
Do I believe licenses for oldies should be dirty cheap and made acquirable without much hassle by some "body of law" that currently doesn't exist, especially since we live in a digital distribution era, fuck yeah.

So if I could live in a world were GOG can acquire permanent license to sell every old game ever released which they make sure is working perfectly on modern systems, that would get two thumbs up from me.

Making / updating games from the old times can be quite simple or diffiult. So it can be cheap (simple) or expensive (hard to get working windows games).

And hosting costs are not cheap at all. Futherway archival of old games is a grey area. If somebody objects, the game gets pulled. Archive.org is no exception.

If GOG SELLS the games now (quite cheap...), there is no problem of them getting pulled, because they bring (small) money for both partners.

I honor that. Publisher and GOG get some money for the games and they (the games) are (again) in circulation. So if they bring more stuff, let them do.

It is sad enough that we cannot get AMIGA Emulation here because of the Kickstart ROMs (copyrighted). :(

"Do we also want Bad Old Games?"

Of course I do! Actually, I already did buy some, of almost a thousand games here, surely 5% of them is utterly crap (And, well, I like trash games if they are at least playable).

no it is clearly not
why?

For many reasons. It could be a game from a company that I like (but made a crap game between good ones), it could be a bad game from an overall good series that I want to complete, it could be a game with interesting ideas with flawed execution, or a bad game from a genre that I really like and overlook their flaws. Sometimes I'm curious and buy it just to see if it is really bad as people say. Or simply because, when the game has some historical value, I would like to have it in my collection.

The question that plagues us all...

... and the very reason that GOG's "curation" was developed.

GOG is not a library, but it seems they have done an admirable job sorting what is a rights' nightmare and hosting many of the most iconic games from years past. Perfect? No. Admirable? IMHO, yes.

With that said...

... "bad games" (unless they have gained cult status) will never have a large market so we can expect GOG to stay away from most of them...

... but...

... every once-in-awhile there's a title that takes a critical thrashing that -- upon user outcry -- will see a release.

I'd love to see GOG take a stance of bringing everything here and then "sorting them out" by sales over time -- letting the market decide what titles stay and what titles leave the platform (albeit within reason) -- but that's not particularly realistic.

As far as Hellboy and guirky, weird, or "bad" games...

... I love "bad" games as long as they are playable. Some are great fun -- often in ways unintended by the developers. Wish they had a home here... *cough* Curse of Raven's Cry,,, but don't see that happening

Gog already sells Cyberpunk 2077.....

well most are understandable but not
"Sometimes I'm curious and buy it just to see if it is really bad as people say." part
I don't get why not just use others experience in your decision. Then basically no matter what the games quality is you will get it anyway. That's not good, that just makes dev teams/publishers more lazy.

or
"Or simply because, when the game has some historical value, I would like to have it in my collection."
so you get a game for being infamous?
I think that is just money wasted, well I find collections to be stupid anyway, I can't see hoarding stuff you don't use good for anything.

isnt it getting better?