Um... Firstly, there are millions of dollars involved here. Even something like Braid made millions and GOG is not exactly a mom and pop store either. Secondly, IMO the quote quite strongly indicates that GOG would not give an indie developer the same contract that they give to Disney, but if you have proof to the contrary, I'd certainly be interested to hear about it.

Maybe if you would provide proof. You quote GoG over how they handle the acquisition of good old games and then just assume it's absolutely the same? Maybe you should get your facts straight...you quoted something that had nothing to do with this. It was talking about the difficulty tracking down the owners of old games and working out how the revenues are split between all the parties to an IP. It's what GoG had to do with games they found. The thing Night Dive or Devolver or Nordic deals with. Which then makes it very easy to cut a deal with a publisher like GoG since the distribution rights have been straightened away

And you really think there are millions of dollars involved in this deal with GoG? You are smoking crack...
GoG at best sells 10-15% of Steam and by missing launch, you can expect to be on the low end of that equation. Not a chance GoG could sell 100,000 copies of the Witness at an average price of $10 a piece. There are just 50,000 games redeemed on Steam from all sources. And you do know that all of CD Projekt made only 22 million Euros in 2014 right, but this one game distributed is worth millions to GoG?

Basically it seems you and so many others here live in a fantasy world. I suggest laying off the crack, man.

The part that I quoted was about what happens after the owners are tracked down, though. At the very least, GOG has a legal department and they do negotiate individual deals. To assume that this is a special case for old games only is a bit far fetched, don't you think? And as far as crack smoking goes, I'm not the one making confident claims here about how GOG operates.

Also, I don't simply mean to suggest that there are millions of dollars at play in every single deal that GOG makes. But they certainly seem to be making enough money that hiring a lawyer at 600$ per hour doesn't seem to be out of their reach. For me it simply doesn't make sense to negotiate deals with corporations like Disney without the presence of a lawyer.

Link? (JBlow post so much on Twitter that it's hard to check everything)

To set the records straight: after their debacle, they sold all their IP rights to Digerati who later published it on Steam and GOG so it's not "their" game anymore.

It happened a few years ago: https://twitter.com/jonathan_blow/status/279312589819899904

OK thanks, I tought he wrote that recently ;)

My take on it is that JB is not really all that interested in a release in GOG (unfortunately, as of right now, only really small indies need GOG, when they are underperforming in Steam). But he is probably still salty about how things went with Braid. And thus his quick tantrum about the contract he probably already expected he wouldn't like.

Which is unfortunate for me, because I liked what I've seen of the game and would rather buy it here. Not on release, though.

From the perspective of a content creator, in many cases (but not all!), an indie developer can be really emotionally and psychologically invested in their work, mainly due to the more intimate nature of independent development done solo or in small focused teams vs. in a large corporate structure. So yes, absolutely, people can end up being very overemotional and overdramatic in a very self-harming way.

Phil Fish is a great example of this: FEZ was a huge passion project for him, and it really comes across in its design and attention to detail (IMO). What I got out of his appearance in Indie Game: The Movie is that he went through a lot of shit to see his vision through to the end. In my very unprofessional opinion his experience may have even exacerbated some underlying mental health issues that he may have been suffering from beforehand. While his errors in engaging others in the gaming community are legion, I still think he didn't deserve the disproportionately huge amount of bile and vitriol that got heaped on him.

I think the same thing is true for Jonathan Blow as well. Like Fish before him, I see Blow being used as a convenient target for scorn and criticism, just because they're seen as indie "auteurs", deserving hatred for no other reason other than that they make games that others don't like. His brash behavior of course, doesn't help.

They are only talking about old games...
"At this moment we have the catalogue of almost 400 classic PC games from such publishers like Electronic Arts, Activision, Interplay, Ubisoft and more."
"What do you look for in a title when deciding whether or not to sell it through GOG?
The easy answer is that the game has to reflect our website’s name: Good Old Games. So we have some base rules for the games to be old enough and good enough considering the average score from reviews."

Right, so you are quoting what the process was to negotiate with EA, Activision, Interplay, Ubisoft, yes Disney. A process that involved old games and complicated royalty situations based on old box copy contracts. Companies with worldwide regional contracts.

Now, in your infinite wisdom you are trying to say that this process takes this long for one developer owning one game. And that's a load of crap.

You can go to the "Indie" page here which used to be more concrete. It used to specifically state the cut was 70/30 but they'd might be willing to give an advance in which case GoG will take a higher percentage until the advance was paid off. If you really think the load of shovelware on Steam involves a lawyer every step of the way, you watch too much tv. And like I said, even back in the day, with EA, Activision, that guy did the negotiation and after the terms were agreed upon, THEN it was sent to the legal departments. No one has a lawyer with them 24/7.
Try this one recently....
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/685322401320583170

And this series of Tweets this year...
https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/685338375356678144

And then this later response that doesn't sound very convincing...
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/691740304936816640

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that your idea of both Disney and Bad Rats devs getting the same contract doesn't sound convincing to me. Or, a "load of crap", if we use your language.


In none of these does he say that GOG are dicks. The first one says that the contract GOG offered was lame (whatever that means), the second one says that Blow apparently wasn't happy with the contract GOG offered him way back when, and the latest one just says that they need to work out the legal details for The Witness for it to appear on GOG.

Only in the one that I quoted did Blow say that GOG were dicks to him during contract negotiation.

Yup, I pretty much agree with everything you said. I only followed things from a distance, but that's the impression I got about Fish et al.

Seriously, even for larger publishers, the basic contract is going to be the same, then you negotiate "the extras". The basic contract will explain how payments are made, how the process works. Basically what GoG is and how it works and what and how GoG does its business. The addendums will discuss things like being featured on specific weekends, the release schedule. The basic contract will look basically the same for everyone, big and small.

Do you think when a big company gets a contract with a hotel for rooms on a regular basis, they don't both agree with the basic contract the hotel already has in place and then have a separate agreement detailing the payment arrangements, number of rooms, and where the payments go?

Do you think if a company cuts a contract with a rental car firm providing access for their sales team, the contract is written up completely from scratch? Or would it make more sense that the basic contract is in place with addendums appropriate to the specifics affecting just this deal.

It just shows you know jack about business.

And this discussion is about one Indie developer and his one or two games. The fact that you are jumping in with your ignorance and proclaiming how many millions of dollars there are at hand, how negotiation with Mr. Blow require lawyers for weeks, etc. You make things out to be way more complicated than reality.

The real complication, is rather simple, can GoG and Mr. Blow agree on the basic terms. But publicly calling contracts lame and talking about removing multiple clauses, implying Gog intentionally tries to take advantage of Indies, puts a big monkey wrench into making a deal. That is the real issue, not lawyers.

A sufficiently big company probably has its own standard contract for accommodations that the hotel better take as is or else. Otherwise, you're right.

Voted for both, but not sure how good chances are for these titles to come here, with the dev having called GOG "dicks" in the past. Negotiation vibe might be sub zero. But I figure you've been through this in here already...

I've seen that quoted a lot, but we should remember that a lot can change in three years time, GOG was just starting to get into indie games then, and we don't know the spe'dick'ics x-P (maybe Blow was misinformed about 40/60 or something).