So did GOG suddenly stop being faggots or what happened?
It is a mystery.
Here‘s what I do know: The initial refusal of Grimoire proved to be controversial on the gog forum, to say the least. There were
a number of threads made on the gog forum (on top of
the existing Grimoire discussion thread), one of which had amassed nearly
500 replies when it was locked after a week. Grimoire‘s rejection became something of a cause célèbre and it was brought up over and over again whenever gog's curation was discussed.
In the meantime, the number of votes on the community wishlist doubled after the rejection, surpassing 1000 votes in mid-June. A very respectable number for a game that is basically a one-man-project and doesn't have a marketing budget. I had been pretty vocal on the forum about my dismay over the rejection and after the counter reached 1000, I decided that now was a good time to go bother gog support about it:
Hello,
I just noticed that Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar now has over 1000 votes on the community wishlist. Here's a link in case you, dear reader, find my claim to be incredulous:
https://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/grimoire_heralds_of_the_winged_exemplar?as=1649904300
Over 1000 members of the gog community have joined together and spoken in one clear voice: No, this game is not "too niche" for us. No, this game is not "a bit too small in scale in terms of production value" for us.
And that's not even mentioning the apparent irony that oldschool RPGs are precisely the niche that Good Old Games - pardon: gog.com, but that Good Old Games moniker sticks - grew popular with.
Please make some 1000+ voters happy and release Grimoire!
Thank you!
Best regards,
fronzelneekburm
I heard back from gog in the beginning of July. Usually, if you write an inquiry to gog support surrounding an unreleased game, you‘ll get a form letter reply: We‘re doing our best, sometimes there are complicated rights issues involved, we‘re working hard to bring you the best in gaming, blah blah. The reply I received was different. Maybe a new form letter, who knows. But it definitely had a more promising tone about it.
Hello fronzelneekburm,
Thank you for directing our attention towards this and it's a real pleasure to have such passionate gamers like yourself. We do watch carefully the wishes of our community and are aware of the Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar situation. That said, I will make sure to pass on your feedback to the appropriate department.
Thank you for your continuous support.
Stay awsome and happy gaming!
All the best
I pinged Cleve in mid-August and suggested that he might want to give gog a second try, since they are known to change their minds (the story I heard is that they are swamped with applications at any given time, so they will often refuse a game and only really give it a closer look if it is submitted a second time) and since 1000+ votes on the wishlist would give him leverage. The best known precedent for gog reconsidering a rejection would probably be Opus Magnum - which had a fraction of the number of Grimoire's votes, but which was backed by a considerable media blitz surrounding the gog rejection (something that Cleve couldn't count on). In mid-September Cleve started dropping cryptic hints about a possible gog release.
Long story short, I have no idea what actually happened behind the scenes, but my guess is that Cleve decided to submit Grimoire once again and gog was persuaded by the number of wishlist votes. Or they decided that keeping the game off the site was more trouble than it was worth. In any case, I'm glad Cleve stayed persistent, gog changed their minds and it's finally here. Ultimately, that's what really counts.
