As the producer for Dominique Pamplemousse (or ‘Professional Extrovert’ as Squinky calls me), I have to get the game in front of as many people as possible. With the IGF Grand Prize & other nominations, there’s a lot of opportunities presented to the game and it’s my roll to capture them. Course, we’re limited by budget (there is none) and time (I have little of).

Our sales are particularly high in Europe and Russia. Shocking as the game is English only and no advertising to speak of. Steam is a good partner and everyone at Humble is wonderful! I figured adding Good Old Games would compliment the Eurozone in coverage. The only contact I had was a Submit Your Game link. I gave a little bit of info in the form, and named drop our festival destinations along with the fact the game is already released.

I wasn’t expecting this kind of response:

May 29th, 2014 Hi, Deirdra Kiai Productions, Thanks a lot for your submission and your interest in GOG. We’ve taken a look at Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!”, it looks like a very interesting and unique concept that is not afraid of rising some hard and difficult questions. The form of musical in a video game is something you don’t see every day and looks like it fits the game perfectly, additionally the stop-motion animation is a really cool touch. Unfortunately, however, we feel that the game would not be a good fit for GOG, as we think that it appears to be too niche and a bit too small in scale for our core users, which means that we aren’t confident in its sales potential on our site. For these reasons I’m afraid we will have to pass on Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!” . If you have any other games in the future that might be a better fit for GOG, please let us know, and hopefully we’ll be able to work together. All the best,

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As Squinky so powerfully put it:

Making Games is Easy. Belonging is Hard.

Dom Pam isn’t a game for everyone. That’s totally fine and fair! GoG has absolutely no obligation to sell this or any other game. This response struck me as unique. GOG’s foundation comes from selling niche adventure games. Dom Pam is the most awarded adventure game in the 2013 release year. I can’t see the logic of not selling the game as being “too niche” for the premiere adventure game store.

I think it’s important for consumers to know the reasoning a storefront makes in choosing or not choosing a title. Especially when the costs of shipping a purely digital product is insanely low. Especially when it only reinforces the perpetual cycle of monoculture, rather than challenging ourselves in how we to experience media.

Going public with this is a faux pas of sorts. I know this runs a risk of potential partners feeling entrapped if I approach them. Not all deals will work out and not all potential partners can ship a product with effectiveness. For GoG to specifically call out the content in this way and reject the title is uniquely disconcerting and worth discussing openly.

Note: I removed the name and position of the sender. E-mail is otherwise unaltered.