That's absurd, yet I see it quite often said here. Of course there will be more because, whether you like it or not, time does not stand still and what you might consider bleeding edge of gaming is in fact quite old today. Do you realize that HoMM 3 or BG were barely decade old when GOG started in 2008 and many games were newer than that? Stop pretending that only 80-90's games can be called old, that's not how "old" works.

Nope, that is a later things. It all went titsup when they released galaxy. Everything after that point has been downhill. GOG simply changed at that point from something "different" to a "hipster steam", led by the "we want steam but not called steam" crowd. Since that point, nothing has been done on the website, offline installers got galaxified, "achievements" and cloud saves becamse a thing, online gating started happening, drm appeared in games, etc.
So I would simply say that every problem on this site (and across the industry) is down to clientwares.

yeah dump galaxy.
just dump it,
go back to the way it was.

I don't think just throwing Galaxy away and disallowing more downloads of it is the answer, if a decent number of people still use it or to-be users might find it useful. (I know people here will disagree but I'm concerned emotions and bias can take over instead of attempting a balanced view.) I say just stop putting resources into it for now. If people stop using it because it doesn't continue to develop and add features, so be it.

More info from the transcript:
"Q2: One quick follow-up –could you explain your restructuring of GOG? Does that mean we’re going to see sales from that product line decrease in P&L over the next few quarters? Could you give a bit more color on what’s going on at GOG?
PN: No, the restructuring of GOG is rather to allow the team to focus on its core business, so GWENT operations will no longer be co-hosted by the GOG team; the entire operation will shift to CD PROJEKT RED. We have also decided to move some processes related to online features used mainly by CD PROJEKT RED directly to CD PROJEKT RED, and at the same time we reorganize Company operations internally as far as the back office of GOG is concerned. So, this should not have any direct influence on GOG sales of our own or external products."
https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/11/transcript-q3-2021.pdf

To put things into perspective, GOG's revenue did go up 3% this quarter, but expenses went way up. It appears GOG is providing advance payments to certain publishers/developers in order to secure releases here. Also, 2021 has been a weak year for releases and game sales across the board, due to COVID affecting development of games and thus the entire industry.

I am fine with having new games and indie games on gog, but I would like an option to mass-hide them all. I made a GOG account a decade ago BECAUSE of the "good old games". Is getting harder and harder to figure out when an actual old game re-release exclusively on GOG, so I just stopped looking at it. I already have to dig through garbage on Netflix and Steam, I cannot be bothered to do the same here (even though is not garbage, indies are not good old games).


Many years ago, whenever I wanted a old game that can only be played through torrent/physical, I would use GOG. Now I do not have many alternatives, and whenever something old appears, is on Steam anyway.

First how do you know that ? and second the whole curation is not just for customer it is also for devs especially indies, if they release their game on Steam it will most likely we lost in the middle of thousands other games released the same week, when it's released on Gog it has at least some time in the spotlight being featured on the front page and given how reluctant some are to spend time releasing a Gog version, removing the whole curation might not be such a smart idea for Gog.

Yeah it was simpler, but it meant multiplayer removed / disabled, removed all online features, including achievements, etc... so peoples felt even more like the Gog version was a gimped version often even sold for the same price than the "full" Steam version. If Gog "strongly recommend" them to use Galaxy is because if they don't they know that plenty of their customers will be angry and complain about it.

Zoom Platform has the Atomic Edition of Duke Nukem 3D.

c) repels developers. Why waste time targeting a niche platform if, based on anecdata, you're likely to be ghosted or receive a shallow dismissal?

Now I'm not a serious game developer but I can do a thing or two and I do hope to release at least one game during my lifetime. The current way of handling things is such that I don't particularly want to hear what GOG's curats think about my game, so I wouldn't even submit it.

I am not saying that, I would go much further and ban clients completely. They are a platform for drm, provide functionality to run microtransactions and online only games along with online gating. Not to mention all the data capture. Even a company like GOG has been drawn into it, it’s just what happens, develop a client and then see the real potential for owning your client base. Workshop and creation club are examples of further uses to lock in your clientele to one platform. And for what, time tracking, “achievements”, and copying files off to some proprietary server. Wow what a convience!

I want to register my report as a GOG user because I think it's important for the debate, as I saw a lot of people criticizing the focus on Galaxy.

I imagine most of GOG's active users have arrived here because of the DRM free philosophy or because of the old games. This was not my case. I arrived here because of the Galaxy announcement, still in its first version.

Despite being primarily a console gamer, I've always had moderate activity as a PC gamer. Like almost everyone else, I only bought and played stuff on Steam, because until that moment (2015) I didn't even know of the existence of other stores of the genre (understand that the vast majority of PC gamers never even heard of GOG). Turns out, while I liked Steam's social features, I was increasingly hating the smog the store was becoming, with hundreds of dubious releases every day and an increasingly grim interface.

When a friend shared a news about the Galaxy launch on a WhatsApp group, I was surprised not only to be unaware of the existence of GOG, but also to see an opportunity there to "relocate" myself as a PC player from a community leaner and that seemed to be blooming very well. Then later I started reading about DRM (I didn't even know what it meant!) and I REALLY enjoyed the curation service for stopping the store from polluting.

That's how it started. It was thanks to Galaxy that I became a DRM free advocate and active consumer of this store, and I have never, EVER bought ANYTHING on Steam again.

Galaxy continues to be a vital resource for me on this platform, mainly due to its clean interface, no pollution, and without giving up, of course, the DRM Free philosophy, which I came to know, respect, adhere to and share.

Whether GOG is making mistakes with managing the Galaxy 2.0, like consuming resources to create an Epicstore game purchase tool (which I think is complete nonsense) or an exaggerated focus on building connection to all other platforms (the big marketing behind galaxy 2.0), this doesn't negate the importance of the Galaxy.

Wrong, then yes, is the strategy of focusing on an audience that does not care for the philosophy of DRM free or quality of service, giving up organic users, who request resources such as updating the forum, store and and better servers, for example, years ago!

Shelving Galaxy and switching to an uncompromising "no client" stance might be the only way for GOG to restore its reputation as a different store, instead of the broken Steam clone they have been striving to become in the last years…

If they keep going the "it’s not really DRM" way, they will soon lose what little relevance they still have.

it seems their only chance is to build a time machine and make more good old games :O

Without gog galaxy the platform will be left with the famous group of toxic users.

The same users who boycotted it and who are to blame for the fact that the only store that was betting on non-drm is going to disappear. They are responsible for this.

Yeah we are not going to agree on this. ;) We both agree installers need to be improved (for me after seeing the "Why GOG Installers Suck" thread).

I don't think enough people were actively boycotting to affect GOG enough to where the "blame" can be placed on them. Now maybe enough people were passively boycotting by just not buying at GOG anymore for whatever reason but the ~100 people on the list didn't rile the passive boycotters up.

I wouldn't be surprised if GOG is losing money right now has less to do with DRM or DRM-free (aside from the Hitman situation perhaps that actually made gaming news), and moreso to do with fewer exclusives and "Good Old Games", and a majority using GOG for "old games on new machines" and games you can't get on Steam and having bought all the classics they wanted by now. With that said, GOG can court DRM-free enthusiasts again and going ham on that may be the right decision; I don't know there's much they can do about "Good Old Games" since at this point many of the remaining high-value ones must be stuck in some real legal messes. Improved custom/in-house fixes for some games would be nice but may not be a good enough r.o.i.