I think OLD games have too many problems:
- They need maintenance, which is a lose of time = money.
- The most of them cannot compete with the today equivalents / remakes, which 99.9% of people would purchase instead.
- They are limited, there are only X, and that amount won't be bigger. If you want to add more of them, you'll need to lower the bar.
- They are usually sold by a cheap amount of money = low revenue (unless the developer doesn't want any right for the sale)
- The DOS games usually can be easily played on your browser.

There are few notable exceptions to OLD games, which I think they are a good source of income, like:
- Master of Orion 1 & 2
- Master of Magic
- Baldurs gate X (which I don't like)
- Civilizations...
- Heroes of Might and Magic 3
- and few more...

I personally would like to see The Ancient Art of War In the Skies, but that's my personal taste, it's a very niche old game, and it only would generate a few sales.



About the NEW games and DRMs. I'm here because the DRM free, nothing else. I want the games will be DRM free for single player or multiplayer using something like direct IP connection or LAN. But I don't mind DRM only when I'm going to use private server paid by the developer/editor, which is the case of GOG Galaxy or others when you have to login in their servers. I think GOG is doing well here.

Where it isn't doing well, is with the upkeep of the store, which is prone to errors and it's quite obsolete (no review edit, not able to delete your own games, the filters are a joke). Also, GOG Galaxy for default should open the store page, unless someone ticks an option to open your recent or installed.

The 99% of games sales are new games, and GOG should focus on bring these in their DRM free form, as soon as they are released. Another big point would be the mod compatibility, but I understand this may be difficult. And the support bot is a bit repellent. I prefer normal tickets with dynamic links to faqs while the user is writting.

The problem is ever since the resurgence of interest in older games, GOG doesn't have a monopoly on selling "good old games" at all. Pick a classic old game. Deus Ex? Doom? Return to Castle Wolfenstein? Syberia? The Longest Journey? Thief? They're all on Steam. For a while some were only on Steam (eg, Heretic / Hexen) whilst some others still are Steam only (Duke Nukem 3D). What about all the remasters? Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition? Day of the Tentacle Remastered? Monkey Island Special Edition? Myst (2021)? They're all on Steam too.

So what ultimately separates Bioshock on GOG vs Bioshock on Steam (which is as old today as Windows 95, Descent, Command & Conquer, Full Throttle, etc, were when GOG launched in 2008)? It's ultimately just DRM-Free, not the age or classic-ness of the game, as age is a moving target and every new game will become old over time...

They only release a few games per week so I don't find it "useless" to see which is old and which isn't. You're right though that one thing that could be improved is add a lot more features to the website (better filtering, editable reviews, better forums, bringing back GOG-mixes, etc). The problem is, GOG seem to have spent all their web development on Galaxy instead trying to pursue that "meta-client" dream few are interested in. But it's not Galaxy that gives the first impression of GOG when GOG.com is where most games are actually bought. So hopefully a refocusing on "core GOG" will improve things.

My suggestions:
- focus on installers, ditch galaxy, epic, gwent, cyberpunk, and all the other online gated stuff and leave that to CDPr
- completely update the installers, hire a repacker todo a proper job. No barely compressed galaxyified installers that copies of all the usual (cpp extensions for instance, just link them). Have a high compression archive file and a lower compression instant installer for choice.
- fix the changes logs and provide access to every released file and patch with notes, perhaps buy gogdb as they seem to be able it do it.
- replace the forum software with something that will show who voted up/down each post and offer the voter the option to comment on why that vote occurred.
- fix the various broken elements in the website, purple dot, filters, library options

I agree with this, GOG should stay far away from this. They need their fundamentals covered. Most mods are easy enough to install and it would be a waste of resources for GOG to bake a Mod support function in....and by the sounds of 'marketing costs' they've already had plenty of wasted resources to mull over

Basically, we still don't know anything. Got it, thanks! :)

Exactly. Only rumors that GOG isn't doing well at the moment. At a time, where other digital services made quite a lot of profit due to people staying home. But for anything more concrete we will have to wait for their financial report for 2021 some time in March or April next year.

They are certainly not "rumors," but rather, truthful financial facts.

yes

I very much agree with that first sentence. Perhaps GOG will need to accept they can only grow so much, and instead seek to just maintain. (I've suggested trying to grow into other DRM-free media, GOG trying to get good movies here again, but a lot of people didn't like that)

I get the sense a lot of devs just aren't up to deal with GOG versions for such a small return on investment (GOG's tiny marketshare), which is why we keep getting "2nd class citizenship".

Also it seems a fair amount of people still mainly use GOG for "old games on new machines", maybe it's time to bring that back into focus.

I can't judge how reliable The Verge is a source. But it is credible that GOG is doing badly, considering how bonkers their decisions were in the last year(s). So 'rumors' may have been too derogatory. Perhaps I should have said: 'news by a source I didn't verify yet'.


But in any case some changes back to former glory would be good for GOG. Only that those running it seem to be determined to destroy everything that set GOG apart.

I'm pretty sure that Galaxy integration stuff has been doing more harm than good. Devs simply aren't going to want to reinvent the wheel (have to code special Galaxy specific achievements on every game) for such a small audience, let alone keep going back and repeating it for every other store (Epic, etc). From what I've heard, the way GOG have been "strongly recommending" devs do that has been alienating some of them. If they don't do it they end up on the "2nd class citizen" list. If they do it, it makes GOG more work to sell on. Things were a lot simpler and more efficient prior to Galaxy (create one DRM-Free build and it will work on all DRM-Free stores (GOG, itch, Humble, etc) with no extra work. That's what the DRM-Free selling point should have been all along. And achievements should have been in-game all along where they would work effortlessly on all stores out of the box. But Steam + "muh so-shall mee-dee-uh" screwed that common sense up...

all the bad things started when they opened the gate for visual novels

they should start to curate more , nobody buys dating sims or other low quality mass produced indie games

All of this. As I've said many times recently, there's no ONE specific move by GOG that has led to the current situation, but a series of very bad decisions that gradually bled away the support of their most passionate fans. And those fans have more of an impact than their numbers would suggest - not only did they buy huge amounts of games, but they were big ambassadors for GOG on the gaming scene. I'm nowhere near as devoted to GOG as some of those people, yet I used to recommend the store to other gamers purely on the strength of their principles and their great communication with fans and customers. No way I'd ever do that any more.

The source isn't The Verge, the source is the reports CD Projekt’s Q3 revenue for 2021. That's the basis of the reports, it's not a question of ifs or buts, it's facts.


Not liking a genre does not equate for the reason for decline ;)