I hope so. A lot can change over the next two years, though.

I have never read about the actual financial numbers for GOG until now. And certainly not realised how small they are. It's more alarming for me due to the combination of small revenue flow and thin margins (or in this case, quite a bit of loss).

Seems to me GOG's days would have been numbered if it weren't for CDPR propping them up under CDP.

But like you said, there are also other concerning factors that might matter more to other people. For me, there is now an increasing worry about this company's future. And Steam needs more competitors.

Fun fact, I just realised that there are more active users on Steam, than the entire euro revenue stream for GOG. Ouch. It broke some record at 27M. shoo go away volvo.

Galaxy user here, don't really know what the whole fuss about Galaxy is about.
Sure, it did not deliver on it's promise to truly unite all platforms as you still need to run them on the first place, but hey, at least you have a global library... On top of that you get automatic updates which is great for new titles and whoever prefers to download an executable updater every time a dev posts an update.... well. The Lord works in mysterious ways I guess...

Now, about the numbers... Personally I can't remember if I got to buy a title here this year.
Two big reasons:

The China incident
This was a turning point for me. Before I was open to overlook some cons of going DRM Free or second buying some old titles, but when I saw GOG submitting to China's pressures it made me reconsider my present and future as a customer. They already left many of their values behind but this was a whole new level, pure global censorship.
Not like I won't ever buy a title here because of this, but it truly had a negative effect.

No Steam Workshop
This is a huge issue in many many new games. Sure, some really popular titles still use third party sites or the own developers solution to host mods, but this is becoming less and less common, Steam Workshop has taken over the world of modding with it's easy to install method. I would really like to see GOG support or developing a platform agnostic solution.

Don't know what I could say, other than I remember years ago GOG was a daily/weekly visit for me and sadly it isn't anymore. The new web UI never felt right with me, and from than point and on I feel the blog posts and announces either stopped or got too hidden for me to simply find.
The latest news in the last year for me has been Cyberpunk and now the Start Trek one. This simply does not feel good and I miss the old blog posts explaining what two new games were coming that week. Really miss that.

Modding workshops that artificially gate formerly open and platform neutral mods behind stores is part of the problem rather than part of the solution and the way Steam has gone about it that "accidentally on purpose" punishes every store that isn't Steam (including GOG) under the guise of "convenience" has been incredibly toxic to both modding communities and anti-competitive to the PC industry in general. Those "third party sites still exist" is exactly how it should be done - modders write one mod once and it just works everywhere naturally without any fake client lock-outs. They don't have to re-upload the same mod 12x times to 12x different stores on every update, just once or twice to a couple of mod sites. Thankfully we have open platforms (www.moddb.com, www.nexusmods.com, etc) and GOG would be far better off linking to those than blow another large sum of money they don't have trying to out-Steam Steam for the sake of the dumbed down users.

Steam Workshop though is the poster child of why it's important for GOG users to backup not just their GOG games but also all your game mods too in case they get "encouraged" to go Steam-only. Likewise, Creation Club is the #1 reason why we have Elder Scrolls 1-4 and Fallout 1 through to New Vegas, but are highly unlikely to ever see Skyrim or Fallout 4 here...

Simple. GOG has put a lot of time and money into developing a product that is used by a subset of their customers, and they've neglected the non-Galaxy users along the way.

When Galaxy was first released, GOG really tried to make the optional client the easy choice. The big blue "download" button is still there, but at least it's a little clearer that you're downloading galaxy, and the offline installers are no longer hidden by default.

Galaxy gets updates faster - and sometimes the lag time getting the update to the offline installers is unacceptably long.

While Galaxy has received new features, the website has lost features (remember when the website used to notify you about game updates? Remember when Forum notifications used to clear when you'd read them?).

Additional content has been made available as Galaxy only content, and in some cases, the additional content is available in a single player game, and shouldn't be hidden in Galaxy.

It's easy for people to say "if you want those features, use Galaxy". As a Linux user, I can't. GOG has never made Galaxy available for Linux. On Linux we're lucky to get an incremental patch.

This makes no sense to me. Why shouldn’t a store make things convenient for it’s end users. It is exactly for these additional services that most people want to use a storefront. Just like in real life you go to the store that is the most convenient to you and offers the best prices. GoG is not an enclave for the betterment of all game stores. They should find ways to gain more profits so they’re a sustainable business. And that means building an eco system that attaches people to it’s store through convenience. A mod workshop would be great, especially ones that focus on old titles.

I get your point, that's why, apart from developing, I proposed GOG to support a platform agnostic solution.
Probably GOG could contact moddb or nexusmods and create a front-end pipeline to those sites, fetch their mod lists and so on.
They don't have to develop yet another solution as long as they get something solid.

Dual boot user here, I feel your pain. GOG should have given support for Galaxy on Linux a long time ago. Don't think it will be happening anymore but yeah.
On the topic of installers though... was it any better in the past?

I remember having to always wait a few days if not weeks after Steam Updates to get the installers.
This was okay because back then I only bought ultimate editions of new games, but it is really troubling in new titles that update really often.

Being a developer myself I can see what is happening here. First, GOG is a big bottleneck as, based on what I read coming from other devs that worked with GOG, it has really strict updating mechanism in comparison to other stores.
This already adds delays, and, on top of that (and this is where Galaxy came in handy), you need to make a installer with the patch instead of throwing a new build on top of the installed folder. This of course requires even more time.

It is certainly not the best system, although it sadly is the only alternative to Galaxy as of now.

Actually now with galaxy the update process is the same as steam (with the exception of the first patch that gets manually checked by gog) After the build is uploaded on galaxy the offline installers are created automatically after a couple of days (at least for windows , I think for Linux they are created manually)

Convenience isn't the only metric nor is it a never ending straight line. Over-convenience is a thing (where something adds barely +1% to what already exists yet also comes with a massive negative -50% for the whole industry attached via "convenient" artificial gate-keeping). In my experience, Steam users pretend to be more stupid than they actually are to excuse both laziness and particularly "Storefront Agoraphobia", ie a fear / refusal from the "No Steam, No Buy" crowd to do anything unless their Steam client wipes their rear for them. Nowhere is this more obvious than mods for games like Doom (1993) (which being 16-bit DOS games can't have any Windows client integrated) and as if by magic, searching for GZDoom in the Doom 1-2 Steam discussion forum reveals thousands of posts highlighting how no-one has any problem downloading it outside of Steam, nor did they during the 8-9 years Steam existed without Steam Workshop...

In real life virtually all products I buy from stores aren't locked to the stores post purchase. Eg, if I bought a DVD from a supermarket that lacked subtitles in a language I want, I'd visit opensubtitles.org, download one and add it to VLC whilst playing. Neither VLC nor opensubtitles says "sorry that subtitle is specific to another store that you didn't buy it from and DRM'd & locked down for the 'convenience' of other movie watchers". Imagine the absolute mess that would be if developers had to write 2,000x different versions of game / mod for revision because "muh convenience" ended up the excuse to demand and enable deliberate incompatibility that was taken to its logical extreme of Steam Workshop vs GOG Workshop vs Epic Workshop vs EA Workshop vs Microsoft Workshop vs Ubisoft Workshop vs Sony Workshop, then with your "real life store" analogy, one special version just for Walmart, another for Gamestop, another for HMV, etc. Likewise, I don't buy DRM-Free games only to add DRM'd mods.

GOG does not have the resources to undertake new projects, nor do many people (including many GOG users) want even more "Storefront Exclusivity" tribalism crap. Steam users are the first to bitch and moan about Epic's exclusives, and yet mods exclusive to Steam Workshop are exactly the same thing (actually even worse since they don't get opened up after one year). Hostile walled gardens and store-front tribalism were never what the PC modding community has been about, yet is exactly what the dumbed down audience has ended up calling for (without even realising it) out of over-'convenience'. I certainly don't want GOG to start fuelling that even more.

Well said. Why does Steam Workshop exist? In theory it's "convenience". In practise, it's all about consumer lock-in and weakening platform neutral sites (Nexus, ModDB, etc) that the competition also use. Get enough people on board to the point they'll only do Steam Workshop / Creation Club Exclusive mod content, and you artificially fragment the same market and drive a fake "wedge" between gamers on different stores no real different vs when Epic or consoles do it. But if you have a great PR team that knows how to throw around the word "convenience", you're still magically the good guy...

You're overcomplicating what is a simple truth, no matter your personal convictions, people prefer convenience and it sells.

If GoG would provide a GZDoom pre-installed configuration that enhances the experience, then also would offer additional optional packages provided in a workshop service that users can pick and choose from, that convenience becomes a selling point GoG can market to customers. If GoG is then able to properly market this as being superior to Steam due to Steam only doing minimal effort in providing these services, people will choose GoG because it's convenient to them. This has nothing to do with tribalism, this is just making your storefront attractive and will as a consequence attach users to it due to the quality of service.

Look, there are two ways to carve out a niche. You do the EGS thing and yelp that all Steam is bad and do the inverse. Or you focus on key selling points that provide a better service and win over customers with that.

We can see what a failure EGS is with numbers worse than GoG.

But then why do you use a storefront at all if you don't want to be locked in? Whether you want it or not, GoG is already doing that by virtue of it simply storing your library of games.

I can understand where you're coming from, I do, on a personal level. I hate the Apple app store more than anything because it locks me in. But it's not realistic to treat GoG like it's meant for the betterment of mankind and expecting the devs to do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They're a business and they're losing money, they need to attract new customers and we should question how they can do.

True, I never said was GOG problem, is an endemic problem in the industry.
Also very true.

I want to add just an idea, I am not sure how big could be for GOG in terms of support, BD, QA, etc., maybe a nightmare but seeing the "success" of new platforms as Antstream having Amiga, Spectrum, Arcade, Megadrive, NES etc. I wonder if selling these games very cheap, instead of streaming them, would be a good option to amplify the retro niche gamers. I am not that much into it, but I am not sure, just worth checking how AntStream is doing, and it fits what GOG was since the beginning.

Disclaimer: I hate launchers, I don't want to use them and I don't want them on my PC. This is the reason I was a GOG customer first and foremost.

I stopped buying when they removed manual sorting of our libraries to accomodate galaxy. I had a few hundred of games at that point and spent A LOT of time organizing my library to my taste. And they destroyed my effort overnight.

Nowadays I just play my huge backlog, free games, MMOs and (I'm ashamed of that) a few gachas.
I wish I could upvote you more.