With this Steam Vs Epic Store debacle, I was curious about the cut that GOG took on games. After googling and finding out about this 30% cut, my jaw dropped. Is this true, are they taking a 30% cut?

Have fun:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/conclusion_of_the_bfair_price_packageb_program_9b7f5

Edit: in case you miss it: "With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller."

Likely taking less now, but they work harder for their cut than Valve does.

No, it's volatile and depends on how much work GOG does etc.

That'd really depend on the game wouldn't it?

For Diablo, sure. But a game they just sell with minimal effort on their part? And those are likely the majority at this point (after the Good Old Games days)

It does seem they were taking about a 30% cut, although they also have been reimbursing customers with store credit when regional pricing brought the price over the U.S. base price. This seemingly came entirely out of GoG's cut and thus GoG was not getting a full 30%. They claim the average return was 12% in these cases, meaning that for the vast majority of games sold in certain regions, they were actually only taking in 18%. They said sometimes this reimbursement rose to 37% and they were losing money on those transactions.

But one also has to realise that out of this 30% cut, they are paying processing fees, staff for the forums and the development of Galaxy as well as dedicated support staff among other things. Meanwhile Epic Game Store doesn't have forums, has a very basic launcher and seemingly leaves all the support to the individual developers if one has a problem. They do also have to pay processing fees, but everything else about them is very bare bones.

The question one should be asking is whether it is really that unreasonable to take a bigger cut when one is providing more in services.

I sometimes wonder if DRM-free or the small userbase is a bigger issue for getting devs or pubs here.

Userbase every time. Most people don't care about DRM, or even know what is it. Bar the odd case where a YouTuber picks up a very bad case of DRM...which makes it sound like a sickness when typed like that.

I think the same is true. If GOG would have a 100 million potential customers, I'm sure most companies wouldn't mind a DRM free release after 1-2 years of the initial release.

I wouldn't be shocked if each publisher ends up negotiating their own amount.

It's a chicken and egg scenario. If more publishers would release to GOG, a DRM-free version after a year or so, it would attract more users. Hell, whenever a publisher releases a version on GOG that I already have on Steam, I'll double-dip.

Yes, it's true. And that's one of the things that's handicapping GOG, as they don't do enough, from a devs' POV, to justify the 30% cut.

Here's an easy and great way how GOG would no longer have to take 30%: stop paying people to 'curate' games. That's a useless expense and 'curation' only makes the site worse, not better. And it doesn't stop bad games from coming to GOG either. That quoted statement is sheer nonsense though, as what it actually means is extremely ambiguous & unclear. You seem to be implying that GOG no longer takes 30%. But GOG didn't actually that. Granted, the statement you quoted could theoretically be misinterpreted to cause one think that they no longer take 30%; such potential confusion is perhaps the very reason why GOG worded it so cryptically.

With all due respect, the reason they go to Steam first is purely down to the user base, this isn't going to change. That's why GoG and others in that space need to be smart/smarter or even bolder. It's worth remembering how many doubts there were when Steam was a fresh new service on offer.


Most won't double dip. You'd be surprised how many people don't even know who/what GoG is.

I don't think you know what "chicken and egg" means.