Is Epic hurting GOG?

Surely they must be, with their regularly weekly freebies, that came about due to a fall out with Steam. Steam is so big though, I bet they hardly notice, while GOG is a different matter I suspect.

Many of the freebies at Epic are available here and often on sale. But how many are going to buy here when they got it for free at Epic? Maybe if they were cheap enough here, as getting DRM-Free (if they aren't so at Epic), is certainly worth it.

I imagine the great majority here don't care that much about DRM-Free, so they grab a game wherever it's available and cheapest.

While I hate DRM, it is a bit hard to ignore a good freebie, and GOG may not last forever, especially as DRM-Free. It is a bit hard to ignore a few other facts too, like developer support and updates. Couple them together, and a sense that you probably need to plan for that rainy day scenario, and it feels foolish to ignore the freebies, especially as many are great games.

Epic must have been doing their weekly free game(s) for a year or more by now, and that is a lot of games.

Both Humble and GOG have had a lot less free games for that same period, while Steam still have regular ones. You can certainly build up a good free collection from both Epic and Steam and other stores like itch.io. And while maybe not all are available here at GOG, any large collection you need to wade through, would probably be impacting your interest in other games, and the willingness to spend.

From what my records show for the 600+ games on my Wishlist, prices have gone up a good bit for games at GOG too. And yesterday I finally remembered to check the Movies here, and they have gone up a by a few dollars too.

It does make me wonder, if GOG will survive. I want them to, because with 900+ games, I've certainly made a big investment in them. On the other hand, loyalty here is not what it used to be, probably in both directions. For some, I think the loyalty has now shifted from GOG to DRM-Free, where once they were intimately one and the same.

Can GOG last as a DRM-Free store or are they doomed to fail, because so many just don't care about that issue, and see it as just a gimmick?

I like to think they can survive DRM-Free, because it is such a worthy ideology, but maybe I am fooling myself. GOG certainly don't have the power and control of Steam or Epic, etc. Personally, I often think GOG have only survived thus far, because the bigger stores have let them.

GOG are certainly an interesting and unique phenomenon.

Long Live DRM-Free GOG!

P.S. Please give us our GOG Downloader back. Let's end the negativity and work together.

Is EGS hurting GOG? I'm not so sure about that. EGS fans generally don't care about DRM or not, whereas GOG fans do. So they are for the most part serving completely different markets, I would think.

Definitely EGS has given away a lot of free games that GOG also sells. However, those games have usually been put up on EGS after they've already been on GOG for quite a long time. So they probably had already made the majority of the sales that they were ever going to make on GOG anyway, long before EGS offered them for free.

As for GOG's future, the way I see it, GOG has two major problems:

1. Not enough big name publishers/devs are willing to release their games DRM-free whilst they are still relatively new.

2. Multiplayer on GOG is terrible and almost non-existent and Crossplay between GOG and other platforms is not viable with things as they stand now, because 99%+ of devs never bother to implement it (probably because the devs don't want to and/or can't be bothered to learn the Galaxy stuff they'd need to know to make Crossplay work).

If GOG could solve both of those problems in a good way, then it would become a lot bigger than it is now, and it would be able to compete with EGS and Steam in that case.

But that's a very tall order, and thus far, GOG has been unsuccessful at solving those problems. I'm not sure they will be able to do so in the future either.

If they keep the size and scope of their operations in check and manageable and don't over-reach by expanding too fast or too much there's nothing to worry about I think.

The same in terms of releases. There will always be a relatively steady stream of new or not-so-recent indies to bridge the time it takes to bring back/secure highly requested classics or new'ish AAA titles. Even if it's 10 years, like in Blade Runner's case.

Not to mention THQ Nordic, Daedalic and other similar-sized publishers or self-publishing devs like Hello Games that are willing to release their AA or AAA titles day-one on GoG. And while they may not completely make up for the still absent brand-new AAA titles from the big publishers, there's usually enough of them to sufficiently fill that void.

Which has become rather small and thus easy to fill anyway, with those 2, maybe 3 half-decent offerings (that aren't complete shite) from the likes of EA, Ubisoft or Bethesda.

And as long as GoG gives them a reason to do so I think there'll always be enough people buying DRM-free from GoG.

The only thing about the EGS and Epic in general that upsets me is the PC exclusives thing they offer. This has ticked off alot of customers who think they are getting the game on Steam and low and behold the devs pull a fast one on the customers and made their game an EGS exclusive. One game that I know of that came to Steam recently that was an EGS exclusive was Borderlands 3. Also there are games on both Steam and GOG that EGS does not have mind you because EGS doesn't touch niche type games.

Also the freebies that EGS is offering such as the Batman games for example. Those games have been on Steam for a very long time as well. Same thing with GOG as Ancient-Red-Dragon had pointed out with their games. Since I have a choice where I purchase my games at I choose GOG and Steam because 1 Steam has a launcher that doesn't need alot of work vs what EGS has and GOG because you don't need Galaxy to play your games unless it is some sort of multiplayer game that the developer implemented into the game. Yeah I know Steam has drastically changed their launcher some people hate it and some people like it. I am one of those people who like it because of the category organization they added to it.

So at the end of the day I don't see EGS hurting GOG or Steam because they offer niche style games that Epic does not offer. And it's like Sony and Microsoft as well when they both offer free games as well as different games.

Epic hurting GOG? i really dont think so, the way i see it, the basis for GoG is the ability to play your games without irritating launchers should the service go down for any given reason...thats the main reason i love it here apart from the amazing community, Steam is a pain to deal with due to the fact that if the store goes down your entire library is fucked from both downloading and playing (after 2 weeks) btw steam had a recent server crash and nobody could access their account for a period of time....i personally use steam for multiplayer games and the occasional keys i get from my friends as well as freebies...i could careless about the multiplayer on GOG as it basically non existent and EGS can kiss my ass only reason i have that pile of shit is because of freebies....the launcher doesnt work well, the multiplayer function for certain games are bullshit, uses way more resources than it needs to use even more than fucking STEAM and its barebones just like the skeletons that are in my closet...its just another marketing scheme made by a communist organization...besides the games that are free on EGS are for the most part on GOG and steam already so i dont see how that would affect sales for GOG...and the exclusives eh...thats just hurting the games more than it should...take Borderlands 3 for example..compared to steam...it was a fucking financial FLOP and thats just to show, a great game for the duration of its time on the EGS store was kinda fucked because of bad practices....


anyway i hope you guys have a good day or night, stay indoors and be safe....long live GOG and happy gaming! =)

Loyalty goes a long way.

Epic does not have a loyal fan base that will vigorously defend the platform. Most of the people just download epic to get free games.

Gog has plenty of loyalists that defend DRM stance and the right to play games without constant internet connection.

I don't think epic is hurting gog.

I would guess some freebies are selling worse, and only to the hardcore "no client!" types, but overall it's probably not too big a dent on GOG (or Steam for that matter). Steam especially, and also GOG, are so entrenched that most people will only go to Epic for exclusives or freebies, and I'd bet Epic's other offerings are much smaller in market share.

GOG and Epic audiences probably don't overlap much.

The majority of the titles Epic has been spitting out as freebies have been directly portable installations and don't require the client on your system at all to play. Even games not for free like the entire Walking Dead series are like this as well. A few require special command-line args to bypass the client lookup. Others are DRM-tied to the client, obviously all the Ubisoft ones. I and others have been tracking every single freebie drop and tested them by porting them from one system to another without the client... and the majority work, and work without having to source 3rd-party installer packages (thus the game folders are complete self-contained installations).

Sure, if Epic goes six feet under you'll lose future updates and new OS compatibility, but personally archived installations (a static version) should serve you a long time. So yes, the games Epic has given away free which are client-independent are direct blows against GOG's bottom line, especially when you consider the majority of titles only get played by their owners once only.

I seriously doubt they are hurting Gog any more than Steam. Since games for Epic do obviously cant come with mandatory Steamworks integration the chances are that Gog could benefit in the long run.

And about the freebies... for a game I really want I rather pay the release price 10y later on Gog (and possible FireFlower Games or Zoom) and continue to ignore them on exclusive hogging sites of ill repute like Epic, Steam, Origin, whatever UBI call their thing etc even if "free". For the time being at least.

Yea, in theory... but how many people really back up their games like this? As it stands now it requires you to run a pythong script which is already takes a bit more than the average computer skills (getting worse with removing GOG downloader). Also would not underestimate how long Steam has been around. Even though it could go under hypothetically (now that more publisher try to force their own platforms) many young customers grew up just expecting it more like a basic infrastructure than a store.

Nah, not really. On Epic there are only Fornite fans and enthusiasts of freebies. We will see what happens in the end of year when battle royale fashion die or every game was already given for free.

GOG is more hurt by lack of activity or polishing stuff like it used to do it.
For example, there was a new game published yesterday, Someone forgot to put the typical note"Hurray, from today we sell that game".
Ok,it happens,especially in these times of virus, but developer of the game or other who want to publish the game here might be a little bit dissapointed.

I am not quite sure what your point is. Other stores offering games for free somehow hurts GOG specifically? It hurts the other stores (even the stores offering the freebies) just as much, and I'd think it also hurts those publishers who offer the freebies (ie. I got Superhot for free from Epic, and now I am less likely to buy it from GOG or anywhere else for that matter, except if it gets a very deep discount. From my perspective, all stores, and also the game's publisher, lose here.).

It isn't like that the store who offers the most freebies wins and is the most successful. All these stores are businesses, they have to make money, and just giving out freebies doesn't work alone. Freebies are a double-edged sword both for the stores and the publishers. Is there any indication that the games are updated and supported any better on Epic (and Humble Store, itch.io etc.), than on GOG? I recall Humble Store has a much worse track record in getting updates for their DRM-free installers than GOG, but then you can also get Steam keys from them I guess.

Overall, while the extra competition does certainly affect GOG too, Epic is more directly competing with Steam than with GOG.

I don't think, even if Epic Game Store becomes actually successful past being a repository for free games and a Fortnite (and Unreal Engine for me) launcher, it would matter to gog, because gog caters to a different market. But I just wanted to point out that while I consider offering free games to be a pretty silly way to attempt to gain market dominance, I have to say, while obviously it can't compete with Epic, I think gog has had a lot more free games than Steam. Almost every other sale is coupled with a freebie, and it is usually a freebie of reasonable quality or reknown.