satoru: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2018/11/condensed_financial_statement_q3_2018.pdf

GOG has been bleeding money the ENTIRETY of 2018

Stuff was bad BEFORE the '10th anniversary'

You want to 'go back' to when GOG was 'bleeding money like a screen door on a submarine'. Sure please explain how losing 500k PLN in Q1-Q3 is 'awesome'

RWarehall: Right now, GoG supplements the sales of games within Europe by both paying VAT and offering the "fair price package". If I were to guess, and GoG were forced to become more competitive, I'd expect that at the very least, they might start charging VAT in Europe. They would almost have to if they felt forced to reduce their cut below 30%.

Pheace: Wut? Of course they 'supplement' VAT, every store does. It's required to be *included* in the price. They can't charge us for it, except by raising the price entirely. Since prices are mostly the same as other major stores they're not taking a hit on VAT here, they're doing the same as everyone else.

VAT being included in price is also why people who still complain 1$ =/ 1Euro are missing the point.

liquidsnakehpks: i wonder if Thronebreaker did more damage then they let on , i mean them having to admit not only it did not sell well but gog not having the reach....must not be enticing to people bringing their games here

RWarehall: The problem is that by including the VAT in the price and then also having the fair price package, they lose a lot of their 30% cut while developers still consider it a large cut. If Epic is a success and GoG needs to reduce that cut, I believe something will have to give in that regard.

But, that really depends on Epic's success as an actual storefront and not just a "free games" distributor.

fronzelneekburm: Precisely. A little word on "curation" in general: Why does everyone buy on Steam? Because they've got all the games. Sure, there's the occasional whining about how all the shovelware clogs up the storefront and the actual good stuff barely gets a chance to be in the spotlight. But ultimately, it doesn't matter, because people still buy their games there.

Gog could work the same way: The place where you can get all the games - but without DRM. The way gog "curation" actually works is the complete opposite and IMHO harmful to the website. In the past, the curated store approach made sense. Because you're selling "good old games", so curation meant that you're going to get the best version available and ensured that the games would run on modern systems. And while the current gog still clings onto that same pretense, it's simply not true anymore: you get outdated builds, games that aren't feature-complete, a lot of them are buggy as hell and won't run properly (Hi, Bioshock Remastered!), support is hopelessly overburdened and a lot of the more recent releases simply aren't very good at all. "Curated store" went from a seal of quality to a seal of approval. As in: some rando gets to decide for me which games I want to play, Sorry, I'd rather decide for myself.

I share your sentiment that they don't release anything I'd be interested in any more. My average monthly spending on gog has gone down by 95% since the 10th anniversary update. That partly has to do with how off-putting I find the new site layout, but mostly with how gog rejected (or pointlessly delayed) pretty much all the games I'd be interested in.

blotunga: That's bullcrap. Itch has 5x more games than gog. And with a smaller cut. Are they making any better because of that? No.

Pheace: You're making it sound like GOG is swallowing the entire VAT% or something. I highly doubt that. It just means EU games have a lower amount post-sale for the cut to be taken from. That seems to have worked fine for most other stores. I doubt that's where the issue is. If anything the fair price package is where the issue would be, not in the least because it's based on an outdated premise. I'm honestly surprised they kept that package this long since I'm pretty sure they introduced it to appease the massive wail that came out when they introduced regional pricing.

timmy010: thronebreaker needs a 90% off sale

RWarehall: But they are! Because of "Fair Pricing". They are charging the same number of U.S. dollars because any difference is paid back in fair pricing. They will still have to pay the developers for those games bought with fair pricing as well as the VAT again even when that creates more fair pricing.

Sell in the U.S., they keep all 30%. Sell in Europe, all that regional pricing is taken straight out of their profits because it is given back to the users. Straight out of their 30%. It's the combination of the two that is the problem.

TentacleMayor: All this talk of backing up your games... even if GOG were to close shop, they wouldn't come out one morning and say ''that's if folks, show's over, all downloads are down, your libraries are erased, if you haven't already backed it up then tough titties''.