Heh. I noticed that immediately when the news broke and the "GOG is failing" threads started, each using their pet hate of GOG as the definitive reason of why it's happening. But it makes you wonder:
Death from the thousand cuts perhaps? With so many issues to pick from perhaps there is enough dissent across the board to be a big enough problem overall. And keeping stone silent and failing to alter/fix even the minor issues that plague the store is not helping. So I'll put up one of my pet hates to join the crowd: GOG, you don't communicate often nor detailed enough. Clamming up about everything and waiting for the issue to blow away does not work, it only breeds innuendo and frustrates customers into leaving. There we go, another different placard in the crowd.

The problem is, it's easy to assume that whatever pisses someone off, or even the majority of the forum users here, is a problem, but the truth is we don't know that. The forum users, even though a lot of the "old guard" left, are still mostly a bunch of "old school goggers", but perhaps what seems bad or pointless to us is actually fine with the majority of GOG's new, younger, hip users.

I know for a fact I'm pretty much entirely disconnected from what most gamers today are like. Clients, achievements, livestreams, twitch, social features etc. etc. all this stuff is trash to me, but I know that that's what the gaming industry is today, and there's probably no future in catering to dinosaurs like me. I don't think I can give GOG much sound advice on how to run this store.


Although I still can't imagine anyone, regardless of age group and tastes in gaming, who wouldn't consider the current layout a clusterfuck :D

Also it's wrong to only look at profits or losses. To measure growth the turnover is much more interesting. Losses can be created by R&D and then maybe "loss" is not the right word - investments more like.

Actually for me it makes much sense if CDP actually invested a lot into GOG as a platform, not that much caring if it's really profitable now, but as an asset to stay independent of Steam, Epic and co.

That said, I really doubt the competence of some of the decision makers at GOG HQ. And I don't mean the curation decisions of some single games. The whole company seems to lack a vision, a rope which all the employees can pull on in the tug of war of the market.

Let's be honest:
- The 10 year anniversary should have been a really big thing. Contests, random giveaways, some fun stuff. And it was basically just another sale.
- The site re-vamp was a mixed bag. Autoplay videos, news at the bottom of the page (wtf?)... some good stuff, but did people go "yay" and "how cool!"? And that the site works only in a few select browsers now is simply unprofessional. Yes I hate IE too (I'm web dev), but I'm required to support it, because many people don't have another browser (i.e. in their workplace), so the site has to work with it. Same for Firefox ESR and co.
- The #FCKDRM? Half-hearted at best. I want to read about that in the newspaper. Get the nerds who maintain the video games museums in front of a camera and complain about how DRM makes their lives miserable. Get the studies that show that piracy isn't the big problem, that companies are screwing themselves over buying shit like Denuvo. Get people with expertise talk about it, and go the hell public! And then keep the pressure on! Or leave it. The way it was done it was laughable - a real shame.

I think GOG simply lost their shit over the last few years, they're as aimless as headless chickens. And I don't mean the grunt at support and the people prepping the good but bitchy old games for modern machines - those still do great work.

The problem is the leadership, IMO. It lacks vision, guidance, chutzpah, balls... name it as you want. GOG is a small business compared to the competition, and they should work with it. Be innovative, brazen, even audacious... and personal. It's their strength that they're not the anonymous and monstrous machine like Steam. They should be able to make both devs and players feel right at home here - but what happens is that devs are annoyed and customer communication is sometimes legendarily bad.

GOG has so many strengths they could play on, and the only ideas they have is "let's make another sale". That's the real problem. Sounds like a kind of company burn-out-syndrome.

Why the hell did this post get downvoted so much (without any legitimate retort I could find, to boot). First of all, people, updoot/downdoot is NOT a conversational tool. At least state the reason you disagree with something, no matter how briefly!

Secondly, this observation is spot on.

Curation on GOG is... strange, to put it mildly. A lot of games that ended up a huge success elsewhere (mostly Steam) were outright rejected by GOG, and while GOG staff does not presumably own a crystal ball, or any other tool of watching the future, they should have the capacity to adjust their acceptance standards based on both client base requests and past mistakes in relation to refusals.

And the rest? GOG became an actual market force after being a simple site that offered what nobody else did - DRM-free stand-alone installers and business based on attention to customers.

No Galaxy client was required to propel them to become, reportedly, the second largest game distributor. The web site was simple and hugely utilitarian - unlike the current mess of "design" that made the previous overhaul, already atrocious in itself, look like a gem.

Then GOG decided to chase the Steam crowd with Galaxy. If you think this was done without investment of a lot of money (money that could've been better, in my opinion, spent on securing more titles to add to their library, or just basic user support!), I got a great offer on prime-location bridges.

What's even more egregious about that decision is that GOG apparently decided to focus on the very segment of the market that, if they have "brand" loyalty at all, will need a huge bloody crowbar to pry them away from Steam itself.

All the while undercutting their business practices that attracted the core customers in the first place.

GOG is trying to chase Steam. Any business leader worth their salt will tell you that's a recipe for a disaster unless you have so much money you can comfortably undercut your opponent to the tune of huge short-term loss.

Instead, GOG could've focused on silly things like ensuring proper support for the games they do publish (and adding Galaxy to the mix only made things worse that were already questionable with multiple developers outright ignoring their GOG versions while Steam patches kept rolling out). At least now, supposedly, there is a contractual clause requiring reasonably fast update of GOG itself, but it sure took years to get there.

For that matter, GOG could have invested in automation of patching process for both Galaxy and stand-alone installers, and give developers the capacity for testing either on their own. Again, Galaxy strikes against the people who made GOG, if they don't care for a client. Plenty of games had stand-alone patches delayed for considerable time, and I've personally seen several developers state that to be because of delays on GOG end.

Instead of aggressively attempting to expand their library, GOG's curation seems to actively encourage the use of Steam. There have been multiple games that released on GOG so long after Steam release that ensured most people interested in the title already owned them. Some may decide to re-buy, but not everybody has the same level of disposable income to throw it away on redundant purchases. I'd expect GOG's curation staff to be more diligent in their task of acquisition of profitable titles, and yet instead we get constant stream of stories how a highly anticipated title (at least in indie terms) gets rejected because.... error 204: reason not found.

The whole site redesign being another bloody fiasco that I won't elaborate on because plenty has been already said on it. At least Steam has the excuse of having a financial reason to cram as much advertisement everywhere as they can, considering how they operate (developers/publishers gib moar mony or get buried into obscurity). GOG, on the other hand, went from a highly functional site encouraging sales to a redundant mess throwing the relevant (to core users) information all the way at the bottom (and with limited ability to back-track). Seriously, I really hope whomever decided to remove the News section as it were and "redesign" it as graphics with limited "go back" functionality was among those that got the axe. I had purchased a lot of games that way, since I don't exactly sit on this site every day waiting for an opportunity to make another purchase.

Oh, and GOG also removed the community-based curation that was all that much better tool of discovery than what's offered.

For that matter, GOG had a fantastic opportunity to add "user privacy" to their "core values" (though the trend seems to be removing those constantly, rather than add to them - surely a winning proposition, dropping the very thing that made GOG unique among storefronts) right around the time general public was actually getting somewhat aware on the loss of privacy with the whole Facebook and CA scandal. Call me Mr. Silly, but I'd assume having another point of enticement to undecided customers in the form of "we value your privacy - actually do, and we won't have any third-party scripts on OUR store page!" should be considered more valuable than getting some bullshit metrics from Google, or the occasional Tweet or FB post from a user. There is NO privacy-oriented game store. That's how GOG could've elevated itself - again - from the crowd.

Instead, GOG decided to integrate Facebook into their own web site. Brilliant! Pure MBA A+ coursework right there /s

Rather than go on and on, I'll just stop now. Bottom line - current GOG is nowhere near the entity that garnered such support when it first appeared, and it did NOT improve in my eyes.

Stop chasing butterfly users with no concept of brand loyalty, keep to those things that DID earn you trust, focus on expansion of your game library, and try to get back to those things that made you stand out from the crowd. I do wonder if the investment in Galaxy really paid off in the end, because somehow I doubt it was a necessity for majority of recurring purchasers.

Maybe even try to figure out a new ways of positively differentiating yourself from other storefronts. Protip - privacy matters to a lot of people, especially those with greater exposure to the technical side of things. Generally being people with greater amount of disposable income. See where I'm going with this?

Oh, and stop playing politics on the forums and social media, because you WILL end up offending somebody one way or another.

We don't always see eye-to-eye on things but I tip my hat to you.
With so many swallowing an assumption that the sky is falling, the forum is jumping with analysis on what will happen when it hits and what caused it in the first place. To see a post which challenges the very notion of the sky falling at all is very welcome thing :)

That's purely nonsensical.

Investors dont care about how GOG did before

They care about how GOG is doing right NOW. Saying "oh they made money in 2012" is pointless. It has NOTHING to do with the market TODAY. And today, GOG is bleeding money every quarter for at least 3 quarters, and likely Q4 was also a disaster, and Q1 2019 also sounds bad.

1) GOG somehow went from millions of PLN profit per quarter and in single year is turning a loss every quarter. That's alarming.
2) Q1-Q3 is even BEFORE Epic launched. Now not only is your store utterly unprofitable just trying to compete with Steam, not its trying to compete with Steam and Epic.
3) GOG has literally no long term strategy to address this. They're going to continue ot bleed money because there's functionally nothing different between 2018 and 2019. Less revenue, higher costs, negative profit.
4) GOG doesn't have a head engineer for GOG Galaxy as per their career page. which means the only real vehicle they have right now to retain and get customers has no one heading it at all technically.

So what exactly changes in 2019 where somehow GOG magically starts making more money? They don't have a viable client. They dont have games taht will pull in more revenue. Cyberpunk probably isnt coming out this year ot save them either. giving away games via GOG connect and seasonal sales isn't working. DRM free isn't working. Selling old games isn't working. Seasonal sales arent working. GWENT isnt' working.

So what exactly is GOG supposed to pivot to where they suddenly are making millions of dollars in sales every quarter they couldn't in 2018.

^This. Thank you!

Read the financial statements. They explain exactly what was going on through the year.
To call actual numbers "nonsensical" is what I call nonsensical...

You really know absolutely nothing about investors nor investment which is clear from all the GoG-bashing posts you keep making.

Investors clearly care about the past, because it is a good indication of whether a company is in a good position to rebound. They also care that the majority of GoG's profits every year usually comes from the 4th quarter which we haven't seen the results for.

Yet here you are asserting how horrible 2019 is for GoG based on an article that said GoG did very well in January. Or did you even bother to read the article? And as I've mentioned above, anyone claiming to know how well GoG is doing in February while we are still in February is not someone to be believed.

GoG sold more non-CDPR games for dollars in 2018 than any quarters before. This is a very positive sign. They got bit because the majority of those games were sold in U.S. dollars as the value of the PLN went up in comparison to it. Meaning those increased sales weren't as profitable because of exchange rates. They got hit by a currency fluctuation. On top of that, they invested in upgrading their network infrastructure. Neither is a bad trend.

What you don't get, because you clearly don't want to get it, is that GoG as actually selling more games than ever before once you take CDPR's games out of the equation. Their sales revenues are growing in that department. They are selling games. Their sales are working. But you would know that if you had bothered to read the financial reports...

That's the main reason behind ALL of my posts being downvoted.

Great analysis, by the way. Good thing you mentioned that big proffessional tip, too... DEDICATED, RETURNING CUSTOMERS. Lately, more and more companies, do their best to shaft them (maybe because they are being taken for granted?), while struggling to lure in new, occasional ones... Who frequent other places, even. Well, their decision, their money. What would business be without new openings, with no risks?

First they gave up on their own unique features... Features that made older fans quite zealous and passionate over the service, even. Then, they gave priority to modern titles, over oldies. That's not necessarily bad, unless it shifts the whole balance completely; which it did! And certain good oldies, are not even negotiated for, yet (mortal kombat trilogy/4? Cybermage? The Reap? Sub Culture?), even if they had been pioneers and benchmarks of their genre(s). Best oldies, like C&C, Warcraft, Diablo and GTA series, are what i myself would die for them to arrive here... But even great newer titles, such as the Arkham series, didn't appear at all.

Curation is very fishy and honestly, i am happy i am neither the first, nor the only one, to notice. Everything you said about client and web-design, are also quite true and spot-on, as well.

Well, we are only observers, at the very end. Our opinion weights nothing. Other people's opinion that DID weight in the past, for gog policies though and some recent changes are due to their "demands", are those who damaged GOG. But if GOG goes down, they will go elsewhere and laugh it off. We of the core fandom are the ones to be dragged down, at the end. Many old fans left disappointed too, ever since things started to change.

Even though this idea is pretty far-fetched I don't exclude the fact that someone could be spreading this stuff in order to damage GOG.

I'm not saying this is fake news. But it's a fact that almost since the beginning, while the YouTube community has been quite sympathetic towards GOG and its DRM-free stance, the vast majority of the gaming press has been ostensibly ignoring GOG for quite some time. I still remember that it took some time and quite some complaining (by its readers) until a site like "Rock Paper Shotgun" announced that new games were released at the same time on Steam and GOG (since they almost always only announced the Steam release).

I'm old enough to remember the times when some gaming magazines from the ZX Spectrum would give suspicious high reviews to games that were completely broken and a disgrace (looking at you, "Renegade 3" ).

Well yes, financial pressure tends to happen when you reject games to sell for no real reason. You know, those things your site is supposed to sell? That and not having your games up to date and patched with other storefront versions in a timely manner.

GOG will be just fine. This is all about peaks and valleys. Its normal in any business.

I wouldn't call this far-fetched at all. The tides are getting rougher and who knows what connections and business interests are at work behind the scenes.

But I still think that GOG needs to get their act together and play on the strengths they have.

The gaming industry is becoming more and more cutthroat as the weeks and months go by. You have Epic trying to come out like gangbusters being the new bully on the block telling Steam they aren't the only big boy in town anymore. Steam will fire back at some point im sure with their own ammo. This usually causes the stores under them to suffer indirectly. But its time to adapt.

Maybe its time GOG did its own new exclusives. Cyperpunk for example should only be sold here on GOG.

And you have certain shills who write for these gaming websites who loves to spread false rumors and lie about certain platforms. Or at the very least, stretch the truth to the point of hyperbole with fearmongering and smearing.

In the end, I wouldn't trust the word of these clickbait gaming websites and their biased shill writers. For all we know, Epic or someone else could be paying these writers to make false reports. I'd always wait until GOG themselves make an official statement.