I'm running low on optimism right now but thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure to give that site a thorough looking over.

Unfortunately, I am old enough and, as time goes by, more and more cynical to know not to put too much value on the "core values" of business entities, hypocritical and unethical stances are often the norm. It's about how much compromise I am willing to take from them against or in line with my own personal values and beliefs.
I have enjoyed my time with DRM free GOG.com, and we will see for how long after Epic deal. Things always change, for better or for worse...

If GOG's "cut" comes out of Epic's with no renegotiation, then there may be more direct financial reasons for publishers to not do a proper GOG release:-

A. Epic version of game sold on Epic Games Store = 88% publisher / 12% Epic cut.
B. GOG version of game sold on GOG / Galaxy = 70% publisher / 30% GOG cut.
C. Epic version of game sold via Galaxy = 88% publisher / 12% cut shared between Epic & GOG

A+B = Publisher needs to maintain 2x separate releases and 2x upstream updates / patches, plus pay developers to recode GOG-specific integration work (eg, Galaxy Achievements)

A+C = Instant +25% more profit to publisher, plus publisher only needs to maintain 1x release resulting in half the work with each update. No extra Galaxy integration work needed.

If A+C becomes more popular than A+B (for obvious reasons), then publishers wanting a dual Epic + GOG release will start demanding it by default for future games. If GOG says no, or if GOG ends up dividing the publishers up into two "deserving vs undeserving" groups which have to pay different fees to GOG based on GOG's "curation", it may well p*ss off publishers enough they may well just leave GOG completely and go A only. After all, Option C = GOG users are happy to USE the Epic Store version (whether they go through GOG to buy it is a separate issue). And the Epic Store game itself will still show up in Galaxy due to "client integration" making buying Epic Games from Galaxy vs buying Epic Games from Epic completely irrelevant to the "all my games in one place" thing.

A+B+C = Epic version gets released on Galaxy then converted into a proper GOG release later = Extremely unlikely as on top of paying devs to support a second stream of patches, Galaxy achievements, etc, it would also require publishers to voluntarily take a pay cut unless GOG matched the same 12% deal as Epic (which they can't afford to do).

The primary mission of GOG right now seems to be summed in two words - Confused Divisiveness - first dividing its community up into 2nd class offline installers vs Galaxy, then DRM-Free vs "sort of DRM-Free", then dividing publishers up into who is "deserving" enough to pay 12% (Epic on Galaxy release) vs who is "undeserving" and gets charged 30% (a real GOG release). GOG really haven't thought this through at all that if they think they can award some publishers 88% cut and lower support burden through "curation" and everyone else will continue to be "happy" with 70% and higher support burden, yet in reality they are opening the floodgates to publishers wanting a dual Epic + GOG release all pushing for that 88% deal and GOG ends up with either 1. less income than ever, or 2. a lot of p*ssed off and alienated publishers rethinking their long-term relationship with GOG after being charged 2.5x more for doing a "proper" GOG release than their peers for doing a fake GOG release...

You seem to forget, or maybe don't know if you don't use Galaxy, that shop integration, expect for Gog, is not enable by default. If you are a Gog customer and don't have an Epic account or don't enable the Epic integration you will never see those games and won't be able to purchase them. In the same way that if you don't enable Steam integration you will never see your Steam games in Galaxy.

So it's doesn't reach all Gog customers only the portion of Gog users that are also Epic customers and have enabled the integration.
It's not A+C, technically C is A' . To be able to do C you need to already be an Epic customer and have enabled integration.

So for a publisher the "C" option don't change anything from "A" it's still a game sold to Epic customer base, as in peoples who have created an Epic account, they don't really reach any extra customers than those they would have through Epic directly as Galaxy users who don't have enabled Epic integration will never see their games.

More than just that. It will most probably change the number of (esp. higher profile) games appearing on GOG.com. Those games that "Galaxy Epic" starts to sell on their store will most probably not appear also on GOG.com. GOG kinda loses the incentive to try to bring them at some point also to GOG.com because they are already on "Galaxy Epic", and the same for the publishers themselves.

So if for example Control, Kingdoms of Amalur: Rereckoning, Dishonored 2, The Surge 2 etc. had already been available on "Galaxy Epic" store, with DRM or no, then I think there would have been zero change they would have appeared also on GOG.com.

So yeah, I am expecting this to reduce the number of game releases on GOG.com, especially for higher profile (even if a bit late) catches like those above.

I don't have a link, somebody can look for this... but I'm fairly certain a GOG staffer once said the GOG does not have a standard 30% cut and that their cut is negotiated and usually depends on the work they have to do (like getting an old game working on windows 10).

------

Disclaimer: I do not work for GOG.com, nor am I paid by GOG.com. All views expressed in this post are my own, and do not represent the views of GOG.com or it's employees. My views are expressed as a fan, gamer, and fellow GOG user... that is all. Thank you.

The problem is it goes in the other direction too (as high as 50/50 apparently):-
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/so_you_thought_revenue_split_is_7030_how_about_5050_at_least_in_this_case

Clearly though that would not be the case for newer games, for a lot of older games though, in some cases, you could be talking about major reverse engineering to get them to work right on Windows 10. So depending on exactly what GOG has to do, I could see GOG getting 50% if they have to do all the work.

------

Disclaimer: I do not work for GOG.com, nor am I paid by GOG.com. All views expressed in this post are my own, and do not represent the views of GOG.com or it's employees. My views are expressed as a fan, gamer, and fellow GOG user... that is all. Thank you.

Yes I know. And I think we can ignore 50% outliers because Epic don't sell them. But what GOG charge isn't massively less than 30% (and certainly nowhere near 12%) for the simple reason they aren't being subsidised with Fortnite money, but the overall point still stands that if your endeavour succeeds and a Galaxy-Epic game sells well, then 12% + lower support costs vs 25-30% + higher support costs is certainly not going to be ignored by publishers as a potential disincentive for choosing not releasing future games on GOG "proper", leading to a potential long-term reduction in games on GOG.

We don't know what they charge... anything else would be a guess. But I still don't see that as true. If that was the case why not skip GOG / Galaxy entirely and just use Epic only now? This must mean that these publishers believe that they can get sales via GOG that they can't get via Epic. So having Epic integration isn't going to change that.

------

Disclaimer: I do not work for GOG.com, nor am I paid by GOG.com. All views expressed in this post are my own, and do not represent the views of GOG.com or it's employees. My views are expressed as a fan, gamer, and fellow GOG user... that is all. Thank you.

Because if they want a "presence" on GOG today, then a "proper" GOG release is the only way of obtaining that today. If you are offering them a "presence" on "two stores for the price of one", and "but almost everyone uses Galaxy today, not offline installers!" (as we're repeatedly told on these forums), then obvious long-term outcome is obvious...

Say you run a book store and you insist all books sold have your store's branding printed on each book's front cover requiring all publishers to print a special front-cover just for you. Your competition do the same. You also run a book club called "Galaxy" and regularly boast about how popular it is that 95% of visitors to your book-store are also members of that book-club. Then say you change policy to allow sales of books branded for other book stores specifically for your book-club members and even charge publishers less, and as a side-effect publishers start to realise that it then becomes logistically cheaper & easier for a book publisher to share a single run of books on both your book-club and your competitions bookstores by reusing your competitor's front cover on your books which eliminates the need for them to print a unique cover just for your whole store.

Aside from diluting your own brand, the bookstore owner would have to be irredeemably dense to not see how less economically desirable it's going to be in the long-term for publishers to continue to still print a custom unique cover just for your store after you've already explained to them how they can save a lot of money doing the exact opposite...

The ones who will see and potentially purchases those "Galaxy Epic" games are not all "Gog customers" but Epic customers, and even less than that Epic customer who use Galaxy and who have Epic store integration enabled.

The only way to still get a "proper" GOG release, which means getting users that do not overlap with Epic is by releasing on GOG. If Epic on Galaxy didn't exist there would be no difference, the overlap would just buy directly on the Epic app instead? Where is the difference here? Your kind of conflating two things.

------

Disclaimer: I do not work for GOG.com, nor am I paid by GOG.com. All views expressed in this post are my own, and do not represent the views of GOG.com or it's employees. My views are expressed as a fan, gamer, and fellow GOG user... that is all. Thank you.

See above edited in analogy.

And that won't change, if they want a presence on Gog they will have to release the game on Gog because the only only presence the "Epic store on Galaxy" give them is among Galaxy using Epic users who happen to also have enabled Epic integration; which is even less than the normal Epic store presence.