amok: Lets say one person needs what? $20.000 year salary to live?

CymTyr: What part of "I CANNOT AFFORD FULL PRICED GAMES" did you not get? I stated in my previous post I no longer feel badly for buying games on sale. Are you trying to start an internet fight, or just being obtuse on purpose, or had too many pints tonight?

F4LL0UT: Bwahahaha. Sorry, it made me laugh living in Poland and all. Actually it was rather depressing.

Aver: I don't see any sense discussing it if we don't know who said it and we don't have any proof. I can say that Steam ordered me to give them my kidney or they won't publish my game. Any anonymous statement is worthless for me.

amok: I edited my post to say that fine, but this was not how you set out to start with, your start was :

"after reading this thread and discovering the huge profit margins on dd sales being verified, I am now more inclined to never pay full price for a game again, unless it's a classic GOG I really want.

Those guys can bitch about piracy and lack of sales all they want, but SOMEONE is making money off digital distribution, and I cannot believe it's all going to Steam and other platforms. Even a mediocre selling game via DD methods is looking to recoup development costs and create a substantial profit. "

which is not the same as saying "I can't afford it". Not being able to afford it is one thing, this stance, however, do not say so but something I think is wrong.

CymTyr: Okay, in that case I see where you're coming from. I agree that developers need money, and I wasn't very clear with why I was saying what I was saying originally. Truce. I agree with you, but personally I can't afford full-priced games besides maybe one or two a year.

Barry_Woodward: [snip]

F4LL0UT: Can't we just let GOG do the business? I am sure that they are more qualified in this aspect than any community member here and being the successful company that they (apparently) are they can probably figure this kind of problems out by themselves. Sheesh, what is it that people always feel like telling GOG how to do business? Focus on telling them what services you as a consumer want instead of telling them how to do their jobs.

SimonG: snip

SimonG: GOG always uses the "underdog"/ "we are the good guys" marketing spiel. If that turns out to be wrong, I think it is the business of their customers.

amok: Lets say one person needs what? $20.000 year salary to live? lets say he is a single indie develop with no other expenses then living expenses. So he makes a game and for him to be able to live he needs to sell for at least $20.000, just to survive. So, for $20 he needs to sell 1000 copies, or for $3 he needs to sell 6667 copies. that's OK, but not all indie games sell that many copies in a year.

Now suppose he was not alone, but they are two, a coder and an artist, they now need to sell 2000 copies or 13334 copies. This is still just to survive, cost of equipment, possible licenses and so on is not even in the picture, nor renting some space, hosting etc. God forbid they are hiring in a musician....

If we now get close to AA titles, with a team, lets say a small one of 15 men each drawing a equal salary of 20.000, you now need to sell 100.005 copies at $3 or 15.000 copies at $20. This is still just to cover salary costs for the team,and the distributor takes 0%, other expanses do add up very quick.... not sure where you expect them to get the money from?

MonstaMunch: [ This is not how business (or life in general) works. All you've really done here is make the obvious argument that becoming a small indie developer has little chance of paying for itself, let alone making a decent profit. And guess what? That's the case with most small businesses starting out, in any industry. It's not the responsibility of the companies you deal with to ensure that your company makes enough profit for you to be satisfied, it's up to you to create a business model from the outset that will be profitable. If it isn't, you need to rethink the whole thing before getting into it.

GOG also has staff, and they also need to be paid. Did you consider that part in your calculations?

If a developer makes a good enough game to be able to negotiate a better revenue share, then great. If they can't, don't blame GOG for it.

Barry_Woodward: Obviously GOG has the right to conduct their business however they see fit

WBGhiro: How gog manages their finances is a thing on which the community should not meddle. It's their business and they are responsible on their success on their own.

amok: Thank you for taking this post out of context, taking extreme care of deleting the " more completely wrong calculations" which I started it with. Congratulations for missing the point in the discussion completely.