Exactly this! With all due respect, achievements are just an arbitrary set of tasks or goals thrown in for the heck of it. If one cannot be creative enough to think of one's own goals or objectives then....well, that's very unimaginative of one. Been gaming since 1981, and never heard about these achievements things until the PS3 and 360 era. It might be somewhat cool to folks, but definitely not an integral part of the gaming "culture" to me at all. Then again, I find Twitch streaming, watching others play, achievements, and anything of the like superfluous fluff.

Eh, I can't get aboard the modern game hate train. There was a time like a decade ago where I thought my interest in games was doomed but things have gotten a lot better. Not only tons of indies in genres and styles I love, but big AAA singleplayer games of quality still come out here and there (like Resident Evil 4 in a couple weeks).

It's definitely more rare to see a "big" release I care about, but I ain't hurtin' for games to play by any means.

I try to keep myself positive, but god damn it's hard sometimes. Lots of doom and gloom just in general. In this, I have to thank you for helping center me. It can be hard in the current environment to remember that most games have always been shit, and it's only the good ones we really remember. And even if I don't go to Steam for my games or reject DRM entirely, there'll always be something somewhere.

re4 is a lame remake that was already out a while ago.

This is probably true. A bigger issue than GOG itself is that, as Stinging Velvet said, most people simply don't care about DRM (but I would add, except for in cases where it is performance-impacting and/or extremely intrusive, like Denuvo... that kind of DRM do have considerable backlash against it even among people who otherwise don't care about DRM).

That reality means that any kind of DRM-free store is always going to be a very uphill battle, and probably a losing battle in the long-run.

As for the anti-Achievements comments: if Achievements are so unimportant, then why do WayForward's Steam customers always get them, but yet their GOG customers don't? They must think Achievements add value to their games given the fact that they include Achievements for the Steam versions of their games. So why do their GOG versions deserve less value?

And anyway, regardless of whether or not Achievements are good, either way, it's still unethical and lazy for devs not to give their customers on each platform feature parity whenever possible, which when it comes to Achievements, it is possible, and the only reason why WayForward excludes them is because they simply can't be bothered spending a few hours to do the work which would result in GOG customers receiving equal treatment and full feature parity...and yet they still want(ed) GOG customers' money anyway, in the same equals amounts as on other stores where they do put in the work and give the game 100% of its intended features; that doesn't add up and that's not acceptable IMO.

As for the idea that no one needs Achievements because everyone can "think up their own goals and objectives," well if that be so, then one could just as easily say the same thing about the act of playing video games; by that logic, there is no reason to do it because the purpose of playing is to fulfill game-related goals that could have instead been imagined in the mind.

Indeed sad. I'm not especially surprised though.

They care enough about Denuvo to complain about it, but very few care enough to actually not buy the games.

While I respect your viewpoint, it's just one I don't share at all. When playing games, the true achievement process is actually just completing the game, unlocking skills, progressing, etc. The whole act of playing the game is compromised of little achievements. To me, this arbitrary trophy/achievemnt system is akin to training lab rats. By completing these arbitrary extra so-called achievements and being rewarded with a nice little shiny digital trophy the player gets a controlled shot of dopamine for being praised. In the end, people quit having fun and become achievement chasers. As I said....games have been around far longer than the ridiculous trophy/achievement concept. Guess everybody needs a participation trophy these days though. lol

Well to be honest, I still think a significant portion of users dont really understand DRM and why its bad for gaming.

When discussing game preservation, alot of PC gamers talk about how this is why PC gaming is superior to console; because their games will always work on a PC while a game may disappear with the next console not having backward compatibility; forgetting the issues with DRM licenses expiring or the ominous issue of Steam shutting down. Nevermind the fact that alot of popular games are "live service" games like Fortnite.

I do think GOG's rise to prominence will appear when more people really understand what DRM is and why it sucks for the consumer. But we still live in a world where people are surprised when purchasing a movie on Amazon prime is not permanent when Prime loses the license to show the movie.

I think WayForward’s biggest issue is that they release games on Gog a long time after they’re available on Steam and being surprised they don’t sell well - with crappy discounts too. Maybe try a simultaneous release with the same discount as Steam and see how things go.

But that will never happen with WayForward.

I noticed that when looking up the game. 30 dollars for the game like that is alot. No wonder it sold like crap.

In a few sentences, could you elaborate? Did they do a huge marketing campaign with no new customers?

From the (admittedly) little I understand about (Steam-)achievements...they usually are not hardcoded into the games themselves, nowadays.
So, it would take some work/time (aka: monetary investment) to add the same achievements to the GOG versions, that are bound to the Steam environment.

And in regard to that, you probably missed this part: I mean: you wouldn't invest extra money in a product, only to make it more attractive for a small segment of the market, if you already know, that that particular segment of the market won't make good on your investment, right?

Three star review title on GOG: "Mediocre, not worth $30"

And yet it has a "Very Positive" rating on Steam.

Dig deeper and you see that it's barely "Very Positive" and almost "Mostly Positive".

And the game has quite a few sub-two-hour played positive reviews.

Yeah I don't think this is GOG's problem that the game didn't sell well.