Exactly. And then you have to start scraping the bottom of porn barrel to make some sales as customer number dwindle.

Edit:
Shit, I had to recheck this...
I own more than 10% of ENTIRE catalog of a game store. That is bizarre.

How to hell do they even stay afloat?

A relative of mine has a small record store, and he has way more vinyls than that.

Not really. I think you guys have far too much invested in this (literally and figuratively) and that you're quite rigid and stubborn, but that's about it. Anyone who posts weekly or even daily on the forum for a decade and has spent thousands of euros on games here would be the same. There's no shame in that. It's about as crazy and non-sensical as any enthusiast guy investing thousands of euros on any kind of hobby (see hi-fi nerds for example). So not really. Whatever makes you happy :)

But havent' they catered to the old guard all these years? It's been DRM-free for a decade now, and it has a pitiful revenue stream, razor-thin or negative margins, and little room for growth due to competitors. What makes you think they were/are succesful by doing what they did? This isn't me or anyone saying they need to have always-online/other draconian DRMed games on here, or in fact any DRMed games, just wondering what your measure of success here is? Seems to me GOG is operating like a charity for a small band of the old guard. That can't be sustainable.

I noticed your other comment about me probably never replying to you, but here I am. Sorry, I'm super busy these days and not really that active on GOG anyways, but I do try to reply.

Sure, but consider also how tiny their revenue stream is (in addition to negligible profits of that). Even the old guard, if they are buying every single game at full price, hasn't been able to affect it, despite their best efforts. Tad defeatist, or realist, I know, but there it is.

Anecdotal, but I've seen plenty of the old guard complaining about the price of games on new releases threads and stating they will only buy it once on sale. I bought XCOM2 with all the works at full price just because I love teh game, wanted to support GOG for bringing it here, and thought there aren't that many games here I desperately want anyways so I'll pay 60 euros instead of the 4 euros it was on sale with. This was not very savvy on my part, I could have upped my game count by 10 games or more for bragging rights, but I bought what I wanted and thought would play.

Think about how much revenue that 80% sale is actually bringing in, and how many people buy games on sale on GOG. These sales are incredibly frequent on here, because let's face it, most of the games are past their sell by dates and were released many years ago on other platforms first. Even their base price is low due to the age of the game.

Also think about how limited their catalogue is for most people interested in only playing and buying some of their desired games. At some point you run out of things to buy but definitely not play, and since the sales are ridiculously frequent and abundant, everyone and their mother owns that excellent game that they got for a pittance.

This is not a great business model, and I believe it goes a long way in explaining why GOG basically operates as a non-profit organisation.

You and me both know there probably isn't such a user. Not only because Epic Games hasn't been around for that long, and the Epic integration with Galaxy certainly hasn't, and to accumulate hundreds or thousands of games in a year or two is pretty crazy and wasteful. But that doesn't detract anything from what I've said, in fact it's fairly inconsequential to it. If the old guard can't bring in much of any revenue anyways, why pander to them and stay hostage to their demands? Are they really the ones propping up the whole store? I don't think we will ever know to be honest, unless GOG tells us something about their accumulated data about us. What we do know though, there is little growth out there to get in the market for GOG with the old-guard 'profile' audience. There aren't a lot of people who are diehard DRM-free fanatics that are willing to buy thousands of games and *aren't already* here, let's face it. Everyone who feels so strongly about DRM-free gaming, will almost certainly already be on GOG and contributing. Yet, as we know, it's hardly enough unfortunately.

Not only is this a cringe analogy, it's quite flawed. It relies on the assumption that GOG is introducing DRM to GOG, or 'leaving it to grow' and thus will end up destroying and killing it. Forgive me for my ignorance, but aren't there only a handful of DRMed singleplayer games on GOG at the moment? Where is this massive cancerous tumor that you speak of? Where are the hundreds of games with non-optional singleplayer DRM on GOG? Cause I haven't seen much of them. I think it's blown completely out of proportion just to allow outrage and cancellation or boycott of the entire store for the sake of feeling good about people's vidya gaming principles. If there's 6 games out of 4200 that have a whiff of some DRM remnant (someone here mentioned 6, idk if that's accurate), why would you throw the baby out with the bathwater? Enjoy the DRM-free gaming and work with them, don't shoot yourself in the foot and boycott the whole thing and kill the person with the cancer because he has a little bit of a cancerous tumor.

No. There's like eighty billion adult stores to buy this stuff from or we can support the devs through Patreon and get access to updates that GOG won't have. Being A DIK for example already has access into Season 3. GOG won't get that for a while. Plus, people generally like to support Jast USA or MangaGamer perhaps on their own sites. Remember, Jast USA admitted that they don't make anything if you buy their stuff from GOG.

And please quit equating adult games with masturbation. Some people just like nude and sexual artworks.

Actually, it's not flawed because my point was I would have either spent 4 euros or 60 euros. The other 10 games didn't interest me, like you said at the end. So I gave GOG a lot of money by supporting them bringing in an outstanding game. Little did I know it would be missing stuff plus the native Linux version, but I digress.

Okay, in that case you're quite right and I misread your post. My apologies for misinterpreting your point.

Actually, now that I think about it, you make an excellent point. I was indeed saying if everyone bought everything at full price, Go would be doing amazing. But actually person A will regardless spend 100 euros a month, whether it's on 2 games or 20 so Gog gets the same amount. However, they've lost the potential to charge more and earn more for those games bought on sale. But this only matters if the catalogue is quite limited. Anyways, good point.

This is where you're wrong. GOG's been profitable until recently [and still generally profitable even with thst], and its profit-ruining has come from the costs related to things like Galaxy development, GWENT maintenance, and things like that. Moreover, losing their competitive advantage (DRM-free) that sets them apart from other retailers is a harm to them actually selling more in the long term.

Hey sorry for that, and thank you for replying. I stand happily corrected. I will respond to some of your points but ultimately from reading your post I believe we are at an impasse so I will probably bow out after that...you are free to follow up, it isn't like I am trying to have "the last word," I just don't think much more progress will be made for either of our "sides" as it were.

Well, that's the thing...if GOG wasn't pouring resources into misguided attempts at growth, they would theoretically be in better financial shape even with everything else remaining equal.

I am not even necessarily saying here that they shouldn't pour some resources into attempts to grow (though it is a completely valid argument to say GOG should stick to catering to their niche and slowly expanding within that niche); just that I have a vastly different idea of what might be successful. Have you ever seen advertising for GOG...like...anywhere?

Given the fact that GOG has started and ended several promotions or campaigns (GOG Connect, FCKDRM), I think it is clear that the growth ideas they used thusfar were not successful. What's really concerning is that the window for using some ideas may have passed or been re-shaped, as the game industry has increasingly moved towards DRM. That doesn't mean a niche can't be successful, of course.

Your position seems to be that GOG had to try all these alternative ideas since the old-school-minded users supposedly don't bring in enough money but I am saying if GOG spent their money better that may be a moot point, and if nothing else is something that would have to be factored into your analysis. I think it is unfair to attribute that to the old-school-minded users, especially if alternative avenues of growth may have brought in additional similar users.

I have thought about it...this was addressed by my point that the passage of time means we never need to run out of "old" games. There are many, many games from the 2010s that should come here...of course, if GOG destroys their own negotiating leverage, it is unlikely said games will come here let alone DRM-free. As I'm writing this, I'm seriously wondering why developers would even want to put their games on GOG going into the future, given GOG's direction, considering that GOG's audience is (supposedly) accessible via Galaxy 2.0, the mother of all clients. Us old-school types are just a vocal minority right. So devs/pubs can say to GOG "why should we bring our game here? Your users can just buy it on Scheme/Epic Fail and boot up Galaxy 2.0".

GOG is a public company with shareholders which is part of the problem and very likely why we see such trend-hopping attempts at growth. If they could sell you a Geralt NFT without too much backlash they would. I could only dream of GOG, and other businesses, being actual non-profit organizations...very strange to use this as a sort of negative attribute but I don't want to get off topic.

Okay, fair counterpoint on the challenge, so perhaps we could modify this. Would you be able to show me a "new style" user from say the last 5 years who also has high-triple-digit/low-quadruple-digit games and/or buys extra copies of games to give away? By "new style user" I am thinking of someone who came here for CDPR games, uses Galaxy multiplayer/achievements extensively, and, important, doesn't object to client requirements such as the Cyberpunk content and Galaxy-only multiplayer? Is that a fairer point of comparison?

In the pipeline, which has been expertly laid down by the OP and subsequent staff responses, whether they realize that implication or not. C'mon man it isn't hard to deduce what can happen based on the current direction. We've literally seen it happen over the years with Humble Bundle already, DRM-free games seem like an afterthought and they're a glorified Scheme key reseller. Ask yourself what stops that from happening here, especially if you are in favor of relaxing DRM-free definitions in (misguided) attempt to stimulate growth.

Why should I work with them? They don't even have the decency to reply to my genuine questions in this topic, though again since I was wrong about your reply, perhaps I can expect one from them too :)

If I can get 100% DRM-free gaming on Zoom-Platform and work in growing a store that seems to care more passionately about DRM-free, what are they offering me here?

I have invested as a customer in this store, sure, but to go out of my way to join them on a direction I definitely did not want or come here for is just the sunk cost fallacy.

I can't speak for others, but for me, its not just about the monetary investment here, but freedom in software overall.

I knew that I would never buy a game I don't own, before I even purchased a cent here.

You call us stubborn, but I'd argue that the industry (including GOG) has invested far more in tooling to restrict it (the simplest thing in the world would be to just give us the software that runs offline) than we have in ways to promote it so I'd say they are far more stubborn than us.

Otherwise, yes, one could call our passion for software obsessive, but if you aren't passionate about anything, then why the heck are you living for? I'd argue that everyone living a good life is passionate about something.

Well, we'll never known how that would have turned out if they had invested in ways to make drm-free more user-friendly as opposed to sinking all the capital they have in Galaxy to be like Steam. That surely ate a lot into their profit margin.

Otherwise, you could argue that not caring about drm would be more profitable (look at Steam), but if they had done that, you think they'd be were they are now?

Um, not really wrong. Their revenue stream is very small and they basically operate as a charity without a big Cyberpunk or Witcher release. Remember, revenue doesn't consider any costs yet.

And your "generally profitable" means razor thin margins in the best case scenario unfortunately, as in 6% in GOG's best year 2020:

(copy pasta from one of my previous posts)

I've said it already but what you've mentioned is why, from a business perspective, part of me wouldn't blame CDP for selling GOG or shutting it down. The juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze.

Did you have occasion to pass my list:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/bgog_2022_update_2b_our_commitment_to_drmfree_gaming_8cb8b/post259
to the relevant people?

I come here for the offline installer downloads. I hope those stay as I rarely use the client.