A clear overview, thanks.

I really think they should make The Witcher IV a timed GOG exclusive on PC for something like 6 months at least. More money for CDP, promote GOG... the only possible downside would be if the game sucks, in which case it's best to get as many people as possible to buy before word of how bad it is circulates. But unless they know they have a stinker on their hands I feel like it would be plain daft not to give it a GOG-only window.

They tried that with Thronebreaker and it underperformed, pretty sure shareholders threw a fit. Much as I'd like GOG to get temporary exclusivity, CDPR is focused on making their money back and a profit, and Steam-only users are probably too plentiful to avoid.

Again I'd love to see this happen but avoiding Steam is probably "plain daft" in CDP and CDPR's eyes.

I also thought there was reason to believe CDPR sort of "looks down" at GOG. They did make their own separate log-in accounts system not too long ago, which seems like trying to separate more from GOG, or am I misremembering? Maybe I shouldn't speculate on this but I wouldn't be surprised if secretly CDPR wants to use Denuvo, with how hard it is to crack.

Edit: maybe Witcher 1 remake has a better shot at being timed exclusive.

Don't think so.
In my book the will lost many customers if they abandon their DRM free credo.

Who wants to buy it - will buy it DRM free.
Who will not - will not buy even with denuvo.

Being DRM free did not stop witcher 3 & cp77 being sold millions of copies.

I absolutely loved Thronebreaker, but it would be silly to think it's anything in the same league as a proper Witcher sequel in terms of attracting customers. There was never a snowball's chance in hell of it having the kind of hype as Witcher 4. I'm not sure if the remake will have enough clout either.

Maybe I'm thinking completely wrong about this, I'll be the first to admit I know jack shit about running a business, but it seems to me that the "timed exclusivity" move is something you need the strongest possible title to pull off, and using weaker ones because of lower risk is just a guarantee of failure. It becomes a self fulfilling thing, you try it with a title it could never work with and then you take that as proof you shouldn't do it with the big one. It's like losing a Formula 1 race riding a bike and saying "good thing we didn't waste money on an expensive car for that!"

Oh I agree, I just meant a desire, not one they'd likely act on.

I'm with you on this.
GOG didn't cost much.
Sometimes it loss some money (not much), sometime get profitable (not much either).
But it pays off so much with selling their own games.
Lets remember cp77 - pre orders alone worth it.

Well. At least in my book.
I'm software engineer, not an economic PHD. =)

As I said before - I think GOG going down only when CDPR going down.

Again - exclusivity, neither timed nor indefinite isn't really necessary, CDPR-developed titles - mainline Witcher & Cyberpunk installments at least - sell the most copies on GOG in any case:

Little known fact:
The 2020 pandemic pre-release press demo of Cyberpunk 2077 had Denuvo.

Not necessary, but why not try to make that 53% into 60% or 65%?) for the next game, while giving your store some good marketing while you're at it?

For Cyberpunk 2077, that’s certainly not true. It’s a bit hard to find exact numbers, since most aren’t public, but here’s what we do know. Based on CD Projekt’s reports, around 62–63% of all lifetime sales have come from PC, with PlayStation accounting for about 26% and Xbox around 12%. Within PC sales, GOG represented roughly 10% in 2021, meaning about 90% of sales came from other places. That is the newest number we have, the shares hasn’t been updated publicly since. Pre-orders were stronger on GOG, making up about one-third of all PC pre-orders. But even then, two-thirds of pre-orders were through other places, and of course, those numbers are included in the10% sales totals after launch.

What they can do is offer things for the GOG version that steam users cannot get. Such as bonus goodies (soundtrack, artbooks , printable maps etc.) for free and make them exclusive here. Also there is a chance this might be an Epic and GOG exclusive since the game will use Unreal engine 5 and they have a close partnership with Epic about Witcher IV. I guess we will have to wait and see on that because we are years away until the game gets released.

Still no concrete numbers, but the all-time bestsellers list suggests otherwise.
2nd place before The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, which accounts for existing owners of Legacy The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (the CE was added to the respective libraries for free) + copies sold since 2022.

And the PC version of Legacy The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (on 43rd position) should have moved (based on the 2015 gamerant report) and probably still keeps moving the most copies through GOG.

As I said, that’s not true for Cyberpunk, I did not mentioned The Witcher 3. But if you look at the numbers, the picture is actually worse. There’s even less detailed information about The Witcher 3’s sales breakdown than we have for Cyberpunk. What we do know is that in the first week of release, CDP reported a little over 50% of all PC sales came through GOG, which was a massive success. However, when compared to the numbers we do have for Cyberpunk, that share clearly declined over time. By then, GOG only accounted for about one-third of pre-orders and just 10% of total PC sales of Cyberpunk in the first half-year.

10% looks weak but if taken into account that the biggest platform got approximately 100 times more active accounts it is a pretty solid number. In usual this number is between 5 and 15% of the PC market share, of most games released day one.

Obviously if released 1-2 years or even more after launch day it is way lower but this is a usual behavior which will happen everywhere; the launch-hype is strong.

There are many factors playing a role why the biggest platform is just steamroll almost anything but the main reason is:
1. Industry support
2. Gamer support
3. Premium functionalities, which would not be possible without the first 2 factors, so everything is affecting each others.

The disadvantage of Steam in theory is DRM free of course, but the main issue related to the only true GOG advantage is:

1. Most Steam games can be played, sooner or later, DRM free without any cracking, even many of the "big games" in the AAA territory, including Denuvo-games... yeah... including Denuvo in many cases. This is possible because a good bunch is almost without any protection, without a Stub... and in almost any cases only the API is "stubborn", almost nothing else.

I want to specify this matter, i would say, after a lot of research, i realized there is basically in almost any case a "easy workaround" even some low-IQ-users with low PC knowledge could sufficiently be using which is in many cases just some sort of "circumventing" nothing else. There is no cracking or any cracking-knowledge needed, basically nothing a cracker would have to deal with and in many cases they do not even decrypt or remove a Denuvo because "waste of time"... if they can just use a certain tool in order to make it work on "unlimited machines".

There are just a few AAA games with a series of DRM at once... which could be really "stubborn": On those games only there is absolutely no easy "circumvention" possible on those few games... for example Gujian 3, which is "always online and always connected to a server, which was intended to be a super-DRM" because not required, it is not a Online game.

However... after about 2 years this rather unpopular game, in the eyes of the scene-members, has as well as one of the rather few games who actually is in need of cracking, been cracked: With real cracking methods such as decrypting stuff and actually removing a serious DRM by custom-methods,... so just the Steam-users will have to "hug the servers".

Anyway, what i want to say is... most games are available almost instantly or at least pretty soon... in usual way faster than many GOG versions, toward anyone who want to have it DRM free (no matter if they just want to have a backup or if there are more evil intentions).

Then there comes another GOG disadvantage:

2. GOG games are often either delayed a lot or are not becoming updated, which is slowly decreasing GOGs reputation and many gamers simply "avoid it" as one of the big factors they do not enjoy.

As i said... paired with the possibility that even a Steam game may be able to be played DRM-free in a rather "easy way"... it is for 95% of the gamers "barely worth it to deal with"... this is the sad story. So they dont...

If they still deal with, they usually got a strong ethical attitude and they want to "move something"; as well fully legal get ANY game without any "circumvention" DRM free. They simply want to stand in for that demand and wish and are signaling it by supporting a place standing in for and clearly showing this demand without "sneaky stuff... which may provide the same but simply sneaky".

Another GOG disadvantage:

Steam got near endless amount of different key-sellers and almost any game can be gotten cheaper almost everywhere, compared to GOG. If a GOG game is not offering a clearly better value (for example because the other version is locked down by the hardest DRMs possible, and not even Denuvo is sufficiently powerful...) then GOG is automatically at a disadvantage.

There is perhaps a bonus GOG-advantage:

The strong support for classic-games... reason it is called "Good old Game", yet... although in my mind they offer the biggest or lets say most impressive legally purchasable collection of "classic games"... they are not the only ones providing it but it should be honored and it is for many gamers a good reason supporting them as well.

Other stuff is purely ethical but i am a hard realist at times... the big majority is only ethical toward their personal needs, not any "bigger picture or bigger needs", they rarely think 2 days in advance... usually not more than one single day. So, i do not expect to much from the majority... sorry to say... but i still value every serious gamer, no matter at what place for whatever reason.

GOG will survive, thanks to its loyal user "base", they only need to make sure they are not upsetting them by bad business decisions because the majority will not stand in for them, only the truly "loyal ones" in general, and that is fine this way.

In the end it is very clear to me why the situation is one-sided but i still buy more than 10 times more games on GOG vs. any other place, because i do value many of its core values and the in most cases easy "DRM free"-access along with Offline-installers.