Actually, most of the money from the tax n daff people (sales of cyberpunk) went to shareholders and massive bonuses for the up tops due to they stellar performance on probably the worst release on 2020 (only trumped in 2021 byR* and GTA definitive). Not too mention the huge investment in buying reviews, taking n game footage, paying back ps store etc.

As for GOG doing modding, that’s a laugh, they can barely do installers. Even vortex would be far out of possible for them, and most wouldn’t even use that. Also, if GOG were to start doing mods, then they should provide support for all that, which would be fun I am sure…

Not if the store shuts down before that. Reverie isn't even scheduled to release until sometime in 2023, so that's a ways off and a lot can happen during that time. Personally, I own every Legend of Heroes and Ys game on GOG, but I'm going to re-buy them on Steam when it get's closer to the upcoming releases. NIS America, for example, has a nice Falcom bundle with everything in it on Steam that I'll likely buy. I don't exactly trust GOG anymore either with the handling these new releases because of the issues I had with Trails of Cold Steel IV. Ys IX had issues with it's launch week free DLC's disappearing also. It's unacceptable, and you just can't really trust this store anymore with certain things.

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Anyways, this news should be of no surprise to anyone. I've been openly saying this here for months now, and anyone who can look at things objectively and take their fingers out of their ears, or their head out of the sand, would hear and see the same thing.

GOG is forever treading water in the deep end, and it's only a matter of time before they drown. You don't think GOG hasn't exausted most ways to improve their situation? Of course they have, and while the general public opinion of GOG as a store is high, the sales are not ever going to be where they need to be. The overwhelming majority is going to choose Steam over GOG every single time, and there's nothing GOG can do about that.

Games that release here same day as Steam don't even get double digit percentages of sales. That's pitiful, and games that release after Steam do even worse.

CD Projekt has even tried releasing a GOG exclusive with their own games (Thornebreaker) and it performed horribly. They can't try that with something like a Cyberpunk or a Witcher 3, because people would get pissed off, and it would be an anti-consumer move, and people would pirate it out of spite who'd normally have bought it on Steam.

Steam is necessary for CD Projekt to succeed on PC, and they obviously need the console market also. AAA game development is extremely volatile and one flop could seriously damage or even sink a studio. Don't expect CD Projekt to throw away money to help GOG more than what they're already doing.

But just stop blaming GOG for the problems here. The issue isn't with Galaxy, offline-installers, or even the limited selection of titles GOG has. The issue is that most consumers want a monopoly when it comes to digital entertainment. Having all their games in one place is too appealing. No one wants to have all these apps, accounts, and launchers. People say they don't want a monopoly, but they really do, because it's the most convenient for them.

If every game was on GOG would you buy anywhere else? No, so you'd be in favor of a GOG monopoly if that was possible.

Steam just has such a lead from being around in 2003, and the feature set of thier client, that realistically no one can catch up. Even if they did, and had a comparable client, with a social space people cared about, it wouldn't matter, because, again, the whole everyone wants all their games on one client deal. Steam is the Playstation, Xbox, or Nintendo of PC, and that's never going to change.

When people think of PC gaming they think of Steam. I don't like that, but that's just the way it is. Even "influencers" who have CRPG channels don't even mention GOG when covering games. It's like you're a channel talking about Baldurs Gate 3, Solasta, and CRPGs, but you don't mention these games are available on GOG? CRPGs are some of the most popular games here, but the influencers ignore this store.

The good thing here is that as long as GOG exists it's going to remain a DRM-free store. Why? Because without being fully DRM-free it would just be a really crappy version of Steam. There'd be no reason for this store to exist if it was selling DRM'd games.

It's not like major publishers haven't tried releasing bigger games on GOG either. The sales must be so bad, and these publishers feel that just having an advertised DRM-free version affects the sales on other platforms, that they choose not to release more here. The majority of games are actually DRM free on Steam also, but there's a difference probably when you're actually advertised as such or not.

Lifting curation isn't going to help either, because curation has always been part fo the selling point of the store. They've already opened it up to having more "adult" titles and the like now also (which was long overdue), but having shovelware, asset flips and whatever else garbage that Steam sells is not going to help GOG.

A huge influx of additional titles isn't the answer. The more releases on your Store means the more it costs to operate. GOG needs titles that are going to sell for them. A lot of why that crap sells on Steam is because of Steam features (Cards, Badges, Achievements, and it being another "title" that people add to their collections. It's "clout" or gamer cred when they have their gamer social space with thousands of games or their little profile all decked out...

There's really not much GOG can do except what they're doing currently, and that's restructuring so GOG can operate at as low of cost as possible so they can remain in business. Unfortunately, that means that things like support is going to be forever backed up, and there's no going to be as much improvement to areas that need it.

I really don't want to hear anyone mention COVID as being an issue either. No one, and I repeat, no one has benefitted more from COVID than the gaming industry. Videogame sales are at an all time high and most of these companies are making record profit. If anything, GOG benefitted greatly from COVID. CD Projekt not so much, because while they did have the biggest digital launch ever (yes, ever) with Cyberpunk, they also burned so many bridges in the process because of it.

Should you back up your library? Absolutely. Is imminent doom coming? No, probably not, but you can bet your ass that GOG is in icy waters and it's only a matter of time before an iceberg is right ahead. Be smart and slowly get those back-ups going.

Another thing is that news like this doesn't encourage sales at all. People see a store with a questionable future and it doesn't inspire purchasing with confidence. You might see a situation where people are gonna start jumping ship, and take their money elsewhere in the future. I know that's what I'm going to be doing moving forward.

I've already cut back on my purchases on GOG a lot, and most games will be bought on Steam in the future. Most recently I purchased 'Ruined King Deluxe Edition' in November on day one, and 'PoE:DE' over the Black Friday Sale, but that's probably it for a while for GOG. In the past year I've spent close to US$1,750.00 on GOG, but I'd rather put that money into a store that I feel comfortable will be around in forseable future.

Do I think Steam is going to be around in the next Five (5) years? Yes, absolutely. Do I feel the same about GOG? Not at all.

It's not going to be fun maintaining a hardware based backup of hundreds of GOG games, or paying for online storage for that backup. Maintaining the health of that backup will be an annoyance, and having a backup of your backup will be necessary. It's time and money that I have to commit to that, when ideally you'd be able to download that game whenever you wanted from GOG.

I'll still be around, and will buy the occassional title off GOG, but I wouldn't think it smart to do anymore than that when the future of this store is looking so grim.

Hopefully GOG really follows through with the back to basics philosophy they seem to be preaching.

Cut the unnecessary spending, fix all the existing problems that seem to be reported on by the community. Borked installers, games not being latest patch versions, etc...

It would go a long way toward restoring their reputation among the community, get the enthusiasts back in here. I can endorse them making a concentrated effort to make GOG totally optional, but fully featured too. However, that obviously needs to be a secondary priority compared to fixing the current problems plaguing the legacy users of the platform.

Still, the sad truth is that they need to make more money. I will be encouraging everyone I know to buy games on GOG and try to onboard some in my friend circle to the store. It takes money to make money.

Despite the frustration, I would also recommend everyone else try to do the same.

Speak for yourself please.

Epic may be making that type of gross profit, but news outlets are reporting a net loss of ~$500M since the founding of EGS. So it appears that the only reason EGS even exists now is because they've been wasting tons of money on a failing effort, and the reason that their effort is failing is because they don't seem to want to be bothered by making a "killer feature" that will attract customers. Instead, they just decided to lazily swing around Fortnite money to bribe devs to only release on Epic, and that action has actually hurt EGS considerably because it has caused a significant portion of the gaming community to strongly dislike EGS. So please don't act like GOG is some sort of lost cause because they're smaller than Steam while Epic is some sort of up and coming market leader because they simply know how to write a check. EGS's revenue may be higher, but EGS's expenses are so above and beyond what would be considered a normal operating loss that it's absolutely shameful. From the recent report, it looks like a lot of GOG's loss is more of a bookkeeping and organizational issue than it is them just dumping money into a black hole.

at least egs is improving , can you say that aboug gog?

GOG has recently brought us some decent DRM-free releases for older games which lines up with GOG's own mission statement. GOG also says that they're going to improve by focusing on their own business instead of handling development for Gwent which is also an improvement because it should give GOG more opportunity to focus on their core business. The fact of the matter though is that GOG has a good core business and doesn't really need to drastically improve anything - they just need to maintain what they have and slowly grow based on their DRM-free values. I can't say the same for EGS as long as they feel the need to be anti-consumer.

i dont care much for older games tbh , drm free is nice , but i cant see these as improvements

says... saying is cheap as others pointed it out already
oh gog needs a lot of improvements they have fallen back in nearly every regard compared to the competition

how is egs anti-consumer?

If you don't care about older games why are you even on this storefront in the first place? I honestly don't get why you'd be using a storefront thats know for mostly older games working on newer hardware if you aren't into older games ..

they have newer games drm-free

GOG hasn't been primarly about older games for almost a decade now. I love classic games, but I'm here mostly for new games DRM-free, and I imagine so are many others. That's been GOG's one unique selling point for years and years now.

Ya and that still isn't what GOG is known for its known for way older drm free games .. Not newer drm free games .. thats why you being on a storefront known for older games being drm free is odd if you don't care about older games drm free aswell as newer ones .. Even more so for I have seen you belittle those you disagree with as just being old and fading sorts at varies points recently .. So I don't see why if you belittle people who disagree with you and say they will soon be no more yet you yourself only care about newer drm-free games I don't see how this storefront should matter to you as it brings in mostly older games and indie games you also regularly I see disliking for one reason or another
Wrong it still mostly brings in old and retro inspired ones the most its just been increasing newer drm free releases as of late as those are easier in ways to get ahold of anymore as most of the easier old enough to be seen as old games have been gotten

Dude, GOG made a big deal of rebranding itself years ago to draw attention of their new focus. You have no idea what you're talking about. Old games still play an important part here, but they are not GOG's focus. Have not been for almost a decade. What it may be "known" for to you is immaterial. It's up to everyone individually what they're here for - new games, classics, mix of both. Acting like everyone is supposed to be here for one thing and you're the arbiter of what that is simply stupid, childish and trollish.

Also EGS is anti consumer for the shit they pulled early on and literally 'buying'' exclusives and word came out they was 'strong arming in mafia style'' devs and smaller studio's to go exclusive to them to basically try forcing people to use it as basically a ''artificial competition'' to Steam and other crude they more recently has pulled and admitted to on social media of in truth more or less wanting to be a monopoly of sorts
Rebranding is not what I am talking about as when a company is known for something its basically the established brand that will take a very .. very long time to truly rebrand in the mind for many people you seem to be thinking in a rebranded thought process I am thinking in a known for sort of process .. besides heres a example of rebranding that flopped hard for what they was indeed very known for Colgate the hygiene product company tried brancing out to food and that flopped hard as no matter what they tried people had long sense known em as basically a ''personal hygiene company'' despite the attempted for abit Rebrand shift /brand change attempt

Thus why I am saying its known for one thing older and retro styled games

the other person I replied to said they didn't care for older games on any real level basically thus its strange to use a site known by the masses as for old games to only care about newer games and not for new aswell as old games in a equal sense of care

that is not anti-consumer, you can buy the games on others sites after a year
and misinterpreting what they said won't prove you right
agree