Maybe the more that PC gamers who use Steam write reviews of the video games that they purchase on Steam and mention gog.com in those reviews, maybe, just maybe those video game developers and video game publishers will release their video games even more on gog.com for sale.

Or they might ignore it, but Steam's video games reviews is actually a very good tool for video game publishers and video game developers to look at. I have no idea how good gog.com's video games review system is of a tool for video game developers and video game publishers.

Steams own forums play fast and loose with the rules which has made off topic rather boring. They had also come under attack a while ago with false racist comments on there and in games which led to anti customer censorship measures.

Having said that some of gogs current community staff are doing the same thing.

Thanks for clearing that up. I misunderstood the context of your comment there.

As a general comment, I believe that it is very important to note the distinction between "exclusive to a platform because the devs chose to not release elsewhere" and "exclusive to a platform because the platform paid the devs for exclusivity". In the first scenario the devs are exercising their right to sell wherever they want. In the second scenario the devs are being bribed/coerced by the platform.

how is that importand?
as a customer I can't see anything difference between the two
in both cases the publishers/devs decided they put their game only to one store cause monetarily this benefits them most

bribed? coerced ? you clearly have no idea what the hell you are talking about

Or the "if you want to release your game on this platform, you have to do so exclusively" option that Steam has thanks to its market position. Good luck finding out what applies without asking the publishers/developers directly....if they are even allowed to answer. I only know as much because I've talked with employees of competing stores who are somewhat getting squeezed out with Steam deciding to properly target the Japanese, Chinese, Korean audience.

This is correct. The publishers/devs will do what makes the most financial sense, and I can't really blame them to taking "an offer they can't refuse" due to the amount of money behind the deal. However, the fact remains that whatever platform is paying for exclusivity is using their financial resources to pressure a publisher/dev act in favor of the platform regardless of the personal preference of the publisher/dev with regard to which platforms they would rather release on.

Steam does not appear to actively enforce such an exclusivity rule. Market dominance doesn't really seem to force exclusivity either because devs who can release on Steam can still sell elsewhere (including GOG) or choose not to sell on Steam at all (like Ubisoft, EA, ActiBlizz...). Steam doesn't seem to care, and restricting a release to Steam instead of putting in the effort to go multi-platform or making a competing service is left as a personal decision by the dev. Epic, on the other hand, will actually turn devs away who decline exclusivity deals because the dev wants to release on multiple platforms.

So I'm not saying that it's great that Steam is at the top of the market (I would rather see GOG there), but I'm just not seeing any data that indicates that Steam is pressuring devs to exclusively release on Steam. The best that ascertain is that people will release only on Steam in order to reach the widest audience on a single platform and feel like that is good enough given their business goals, and I see nothing wrong with that. If they want to go a step farther and release on other platforms, Steam does not appear to step in to prevent that.

This is interesting. For sake of discussion, would you mind elaborating? How do they feel squeezed out? Simply by Steam's advertising to these locales which are not targeted by these competing stores? Or something else?

I've already stated twice that Steam has exclusivity contracts, as confirmed by employees of competing stores who can't get games from developers/publishers due to it. Your "does not appear" and "I'm just not seeing any data" is just nonsense and trolling at this point.

I'm seriously not trying to troll. I can point to announcements by Epic to show that they do exclusivity deals, and I can also point to emails posted by the Darq dev in the link above which shows that Epic will try to strong-arm indie devs by threatening to turn them away entirely if they don't accept an EGS exclusivity deal. So all I am saying is that I unfortunately have nothing similarly concrete that I can point to in the case Steam.

The only reason why these business deals are sustainable is because consumers enable them. If the innovator and early adopter demographics stopped buying into these business models, this route would be infeasible.

However, they don't and gamedevs profit immensely from this model. If gamedevs think they can benefit more from these deals to prolong their lifespan, I don't see why I should restrict them though I don't fully support this model. For example, I haven't bought Skyrim yet and won't until it makes its way over to GOG if ever.

Timed exclusives are OK so long as they make their way to other platforms.

There's nothing recent primarily because Valve have grown to the size they don't need to. Back in the early days however, Valve happily paid for digital exclusivity rights for some 3rd party games and even demanded their publishers remove the option to buy digitally and even the ability to download free playable demos from their own store and make them available only via Steam:-

"As part of the launch and Steam's exclusivity, we will no longer be offering Darwinia as a download option from our site, although it will still be possible to purchase shipped boxed copies. At Valve's request we will also be removing the demo from our site for about a month."

https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203

So if people want to name two platforms which during their early years of operation have engaged in purchasing games as timed exclusives and then demanding they be temporarily removed elsewhere digitally during that period as a condition of coming to that platform, they are "Epic" and "Steam"...

Interesting. I was unaware that this was the deal with Darwinia. Thank you for posting this info. I wonder what Steam's exclusive spend looked like compared to Epic's at that stage.

I have not purchased a single video game from Steam since 2012, but that does not mean I will abandon my Steam account that I have since 2004. I will still continue to play the video games that I have purchased on it Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead. Makes sense now?

I think the new generation of kids will be entrenched with Epic games because they'll have their biggest library in that gamestore

The problem with Epic keeping these kids is the lack of frequency of Epic gamestores. Steam and GOG have 2 sales a week. Epic rarely have sales. I've only ever bothered buying games with vouchers and they probably made no profit from those games.

They will probably have a few percent who come for the exclusives. But maintaining purchase will need to renovate their store with tons of tastey sales.

+1. If one hates what Epic Fail is doing, they must also hate Scheme.

Personally I think the "which store is better of these two" is a really misguided place to go. As far as I'm concerned, the real exclusivity is with DRM versus DRM-free. Is a game available on both Scheme and Epic, but contains respective client DRM and/or Denuvo etc on both? To me such a game is simply considered DRM-exclusive. I would say Scheme deserves much more distrust and outright ire imo compared to Epic, since Scheme has irreparably set the course years ago for DRM-exclusive PC gaming on nearly every major title. That is why I feel GOG does best when focusing on DRM-free releases of big titles, even if they're older ones in a series...you literally cannot buy them anywhere else, and can thank Scheme for that.