That's not necessarily a bad thing depending on what their business strategy is. Many businesses take strategic loses. Amazon has almost never turned a profit on paper, and they're one of the largest companies in the world, with solid consistently increasing revenues.

It really comes down to whether of not this is part of a long term strategy or if this is just a management failure, and that's hard to judge without inside knowledge.

They lost money each of the first 3rd quarters and you are going to emphasize that they ONLY made $7,800? What about the great 4th quarter rebound they had?

I'm all for trying to be positive, but this isn't a small business. That's a pretty small sum.

Hopefully, it signals in a change in direction towards actually informing people what GoG is and the dangers of DRM, this time without a distracting pun and TMZ quoting out of content.

It's not that I'm being positive, just realistic. I don't have enough information about their operations to make a solid assessment of how bad their year was either way. Most people won't either unless they're in on guidance calls for the company, and I doubt anyone here is.

Profit is profit. It's not a loss. That makes them efficient.

Maybe I should explain it more clearly...
As of the end of the 3rd quarter of 2018, GoG had lost 1,739,000 PLN (~$455,600 USD)
So that means in the 4th quarter alone, they made 1,769,000 PLN (~$463,400 USD)

A lot of the turnaround had to due with the USD to PLN exchange rate which averaged 3.42 PLN -> 1 USD in January and rose to 3.77 PLN -> 1 USD in December. [It is currently 3.79 PLN -> 1 USD thus far in March]

They had a very good quarter to say the least, but the currency exchange stabilization helped.

For a company to turn it around that much in a single quarter proves Kotaku didn't have reliable information...they really are doing fine.

"GOG has only generated $7.8k net profit in 2018 on $34.5 million in sales. They burned them on R&D and operational costs."
They reinvested those sales in GOG.

Since they are a publicly traded company, their consolidated financial statements are a public record (2018 Annual was released today). The knowledge is out there.

You're not taking multimillion business risks for $7k profit. It's just bad news.

The aforementioned strategic losses may be fine, but correct me if I'm wrong - we haven't seen any strategic moves or investments recently. Nothing that significantly changed userbase or their market position. That's just bad news. Such result is unacceptable on the long run, so expect big (sttategic) changes. New layout, for example. And all that features requested by users for years ;)

Unfortunately those R&D investments are things like the website redesign, which has made the site unusable for most users, regardless of what browsers and OS's they are running.

I find it very hard to believe that it's going to generate more money in the future, if people are struggling to buy games on a site where buying them before was much easier.

For the 4th quarter with that ~$463,400 profit, that was achieved on ~$13,527,000 in sales revenue. And remember GoG keeps only about a 30% cut of that revenue before other operating expenses.

If they keep on track with what worked in the 4th quarter, GoG itself can break $1 million in profit next year without drastic changes.

The behind the scenes operations of gog are it's own and the shareholders business. I have no concern other then buying games on this site as a consumer. Also I don't really deal with armchair youtube clickbait. If gog wants to make more money they can with bringing games that people want to play like Diabilo instead of more samey indie crap.

LOL!

*cue in the 2. wave of hysteria and angst*

Again, thanks to RWarehall to provide a (bit) more analytical/non-emotional side XD

Here's another comparison...

GoG 4th quarter profit:
2017: 1,499,000 PLN
2018: 1,769,000 PLN

But let's be honest here. Exchange rates hurt GoG last year early, but that didn't look like the only thing. So GoG needs to look at what happened those 3 quarters. Is this great 4th quarter a reflection of improvement? Maybe. They were as profitable as years past. But it's only 1 quarter just as those were only 3 bad quarters. This one quarter is a nice rebound, but I also don't want to appear overly rosy about it either. I imagine the Fair Price Package end is a step intended to not repeat the early losses of last year. Of course, those changes won't hit the balance sheet until 2nd quarter 2019...

At least GoG has shown they still can be profitable with one very solid quarter in a row.