Maybe not a vision, but I'd at the very least, like them to have a visible Kanban or a Rational Unified Process?

The tacky, sexist porn that is frequently splattered all over the front page is really a turn-off, and drives new customers away. You want to attract new customers - stop shoving it in our faces. It's not a good thing. This place used to be about GAMES, not 'ooh boobies'.

Me and my friends had actually stopped coming to GOG because we're so sick of it. But I was lured back by Colossal Cave.

What porn are you talking about? On the front page, all I see are games. I have seen actually porn games searching through steam. Which I filter not to show me, but they still keep popping up.

I personally have no problem with it, but knowing how most of society sees such things I do think it was a bad sign.

I actually care about the stores where I purchase video games from.

I don't either (my beguilement lies in the abject lack of quality), but COPPA might have words, or other laws regulating content for public stores. The fact that GOG can't even be bothered with a proper beaded curtain second in spite of idiotically simple solutions being available (I even got one in an itch.io bundle) just doesn't sit right with me.

This isn't some new thing, it's established law which basically states that nobody under 13 should be on anything involving money. While it doesn't extend to the regulation of content, it does somewhat imply the need for safety; and there's voluntary organizations like the RTA.

...I dunno. Just the brazen way those NSFW sale cards show up on the front page screams, "DUDEBRO" to me.

Interesting reading, thanks. haha

Maybe, and GOG have hinted at that stuff before, but I was more thinking "desperate for attention."

most games that have a coupon to buy multiple series.. but its nearly every game that i go look at, thats 10-15+ years old

I prefer Galaxy as a launcher to Steam, I would love it if they would turn it into a community open source project as i feel the community would pick up its shortfalls, add customization, port it to Linux etc

You know things are rough when you get people like me to agree with threads like this lol. But really, I agree with most of what you said here. I love this site, service and company but they feel like they've given up on the momentum they had when they first started trying to fix stuff. It was promising at first but it's like they don't care anymore, which is frustrating. Honestly, I just wish they'd be a bit more transparent; I'm far more patient with a company when they're open about what they're up to, why they're doing certain things and where certain projects are in development.

It wouldn't take that much for GOG to have better PR overall.

It feels like the decision-makers kind of "gave up" after Cyberpunk2077 and Galaxy 2. That's kind of how the "state of the business" posts (was it early 2022?) feel, to me, in retrospect.

I've said this before but part of me wouldn't blame CDP for selling GOG (assuming that can actually happen, selling both the store/site and digital contents sold within it / "publishing/distribution contracts" or whatever). But is there really a company who can both afford to buy GOG and retain or improve caring about DRM-free single-player at least? I dunno.

I might be wrong in assuming gog has seen better days (it certainly feels that way to me though), but I'd argue there's a lot they could be doing to, at least, try to claw their way back to those numbers of yore. It's such a shame because if Glassdoor's reviews are to be taken as true, it seems gog employees want (or wanted) to improve the site and client just as much as we've been almost begging them to do so all these years. But if none of that drive remains, or is being shunned upon, or is not given enough resources to make a difference, then yes, I don't see any way by which gog can even begin to think about competing with Steam since, in a way, they are the ones who keep sending their users in the direction of Steam's front door :S

P.S: I've kept reading through the reviews posted over at Glassdoor and oh boy, what a sad and depressing state of affairs.

I can't see that working out. The reason why Microsoft, EA, etc, buy up so many other 3rd party studios is to have a "stable" of content that justifies a subscription (you need dozens to hundreds of games for that, certainly a lot more than just 4x games (Witcher 1-3 + Cyberpunk 2077)). And then you need to add DRM to them to enforce rendering the content unplayable when the subscription is cancelled... I think what worries people more is if it were a sign that CDPR were planning to sell GOG. Even the Glassdoor reviews by staff someone posted above said CDPR have been underinvesting in GOG for a while relative to every other game store. What do CDPR really want in the long run? GOG seem to have finances that are the worst of both worlds - all the ambition and expenses of making a full-blown Steam-like client + back-end infrastructure "because you need to be like Steam to take on Steam", but limited finances that often seem more suitable for a 'keeping it simple' itch.io style low-cost, low-maintenance store that doesn't impose elevated expectations (ie, no-one who buys itch.io games demands itch.io achievements, itch.io Deck, etc, because they accept the store is aiming for simplicity (which was also true of pre-2014 GOG)). It seems modern GOG is stuck in a paradox of the more they spend on adding Steam-like features to attract more people, they more they inadvertently attract certain groups of people who demand they be 100% exactly like Steam, which is practically unaffordable.

I don't think there is. GOG are big enough that other small stores can't afford them. At the same time, there's obviously a reason why the newest Ubisoft game here (Rayman Origins) is now 11 years old, why the newest EA game (Dragon Age Origins) is 14 years old, why we don't have 25 year old Good Old Games from Microsoft like Age of Empires (despite DRM-Free disc versions existing). So the big players who could afford it have already signalled the extent of their 'interest'...

Also needs The Monk and Trevor:)