That makes me wonder if we really need a marketplace that costs 30% of the total revenue generated. What we get for the money is a not really useful website and the occasional privacy invasion.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and better to get the DRM free games directly from the producer, circumventing GOG (and Steam in any case)?

Gog struck, alright... against websites that carried their ad banners for years but they apparently no longer deem profitable enough.

http://ultimacodex.com/2018/12/the-codex-will-no-longer-be-a-gog-affiliate/

Am I missing something here or are gog trying to shoot themselves in the foot again?

That might be just a minor thing. Either they just spend their advertisement budget differently or they cut it because they are not doing so well financially. I don't think this counts as shooting themselves in the foot.

The articles states that the links to GOG games actually stay the same.

Who's a AAA and who is not isn't that clearly defined. So what you have are a lot of "AA" developers who think they are AAA and/or are attempting to break into AAA space, naturally with AAA methods (DLC, microtransactions, endless iterations of the same game, social media crap incl. achievements, 200 hour open world bollocks, multiplayer elements violently shoehorned into single player games, etc.).

Which naturally means that there are decidedly more developers who make the attempt at consolidating sales on Steam than there are developers for whom the move would actually make sense. It's all about "dreaming big" – a key concept in way too many modern businesses, especially American ones.

Hence, making their own launchers or selling their game from their own website only makes sense for developers with an incredibly strong market position. The last actual indie that tried was, to my knowledge, Telltale, and, well. :|

I'm totally with you here, but for some strange reason some GOG members consider the indie scene their declared mortal enemy that kills off the entire games market with their crap. And it also seems like GOG suits themselves aren't too OK with selling the AAA products of CDPR alongside lower budget games (hence killing off yet another GOG USP, actually announcing and advertising games on their main page).

True. So it's all the more baffling that GOG relies on the hilarious "FCK DRM" initiative as their only USP, fighting against and whining about copy protection systems that (thanks in no small part to Valve) have been obsolete for a decade – while proudly sporting Gabe Newell quotes on their website plus adopting the very same social media copy protection/customer loyalty schemes. They do their fucking darndest to become Steam's baby brother. GOG is walking in Valve's footsteps and they're priding themselves for their huge leaps because they can only ever fill the little toe of those footsteps.

Neither do I. Nonetheless, in looking at the numbers and the games that release here and there, you don't need an MBA to understand that something is going horribly wrong. :|

prediction : THQ Nordic will launch its own online store in Q2 2019 . Gog will fall within months , Steam will loose 1/3 userbase .

2nd prediction: every publisher will launch its own store with games with serial keys and every digital store will collapse (except GOG and Steam who will keep selling Witcher games and Half-life) :P

And you think these "big dreamers" are not aware of this?

Or that they somehow magically have the financials to develop the necessary framework? Or that they are big enough names people will bother making yet another account just for their game?

I think you are vastly oversimplifying the variables that go into creating a successful distribution service.

No idea what you're basing these claims on.

We had a bunch of high-profile releases here along with a majority of what I would consider "indie" titles.

While the execution was... well, childish, I am very much in support of the message they intended (and rather failed) to present - DRM is not beneficial to gamers at all, and highly questionable in its benefit to publishers, much less developers, themselves.

But yes, for some reason somebody at GOG decided they must be Steam in all by name or something. Which is a huge surprise not only from business point of view ("Rule 1 of market domination - you do not imitate your much-better established competitor"), but also a dumb move considering who constitutes the core support group for GOG's existence in the first place.

No, no, you don't get it.

It's exactly right as it should be. If you had an MBA, you'd understand why, but it's very technical and can't be explained to lay people. I'll have my quarterly performance bonus now, please. /s

I am perfectly willing to pay a bit more and get a game on GOG, with access to offline installers, than buy it on Steam. I know I'm not the only one, either.

Offline installers alone are a huge advantage of GOG. Until Galaxy gets forced on everybody, anyway, I guess. Still, right now there is absolutely a huge advantage to purchase on GOG as compared to most other platforms.

Unsupported assertion. Considering that Epic first needs to establish their store in the first place, anybody interested in additional market share outside of Steam will certainly at least consider GOG.

Whether or not GOG will end up having sufficiently advantageous terms to bring the business to itself, that's a different consideration.

Source? Last I heard GOG is hardly at the point of breaking even. And considering the huge advantage having own established distro platform brings to any large releases of CDPR (even if as a contractual negotiation point), I doubt CDPR is going to kill off GOG even IF it was just breaking even.

Then again, corporate decisions don't always follow logic.

Except GOG only needs to survive long enough for most of the other stores to fold under.

Just like PC gaming has been dead for good two decades or so, if going by loudly proclaimed "predictions" from various corners of the industry.

not quite, as far as I see it.
well, obviously, I can't tell for the vast majority of Steam users, but from my impression there is more than just cheap games. it's whole ecosystem, with badges, achievements and other social media stuff, trading cards and other kinds of profiteering that make games not just cheap but free, and the most vocal argument - 'my whole library is too big to abandon it or split between several clients'. so it's part habit, part ideology - 'no Steam, no buy' (seems like worked with Thronebreaker, dinnit?) and 'I don't need and don't want another launcher'.
yet they never refuse launchers at all, so they understand GOG only as Galaxy, and not as independent game installers, which always bewilders me - hell, am I too old if I remember retail CDs/DVDs that didn't require any launcher or Internet connection? maybe Russia wasn't in vanguard of online-DRM offensive and this wave hit us couple of years later, but I still don't get how is that Steam-lover-installer-denier total reprogramming even possible.

I understand what you mean.

When I was a kid, my country was very poor. Very few people had computers and the games were too expensive. Not to mention that, in the entire country, there were probably only 3 or 4 stores dedicated to importing and selling video games (amazing but true). For most kids my age, the only way one could manage to play games was through piracy.

The alternative to piracy was not playing at all :(

Later things started to change and when my generation began to earn its own money, we started to purchase legal software. I only stopped buying games when publishers began forcing the use of Steam.

That's why I can't understand how most guys who I've grown up with can accept so easily the "tiranny" of Valve's client, when it was thanks to lack of DRM (most copy-protected games were so easily cracked that it was almost a joke) that many of them began playing videogames as an hobby.

That's why I'll never be against software piracy.
Even though I understand and respect the publisher's logic, for many poor people piracy is the onnly way they can afford to play games.

Okay I give up.

Is your avatar a Satanist, a Klansman, or a Harry Potter fanatic?

Neither.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monk_(Doctor_Who]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monk_(Doctor_Who[/url])

EDIT:

Cool! It seems the forum is broken. It's the 5th time I had to edit my post.

my prediction: THQ Nordic will buy Gog.com and use it as it's own online store :D

Might not be a bad thing honestly given THQ Nordic's stance on DRM-Free

This

Why do you think that they won't be able to compete with other platforms? The difference is mainly DRM, everything else (bad service included) is almost the same everywhere.

I currently think that the 30% cut that many of these platforms take is much too much for the benefit they are giving to the customer. More like 10% would be right, so GOG should think about ways to cut costs to be able to cut the fee they are taking while at the same time improving the quality of their service (like offering a more functional website). That way they might be able to compete with other platforms and possibly having an edge on them.