That is a good point. The extra competition that Epic brings probably hurts Steam's hegemony more than GOG's (partly) niche market.

So Steam is closing its doors? When exactly?

(I presume that is what you mean by "Epic winning".)

Well It is it's first year. I compared it to GoG , I think Epic is already larger than gog.
As they add more new features it will be a real competitor to steam

This reminds me that I certainly have accounts on the following stores too, but I own only freebies on them I think (I haven't bought any games at least directly from those stores; some ancient Humble Bundle possibly included e.g. some EA Origin keys, not sure if EA got any cut from those):

EA Origin
UPlay
Epic
itch.io (just created an account here a week ago to get the A.I.M. game freebie that someone mentioned here)

I'd presume that so far I've just been a nuisance to those four stores, not having paid them a dime but used some of their resources (like downloading all those DRM-free Batman game freebies from the Epic store).

Depends. From my perspective Epic is much more competing with Steam than with GOG, and potentionally affecting common Steam users' purchasing decisions more than GOG users'.

Just speaking of myself only, but why am I on GOG, and not (only) on e.g. Steam or Epic? Mainly these reasons, in this order:

1. Officially DRM-free games. Not just "well, some games might be DRM-free, but you never know for sure and they are not supported as DRM-free games without a client" like on Epic or Steam or EA Origin. Officially.

2. The games offered as coherently maintained (DRM-free) standalone installers (so it is not like on Epic or Steam where I have to download and install the game first with a client, and then zip it to my archive; or like Humble Store where only some of the games have standalone installers, and HS doesn't maintain them in any way but different games have totally different installer formats, file naming schemes etc., whatever the game publisher decided to provide to HS, I much prefer how GOG game installers have an uniform format and naming.).

3. The ability to massdownload all my games to my local archive easily, and keep them up-to-date too without manual tracking. This it not thanks to GOG.com itself, but third-party tools like gogrepo and lgogdownloader. I am not aware of similar tools for Epic or Steam; I recall hearing that Humble Store might have something similar (unofficial), not sure if it is maintained anymore.

4. The classic games. Was e.g. Warlords 1-3, Diablo + Hellfire or Warcraft 1-2 released also on Epic?

Now, you could argue that most GOG customers don't care about those... but that makes me wonder, why are they on GOG in the first place then, and not just Steam? What made them decide to buy some games from GOG instead of e.g. Steam, if not for at least some of those reasons?

I mentioned earlier that me acquiring e.g. Superhot for free from the Epic store lessened my interest to buy it elsewhere, and I am likely to buy it only for a deep discount. But the thing is, due to reasons #1, #2 and #3 above, it would still be GOG where I'd buy it, not Steam or Epic or EA Origin.

So are a lot of companies. And a lot probably even bigger than Steam, Epic & Gog combined i.e. some Hollywood companies or car manufactures. For me they are of the same relevance. Sure they overlap with the products Gog offers but in such an unappealing way that it really does not matter what they sell.

Should Gog drop their DRM free installers; that would be another thing. All of the sudden they would be in the same dirty alley the others hang around. Then they are dead. Not saying for sure that I would stop gaming (even though that where I slowly heading); but if I should continue I'd rather go to someone consistent & honest with their bullshittery from the beginning (Steam).

I backup my games and have never used python. Really it's as simple as just copying the installers to a backup drive as you download them first time. Downloading them (to play), then deleting the installers, then re-downloading them again (to backup) is just people making work for themselves.

Yes, download all your 0 games on GOG DRM-free. Don't see how GOG's removal of the downloader will affect you in particular. Cheers

Nothing against you personally, and i don't want this thread derailed. My point is, somebody that hasn't spent a single dime on this store( or has and has refunded it, which is the same i guess but ok?) complains about the store. That is not toxic, yet me pointing it out is? What gives you the right? And what actually makes you think that i or anybody else with one game or more regrets buying stuff here? Really silly arguments to be honest with ya.

Epic has some releases I wished I could find on GoG. I had to buy them there.
But if I can chose, I pick GoG.
Most of the Epic free games I already had on GoG. Adventures I always buy on GoG, if possible.
But for example Epic gave away Yooka Laylee and the impossible lair recently.
I see no reason to buy it again on GoG. I would buy the digital deluxe edition, but 40€ just for the soundtrack ... nah.
Once the game is discounted by 70% or more, we can talk about buying it.

So yes, Epic is hurting GoG.

I think it is more likely you never had bought any GOG games to begin with.

You joined this month and were instantly whining about GOG downloader which hasn't even been supported for five years? Yeah, that almost makes sense. You have joined here just to spew shit around and troll.

(Yes yes, I get it, you have another account on GOG but you don't want to post your troll posts on it because you don't want to be recognizable. Either way, you are a liar.)

They are not obsessed. They caught you in a lie.

It's hard to say if Epic is hurting GOG. There's not really a lot of overlap in terms of new games. Especially AAA/AA games.

For the older (usually indie) titles - chances are the existing GOG gamers already bought it on gog, so they wouldn't migrate to / use Epic just for a free game.

How about the people who don't have the title in either platform? Likely they'll pick up the free version, especially if both are drm-free. Which is sometimes the case for epic. Sure, there are those who would never go to Epic, and always prefer GOG. But it is my opinion the hardcore vocal portion of the gamer base that boycotts platforms ideologically like this, is just a vocal minority, especially amongst those who are just recently being introduced to GOG.

So because of the potential gog customers opting for the freebies, Epic might be resulting in some lost sales for Gog. Coupled with some occassional issues and hiccups for some games on GOG, like missing updates, or goodies or features, compared to the more popular platforms like Epic, it doesn't bode well for GOG.

What about an indie title at the same price point on GOG and Epic? I'd like to say people would prefer GOG, but due to convenience and the bigger userbase, Epic might be a more popular choice. Because of the freebies, people are already on Epic, so they see those ads and discounts for games and might press the 'buy' button, poaching that sale from GOG.

And Epic userbase is not just 'Fortnite kids' who use their weekly allowance on microtransactions. Borderlands 3 sold a few millions in a few months on Epic alone, and that was an expensive game 60eur-100+eur. That showed how popular the damn platform actually is.

Funny thing is : even though I hate steam I hope it doesn't goes bankrupt.
If GOG or epic went down, life would go on. Some people (like me) would return to pirating games, while others would just start buying on steam.

But if steam went down (meaning that millions of gamers would lose access to their libraries containing thousands of games) I suspect most of these millions of customers would "rage-quit" the PC market and stop playing video games forever (sure, some of of them would probably just move to consoles, but I think the majority would never touch a video-game in their lives again).

It would be a catastrophe for the industry. Perhaps even bigger than the video-game crash of 1983.
Just an hypothesis, of course.

This is why drm free is a must have. GoG ends you still can play your games.

There are other downloaders that others have made. Yeah they may not be perfect but hey it's better than nothing.