SpecShadow: I heard that GOG was not so profitable and Cyberpunk developement took so long and cost much resources and cash I wouldn't be surprised if situation were real, even when staff would deny that.
https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2018/11/condensed_financial_statement_q3_2018.pdf Refer to page 31 of the statement where CD Project Red (all the Witcher stuff) is separated out from GOG (the store)
GOG was already running in the red for Q1-Q3 already. Its obvious Q4 was not helping. I expect once the annual report comes out it will show Q4 was bad. That wont be otu till mid-end March. But expect the numbers to be bad for GOG specficially
The only thing keeping CDProject afloat right now is whoring out Geralt to every company they can find. Wonder why Geralt is making 'cameos' everywhere? Yeah that's why. Because GOG isnt making money and CDPRoject's Witcher IP is the only thing actually making money
Remember that CD Projekt is a publicly traded company. And investors dont care about 'mission statements' about GOG. They want ROI. They want profit. They want money. If GOG's 'mission statement's are not making money, then they're gonna either cut GOG, or change the mission statements. That means likely:
1) Cyperbunk is gonna be GOG exclusive. That's even assuming GOG stays afloat long enough though. If they can then this is pretty much 100% gonna happen. Though this would be a fairly temporary fix, as again the cant sustain the initial 'push' after Cyperpunk without other titles.
2) Galaxy is dying. They no longer have the financials to play the 'long' game with Galaxy. Something they effectively already wasted 3 years on. They'll have no way to justify putting resources into galaxy when the entire subsidiary is dying.
3) GOG needs to fix their update process. Right now devs are jumping GOG (Long dark) because GOG is basically gate keeping everything and making patches look unattractive. GOG needs to get the hell out of the way of devs because its making them lose revenue. THey can already gate keep games at the front end, they have to stop playing patch nanny once approved.
4) Galaxy becomes mandatory. Of course this is contradicting #2 but I can see a push to make the Galaxy client mandatory for new games thus making 'stickiness' of GOG higher when compared to Steam/Epic. Remember we are now abandoning all 'core principles' because the company is in the red and stuff like that is no longer relevant to execs and shareholders.
Stuff off the top of my head