I understand games sell much more on Steam compared to all PC DD stores. It's just that, to me, it seems shady for developers to screw over people who support their game because it's not on Steam.

We all know PC devpubs can't live without Steam. However, reliance on Steamworks features are overrated. In the end, they're all optional nice-to-haves that don't need to be integrated into releases since we already have case examples of how they are dealt with on other PC platforms:

- Common Redistributables - unnecessary, just bundle the necessary libraries/DLLs/redistributables into the EXE
- Game Notifications - unnecessary, seems like most MP games are real-time today
- Microtransactions - unnecessary, we really don't need games with MTX here; extra monetization already exists through different editions and DLCs
- MP - unnecessary, can implement through LAN, direct IP, etc. as mcsqtout said, use a third-party [cross-play] server to manage, or strip this mode from the game entirely
- Stats and Achievements - should be in-game if it was an important part of the experience or just removed entirely
- Enhanced Rich Presence - unnecessary, this is just client telemetry
- Steam Cloud - unnecessary, since local saves are already being stored on users' drives but if needed, other clients like EGS and Galaxy already have cloud saves
- Steam Input - unnecessary, use XInput and DirectInput API support
- Steam DRM - unnecessary, obviously
- Steam Error Reporting - unnecessary, who actually uses this? Bugs should be reported in forum threads so other users can search up this info and learn about their problems
- Steam HTML Surface - unnecessary, who actually uses this? Exiting out to an HTML page in the middle of a game is incredibly immersion-breaking
- Steam Keys - unnecessary, dependent on the store or N/A if DRM-free
- Steam Leaderboards - unnecessary if MP was implemented as the above or stripped from the game
- Steam Overlay - unnecessary, web browsers already do this like GOG's
- Steam Remote Play - unnecessary if there MP mode and local co-op modes are options
- Steam Screenshots - unnecessary, winkey + PrtSc
- Steam Workshop - unnecessary, modmakers should be using the universal NexusMods to be hosting their mods so everyone from every platform can access them
- User Authentication and Ownership - unnecessary just like Steam DRM
- VAC and Game Bans - necessary if you go down the MP mode route
- Steam VR - unnecessary, some game engines have their own VR API like Unity

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features There are no stats to prove this. The only Galaxy stats that GOG has released that I know of is here: https://www.gog.com/en/news/gog_2023_update_2_facts_and_numbers_of_2022_copy3

And even then, in the year of 2022, the # of Galaxy users has remained constant, not growing. And since then, I believe they have not shared this stat anymore. Which leads me to believe that it's not doing as well as proposed.

GOG has seen lower profitability since 2014 when they started pouring investment into Galaxy. While revenue has increased, GOG still has failed to capture the market share of the majority client users. Before Galaxy, GOG was simply more profitable in terms of net profit. In the end, they're trying to juggle both crowds and they end up pleasing no one. Offline installer users are not happy with the slow launch times to accommodate Galaxy users and Galaxy ads being plastered during download and installation. Or. option #3: strip the game based on its bare essentials that stand up to the test of time, can be compatible across multiple different platforms including consoles, requiring less of dev resources to manage and implement, and focus on what makes games great by themselves without clients: incredible stories, well developed characters, addicting gameplay with polished UI/UX, and immersing audio-visuals. If devpubs care about ownership, which most of them are gamers themselves, GOG should absolutely be on their list. Apparently, the golden rule of "treat others the way you want to be treated" is lost on modern AAA devpubs who are run by suits and shareholders, but for everyone else who isn't at that level, their personal goal should be to have as many people play their games by releasing them on many different platforms and letting users have ownership of their copies of the game similar to the bygone eras of physical media ownership. I'm oversimplifying this but I wonder why they simply can't void out MP modes from the main menu selection screen by making it unlinkable and calling it a day. If it was programmed properly, the other modes wouldn't be affected by it. No, they shouldn't. We both know GOG's market share isn't worth doing this.

The inherent assumption client users use when comparing Steam and GOG is that they have similar market shares and resources, which is absolutely not true. So based off that, these users will all gravitate towards Steam. So instead of 'chasing the dragon' and fighting a very uphill battle of client features to capture this market share, GOG Galaxy should be focusing on the bare essentials of the client that has already been accomplished by what 1.2 does - listing all owned GOG games, download manager, auto-updates, letting you launch from one GUI, and cloud saves.

I propose that the reason why GOG does fail in comparison in capturing market share is not because of the lack of client features, but because their game library pales in comparison to the number of modern, high quality release on Steam. So they should keep the current 1.2 on barebones maintenance and allocate the rest of their resources recruiting more partners into growing their current library. Just say outright that they don't want to distribute on GOG and give their current customers a heads up of whether they should buy them from Steam or move on from that company. It respects everyone's time, including GOG's so they don't have to waste their time trying to court them back. It also respects their current and prospective users' time by letting them know upfront if they should get it from Steam or whatever else they've guaranteed to release on OR simply move on so they don't have to spend months or years waiting around for potential releases.

But to keep it ambiguous with a cop-out answer and lead GOG staff astray about making the client better when their resources are already tied up is simply disrespectful and a waste of everyone's time.

Most customers don't want gimpy, feature-removed games.

The devs are complaining about only having a small chunk of sales from GOG.

Stripping out game features for the, therefore, inferior GOG version would just make those chunks of GOG sales become even smaller, and also thus give devs even less incentive than ever to release additional games on GOG, after almost no one buys their feature-removed GOG versions.

BreOl72's post is an excellent one, and he did a great job of pointing out how devs are never going to succeed in these modern times by giving GOG customers inferior versions of their games on this platform.

As for the point that GOG was supposedly "more profitable" before they started working on Galaxy: even if that is true, it still doesn't prove causation, that Galaxy is the cause for the declining profits.

For example, how many employees did GOG have then in 2013?...and how many employees does GOG have now in 2024? No doubt the number is vastly higher now. Who's to say that isn't the reason for why GOG's profitability has decreased as compared versus 2013?

Or many other potential reasons too? (like GOG's 30 days refund policy, which didn't exist in 2013, nor did paid "menstrual leave" [which GOG now pays for], or maybe there were a lot more acquirable old games which were still in the well that GOG could still draw from in 2013, but that well has now almost totally dried up by 2024, etc. etc.).

Whenever you make statements like "most", where are you getting your data and statistics from? If you don't have any, then you're just projecting your own opinion and making it your version of reality. The reality we do know is that GOG once only had offline installers before and GOG was profitable during that time. But now they aren't. There's absolutely nothing wrong with dropping support for audiences that aren't profitable. Companies do it all the time. If resources goes into supporting client features for a small amount of users that won't even pay off, then they shouldn't be doing it.

But to upload an EXE and some patches on GOG? The work has already been done for Steam and GOG is incremental work should only take up <= 1 hour of one developer's time to start uploading onto Galaxy DevPortal and can be done overnight. If we assume a developer's time is worth $30-50 USD/hr and their game is sold for $20, then the incremental time spent updating GOG would've broken even in 2-4 sales. It is true and I keep pointing you towards my spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jlDSN47Q_k1mZ4KyiTrJ0z8yWIdU7P-ENYEW8P_nShk/ Because they had to hire more people to support Galaxy. This shouldn't be hard to understand. EDIT: Refund rate was still 1.8% back in the above link. Menstrual leave only affects a fraction of the 31% of CDP staff that are women at any given time. These do not impact profitability as much as you think it does. And yes games were easier to acquire back then, but it still doesn't change the number of unsigned publishers or how divesting from Galaxy into more minimum guarantees would be more beneficial for all GOG users in the long run rather than only the client users.

A major often overlooked factor also is the frequent lack of advertisement of a game's (staggered or day 1) GOG release on the dev's or publisher's side which obviously is going to result in lower sales once the game is unceremoniously dropped onto the store.
Which is then always followed by every second comment on Twitter or Youtube reading something along the lines of "If I had known that game XYZ is also releasing on GOG I would have bought it on there" and the seemingly oblivious dev or publisher still wondering why the game is performing below their of course unrealistic sales expectations, especially when releasing the game well after the initial release date on top of not announcing/confirming the eventual GOG release in advance.

When it comes to smaller stores that aren't Steam, most gamers don't actually care about lack of Steam Achievements or Steam Trading Cards. Those who do predominantly buy the Steam version. Those who intentionally buy elsewhere do so for a reason for what that store has (eg, DRM-Free or Epic timed-exclusive) not what it doesn't have. The elephant in the room vs your "Everyone thinks client features are much more important than the game itself" fringe beliefs is the fact Epic Games Store had the least amount of client features during its early years (less than Galaxy) yet had zero trouble getting dozens of major AAA games there often in DRM-Free format from publishers not on GOG, and there was no "I'm not bringing my games to your store due to lack of client features" resistance by developers. No-one, gamer or publisher, cared about lack of Epic Achievements, Epic Game Forums, Epic Home Streaming, etc, except a handful of overly vocal Steam fanboys on Reddit who were inventing "I would have bought it but lack of, uh, Epic trading cards, yeah that's it, was holding me back..." excuses to try and make howling at the moon over timed exclusives, Tim Sweeney death threats, and No-Steam, No-Buy fanboyism seem more intellectual than it actually was.

The 2nd "red flag" for revealing just how little an impression Galaxy is making on introducing many recent newcomers to GOG is in the form of the sheer number of them not even being able to remember Galaxy's name, hence the endless stream of "GOG crashed! GOG's integration is broken again! Where's GOG for Linux? How do you launch GOG on the Steam Deck" style forum posts. The most noise made about Galaxy's growth figures (by GOG themselves) coincided with the post Cyberpunk 2077 period where its reputation picked up again after the troubled launch, ie, just like the similar peak of new account signups in the few years that followed Witcher 3, there was a surge of new members signing up just for CP2077, maybe bought 1-2 games then slowly drifted back to Steam for all the other games not here with those "Galaxy users" basically ending up "1-2 Game Accounts" (and some of those paid for with grey market keys). The whole "Meta-Client" hype is practically dead. GOG don't advertise it much anymore and hardly any gamer actually says "I'm tired of using 3x clients (Steam, Epic, uPlay), so to 'simplify' that I'll use a 4th one on top that still needs the other 3 anyway..."

I completely agree with UnashamedWeeb that "feature parity" is heavily used as an excuse by both devs to avoid admitting the real reason they don't want to be on too many smaller stores is simply "Update Fatigue", and by "No Steam, No Buy" gamers claiming they "would support smaller stores if only they had feature parity" but reveal their true colours every time a game is released exactly like that only for them to ignore it anyway and buy the Steam version out of habit / inertia / fanboyism. That's what it really boils down to - developers don't want 30x patches to turn into 300x separate uploads if the sales on the smaller stores don't justify the same effort, so they'll support consoles and 1-2 of the largest PC stores (Steam + keeping their options open for MS / Epic later on) - whilst many Steam gamers have developed an Apple-style Separation Anxiety Disorder over their walled garden addiction. Publishers then just respond to that by putting the most effort where the most sales are.

No-one with an ounce of common sense though will ever seriously believe GOG will have 100% feature parity with Steam in 100% of games with 1/100th of the money to actually pay for it. It's only slightly less demented vs repeating "If Sony can put Trophies in their games, so too can itch.io force every dev to do the same" over & over, hoping someday 'the dream' might come true...

Agreed!

It would be a crying shame if Crate Entertainment's future titles were to be absent from GOG. I'm having a great time with Grim Dawn, and happy to support smaller, private developers who work with passion.

I believe the matter can be solved somewhat, on Crate's end. They need to design their games DRM-free from the getgo, even if it's going to be released on Steam. If any aspect of their game relies on a proprietary framework or anything that would rely on Steam's services, then it should be reconsidered and replaced with an open alternative if possible. I've played multiplayer games that did not require Steam, and Grim Dawn should have been one such game. All games ideally should be, but the corporations feel the need to justify hamfisting gamers to use their half-baked, data harvesting clients.

But Crate has no need to do this, they don't have their own client so it's in their best interests to make their games as lean as possible.

Every Steam user: "why aren't you using Steam to its fullest prospects!? - Why am I supposed to rely on external services, for stuf that Steam can do?"

Sadly they're already intent on weight down Farthest Frontier with Workshop from what I've read.