Massive agree on this one

CDPR are terrible at cross marketing

Lets take EdgeRunners, critically acclaimed Animation that garnered huge hype for CP2077.

Now if Valve ever allowed a Half-life TV series, they'd be damn sure to include Valve and Steam marketing in it. They'd be "Play the game on Steampowered" or some such. CDPR don't appear to leverage their IP at all in order to push focus towards GOG.

Every time they allow their IP to be used by another publisher/company it should come with a proviso to market or release on GOG.

As for developers not marketing their own GOG releases, again that's partly on GOG. They need to incentivise devs/Pubs to include GOG in their marketing. And I've said this before, a very simply way to do this is taking a lower cut for a limited period, such as 2 weeks after initial game release. This would put a huge incentive on devs to really push their GOG release, and the larger number of sales would easily cover the reduced cut.

We already have that with itch and zoom platform ;)

Brilliant write up. Steam's first mover advantage shouldnt be dismissed, especially since they also had quite a bit of time before other devs made their own launchers. Also an easy example of short-sighted greed screwing over the industry in the long run. Devs went digital because they wanted a greater share of the profits and to eliminate the second market. As a result, they are now slaves to Valve.

And people get on Epic for having "exclusives"

Definately see this alot. People say Steam is great because it has the biggest library and the best launcher. While I understand the benefits of the first, the praise for the launcher and community is pretty stupid imo. I dont know why people care about launchers so much but it seems so integral for PC gamers that GOG made one with Galaxy and gamers complain about lack of launcher integration and "too many launchers." Honestly felt GOG was best being able to download games without having to install additonal software.

The concept of game preservation is becoming more prevalent so I wonder if gamers will be more aware of the issues of DRM. The excuse I hear is Steam DRM is easy to break but I do wonder if people will really be ok with that. There is also the assumption that people assume there is that much change from the present and Steam will exist as it is in the long run.

I think you make many fair points, although you seem to be painting a picture of a no-win situation - highlighting a lot of problems but without suggesting any solutions.

This is a no-win then. If GOG has a client, then some developers will be turned away by the extra effort required to support it. However, if GOG doesn't have a client, then developers will be pushed away who see client-based features as integral to the 'game experience'. Imo, if a developer feels that achievements are an integral part of the game experience, then they should be made integral to the game in the first place. Also, GOG seemed to be doing just fine before the release of Galaxy, without the huge additional overhead it seems to have incurred.

Those consumers who really want a client are going to be impossible to satisfy anyway. Those are the gamers that by and large want 'all of their games in one place' and likely already wedded to Steam. There isn't anything GOG is ever going to be able to do to win them over. Trying to compete directly with Steam with a similar client is doomed to fail, because a) CDPR doesn't have the resources to do it properly and b) as you have pointed out, we have seen that, even with practically unlimited resources being thrown at it (i.e. EGS), it still isn't enough to make a dent.

Therefore, we have to conclude that throwing more precious resources at an unsolvable problem is a pointless waste. It is clear that nothing is going to be able to make a sizeable dent in Steam's client-locked PC market dominance, short of governmental regulation to break Steam's walled garden and enforce a standardized PC gaming client interface.

Ultimately, I think GOG has to settle for and accept that it is a niche store, aimed at those who don't want a client/DRM. Therefore, I maintain that the best thing GOG can do is to spend more of those resources on shoring up the DRM-free core of their business; maintaining offline installers; improving/updating the website; and at the very least de-prioritizing the cash sink-hole that is Galaxy.

More games are becoming 'old' all the time, every year. That's the one guaranteed thing about time - it marches on ...

Oh, I never knew that. But with supporting more currencies, wouldn't it attract people who'd change their currency to another one to buy it cheaper? Steam's Turkish currency is removed because of this.

GOG is successful, but honestly still sort of niche. Steam is a giant and I don't see any game store dethroning it soon, but GOG could thrive in another way. Remember what it stands for, Good Old Games. Patched old games like the recent Resident Evil classics would definitely be their strength. In fact, I made this account here back in 2020 because I want to play a patched Fallout 3.

Precisely. Letting Steam handle achievements leans in heavily on the social aspect of gaming. Letting people "flaunt" their achievements publically and whatnot. Building achievements only into the game will only let the player see them and is therefore transformed into something negative, because Steam has determined that. See how many sites are dedicated to achievement guides, gathering stats etc. Even on our forums, complaints about achievements not working or games not having them is a frequent occurrence.
They were usually in the positive, but not by much. And that really has not changed from what I could tell, although I did not experience GOG before Galaxy was a thing.

Well, that depends. In an ideal scenario, they could focus on both. True, the priority should be on the main userbase, but in today's world of convenience, that user base is quite limited by default. In an industry so ingrained in its ways ways, you really do, at some point, have to start trying to "convert" people so to speak. And a ton of people are no longer willing to fiddle around on a website or handle something like offline installers. Simply the fact that you can't install a game with one click and play, in today's world, is something that will turn people off. No way around it. Not you or me, but 7, 8 out of 10 people, it might. The vast majority of people I've encountered that know of/use GOG, mean Galaxy, when they speak about GOG. The concept of operating only through a website is already completely alient to them. Galaxy should definitely not be the main focus of GOG, but it should exist for that reason alone. Don't ever understimate human laziness.

De-prioritizing Galaxy, for now, could be a viable option. Put it on maintenance mode and focus on improving the core of GOG. Most of the issues with the website could be easily solved in like a year by one competent coder/designer. But fully axing it? Not really and I am still somewhat baffled by the frequent cries for it here on the forums.

It does, but a different kind of games. Early on, we've been getting highly desired oldies, that often did not work on modern systems or were stuck in rights hell. GOG started offering that and the demand was large. But in 10 years, the "new" oldies will have been on Steam and maybe other platforms for those 10 years. So when a publisher/dev decides to mercifully put it up on GOG, how do you think sales for those games will go?

It's been 12 years. I guess people will never let go of that.

This seems to me to just further reinforce the pointlessness of trying to compete directly with Steam, and why imo GOG shouldn't even bother with achievements at all. Client-based achievements only have any value if your platform has the critical mass (which Steam does) such that most people are using it, so people you know will see your achievements. It means that, for GOG's Galaxy achievements to really be worth anything, they need to convince 'Gamer X' and all their mates to start using Galaxy, which is not realistic. Any money GOG is pouring into client-based achievements is therefore a total waste - they're falling into the trap of tying to beat Steam at their own game (which we all know is rigged).

Perhaps a good solution might be to revert Galaxy back to being a simpler downloader/installer. Get rid of all the client achievements crap. A really big thing imo, which would help to simplify things a lot, for both developers and users, would be to have just one GOG version of a game. Do away with the Galaxy API and just have offline installers, which can be installed stand-alone or installed through a GOG downloader (which is what we had before Galaxy). This way, we can still have easy one-click download/installation.

Having just one GOG version of a game would improve things massively. It would keep things simple for users and it would keep things simpler for GOG and developers, since there would only be one version of a game to maintain and no additional burden of a Galaxy API to support. Imo, the introduction of a Galaxy API is what has led to a lot of problems: increased maintenance overhead; offline installers falling behind Galaxy versions; developers being turned off by having to support another API.

GOG: get rid of the Galaxy API and go back to having one game version, with a simple downloader. Keep things simple: back to basics.

Ok, but how many Steam games that were released 10-15 years ago are being maintained to work on modern Windows?

Prices are determined according to location, and currencies are only supported in the respective locations. But if you're referring to the situation of a currency changing value massively and very quickly, before the store can react to update the exchange rate, it's possible, yes. But so is using a VPN to change location and get a better price...

And GOG stopped standing for Good Old Games even before they stopped standing for flat pricing, 2012 vs. 2014.

On that note, I do have to say that GOG is too successful for a place that gave up on almost everything it stood for...

Yes, but it's not just Steam playing the game, it's the entire industry. And refusing to play at all is not really an option in my opinion. Even if you are playing badly, it's still better than not participating in it.
True. The differences between the Galaxy vs installer versions do seem to be growing ever larger. There are even cases where a game installed through Galaxy will not launch without it running.

But again, you'd lose most of the features which are now perceived as good/desirable by the general public. Galaxy was made exactly because of that. When 80% of the people instantly skip considering shopping elsewhere and publishers/devs don't even consider day 1 release because X or Y thing is not there, it's not really a good situation. We here on the forums might be in that 20%, but that is obviously not enough as most new releases still go to Steam exclusively.

Well, that remains to be seen, mostly depending on what Microsoft does with Windows. But between, say late Windows XP - Windows 10 most games still worked fine without needing extra work.

It seems to me that most new releases go to Steam because they control by far the biggest share of the market, not because of any lack of feature parity on GOG's part. Many developers just see GOG as being too small to be worth bothering with. And I don't see that situation changing, due to GOG's pushing of a second-rate API-driven client.

Question: if developers are so insistent that there have to be client-based achievements and other functionality, so that gamers can have the 'full experience', why then are they willing to allow GOG to provide offline installers, which lack those features? It's part of the requirement for releasing on GOG that games have to also be available as offline installers (as it should be).

80% of users are already Steam prisoners anyway. No amount of money that GOG/Epic can throw at building a client API is going to change that. Again, we see by Epic's example that the strategy of trying to compete head-to-head with Steam on client-based features (and throwing free games at people) has failed.

It seems we have a fundamental difference of opinion on this point, and we're probably not going to agree. Imo, if the prevailing industry model is rigged and heavily tilted against you, then it isn't going to be very productive to burn resources trying to compete in a situation where you are never going to win. It's a better plan to reject those rules; focus your resources on trying to differentiate yourself as much as possible; and emphasize that in your marketing. I.e. "We're not simply a second-rate, no-hope Steam wannabe."

I've seen a few game devs claiming that GOG has a real problem with pushing updates from them to the GOG servers. Most recently I saw one of the devs for the game 'SpaceBourne 2' talking about how they were having a terrible time with their connection to GOG timing out while trying to push the latest update for the game.

Itch is not launcher free. Since posting a link to itch's launcher download page, here's a screen shot that shows part of the page - just enough for you to see they have one too. Also if there was an award for absolute worst store-based launcher, itch would win it.... it's like they took the worst features of every other store-based launcher and said let's do that.

Three things might make GOG become competitive with Steam, were GOG actually to have them in their best form:

1) A large selection of high quality premium games being released on a regular basis, (at least 200 of games like this per year, instead of a dozen or less as GOG usually gets per year, and only after they are old). I.e. Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA V, etc.

2) GOG acquiring the rights to sell the high quality premim games while they are new & fresh (6 months or less from day one release day on Steam; instead of only getting a few of such games many years later, after they have become old & stale & obsolete).

3) GOG implementing viable multiplayer & Crossplay functionality which makes it very easy for devs to give their games Crossplay with Steam & EGS.

On the flipside, what parts of Steams success should GOG actually avoid/not do?.

Those wanting Linux support - do the number of gamers who actually use linux for their OS justify using GOGs resources? (imagine its limited though)