Pretty sure on both services sale prices are down to the devs, and usually the sales are the same? Regional prices differ due to the way GOG adjusts regional prices for currency fluctuations while Steam's are static.

One issue I hear about with friends who are devs and devs who have friends who are devs etc.

Is that Galaxy is apparently a bitch to work with I have heard this from programmers and devs from two different companies,

One dev almost completely gave up on a GOG version of a game because of galaxy's issues, but when he was assigned to another project which saw a day 1 release here, he also managed to get the GOG version of the other game.

Another company at first had to lock off Galaxy and Steam MP communities until recently because of issues, they were really happy to bring the game here, hell half their patch testers (which I am not a part of) test the gog version and are pretty dedicated to keeping the steam and gog versions up to date together.

I wont reiterate what others brought up, but this is something I hear frequently

I don't think I've seen a truer statement on this foum.

Never used it.

That could work also, though it would require some kind agreement between operators to communicate with one another.

I think both of us tought about big sales which are not at the same time. Definitely when there are singular items discounted from one publisher the discount is the same on both platforms. Differences are when big sales are happening. There Steam has an advantage on bigger discounts on singular items while gog pushes bundle sales with bigger discounts for bundles and smaller discount for singular items. It comes down to preference and for me saddly Steam wins since it offers bigger discounts on singular items which is what I expect from a sale. That doesn't mean I will buy those games on Steam just pisses me off looking at gog discount :/

It's the O in the middle of the G's...looks like a toilet bowl. Companies aren't too bright.

we all are agreeing that steam have a bigger user base, and offers devs more than gog does, and drm free does not help the dev, it is here for the user
( well to give an example about drm free, lets say you have 2 accounts on steam and 2 on gog.
if you buy a game on 1st account on steam cannot be played on the 2nd it simple says pre-installed, while if you buy a game on gog it can be played by who ever wants even with out gog galaxy,here the devs earn more on steam like if you want to start over on a clean page or run from vac or limitation for a reason you buy the game again
the same applies to multi users in a house, steam users buy the game more than once, but gog just copy paste it you have it legit on more than one pc )
companies find it more beneficial on steam more than gog

It's a double edge sword.

GOGers are sick of being treated horribly by publishers when it comes to DRM free and want GOG to take action, yet the only way GOG can get them to not treat GOG like a second class store front is to become more like Steam offering them a Steam like experience, which hardcore GOGers do not want. Therefor GOG has gotten itself in a no-win scenario.

Yeah this is an issue with their bundles, if you're not a 'collector' and not into buying games you're not that interested in to get a game you actually want cheaper then that system doesn't work well.

An open protocol, letting anyone build server software (open or closed source doesn't much matter at that point, though it would most likely be beneficial building an open one to start off as a reference) using that spec.

Similar distribution protocols already exist and are in use, where each node have a list of some other nodes (not necessarily all others, unless there only are a few servers, as that would make it very heavy on traffic). These node's lists of other nodes would get updated as more nodes enter the network or as nodes leave. A new node would have a predefined list of some other nodes, tell those "I'm also here", and would as a reply get knowledge of other nodes. Similarly, nodes would every so often ask ones in their list to see if they're available, and if given no response, it would be taken off the list (or get pushed into an "unsure" list which gets queried more rarely before being taken off the list completely given no response in enough time).

Even the clients could update lists (not necessarily visible to the user) of available server nodes in this manner, shipping with a predefined list and getting updated lists when a successful connection is made, trying each node in order until it hits one that's online.

Some companies just don't know how to maintain efficiently two builds in an efficient fashion, then faced with the choice to run after 5~15% extra sales they just chose not to (I hope this sounds as ridiculous as I intend it to).

Aside from that, the guys pulling a linux version on steam and not in here is really something I don't understand.

Some good thoughts in this thread. Personally I think it's more about market share than anything, coupled with devs'/publishers' insane fear of having to use DRM.

Not necessarily ridiculous at all I'm afraid. Some years back Paradox pulled the DRM-free version of CK2 on Gamersgate and gave every owner of the game the Steam keys instead. Reason was simple, only like 10% of the user base was DRM-free version users, but supporting the DRM-free version requires as much work as supporting the Steam version (or at least they claimed).

For older games it would be less of a problem since they would have minimal patches and post-release contents (DLCs), but for newer games, it can potentially not make business sense for the developers, especially the smaller ones like OP mentioned, to maintain a DRM-free version because of the unfavourable cost&return with the smaller player base. Now also put in even more niche platform like Mac and Linux, That would be up to 6 versions of the same game to support.

Care to provide some proof with numbers to back that up ? i am pretty sure ea origin with the number of players it has playing the mmo, battlefield and fifa outrank gog.

Even though we may all characterize it in that way emotionally when talking about it, I honestly don't think that companies set out thinking "hey, how can we screw people over, how can we treat them like shit". I think digging closer to the truth of the matter is that everyone is ultimately in this for the money above all else for the most part. There may be individual developers or whatever that are all in it for the glory or their passion for gaming or whatever and money is completely secondary to them and they'd keep working on their game for fun or at a loss just to enjoy the process and "for the art" and whatnot, but I think such people are rare and most likely not profitable either.

So I think the primary goal of every game company whether they state it or not is ultimately to be as profitable as possible. That is not a bad thing at all, it's creating a business doing something that you hopefully love doing. Ultimately though things always come down to profit or lack thereof or even to going out of business for having bad ideas or bad execution. So everyone does what they do with profit being the reward even if they have an altruistic nature and passion for gaming and for their would be customers. To varying degrees along the way, decisions have to be made as to what type of person is the target audience, what retail channels are the best way to sell their product, the division of design, development/engineering, support and other resources from finite pools of humans and money etc. and that there is only so much that can be done in the end. Along the way they have to make decisions to delay a product because they under predicted how long it would take to develop something they never did before. They might have a belief that DRM is a good thing that protects profits based on the information they have seen and drawn conclusions from which may or may not actually reflect reality. It doesn't mean they're evil for example, but perhaps not well informed. Or perhaps they are right about it and we're wrong, who knows.

So they make decisions they feel leads them on the path to achieving their goals, their return on investment etc. and they may care about their actual customers to a greater degree like some companies do, and to a lesser degree as others do who are more focused purely on profit than passion or consumer friendliness. There's a wide mix out there. Ultimately the reason any of them do what they're doing even though they make very different decisions on how to do it and what is right or wrong though - is profit motive.

Money makes the world go around.