Figuring Steam takes 30%, having their own store return some of their profit to the customer would help drive more customers to their store (and they'd still make more money with the 20% discount on GoG than on Steam, while possibly getting a few Steam users)

You need to remember, here 100% of the profit goes right to RED. you will see this game for 20% off very soon after release, Witcher 3 when it came out went on discount rather quick for good price. RED put the game on pretty much all store fronts no matter how much they lose on cut to make the customer happy on that end.

I know 100% of the profit goes to RED, that's the whole point! If you pass the profit to the consumers GoG could potentially start stealing some Steam Only users (who would be paying a tax just to have the game on steam). Grow GoG, get a bigger customer base. Etc. Etc.

The whole point is to not steal profit from the "competition" if they're carrying your product, i.e. helping you sell more copies.

To clarify, they have a product they're trying to sell, and start distributing it in other stores that have a base clientele. Yes, they're making less money from X store because said store takes a cut. Would it make sense to compete with the store you're using to help you make sales? What percantage of customers are you going to manage to "steal" in contrast with how much money said store is going to make for you? Bear in mind X store may be much bigger than your own store, with an astonishingly larger client base. Would you compete with someone helping you earn more money if you only covered a small percentage of what they're covering with their store?

All that aside, it's also bad form.

I'm sure them not listing a game cheaper, here, even though they would still make more money off it also has to do with the terms under which they can list it elsewhere, like on steam.

I'd be surprised if other platforms like steam don't have a stipulation that states they can't list something on steam that they have listed elsewhere for less for at least a certain period after launch.

As a side note, my father used to have his own company being a supplier in various cities. As a kid, I once asked him this very same thing, and he said "why would I want to compete with my customers?" (the retail stores). In this case CD Project Red is a supplier, all other stores Cyberpunk 2077 is on are the retail stores.

GOG is a niche store under CDPR that owns a very small market share. According to this: https://comparecamp.com/steam-statistics/, Steam has a grip on around 75% of the market share. I couldn't find a reliable number on GOG's market share, but from what I found it should be in the 10-15% ballpark. GOG would have to steal around 50% of the Steam sales to make a marginally greater profit (assuming they reduce the price by 20%), meanwhile damaging their collaboration with Steam as a retail store carrying their products. That's not a risk anyone would be willing to take.

Also, according to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#Market_share, "As of 9 June 2015, GOG.com had seen 690,000 units of CD Projekt Red's game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt redeemed through the service, more than the second largest digital seller Steam (approx. 580,000 units) and all other PC digital distribution services combined." If people decide to buy from GOG, they'll buy from GOG. No need to damage CDPR's relationship with retailers.

There are laws against undercutting. If someone is selling their product for $10, you can't say "okay, well I'll sell mine for $5". You can offer a discount, but that offer has to be for a brief period.

Because of Steam actually. If one publisher sell any game outside of Steam for less money it will be delisted from Steam. Now you know everything.

There's no stealing involved, this stuff happens all the time in the real world, it's just that the digital world hasn't really seen much competitve pricing going on. There are people who will only buy from steam, there are people who will only buy from GoG... the idea is to give people a reason to buy from GoG.

If having a reason to buy from another store is some how outrageous then why do we have pre-order bonuses going on, like with Ghostrunner which has a GoG exclusive preorder bonus. Yeah, that's a nonsensical anecdote. You're not competing with consumers, you're trying to increase the consumers who want to work directly with you and cutting out the middle man. Of course, the only way your anecdote actually works is if we consider that your father was a supplier to a retail store. Retail stores actually BUY the products from your father, what they don't sell is lost in their profit.

Steam doesn't buy anything... They're a MIDDLE MAN, so in your father's case that would be if some agency sold HIS services to the retail store and then he paid that agency to do that work. He could negotiate a contract on his own with the RETAIL STORES, but he is selling in bulk, not selling item by item. Massive difference here. But GoG has promotional sales that Steam doesn't have and vice-versa all the time... and it really isn't like the same stuff doesn't happen in the REAL WORLD where you might find Walmart selling something for less than Target. Same item, different prices

I'm gonna go ahead and assume that what I spent time typing trying to explain regular business practices in simple terms got garbled when uploaded to the internet, because why else would you ignore the rest of the things I wrote and cherry pick what to respond to?

In any case, you're right. They should do that. I hope they get your message and reconsider their modus operandi. Outright fools, is what they are!

GOG still has lots of costs associated with it, it's not free money. GOG's profits are already razor thin, from what I've read. While CDPR gets 100% of the profits, they also need to provide the services involved. Also the consumer experience is the same, so I don't really see why you "deserve" a discount in that sense.

Also, I'm sure there are contracts in place that prevent GOG from undercutting their partners like that anyway (both on PC and console).

Likely due to contracts. Same reason digital games are the same price as their physical counterparts.The physical retailers demanded the contracts include price parity clauses so they couldn't be undercut and made obsolete despite a significant portion of games' cost being tied to printing and shipping physical media. Obviously the big companies were all too happy to charge the same price with less overhead, but originally the promise of online digital platforms was going to reduce the cost of games.

100% of the price does not go to CDPR. Read their statements carefully.100% of your money goes to the CD Projekt family, of which GOG is a part. GOG still takes their standard cut from the CDPR games.

In Steam's case, Valve explicitly demands their customers to not be treated any 'worse' than other stores. If you sell your games for X dollars on GOG, you have to sell it for X dollars on Steam (regional pricing notwithstanding). Of course you can have different discount pricing for a limited time sale, but the base, non-sale price must remain the same.

Promotional sales for the same base price of a game (if you don't reply to a user in a separate message he/she will never get a notification). You can have your promotional sales each day, but you can't sell $60 game outside of Steam for $50 base price. And yeah, that's how the things work in the REAL WORLD. Now you definitely know everything.

Yes, thank you. But you can technically sell the game cheaper on Steam, this will not violate their policy ;)