The first thing you have to do Gog is to create a social community online (integrated voice chat,achievements,profiles,friends list ... ) ,attract some of the major developers and listen to the users.When Gog has a strong community can begin to compete with steam.

I thought GOG already had a strong community.

It does have a strong community but it's still very much niche.

it is strong, as long it doesn't run out of pills

It's not about Valve's business. It's about shifting publishers' approach. If they all go tomorrow to being DRM-free, all will benefit, including Valve.

Indeed.

It's have everything to do with Valve's business because there is nothing that has made publishers think that Steam DRM isn't the way to go when they are printing money by putting their titles on that platform. On the flip side, there isn't any huge surge in GoG or DRM-Free popularity that has given publishers pause to put their titles on platforms other than Steam.

When certain indie games are only grabbing, at the most, a couple of percent of sales on GoG vs. the same title being sold on Steam, it doesn't make for a compelling argument. Publishers may prefer DRM but they also want to put their titles at places where there is maximum exposure and maximum sales.

There is. Growing competition from GOG makes them think that DRM is not needed. You already see some of the most unexpected publishers appearing here. Things are surely different now in comparison with a decade ago.

No. Publishers prefer to get as many sales as possible (in theory). It means using all available distributors. When they'll clear up their minds to realize that DRM only holds their sales back, they'll ditch it. Well, at least the first category from the 3 types of DRM Lysenkoists described above.

Not only strong, but quite vocal too. Even if most of the people haven't dropped by the forums ever, the fact is, when GOG asks a question, we see to it that they are lent our ears.

It's as strong as North Korea's HTML code.

lol, reminds me of putting an nvidia sticker on an old laptop with intel onboard gfx to rise up the performance/fps

What 'growing' competition? Do you realize that GoG sells as many copies as Humble in some instances? Look at published articles from indie devs, Steam routinely pulls 85-90% sales, GoG 5-6%? That's not competition. That's scraps.

I've been meaning to talk to you about that.

That's my father, not me.

This is why this community is strong; we have a sense of humor. XD

Well played!

Did you read CDPR / GOG financial reports? GOG sales are growing. More distributors - more competition amongst distributors (you aren't likely to buy the same thing from two sources, so distributors are competing for users). Pretty straightforward economics, no rocket science here.