I know, I know, it seems like a dumb question to ask, but CD Projekt sells The Witcher series on Steam. Half-Life and Portal have been out long enough that there would be no real downside for Valve. No one is going to abandon their service if those two game series are no longer exclusives.

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games#order=votes_total&search=halflife
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games#order=votes_total&search=portal

It wouldn't be bad move for mr G. Newell, not bad at all. Feasible I'd say.

The Half-Life series is already kinda, sorta DRM-free on Steam. You can download them and play them without the client. Same with Portal 1. So I don't see what the big deal would be.

The Half Life games are DRM-free. They don't come with handy installers, you have to move the folder, but they still are DRM-free.

The irony of having the ground zero of mainstream accepted online DRM being sold as an DRM free installer.

Beside there are still enough freaks (me and that other guy :P ) around who refuse a game they did otherwise love to play just for it being a (online DRM platform) exclusive.

Oh, is there some woodwork you people are coming from?

They will release half life 1 here free as a goodie for half life 3.

Steam managed to pull that stunt back then because there was no real competition in that area and everybody and their grandmother knew about HL and wanted it.

I doubt CP has the pull now. It probably will be a success but to pull that off it must be the alpha and the omega of gaming; the word of god in digital form the one thing everybody talks about and everyone wants. And even then the NO STEAM NO BUY indoctrination will be tough to get through. Disappointing a part of the already build up fan base with no TPP anymore shenanigans probably did not helped either.

I find it more likely that Valve would release Half-Life for free than release it here, in a move reminiscent to Blizzard and Starcraft.

Logically thinking, it would severely hurt CDPR (by lowered Cyberpunk sales), and benefit GOG somewhat (some new users might actually create an account on GOG, just in order to play the game).

All in all, I don't see CDPR doing that. To them selling it on Steam is a similar decision as selling it on PS4 and/or XBox One, ie. maximizing the sales.

At least Portal has been available for free, probably several times. So yeah, not sure how much even GOG would believe in extra Portal sales on GOG. Maybe it would be more like feather in the hat (wow, Valve released a game on a competing digital PC gaming service!). than the actual money GOG would make from it.

This would be utter financial suicide. Not because anyone is loyal to Steam out of principle. It's just where most people have their gaming collections, friends, etc. Nobody would organize a boycott, nobody would try to do anything harmful on purpose, it's just that most would simply pass it by. In our current era, when there is A LOT of choice for quality games and most people don't have the time to play them all, being on the first page of the biggest store is really the only meaningful way of breaking even.

GOG is great, all of us on this forum probably do most of our gaming shopping here, but at the same time it's still a pretty obscure and unknown (to the general public) venue. Plus the aforementioned Steam collections and connections.

I think I wrote this already a few years ago, but I toyed with the idea of emailing Gabe (assuming his email still works) with, if nothing else, putting up Half-Life on GOG for April Fools. (Maybe a HL3 would be even better)

I think that CDP could in theory strike a deal with Valve to bring a few of their classics here, but CDP would need a really good bargaining chip.

I wouldn't say suicide because CDPR has made enough of a name for themselves with TW3 and 2077 is so hyped that even having it be GOG exclusive I think enough people would bite the bullet and get it here. There'd certainly be a financial loss of course but CDP might consider it worth it in the long-term (ie, having millions of new potential customers). EA was able to survive moving exclusively to Origin (granted they have a LOT more content than CDP)

But from a PR standpoint it might be best to take the route of "we want players to have choice - Steam, GOG, console..."

I assume GOG codes will be included in the physical boxes, like with TW3, and that'll send more new folks our way.

Not gonna happen. I think most would then simply use that as an excuse to pirate the game. A more likely scenario is that they will sell the game on both distribution platforms, but offer some extra incentives for GOG users. I think they already did that with Witcher 3? The GOG version probably had more bonus content... ?