Hello everybody,

I've been a happy GOG.com customers since its inception (I still remember the first release of hostile waters here and the gog is closing down stunt!), however lately my purchases on this site fell dramatically.
The main reason has been the x-box game pass. For much less than the price of a game per month it's been decimating my gog wishlist for many "good on discount" games.

While GOG remains a stalwart for classic games, anything newer (and more profitable for GOG) is now becoming a harder sale. While the newest AAA releases have always been mostly the domain of Steam, you could count on GOG to get them a few months later and usually with some discounts. Not as profitable for GOG as new releases, but still a strong segment profit.

Now the x-box game pass is gradually taking it away, almost every month releasing something that I wanted to try.
You may want to give the fact that the game pass doesn't let you own games as a fair counter-point (to which I agree), however many games aren't that strong on being played multiple times and once done they can be relegated to the virtual dustbin.

GOG of course is not the only store suffering from this and the impact has been felt on steam and partially epic as well (some of their exclusives have been released on x-box too), so I suspect publishers have been getting a good enough deal out of it.

Rather than comparing stores, I've been wondering how having what has been defined as "the nextflix of gaming" will change GOG and the distribution channels in general.

Will they launch their own subscription service?
Will they start including one or more DLC in order to give more content?
Are there going to be more aggressive sales?
Is GOG going to put an even stronger focus on classic games as that is their least likely to be influenced niche?

Personally I would see very positively GOG going after Microsoft's own classic games, they have a huge backlog of untouched gems from the 1990s/early 2000s that are awaiting to be re-discovered (Age of Empires is just the tip of the iceberg!) but I'm sure the community can find other, more creative avenues.

What do you guys think?

What i think ? i dislike subscriptions and rather buy the games and play them. If i wanted to deal with subs and drm crap i would use steam but i don't. I also don't feel the need to give microshit my money and especially not a subscription to their services.

I guess i'm in the negative camp but i really, really don't want to deal with corps like Microsoft or Sony when it comes to games, NETFLIX for gaming is just a horrible fucking idea because it will not stop there and migrate fully into cloud sooner or later as people take the bait not to have it optional then say goodbye to have any say in how you use your games.

I'm under the impression that subscription services mostly appeals to people who go through a lot of games quickly, especially AAA titles. GOG doesn't get many big releases though. I'd rather just pay for what I want.

GOG does have a some DLC for a few titles. However, some dlc that is available on Steam or other storefronts are missing, paid or free....there is a long-standing problem of publishers failing to support their games on GOG.

There some Micrsoft-published games that interest me like Rise of Nations (sadly my retail copy doesn't work on Windows 10). However, Microsoft is content with keeping their games on their own store and Steam.

GOG has been a niche service from the start, with a niche consumer group, I don't see that changing. If GOG wanted to be like every other online retailer they could have just started selling Steam-keys a long time ago.

Personally I don't like GamePass, because I feel I can support the developers better by actually buying their games.

I would think that whether it's worth it or not depends on the games and your gaming habits. I looked at the list of games, and the few that interest me like Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Don't Starve, etc, are the ones I own DRM-Free because I'd definitely want to play again in many times the future without risk of them ending up on the "Leaving Soon" list (like any Netflix-style subscription list, the content is never permanent). Eg, they have Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online but no actual Morrowind to Skyrim? Dishonored 2 and Endless Space 2 but not the (better in my opinion) originals? Others like The Talos Principle, Oxenfree, Tacoma, Minit, Ark: Survival Evolved, Hello Neighbor, Surviving Mars, FTL & Subnautica have all been GOG / Epic Game freebies, etc, which thins the offering considerably. I think it's regularly more than "a few months". 5-10 years is more like it. Eg, Bioshock (2009) took 9 years to come here, Skyrim (2011) is still nowhere to be seen and whilst Prey (2017) came here after 3 years, Dishonored (2012) and Deus Ex Human Revolution (2011) took 8-9 years. The only stuff we've gotten "after a few months" are games like Metro Exodus for which being an Epic Store exclusive has actually done GOG a favour in being included as a one-year delayed re-release. I can see the value of it as to how I treat Netflix - something useful for "watch once then throwaway" whilst still keeping a smaller collection of favourites / classics on Blu-Ray, but as mentioned above this is probably relative to the individual, and personally I find I replay a higher percentage of games more than I rewatch the wall of mediocre movies. I must have racked up +1,000 hours on both Age of Empires alone over the years and would never want to "rent" games like that vs owning them at any price. I doubt there will be a GOG subscription service as that would be impossible to do without introducing DRM. And even if they did, it doesn't mean we'll see anywhere near the same catalogue since as we've seen with Netflix vs Amazon Prime vs Disney, the "pull" of subscription services are all about exclusives at which point they make the most sense when done on a major publisher level (Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, etc), rather than 3rd party store level who don't have a large self-published catalogue to do the same. So would I but it's not GOG that's the hold-up, it's been Microsoft all along. It's why I have zero regrets grabbing the DRM-Free Age of Empires DVD Collectors Edition before they became "Microsoft's Skyrim" (ie, "cash-cow" games that get re-released every 3 years without ever actually coming to GOG once). Same goes for other missing Microsoft classics like Freelancer, Links Golf, Monster Truck Madness, Midtown Madness, etc, I never actually got rid of my disc versions and simply hunted down NoCD's (where required), so they all still work fine today. It would be great to have them here, but "Microsoft's gonna Microsoft..."

You know Cyberpunk is expected to sell 20 mill units, some of them like myself surely move to GoG.

I like Origin and Game Pass myself. And Steam Sales. Thats pretty much it. Ubisoft is a bit greedy and Epic Games has good deals sometimes.

I'm the "wrong type of gamer" for subscription services.

I want to play what I want - when I want.
Plus: it can occur that I have long pauses inbetween games.

Subscription services don't "pay off "under these circumstances.

I sip games slowly. Already, a game I was playing on Xbox left the game pass market. So now I either have to buy it or wit playing.

I did not renew my subscription.

I'm sure many will want to pay for the subscription service. But it doesn't fit my gaming needs at all.

To me, calling a game subscription service "Netflix of games" is somewhat misleading, as I consider movies and games quite different media and pastime.

It takes 1.5-2 hours to finish a movie, so it doesn't really take much effort to me to watch even 2-3 movies within one day (I have done that on e.g. some weekends). Or TV series, at best I recall watching five episodes of Game of Thrones per day when I was on a GoT marathon. So yeah, for movies and TV series, a subscription service makes sense.

Do I finish even one game within a day, day after day? Practically never, unless it is some very short experimental indie game maybe. LIMBO and Portal got the closest, I think I finished both within two days (each).

Depending on a genre, it may take me several weeks, or even months, to finish one game. Partly it may be that I am a slow gamer, I like to take my time in games, explore every nook and cranny and finish every subquest in RPGs, kill each and every enemy in a RTS etc.

Many games are also highly replayable and can't be really "finished" at all, the easiest example being e.g. competitive online shooters. I've e.g. played thousands of hours of Team Fortress 2, and I never felt I "finished" the game. Much fewer movies, and especially TV-series, have similar "replay value" as you can't "play" them at different manners to get a different experience, or hone your skills with repeated views to become a master in watching the said movie etc. Movies like Robocop which I've watched dozens of times are very rare exceptions to me, while there are lots of games I have finished several times, or have an urge to replay.

So, yeah, I personally consider the "ownership" of games generally much more important than that of movies or especially TV-series, and I am consuming games at a much slower rate than movies (or TV series).

Also, unlike with movies, I have a stronger urge to "archive" games for future use as games come and go, and they are mostly dependent on certain hardware platform (or emulation). With movies and TV-series that is not the case, e.g. it isn't like the Robocop movie that I have can be watched only on a CRT TV from the 90s. Old Chaplin movies can still be watched everywhere, they haven't disappeared from the face of the earth because there are no devices to play them on anymore, or because some license expired. How many times have we seen games disappear from stores due to e.g. expiring licenses, or because they don't work on newer Windows OSes?

Music is the same as movies and TV-series, much more future-proof than games. Hence I don't fret about not being able to ever listen to my favorite Pink Floyd, Supertramp and The Who albums, even if misplaced my old CDs. I am certain they are all available in e.g. Spotify, or even Youtube.

tl;dr: A game subscription service may make more sense to people who jump to new games all the time, spending preciously little time per game. I am not that person though.

Is Game Pass on PC actually becoming *that* popular that it can threaten Steam, GOG and others? In my circle of acquaintances, RL or online, I know exactly one person only who is using it so far.

Anyway, I don't see any way how GOG could compete with that by doing their own subscription service. How would it work without DRM? They'd just alienate part of the customer base.

To me personally, a "Netflix of gaming" doesn't have such a big appeal, since I already have a HUGE games library myself that allows me to pick freely whatever I want to play and in my own time. Granted, it does not include the latest AAA games, but I fear those won't run on my rig anyway, so ... (On the other hand, I concede that the existence of this huge library of mine already makes me buy less and less games from GOG, because at this point I have most of what I wanted from here, and the new stuff is still too expensive, considering that I have loads of alternatives to it).

I still have games from games for windows dead that have never run (halo 2?). All game pass and such like are doing is devaluing the games that appear on them. Eventually no one will want to pay for anything, it will all be ad filled streamed games. So yes, supporting such a thing does affect gog as it helps kill off drm free, open source and those kinds of things.

Oh good, I was wondering how long until this trend reaches here! Without fail, whenever there's a games sales thread on reddit, there's always someone that feels the need to bring up the fact that whatever game is being discussed, is actually a terrible deal because you can get it cheaper on XBOX pass. As if buying a game on sale is the same as paying a subscription.

It's the typical hipster mentality. You can't possible talk about eating healthy if you eat meat, you have to be vegan/vegetarian that only buys non-mass produced, bio foods. What is it with these people advertising their choices, as if they are being payed to so.

Now that I've wrote this, I realize that my response might come across too strong, since I'm venting my frustration at constantly seeing XBOX pass being casually mention, and nobody actually calling these people on their shit. This subscription system might work for you, but don't turn a blind eye to its huge disadvantage. You are basically advertising renting a house, instead of buying the same house for cheap.

Best thing ever. Don't care about all the complaints. I mostly get it for for free anyway. I've played thousands of dollars of games. Played games that I wouldn't think of buying and ended up loving. Played games that I just wanted to try out to see what they were like. Played little 2 hour indie games that I'd never buy at $25, but were fun. Played all those game once that I have no need to ever play again. Built a personal curated list of newer games that go onto a "buy in a few years on deep sale list" for the ones I know I really like.

All people can come up with is "but you don't ownz the games!" Like people are idiots and don't understand what renting means. These are games, not houses. They are not investments. I don't care anymore what I ownz, how many collections of ones and zeros I own on a hard drive or on a digital shelf when I die. I care about what I experience only.
Or the one I really like "I'm concerned about the industry" argument. The industry is gonna go where the industries gonna go. I'm not going to change it, but sure as shit I'll exploit anything that works for me along the way.

I would just like to say

fuck subscriptions

thank you. Have a good day.

Gamepass is awesome plenty of good games for cheap.
I wonder if it worths for the companies to release their games there.

I cant see how it is any worse than buying a game on steam or other drm stores , you dont own the games there it is in the contract. So buying a game on steam isn't any more yours than paying a monthly sub sometimes