GOG.com

[udm]

GOG has only generated $7.8k net profit in 2018 on $34.5 million in sales. They burned them on R&D and operational costs.

lol what R&D

 

[sullynathan]

With GOG's rather low profits, is it time for many codexers to admit that GOG isn't as big as they think and most PC gamers really don't give a shit about lack of drm?

 

[vonAchdorf]

35 million in sales is really low. GOG seems to have a higher mind share than market share.

 

[sullynathan]

It would or should be easy for Epic to overtake it, no?

 

[Squid]

most PC gamers really don't give a shit about lack of drm?

Most don't. They just want to buy games on Steam because all of their friends are there and most of the multiplayer games are there. They won't give a shit about DRM until it directly affects them and bites them. Out of sight, out of mind. Who cares about DRM? I'm always online anyway. Yeah yeah.

I ain't sharing my games with the Steam users when the apocalypse happens.

 

[Removal]

lol what R&D

has to be that store/client update they did, they probably blew a ton of money on it
I'm still angry about how shit it is

 

[Melcar]

Yeah, I bet they thought this "Galaxy" thing was going to be awesome.

 

[Ismaul]

35 million in sales is really low.

When a huge number of your sales are made at 2 to 10$, 35 millions is quite a lot of products sold actually. All with tiny cuts going to server costs and shit.

I hope things get better for them, because we need a real alternative to Steam that also puts costumers first and has no DRM. With Epic yanking releases from GOG this year, it's going to be incredibly hard. I hope Epic crashes and burns, and that GOG survives the hard times coming and grows much more sustainable. But I don't know how they're going to do that. I don' think pre-orders for Bloodlines and Cyberpunk are going to cut it.

 

[sullynathan]

because we need a real alternative to Steam that also puts costumers first and has no DRM.

But that's not going to happen at all. I brought this point up in the other thread a month ago, games that release on gog sell even better on steam with DRM.

 

[Melcar]

GOG to me was never a Steam alternative. Rather a place to get old games and maybe the odd game I could not get on Steam. They just don't have the catalogue to enable them to be a viable competitor to the big digital stores. Should have stayed in their niche.

 

[Alienman]

Kinda inevitable to expand, you will run out of old games eventually. What I don't get is how you only make a few thousand from 35 million.

 

[Removal]

well, GoG somewhat hit their limit of easy to grab and fix up older games without getting bogged down in figuring out who owns what rights and which widows or defunct companies need to be paid off to get said rights. The Diablo move was pretty smart though, and partnering up would be a stop gap until they can get themselves in order. But then again, that model would hit the limits pretty fast.
CDPR could probably justify running GoG at a loss since it has given them a bigger name and a not insignificant part of the digital market

I just want them to steal the Metaltech rights from HiRez so I can stop fiddling with HiRez's terrible isos and lack of soundtracks

 

[vonAchdorf]

Kinda inevitable to expand, you will run out of old games eventually. What I don't get is how you only make a few thousand from 35 million.

Accounting.
And they have a staff of 180 people.

 

[CryptRat]

Stores other than GoG which propose DRM-free installers generally also allow to only sell a Steam key instead which is what many studios choose to do. I don't know if GoG converted many studios from not wanting to sell games without DRM to finally agreeing to, maybe they did or maybe many studios have always just considered it's not worth bothering selling anything else than Steam keys. Either way that GoG does not leave the choice and that they became big enough that many studios bother to sell on GoG and then sell DRM-free versions of their games while otherwise they would not is truly great, I love GoG for that.

 

[GrainWetski]

Kinda inevitable to expand, you will run out of old games eventually. What I don't get is how you only make a few thousand from 35 million.

While the entitled devs would have you believe it costs nothing to run a store, it actually does.

 

[udm]

With GOG's rather low profits, is it time for many codexers to admit that GOG isn't as big as they think and most PC gamers really don't give a shit about lack of drm?

It's not that though. DRM-free can definitely be a huge boon, if and only if everything else is functional. However, Galaxy still remains a piece of trash, every redesign of their site is worse than the last, and the one thing that would certainly make them lose out to other stores is that they reject games that they could sell as part of their USP (or they begin to sell them 1-2 months late after the initial hype wave). It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they're not making as much as they should, especially when they're doing a piss poor job at the one thing they should be doing - selling games that people want to play. Instead, they sit contentedly in their ivory tower, acting like they're the gatekeeper of the gaming industry. No shit Sherlock, that's why you're bleeding money.

 

[Valky]

They rejected Grimoire, that alone shows that they have accepted their death.

 

[Ismaul]

the one thing that would certainly make them lose out to other stores is that they reject games that they could sell as part of their USP (or they begin to sell them 1-2 months late after the initial hype wave)

Yeah that's one of the most worrying things about GOG, aside from their financial troubles. Them rejecting games that would fit perfectly in their catalogue and that their audience would want is mindboggling. I hope they change their minds about it.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Kinda inevitable to expand, you will run out of old games eventually. What I don't get is how you only make a few thousand from 35 million.

And yet there are still some Good Old Games that aren't available in their catalogue. So while they would eventually run out of them, they still haven't, and are instead focusing of getting games that I have no interest in.

 

[catfood]

Warcrap 2 is now available if anyone cares about that shitty game.

EDIT: also Warcrap 1

 

[Infinitron]

https://af.gog.com/game/warcraft_bundle?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/game/warcraft_orcs_and_humans?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/game/warcraft_2_battlenet_edition?as=1649904300

 

[vonAchdorf]

Stores other than GoG which propose DRM-free installers generally also allow to only sell a Steam key instead which is what many studios choose to do. I don't know if GoG converted many studios from not wanting to sell games without DRM to finally agreeing to, maybe they did or maybe many studios have always just considered it's not worth bothering selling anything else than Steam keys. Either way that GoG does not leave the choice and that they became big enough that many studios bother to sell on GoG and then sell DRM-free versions of their games while otherwise they would not is truly great, I love GoG for that.

Didn't GOG recently announce that they will support selling GOG keys on third party stores?

 

[Dux]

Never really thought about it before but this layout design really is fucking terrible.

Spoiler

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I am starting to hate GOG with a passion.

For the first time in quite a while I'm going to make a purchase from them. I have a measly quarter in wallet funds, but because GOG wants to calculate my purchases in Euros it throws me this warning:

You currently have $0.25 in Wallet Funds on your account, but completing this order will result in €4.10 being added as a new, separate Wallet Funds balance. Please note that merging Wallet Funds balances in two different currencies is NOT POSSIBLE.

I'm then provided with a 'click here' message to change my purchase into USD, except it DOESN'T WORK.

I had to cancel my purchase, tell GOG ONCE AGAIN to switch everything on my account to USD (I last did that at the start of the Spring Sale) then restart the purchase again.

I get the feeling that for some strange reason they're actively trying to get rid of me as a customer. So far they're doing a good job of it.

 

[Siobhan]

GOG has always been that neighbors' kid that has potential but lacks discipline and drops the ball when it counts the most. The one you use to teach your own kids a lesson about the importance of diligence, attention to detail, sticking to your guns. Everything they've touched has been a case of "good idea with sloppy execution", with hobbyists in their own community providing much better alternatives:

- their downloader was a flaky windows-only POS that kept crashing while one dude in his spare time wrote a much better Python client with regular expressions, update notifications, automatic filtering by language and OS, changelog download, downloading and filtering of extras, and much more; it's only limited by serious design flaws in GOG's API

- their website has always been unbearable without BarefootEssentials, which --- again --- is maintained by one dude in his spare time (and got partially bricked by the most recent redesign, so now I can't find anything worth buying anymore during sales)

- their DOSBOX configs are lazy or downright borked, and they don't get fixed even after years of complaints; if you want it to work well, go to the game's forum and read the sticky there

- I'm still expecting their Linux support to turn into a total dumpster fire once enough time has passed to create serious library incompatibilities

- their game "curation"; though I expect this is primarily a case of penny-wise, pound-foolish. Save some money on hosting (possibly) less profitable games, at the expense of your portfolio being so eclectic that you constantly drive your own customers to the competition. Not smart