GOG (Good Old Games) is struggling financially

[Andreas Lilja]

Don't really buy games anymore (care about old games, DRM not so much), but the experience is 10/10. Wouldn't want to see them gone. 

https://www.pcgamer.com/gog-lays-off-around-a-dozen-employees-amid-report-of-financial-struggles/?fbclid=IwAR148mK1hzEI8Utz0VMTtbZkY8B4VCGzHF2Xwxj9UW9ZcAeb9s0iJKEPsws&utm_campaign=buffer_pcgamerfb&utm_content=bufferc52b7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

 

Quote

Digital distribution platform GOG has confirmed with Kotaku that it laid off roughly a dozen people last week. A reason for the cuts wasn't provided, but one of the employees who was let go told Kotaku that staff were told it was "a financial decision." 

In contrast to that rosy framing, the former employee said that GOG is "dangerously close to being in the red," and suggested that the trend toward a greater revenue share for developers—the Epic Game Store offers 88 percent of revenues to developers, compared to the 70 percent offered by GOG and Steam—will soon put pressure on GOG's bottom line, or already has.

 

 

[williamcll]

If GOG dies piracy will become common more.

[S w a t s o n]

Is CD Projekt struggling? GOG will soon see money from cyberpunk 2077, get it from GOG if you want to help but I have to doubt that CD projekt is hurting so badly they have to shutter GOG

[Orangeator]

How very sad:( I love GOG for everything they stand for. DRM free and keeping an older generation of games alive, up-to-date, and playable. I wish they would at least start asking for donations or starting fund-raising or something. Would absolutely hate to see them disappear off the market...  

[D13H4RD]

We ought to be getting CB 2077 from GoG.

 

 

[PlayStation 2]

Almost as if no one cares about having to use more than one storefront for games when they can get it somewhere else.

[XR6]

6 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I mean if GOG didn't confirm anything, and all we have to go off of is a laid-off employee, is this really credible?

Yep. That employee might just be salty for losing their job so who knows if this is true.

[Delicieuxz]

I don't buy it.

 

GoG, owned by CD Projekt, is the 2nd most-popular 3rd-party games digital reseller, and they take 30% on all sales. They must be making huge money. According to Tim Sweeney, the profits from 30% of sales unreasonably exceed the costs of the services provided by a digital games reseller - so much so that Epic is taking just 12% and Tim claims to be able to develop many of the same features that Steam has with less than 1 of that 12%.

 

12 people being laid off represents ridiculously small workforce cost savings for a mega-million dollar company like CD Projekt, and when the company says they've recently hired nearly twice as many, then it isn't a sign of financial trouble. Also, CD Projekt are looking to hire a lot more people.

 

“We were told it’s a financial decision” doesn't necessarily equate it's because the company is struggling financially. It could just be that having more people in a certain position was costing the company without accomplishing anything for the company. Or, it could just be something said to be comforting of the person getting laid off, like 'it's not you, it's me'.

 

Also, if CD Projekt was struggling then an obvious thing to do to help them out would be to make CyberPunk 2077 exclusive to GoG. Yet, CD Projekt have recently stated that they won't make CyberPunk 2077 exclusive to their platform.

I think this is just a sensationalist story being spun out of an anecdotal detail.

[RejZoR]

People actully buy CD Project RED games from anywhere else than directly on GOG? I know they do provide it, but still. I did the opposite, I bought most of their games on Steam AND GOG (same games).

[Mihle]

CD Project, that owns GoG and CD Project RED (games developer) might be trying to hold both as separate as possible.

 

That means even if the games developer, CD Project RED has lots of money in the bank (and they probably do), they still want GOG itself to be in the plus every year. That might be why.

 

Or maybe they just had too many people compared to the work they had, and therefore got rid of someone they paid but wasn't able to give enough work tasks to.

 

I don't know how hard it easy it is to lay someone off in Poland btw.

 

Is also a chance it's not true. But even if it is, I hope GOG will continue to exist forever.

[Granular]

3 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

CB 2077

Cyber-Bunk?

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, Granular said:

Cyber-Bunk?

Cyber-Burritos

[Humbug]

If the Epic store becomes more popular then a lot of indie devs will be contractually prevented from releasing new games on GOG, due to the 1 year exclusivity clause with Epic.

[Humbug]

8 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Is CD Projekt struggling? GOG will soon see money from cyberpunk 2077, get it from GOG if you want to help but I have to doubt that CD projekt is hurting so badly they have to shutter GOG

The developer arm known as CD Projekt Red is doing well.

Maybe the part handling GOG (known as CD Projekt) is  not doing so well...?

 

Their infrastructure costs must be a lot smaller compared to steam, who maintain high end servers and ridiculous amounts of bandwidth in data centers all around the world. But maybe it's a case where they haven't reached the critical mass of customers required to make much profits on top of their infrastructure costs. Or they have too much staff because their back end isn't well automated enough. Just speculating...

 

[D13H4RD]

3 minutes ago, Humbug said:

If the Epic store becomes more popular then a lot of indie devs will be contractually prevented from releasing new games on GOG, due to the 1 year exclusivity clause with Epic.

That's my concern. Lack of choice

[RejZoR]

9 minutes ago, Humbug said:

If the Epic store becomes more popular then a lot of indie devs will be contractually prevented from releasing new games on GOG, due to the 1 year exclusivity clause with Epic.

They can do this. It'll just mean I won't buy those games at all. Mostly because Epic store and client are shit and they can shove exclusivity up theirs.

[Bcat00]

Who cares? I've never even visited their site in my entire lifetime so its no wonder they aren't doing well

[Humbug]

10 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

That's my concern. Lack of choice

And when we bring up the fact that we do not like PC game stores asking devs to sign exclusivity clauses people think we are trying to defend steam. 

 

I repeat it's not about steam. In ten years they may not be the dominant player anymore, but whoever it is we do not want a world where publishers are signing away their rights to particular stores and losing the freedom to sell their game where-ever they want. We are all better off if a dev can wake up one morning and think "hmmm let me see if I can move a few extra copies by launching on xyz store".

[Guest]

Always thought GoG was Games of Gondor 

[D13H4RD]

3 minutes ago, Humbug said:

And when we bring up the fact that we do not like PC game stores asking devs to sign exclusivity clauses people think we are trying to defend steam. 

 

I repeat it's not about steam. In ten years they may not be the dominant player anymore, but whoever it is we do not want a world where publishers are signing away their rights to particular stores and losing the freedom to sell the game where-ever they want. 

+1

 

The point is that people want healthy competition to Steam. A platform that is fair to both developers/publishers and consumers, even if some form of compromise has to be made between the two. Steam is very far from perfect, but Epic totally botched their image with exclusivity contracts done well before the client is ready for prime competition, and it didn't help that publishers like Deep Silver only added fuel to the fire.

 

It's not "Durr, iT's anOThEr lAUncHer". It's far more than that.

[laminutederire]

3 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I don't buy it.

 

GoG, owned by CD Projekt, is the 2nd most-popular 3rd-party games digital reseller, and they take 30% on all sales. They must be making huge money. According to Tim Sweeney, the profits from 30% of sales unreasonably exceed the costs of the services provided by a digital games reseller - so much so that Epic is taking just 12% and Tim claims to be able to develop many of the same features that Steam has with less than 1% of that 12%.

 

12 people being laid off represents ridiculously small workforce cost savings for a mega-million dollar company like CD Projekt, and when the company says they've recently hired nearly twice as many, then it isn't a sign of financial trouble. Also, CD Projekt are looking to hire a lot more people.

 

“We were told it’s a financial decision” doesn't necessarily equate it's because the company is struggling financially. It could just be that having more people in a certain position was costing the company without accomplishing anything for the company. Or, it could just be something said to be comforting of the person getting laid off, like 'it's not you, it's me'.

 

Also, if CD Projekt was struggling then an obvious thing to do to help them out would be to make CyberPunk 2077 exclusive to GoG. Yet, CD Projekt have recently stated that they won't make CyberPunk 2077 exclusive to their platform.

I think this is just a sensationalist story being spun out of an anecdotal detail.

I also know a guy who said he could produce cars like Toyota and the likes and that those old manufacturers were overselling their manufacturing costs. Now he can't even produce his cars to a reasonable degree.

To me the epic store seems to be like that. Aggressive marketing and non sustainable business model that'll just fade out to either be left to die like Tesla probably will, or to change to become more like steam or GoG are share wise. But in the meantime they can do ridiculous investments on the back of fortnite to gain market share while they can justify losing money.

I therefore would argue that it's a possibility that GoG may suffer financially until they release CB 2077, since it kinda has been a long time since any huge game has been released there on top of some indie titles switching over to epic.

One thing that is being ignored is that while steam and GoG could be taking less money, maybe 20-25% instead, they probably couldn't do less than that to still deliver on both the huge scale of consumers and the huge scale of games on their platforms. Epic doesn't have that yet so that's why they can make bold claims as well without an instant death.

[D13H4RD]

15 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

I also know a guy who said he could produce cars like Toyota and the likes and that those old manufacturers were overselling their manufacturing costs. Now he can't even produce his cars to a reasonable degree.

To me the epic store seems to be like that. Aggressive marketing and non sustainable business model that'll just fade out to either be left to die like Tesla probably will, or to change to become more like steam or GoG are share wise. But in the meantime they can do ridiculous investments on the back of fortnite to gain market share while they can justify losing money.

I therefore would argue that it's a possibility that GoG may suffer financially until they release CB 2077, since it kinda has been a long time since any huge game has been released there on top of some indie titles switching over to epic.

One thing that is being ignored is that while steam and GoG could be taking less money, maybe 20-25% instead, they probably couldn't do less than that to still deliver on both the huge scale of consumers and the huge scale of games on their platforms. Epic doesn't have that yet so that's why they can make bold claims as well without an instant death.

I don't think Epic's 12% cut can be sustainable over a long term, especially if they aspire to grow to the size and scale of Steam. 

 

Tim Sweeney's admission that the 12% cut does not cover any payment processing fees subject to the payment service used just adds to the limitations. 12% is a disruptive number and certainly very enticing to developers, but I don't think they can maintain that revenue split over the long term. 

[Stefan Payne]

5 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

According to Tim Sweeney, the profits from 30% of sales unreasonably exceed the costs of the services provided by a digital games reseller - so much so that Epic is taking just 12% and Tim claims to be able to develop many of the same features that Steam has with less than 1% of that 12%.

Yes but for example steam eats all transaction fees on your side while you have to pay for them on Epic store.

So paying with Paysafecard on Steam means that a 45€ Game costs you 45€. 

 

IIRC that is not the case on Epic. Don't know how it is on GoG.

 

So buttom line:
Sweeny is full of shit as with his stores transactional fees are on your end...

Wanna bet that he will raise the 12% to 25% or more once Steam is smaller??

[MoonSpot]

I could see this being true.  Rarely have I seen newer titles reach the price points other clients have dropped to during their respective sales.  Also newer AAA & AA titles are few and far between on GOG, so even checking in with the client doesn't happen unless I'm playing The Witcher.  Had a couple times I've staked out multiple clients for a particular title to snipe either the best deal or minimize the hit for picking it up on GOG for potential DRM-free goodness

Would personally like to see GOG pull through in the client wars though.  Be the Taco-Bell we need you to be GOG!

[laminutederire]

2 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

I don't think Epic's 12% cut can be sustainable over a long term, especially if they aspire to grow to the size and scale of Steam. 

 

Tim Sweeney's admission that the 12% cut does not cover any payment processing fees subject to the payment service used just adds to the limitations. 12% is a disruptive number and certainly very enticing to developers, but I don't think they can maintain that revenue split over the long term. 

Well they try to use that yo get exclusivity deals and suffocate the competition, which won't work for the powerhouse that is steam, but could suffocate GoG if it's stays as is for too long. Reason being that GoG success was more than partly achieved by the success of CDPR games, which they didn't release for now a rather long time to give and to the storefront. They kinda need to hold on until CB 2077.

That's a very sleazy move from epic which I hope won't get to be rewarded otherwise we'll have a duopoly steam/epic and that's it.