GOG (Good Old Games) is struggling financially

[D13H4RD]

9 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

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.

That's my concern. I hope GoG holds on because this is not competitive behavior. 

[DesolationGod]

Epic store can afford to operate on a 12% margin because of the billions in fortnite dollars rolling in... once that stops or diminishes, we will see what changes, the fact the payment fees are being passed on to consumers kinda hints they are operating at a slim profit, which for companies that the store is their main source of income simply is not reasonable. They are just going to pass the cost on to us whereas steam and every other digital goods store eats the cost.   As for GOG, honestly ive never bought games from their store, for me its just easier/more convenient to have it all on steam or origin(for EA games).

[S w a t s o n]

7 hours ago, PacketMan said:

By the time CyberPunk is out, GoG would be dead if rumours are true lol

I dont think the rumours are true though

[IntMD]

Like someone else said... 'For financial reasons' does not not mean they are low on money/losing money at all. They might just not need as many people to help run it as previously so, 'for finanacial reasons' let some people go. No point in paying people if you don't actually need them anymore.

[S w a t s o n]

7 hours ago, Humbug said:

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...

 

CD Projekt is the publisher for CDPR so if CDPR is doing well, the publisher should be as well.

[pas008]

maybe the platform/work is done and no need for all those employees

 

[yian88]

Epic Games dirty strategy is going to put all except steam/origin/ubisoft/battlenet out of business, discord games, GOG not a chance they will be gone by next year if Epic pursues their goals aggressively, EPIC have done the worst possible for PC gaming making even more exclusive deals, i will never buy anything from them and they wont be offering any sales or region prices or ability to buy keys from other "illegal" cd key stores.

The fact that UE4 games are free for their store makes it even worse, because Epic store will never be available for linux/mac only windows, we were going in the right direction with steam and proton and now shit Epic move ruins everything, fk em.

[brownninja97]

2 hours ago, DesolationGod said:

Epic store can afford to operate on a 12% margin because of the billions in fortnite dollars rolling in... once that stops or diminishes, we will see what changes, the fact the payment fees are being passed on to consumers kinda hints they are operating at a slim profit, which for companies that the store is their main source of income simply is not reasonable. They are just going to pass the cost on to us whereas steam and every other digital goods store eats the cost.   As for GOG, honestly ive never bought games from their store, for me its just easier/more convenient to have it all on steam or origin(for EA games).

Epic also has a lot fewer features to cater for, there is a lot of stuff steam has to deal with, all the reviews, all the screenshots, artwork, pictures, mods, curators, leaderboards, forums etc etc . All that takes up space and bandwidth. Epic simply have less to pay for at the moment. 

 

1 minute ago, yian88 said:

Epic Games dirty strategy is going to put all except steam/origin/ubisoft/battlenet out of business, discord games, GOG not a chance they will be gone by next year if Epic pursues their goals aggressively, EPIC have done the worst possible for PC gaming making even more exclusive deals, i will never buy anything from them and they wont be offering any sales or region prices or ability to buy keys from other "illegal" cd key stores.

The fact that UE4 games are free for their store makes it even worse, because Epic store will never be available for linux/mac only windows, we were going in the right direction with steam and proton and now shit Epic move ruins everything, fk em.

Out of all of those discord and GOG are likely most at risk. Steam, Origin & Uplay will be fine, steam has the brute force of the vast majority of pc games on it, origin has the steady stream from access and EA games are popular, uplay can survive off its own games as well and I expect them to got subscription based in the future as well. 

 

Sadly at the moment I dont think epic is going to fail, they have too much funds to unless people are very patient which I doubt very highly they will continue the brute force tactic, this being said I dont have the best history at predicting the future, I hope Epic fail however I dont think they will, there are too many people that dont give a crap that about having 50 launchers. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

8 hours ago, Granular said:

Cyber-Bunk?

Cyber-Bank. As in we're counting on it to boost our bank  

 

7 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

Who cares?

Me, and any game developer trying to sell games to people like me, as the only (even preferred) alternative is to sell them themselves directly without DRM.

 

7 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

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

Yes, I'm sure the financial health of every company in the industry can be determined by whether they have sold you something or not.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 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. 

 

It depends. None of us really know the cost structure of these companies very well in order to determine a profitable minimum cut, especially taking into account that a lower equilibrium cut in the industry may impact prices, and prices will affect demand. Complicating things further, all these platforms are tied to bigger companies on other stages of the business (like publishing/developing), so actual financial results may get blurred by cross-subsidies between them.

 

On the other hand, perhaps more importantly, 12% of $60 times millions of copies may be way more sustainable than 30% of $2 times a few thousand copies...

[dalekphalm]

9 hours 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.

I've seen nothing saying that an exclusive contract is necessary to get onto the Epic Store. I'd be surprised if that were the case. The Exclusive contract is almost certainly optional.

[Humbug]

1 hour ago, yian88 said:

The fact that UE4 games are free for their store makes it even worse, because Epic store will never be available for linux/mac only windows, we were going in the right direction with steam and proton and now shit Epic move ruins everything, fk em.

Ya it's really sad for Linux gamers if more devs take up the epic store exclusivity deal.

 

Of course it's their choice if they do not want to directly support Linux. Free market, no qualms.

 

But what the exclusivity clause does is it bans the dev from working with a store which does support Linux such as GOG or Steam. So the dev cannot ship on Linux once they sign that contract.

 

Even if you are a windows gamer who doesn't care about Linux you should remember that there are over a million active pc gamers using it and there is no reason to have artificial barriers like this blocking them from enjoying their hobby.

[Humbug]

17 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I've seen nothing saying that an exclusive contract is necessary to get onto the Epic Store. I'd be surprised if that were the case. The Exclusive contract is almost certainly optional.

Ya i don't think it's a requirement either. Haven't seen any any evidence for it either way. Based on Tim Sweeney's comnents they make special deals with devs for exclusivity. I am not sure if the 12% revenue share deal is for exclusives only, or if exclusives get some other benefit on top of that. My point was that if more devs sign exclusivity deals the more it will hurt other stores because when you commit to that deal you agree not to launch on gog for a year.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Humbug said:

Ya i don't think it's a requirement either. Haven't seen any any evidence for it either way. Based on Tim Sweeney's comnents they make special deals with devs for exclusivity. I am not sure if the 12% revenue share deal is for exclusives only, or if exclusives get some other benefit on top of that. My point was that if more devs sign exclusivity deals the more it will hurt other stores because wjen they commit to that they have to agree not to launch on gog for a year.

I'm fairly certain the 12% cut is store wide. The special benefit for exclusives is pretty much just a large pile of money.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Have you heard of that joke where someone gets asked what do you think of increased gas prices in an interview and person responding it doesn't affect me, i still only buy 50$ worth of gas

yeah, so, the last game i bought on day 1 was ACS back in 2015 when the games costed 20$,  bought Shadow of War gold edition because there was a glitch that listed gold edition for just 20$

that's my limit, idk what game it is, never gonna buy a game above 20$, so go ahead price it insanely high, gonna get it on sale when its below 20$ anyway(edited)
you have to realize 20$ in India is as costly as 60$ for you guys over there

most of the people here wont spend more than that, they took so much time for people to get used to buying games and ruined it all by making them expensive starting 2015
so in this case, it wouldn't matter if they increase the prices, gonna get it when the product gets to that amount anyway.

[Theminecraftaddict555]

9 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

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

1. Why are you on here then?

2. Wow so if a company doesn't get your buck or visit, then they aren't doing well LOL

3. Oh and who might care if you ask? Well IDK, alot of people in this comment section 

[FratStar]

11 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

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

Myself and probably quite a few forum members care. I quite enjoy having DRM free games. It makes my life a bit easier especially if I have to migrate drives which I do regularly enough for it to be an issue for me.

[Maslofski]

ironic. their main feature, no drm, is the one thing that makes them the only company ok to die without much harm to peoples libraries

[Andreas Lilja]

https://www.altchar.com/games-news/589430/cyberpunk-2077-will-not-be-a-gog-exclusive

 

Good to hear. 

[mr moose]

Either these are just disgruntled ex employees or the whole DRM free thing is not a good business model.

[Doobeedoo]

It's great to have DRM free store, supporting it is good.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Well. I gave GOG a shot. Bought quite a few games there, if available,... and now I am moving all the games i still play to steam.

Lack of Workshop and active Forums is the primary reason for me. Steam DRM can be removed by a first grader, so if (and this is a huge if for me), I ever need my games DRM free, I can just fire up Notepad++ and remove it.

 

They started strong, but failed to deliver what people came to expect from Steam.

You can't enter a market, without at least offering the basic stuff people expect to see.

[Syntaxvgm]

I wonder why 

[alicskysareblue]

Man I love gog I have a windows xp pc and play old games on it. Most of those games are from gog. If gog goes under alot of us classic pc game enthusiasts are screwed. Physical copies can be rare or very expensive.

 

Side note Im really starting to hate the epic store. Iv already chosen to boycott epic over there anti-competitive tactics

[Humbug]

13 hours ago, elderago said:

Man I love gog I have a windows xp pc and play old games on it. Most of those games are from gog.

Do you need a seperate pc for that? Can't you just run windows xp in a virtual machine on top of modern windows 10 or Linux?