Do you mind giveaways for GOG keys?
In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore. With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller.
So no more 70/30 for GOG? Interesting.
Related to the news that 18 people were let go and GOG has (small) financial problems, this can be called the "Epic effect".
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Unfortunately. Hopefully they last for years. They are about the only place where one can legally find many of the old gems. In many cases, if I have a choice of GOG vs Steam editions, I end up buying the GOG edition if it is reasonably close in price. I often prefer the old games to the newer ones, or at least, I can afford the older (and cheaper?) games.
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And this is the thing that bothers me. Tencent pumps its money into Epic and with the addition of the Fortnite money Epic can pull the stunt of lowering the cut. They hope it doesn't hurt them in the long run due to higher sale numbers and due to having a strong financial backup (Tencent) in the background.
Developers now can put pressure on platforms like GOG and literally coerce them: "If you don't lower your cut from 30% to 20%, we simply will sell our product exclusively on Epic and you don't get any money at all. You will agree with us that less money is still better than zero money."
GOG now is forced to lower their cut to stay competitive but without a strong financial backer and without any kind of Fortnite money so they have to cut costs to stay efficient. Resulting in the end of the fair price agreement, resulting in higher costs for some/many people, resulting in less sales, resulting in even more financial struggles, resulting in a win for Epic Store.
What Epic and Tencent are doing is literally trying to become the next monopoly by bullying others out of business. These are mob tactics.
Fair competition is always good and a healthy competition should always be good for the customer. I just can not call this fair what is happening at the moment.
But huge conglomerates like Tencent don't play fair, otherwise they would not be those huge conglomerates. Considering gaming, they now have stock in Riot Games (100%), Epic Games (48,4%), Activision Blizzard (12%) and Supercell (84,3%, pushing for 100%).
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Eh, it is more complex than that. GOG's issue starts with the people. As in, the gamers. As long as the average herd mentality is that "doooh, I only use Steam", then you can tell people that sure, GOG is somewhat more expensive (seems to average on the low 10s in percentage), but you do not have to worry about any limitations beyond that game's initial startup requirements.
We reached the point from Steam's initial launch, where using a launcher was considered a pointless hassle, to where people not even knowing how to install and run a game without one.
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Tencent pumps its money into Epic and with the addition of the Fortnite money Epic can pull the stunt of lowering the cut.
You seem to think it's impossible to take a lower cut and make profit at the same time? That only the Fortnite money enables them to do that because they don't make money that way? I beg to differ. Valve does not take the 30% because they have to. They are actually the most profitable company per employee in the USA. That 30% isn't necessary at all in order to make profit. Valve could have made huge profits all those years with a lower cut, but of course they chose not to. If you're the only big player on the market, there is no need to do that.
I don't like some things Epic does. But this - imagine there was no Epic, and Valve suddenly decided to lower their cut by 10%. More money for the devs. Everybody would have applauded them. Not the lower cut is the problem here. It's that Epic does it, not Steam...
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they dont actually have financial problems (sensationalised reporting out there), though they did have a bad quarter on the last report.
as to the people let go, I believe some are at least from language depts they may no longer be supporting.
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Wow. in the US, the sale prices are the same, usually. Usually, the only difference for me is if I own part of it on steam and steam has a "Complete your bundle" deal. Or if GOG has extras (like Baldur's Gate HD on GOG includes BG Original, but does not on steam). DRM-free is always a huge plus, as is my own offline installers.
Steam, however, has giftcards.
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Hopefully GOG keeps existing, DRM free games are always better. Sadly, it's way cheaper for me to buy games on Steam.
Epic is not only NOT competing against Steam, making games exclusive to their paltform instead of having a better service, but also making smaller stores like GOG struggle to make any money at all.
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Exactly. The whole "discount on completing your bundle" helps steam get my money. I vastly prefer GOG (to steam or other stores), but in my current financial state, unless there are exclusives, I don't really want to spend more on GOG for the same product which I can buy cheaper elsewhere.
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seems people are more interested in cheap prices than drm-free games, and that won't be enough to keep gog working since it's the only *exclusive* feature they offer.
it looks a bit similar to what epic is doing. epic "invests" in their store with fortnite money, and gog with witcher and soon cyberpunk. i'm sure it's more complex than "take money from our game to run the place" but it sure sounds like the store alone can't make enough profit to keep investors happy.
anyway, they had some prices with 18% discount for my region (comparing the steam store), but that still doesn't reach reseller prices for steam keys...
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can't make enough profit to keep investors happy
that was also my first impression reading that "don't worry, we're ok". i don't know if articles about their financial situation are just pure speculation, but the more i read those comments, the more my impression gets stronger.
a pity, if they really are in troubles.
a video linked by one of their employees to know a little more about them and their revolutionary idea:
GOG: Preserving Gaming's Past & Future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffngZOB1U2A
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Have you tried Railroad Tycoon 2? It is one of my all-time favorite games.
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For me all of them are great.
Fallout 1 + 2 are best postapo tactical RPGs I have ever played.
Deus Ex 1 + 2 was the best FPS RPG in a cyberpunk world and all endings were great.
Baldur's Gate 1 + 2 are the best RPGs with D&D 2.5 system.
Icewind Dale 1 + 2 give me more fighting that I loved from Baldur's Gate.
DA:O Was amazing because of the difference betwen races you start with and how the game later makes some parts of the game different (dialogues).
You should also play Shadowrun Returns + Shadowrun: Dragonfall + Shadowrun: Hong Kong because they are great Tactical RPG Cyberpunk games.
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Thank you! I have Deus Ex GOTY, 2, 3, and Human Revolution but have not gotten very far into them.
I also have Baldur's Gate 1 (Enhanced, from GOG, so it includes the original), Icewind Dale 1 & 2, and DA:O-UE.
I have Shadowrun Returns and Dragonfall.
Of these, the only ones I have played are DA:O and Deus Ex 1. Thank you for the synopsis! i appreciate it.
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seems people are more interested in cheap prices than drm-free games
This is unquestionably true.
Steam is just too reliable for most people to think about DRM. I think most of us know that our Steam games could disappear at any time... but Steam being shut down seems too unlikely to be a real concern.
If GOG were a movie villain, they would find a hacker to take Steam offline for a few days, so they could step in and remind people that such a thing could never happen with GOG's DRM-free games.
(It's probably good that GOG is not a movie villain, though).
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I wonder if this is the reason for it:
Gog lays off around a dozen reportedly due to financial trouble.
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If we listen to game sellers, the game industry is in crisis and profits are sinking.
But a few days ago, I watched a news report saying game sales were at record highs last year in my country...
So, who's lying? 🤔🤔
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Neither, ironically. This is the big drawback of unchecked raw wild capitalism. The game companies have record income and even profit, but since investors are interested in future growth possibilities, which have disappeared entirely from the sector, they will pull their money from the video game stocks. This means lower capital to work with, which means they usually either try to monetise even more aggressively or lay off people. Since none of the US or even most European companies are like Nintendo where they cut the paycheck of the top management, they always cut the costs at the bottom.
(Activision fired almost 800 people, their CEO in the meanwhile received a larger salary bonus for doing it than what those people's entire year of salary cost.)
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not exactly, but kinda close.
revenue and profit are two different things, and a company can have high revenue and low profit, or vice versa. For investors, the video game industry is all about expected growth, and when something disrupts that growth, they may sell their shares and invest elsewhere.
This doesn't actually affect the company directly - shares were sold a long time ago, and the share price does not affect how much capital an existing company has to work with*. But, perversely, while management's job is to make a profit, the board of directors' job is to increase share price. On top of that, management and directors are often paid in shares, meaning that if the share price is down, so is their income.
*unless of course they're trying to raise more capital by selling shares, but that's not really applicable here.
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it's in crisis because they always want more and more profit and new insane goals not reached then its in crisis even if they sold X millions of games and got a huge total profit.
On other hands those companies rarely make any new great games, just repeating themselves and their games now cost 200eur with all the DLCS. There are always some new guys tho whose creating great new games and they usually keep releasing one more before they bought up or accompanied by new "investors" and after that their product becomes rushed and bad because needed to be released to meet financial plans.
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Totally reasonable decision by GOG.
But it also shows how absurd the argument of some game developers is, when they insist that customers would benefit from a lower cut for the stores too. That might be true if you live in the US. Then you get a $10 better price for Metro on Epic's store and GOG's FPP never mattered. Outside the USA though, there have only been financial disadvantages, so far.
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I recently bought The witcher 3 again. The "fair price program" gave me a regional store credit , I assume, due to regional price difference. But here's the thing. Cdprojekt red are the publisher. So when they say it's due to a "an increasing share paid to developers", they are talking about themselves.
When they sell me a copy for AUD 78.99, they can no longer give me credit for $10.40 because they are being forced by themselves to give it to themselves? It makes no sense.
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the pricing of australian games is really weird. I've read articles about it, and even in the game industry nobody quite understands why games cost that much more - but even digital distribution games aren't more profitable. It's a real anomaly.
That aside, yes, they are the publisher and developer and seller of the Witcher games, but GOG sells a lot of games that are not Witcher, and GOG policies will be applied across the board to all games GOG sells. If they carve out exceptions for their own games, other publishers may stop using GOG (I know I wouldn't want to use a distribution company that drives business away from my product to their own competing product)
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I know Europe requires VAT (Value Added Tax) to be included as part of the advertised price. It's possible that Australia has something similar or might charge tariffs on video games. Certainly that is part of the reason for regional pricing. Doesn't explain the cases where the price is higher than that tax but might explain what is going on in Australia. If you sell a game for $60 U.S. and there are no added taxes, there is $60 to split between GoG and the developing arm CDPR. If you sell a game for the equivalent of $60 U.S. but it is taxed 20% that has to be paid by GoG, there is only $48 left to split.
GoG tried to push the idea of one price worldwide, but it appears that regional pricing has won the war. Now, with pressure from developers for a bigger cut, GoG can't afford to supplement these taxes anymore. GoG's estimated 30% take was never truly 30% because they paid these taxes out of their own pocket in the form of store credit for the difference from the U.S. price.
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Most of the games on GOG's platform are neither owned nor published by CDProjekt Red. Only the Witcher series and the new card-based one are, as far as I know.
And yes, Australia charges an entertainment tax, which significantly raises the price of games.
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I do really like GOG and sometimes buy games there instead of Steam just to get them DRM free. That said, Steam has done a lot more for Linux gaming especially lately with proton while GOG Galaxy only runs on Windows, which is pretty lame. Still, I'd hate to see them go away and I'll probably buy more games from them in the near future.
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Works on Windows and Mac.
Since Mac and Linux are both unix based, it wouldn't be too hard for them to set up a linux version too. Wonder why they haven't. :/
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https://www.gog.com/news/conclusion_of_the_bfair_price_packageb_program
Please still shop https://www.GOG.com if you want to guarantee that the game will be DRM-free (except for a scant handful of newer titles).
If this change in their policy will negatively affect you, purchase now or before March 31, 2019.
Other link: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/gHxSM/how-to-apply-for-fair-price-package-refund-on-gog.
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