Taking a leaf out of Steam's book here perhaps on sharing a little more, GOG have for the first time ever, given an overview of how the store is doing and it's looking good.
What they've shown is for the year ending 2020 and compares against the previous year. All of the numbers are based on the CD PROJEKT Group 2020 annual report. Here's the highlights of what they announced:
- +208% Monthly Active Users "of all GOG services"
- +392% New user registrations
- +805% GOG Galaxy Monthly Active Users
- +114% GOG.com store net revenue
Moving onto the countries that make up their revenue:
- 49% Europe
- 34% North America
- 6% Asia
- 4% Australia + New Zealand
- 7% Rest of the world
The number of games they release on the store each year is growing too:
- 2018: 296
- 2019: 378
- 2020: 483
Unlike Steam, GOG take a much smaller approach to game releases with a more curated store style, and they're known for denying listing games at times. Seems overall it's working for them though going by all their figures.
Hopefully they will eventually port over GOG Galaxy to Linux, as it's the big missing piece of the pie for Linux users although plenty still purchase their Linux games from GOG (and we can see that as a GOG partner). We bring it up with GOG often and it's still their number 1 most voted for Galaxy feature.
See more over on GOG.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
As long as GOG remains the underdog, my support goes (mostly) to them. As much as I like Valve for their commitment to Linux gaming, I'm still not quite over them essentially single-handedly destroying physical distribution of PC games. Now get off my lawn!
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Quoting: poiuzGOG's developer documentation disagrees with you. They have released their Build Creator application for Linux so that the build is the same as on the other systems. The version numbers for Linux releases match if the developers set it correctly.If that's so now, then it's a recent change.
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Quoting: scaineLike, Dpanter mentioned in Discord recently that GOG just released Voodoo Kid [GOG] which is Windows only. So what's the problem? Well, it uses BoxedWine to run. BoxedWine is a Linux emulator which runs a pre-packaged wine version. So now you have a Windows executable, running a Linux emulator, calling Wine, to run a Windows executable. And they released this marvel... only for Windows. <sigh>To paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android, "It gives me a headache just trying to think down to that level".
They're not even trying anymore.
Though it is kind of interesting to see Wine becoming a better Windows than Windows.
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Quoting: CatKillerIf that's so now, then it's a recent change.I don't know, but the version numbers match in releases from 2018.
Quoting: scaineThey're not even trying anymore.They're not even responsible for the game! It's also available on Steam and, surprise-surprise, not available for Linux or macOS! A developer already said they could look into a Linux & macOS release in the future.
The whining about GOG is really bugging me. If you're happy with your DRM gods & Proton then good for you. Just stop the constant complaining about GOG. That's not "ignoring GOG".
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Quoting: CatKillerIf that's so now, then it's a recent change.In the last year or two the API became available for Linux builds, I remember developers widely complaining about it for a long time then eventually saw a developer mention it was finally available. I imagine this was back in late 2019.
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Quoting: poiuzGood point. My point was more that it's ridiculous to emulate Linux in Windows, in order run wine, emulating Windows again, but you're right - I made that point in the context of GOG being terrible "supporters" of Linux. I stand corrected.Quoting: CatKillerIf that's so now, then it's a recent change.I don't know, but the version numbers match in releases from 2018.
Quoting: scaineThey're not even trying anymore.They're not even responsible for the game! It's also available on Steam and, surprise-surprise, not available for Linux or macOS! A developer already said they could look into a Linux & macOS release in the future
Quoting: poiuzThe whining about GOG is really bugging me. If you're happy with your DRM gods & Proton then good for you. Just stop the constant complaining about GOG. That's not "ignoring GOG".
The "whining" is perfectly justified. This is a site that sings the praise of gaming on our favourite O/S, but GOG's support of that O/S is extremely lacklustre. I don't buy my games on Steam because I like DRM. I buy them there because I want the Galaxy experience - workshop mods, seamless upgrades, community engagement, integrated chat, transparent multiplayer and yes, nearly transparent Windows support via Proton. If I buy a game on GOG, meanwhile, I have to download it and install, like it's still 1998. Or use a third party launcher, I suppose.
Steam is just a better experience for me. GOG could match it, but choose not to. So yeah. I think that's a perfectly valid opinion. Sorry (not sorry) you see it as whining.
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Quoting: Liam DaweCool, thanks.Quoting: CatKillerIf that's so now, then it's a recent change.In the last year or two the API became available for Linux builds, I remember developers widely complaining about it for a long time then eventually saw a developer mention it was finally available. I imagine this was back in late 2019.
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Quoting: PublicNuisanceTo all those who refuse to buy Linux games from GOG due to them not releasing Linux versions of their client or newer games: do you buy Windows games on Steam ? Just a curiousity........
Personally, no. I only buy games with native Linux support. If a dev doesn't support Linux, then I don't support them. Why would devs consider porting games to Linux if Linux users will buy their game either way?
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Quoting: poiuzThe whining about GOG is really bugging me. If you're happy with your DRM gods & Proton then good for you. Just stop the constant complaining about GOG. That's not "ignoring GOG".
Sorry dude, It's popular to hate on stores that aren't Steam here, with the exception of Itch.io, mostly because no one considers it a "real store".
Something, I do find interesting, although a bit tangential to this topic is what we as a community are willing to sacrifice for our comfort or easiness, myself included.
I saw a few posts above lamenting how it's not easy to play a Linux game from GOG and how antiquated the concept of downloading the game off the website is. Yet, we spend a lot of effort adding PPAs, learning the CLI (talk about something actually from before 1998), ldd, protontricks, winecfg, mesa, kernel stuff, tinkering, hacking, sometimes just to get mostly functional desktops.
I wonder how many of us really want to "play on Linux" (sorry for the pun)? The more I think of it, the more I wonder if I really do. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and I like Tinkering with it in ways that I could never do with windows or Mac. I'll never go back! And haven't in over a decade.
But when I want to play a game, I find it really frustrating when I'm missing a library that I have to hunt down or a new kernel doesn't play nice with my graphics drivers or have to tweak wine/proton with my limited game time. It's like I'm frustrated because I'm reminded I'm on Linux with it's flaws and complexities. I just wanted the game to work without problems and relax!
Maybe for us the problem isn't GOG's Linux support. Maybe the problem is more that GOG reminds us we're still on Linux when we'd rather not be reminded of such.
Perhaps that's part of the allure of Steam. It's makes effort to make the Linux-ness of the system not apparent. With proton in the background, many things just work, like on Windows or Mac.
I find this an interesting contradiction and by looking at the comments, I think it's one many of us, myself included, are comfortable with having.
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Quoting: denyasisSomething, I do find interesting, although a bit tangential to this topic is what we as a community are willing to sacrifice for our comfort or easiness, myself included.
I saw a few posts above lamenting how it's not easy to play a Linux game from GOG and how antiquated the concept of downloading the game off the website is. Yet, we spend a lot of effort adding PPAs, learning the CLI (talk about something actually from before 1998), ldd, protontricks, winecfg, mesa, kernel stuff, tinkering, hacking, sometimes just to get mostly functional desktops.
I wonder how many of us really want to "play on Linux" (sorry for the pun)? The more I think of it, the more I wonder if I really do. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and I like Tinkering with it in ways that I could never do with windows or Mac. I'll never go back! And haven't in over a decade.
But when I want to play a game, I find it really frustrating when I'm missing a library that I have to hunt down or a new kernel doesn't play nice with my graphics drivers or have to tweak wine/proton with my limited game time. It's like I'm frustrated because I'm reminded I'm on Linux with it's flaws and complexities. I just wanted the game to work without problems and relax!
Maybe for us the problem isn't GOG's Linux support. Maybe the problem is more that GOG reminds us we're still on Linux when we'd rather not be reminded of such.
Perhaps that's part of the allure of Steam. It's makes effort to make the Linux-ness of the system not apparent. With proton in the background, many things just work, like on Windows or Mac.
I find this an interesting contradiction and by looking at the comments, I think it's one many of us, myself included, are comfortable with having.
When I started PC gaming, configuration was done with DIP switches and jumpers, and one could overclock one's computer with a pencil. Often getting a game to work involved a custom config.sys and making sure that just the right things loaded in just the right order. Tinkering was absolutely part-and-parcel of being a PC gamer. The past (more than) 15 years I've done my PC gaming on Linux, and it's easy. I'd be comfortable tinkering, but I just don't have to.
My gaming desktop just worked as soon as I put it together. My laptop came with Gnome, which worked out of the box. I swapped it out for Cinnamon, which worked out of the box. I swapped that out for KDE, which worked out of the box. My HTPC/TV gaming/Minecraft server NUC worked out of the box. My controllers worked out of the box. The NUC I administer, to the extent that it needs it, from my phone. If there are updates, I get a notification about them, can apply them when I fancy, and (should it be required, although it rarely is) I can restart the machine when I'm good and ready. It's just all entirely painless.
At the time that I switched, I didn't mind Windows, I just preferred Linux as soon as I'd tried it. After a while I realised that I was doing all my gaming in Linux and only booting Windows for email and web browsing, which seemed silly. So I dumped it. These days I find Gnome too overbearing and controlling; there's no way that I'd be happy putting up with Windows' shenanigans.
I've got more great games available than I'll ever have time to play. No muss, no fuss. To bring us back to GOG, if they had a compelling offering, I'd give them money. If GOG's service was better than Steam, I'd spend more there than I do on Steam. Valve do masses for the Linux ecosystem, even outside of just making it all really convenient to buy and play games, and GOG just DGAF. So Valve gets my money, and GOG doesn't.
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