While Steam continues to do well with it being the most popular games store, it seems CD PROJEKT Group's store GOG is really starting to struggle.
CD PROJEKT recently released their latest financial results, along with a call with investors that went over how the whole business is doing. It's not all bad news for them, since they saw overall 38% more sales revenue compared to the third quarter of last year. On the GOG side though, it posted increasing losses and so it's going to be restructured.
Over the current year to date it appears GOG has seen losses of about $2.21 million, which is pretty bad considering the 1.37 million they gained during the same period last year.
They've said that GOG "should focus more on its core business activity - which means offering a handpicked selection of games with its unique DRM- free philosophy" and so there's going to be some changes to the GOG team, with some moving over instead to CD PROJEKT RED. Additionally, they've "initiated reorganization of GOG’s operations" to focus on the "core business" and they're hoping this will "improve its financial effectiveness in 2022".
It's not really surprising, when you think that Epic Games continue to desperately try and turn a profit by pulling more customers to their store and even they don't expect to turn a profit until at least 2024.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: GuestAnd of course (OK, IMHO) it was a consequence of / reaction to the competition from Steam. If only because developers lost interest....
Yeah I don't agree with that, but (OK, IMHO too) I think it was more a matter of the market flooding with indie bundles from them and others. The quality of games dropped substantially, and it didn't take long for people to get sick of their libraries filling up with, how do I put this, "crap". Humble and others did take steps to combat this issue, once people stopped buying bundles because they were bundles, by breaking them out into individual keys once purchased; however, even then people were and still do get turned off by just having an abundance of junk keys.
I know whenever someone brags about the size of the libraries, someone always asks (pretty quickly) how much of it is junk from indie bundles. And they're usually not wrong either.
It's unfortunate that that stigma regarding junk keys was created, because I'm sure there are legitimately good or even great indie games that get passed over due to immediately looking like bundle filler and never being given a chance. Especially since sometimes they are junk bundle filler.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: kuhpunktIt's not a technicality. There is a 30%/70% cut for everybody. If they had reduced the fees for big publishers like you say, they would have a 20%/80% cut as a default. That is not the case. How can you claim that they reduced the fees when they didn't?Oh come on. If for a given group, their games get deal X 99% of the time, and 99% of the games getting deal X belong to that group, who was deal X made for?
Sure, this way it's future proofed for if someone else comes along and joins the group. And the deal has significantly better optics than "Companies A, B, C and D pay 20% and everyone else pays 30%". But the point of the policy was to appease the big publishers, not to give a bonus to indies with a flash in the pan.
3 Likes, Who?
Well many analysts and not only have predicted from the first very moment Epic started throwing trucks of (chinese) money in order to cannibalize the market that this would kill smaller stores sooner or later. Remember Swiney officialy told the court that they are expecting to see profits in 2024... remains to be seen if that will be proven right, all those years they are at loss, building armies of angry Fortnite teenagers while making ridiculous claims and being hypocritical. They are not competing head to head, despite them having tons of $ more than anyone else, sorry, they are just cannibalizing. It's the same thing M$ did reaching 95% userbase, that 95% is not a product of competition, we all know how they reached that %, from the days of CP/M 'til latest ".NET open-source" incident.
Last edited by sudoer on 2 December 2021 at 6:37 pm UTC
Last edited by sudoer on 2 December 2021 at 6:37 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
oldrocker99 Dec 3, 2021
I once saw the "sweaty guy deciding between two buttons" meme with
"GOG: DRM-free games from a company that seemingly doesn't give two shits about Linux gaming."
"STEAM: DRM-filled games from a company that actively promotes Linux gaming."
"GOG: DRM-free games from a company that seemingly doesn't give two shits about Linux gaming."
"STEAM: DRM-filled games from a company that actively promotes Linux gaming."
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: oldrocker99I once saw the "sweaty guy deciding between two buttons" meme with
"GOG: DRM-free games from a company that seemingly doesn't give two shits about Linux gaming."
"STEAM: DRM-filled games from a company that actively promotes Linux gaming."
That's not a "sweaty guy" decision for me. Especially when I realise that not all Steam games actually have DRM. I guess we're all different though, which is no bad thing.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: scaineI have the same annoyance when the Humble Choice comes out each month, because while Humble allows Steam linking for redeeming the games, there's no library search function. So I have to grab the title, visit steampowered.com, enter it and see if I own it. Doing that for 10-12 games... it's just a bit tedious.
The Augmented Steam extension has a feature that adds a "Search Steam Store for <marked text>" entry to the right click menu. You can't use it everywhere (for example when you can't (easily) select text on a website), but it's usually pretty convenient and saves a lot of time.
But you're right of course, 3rd-party stores should have library syncing and (or at least) links to Steam.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: damarrinValve isn't publicly traded as far as I can tell, so they don't have to chase profits and forecasts at any cost like a lot of the "evil" companies do. That's not to say they won't become evil at some point, people in power and business practices change.
A monopoly is _never_ good, so it's always worth it to have some competition to turn to. Their dominance/monopoly in the Linux space is unfortunately insignificant, though I find it very hard these days to give money to GOG what with their Linux support being the afterthought that it is.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped Linux support entirely now they're "restructuring".
It's unlikely, as even with the slow hype DRM free is getting, it's still disproportionately better selling point among us nutters than your average "gamer".
1 Likes, Who?
wit_as_a_riddle Apr 6, 2022
Quoting: GuestValve's stranglehold on PC gaming
Seems to me more like Valve's plush pillow upon which PC gaming is comfortably enjoying itself.
3 Likes, Who?
wit_as_a_riddle Apr 6, 2022
Quoting: mao_dze_dunGOG and by extension - GOG Galaxy, offers a better experience on Windows than Steam.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
1 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me