As GOG struggles, Steam hit a new high of 27M people online

I would be curious to know how many preorders they got for the Steam Deck!
And how many are they planning to ship in Q1 and Q2 2022.

A question for you: do you expect the Steam Deck to push Steam player numbers even higher? For a lot of people, it will be an additional device but no doubt it's a device that will be pulling in some new users who didn't previously use Steam or even a PC. It will be thoroughly interesting to see if there's much of an effect there.

I think there will be an effect, but it will show up only over the next few years. The Steam Deck exists to push the PC as a platform and people won't just abandon their consoles over night... but it will help people migrating.

I for one would have bought likely hundreds of games if GOG would have provided that Galaxy client for Linux (https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/release_gog_galaxy_20_for_linux)... Now every penny has gone to GabeN and Steam

GOG is in a bad place; when they started bombing my inbox with "personal discounts" I knew they were struggling, and I do feel sympathy for the company that fights DRM. But I stopped buying from them a long time ago because I don't want to be a second-class citizen. They provide a lot of services to Windows and OSX users, including friend servers, auto-updates, cloud sync, and achievements. Not to mention a good library for games even outside of GOG. But the best I can hope for is a downloadable .sh installer with nothing. It's very hard to justify paying for this kind of service, especially when a much smaller itch.io managed to provide me with first-class support, even with Wine.

I never buy from GOG. Even if they provide the Linux installer, for everyday use the experience is not good. No official client or whatsoever. Completely different from what we have on windows like was said above.

I think the only games I have there are The Witcher 3 and Cyberbug which I regret it because I simply forget I have those games. Since I use only Steam and Heroic most of the time.

I may have to grab my library off gog just in case and just store them on some blank Blu rays

I think the only games I have there are The Witcher 3 and Cyberbug which I regret it because I simply forget I have those games. Since I use only Steam and Heroic most of the time.

You could add them to Steam as non-Steam games. Which also gets you controller support for games that don't natively support controllers.

I think the only games I have there are The Witcher 3 and Cyberbug

Buy them on Steam too ! They are both really good, worth it imo. Should definitely be played. And there's no denying the comfort of Steam Play.

You could add them to Steam as non-Steam games. Which also gets you controller support for games that don't natively support controllers.

I think the only games I have there are The Witcher 3 and Cyberbug

Buy them on Steam too ! They are both really good, worth it imo. Should definitely be played. And there's no denying the comfort of Steam Play.

For sure, I finished both already tbh.
The Witcher 3 a few years ago and Cyberpunk I finished two months ago using Lutris.

Great games besides the bugs, hehehe.


Last edited by fearnflavio on 1 December 2021 at 12:07 pm UTC

I think the only games I have there are The Witcher 3 and Cyberbug which I regret it because I simply forget I have those games. Since I use only Steam and Heroic most of the time.

You could add them to Steam as non-Steam games. Which also gets you controller support for games that don't natively support controllers.

And you can use Proton with those games too. :-)

I would be curious to know how many preorders they got for the Steam Deck!
And how many are they planning to ship in Q1 and Q2 2022.

Well, technically 0, since nobody has actually paid any more than the $5 reservation fee and nobody is actually obligated to order once they become available.

I for one would have bought likely hundreds of games if GOG would have provided that Galaxy client for Linux (https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/release_gog_galaxy_20_for_linux)... Now every penny has gone to GabeN and Steam

Yeah, I love the idea of GoG but I'm finding it a harder and harder sell these days... I'm of a mind now to get everything on Steam and just grab the game again on GoG as a backup when dirt cheap.

The integration in Steam just makes managing the games so much easier.

I know Windows die-hards who are buying/reserved a Steam Deck with no intent of replacing the built-in operating system, so if nothing else maybe it'll push the Linux user count a tad higher. Here's hoping… Even if not, the changes it's brought about regarding DRM/Anti-Cheat are/will be a massive benefit.

It seems really weird that GOG with their "FCK DRM" philosophy doesn't properly support an open OS like Linux so it's more of a choice for hardcore anti-DRM people and everyone else chooses Steam with actual Linux support.

It seems really weird that GOG with their "FCK DRM" philosophy doesn't properly support an open OS like Linux so it's more of a choice for hardcore anti-DRM people and everyone else chooses Steam with actual Linux support.

It was just a corporate slogan all along i guess. perhaps it should of said "FCKing Hell implementing DRM is expensive, lets not bother and pretend it's a virtue"

When I was using windows I preferred GOG over Steam because its DRM-free policy. But when I changed to Linux I felt their services weren't good enough and that Steam was doing a better job, so I started using the later more and dropped GOG.


Last edited by rafagars on 1 December 2021 at 3:15 pm UTC

Even if the Steam Deck is almost exclusively bought by people who already gamed on Steam, I think it's likely that it will cause them to game on Steam more than before. They will be able to game in situations where they couldn't before, and if part of their gaming was on other devices like consoles the Steam Deck may shift how much gaming they do on what.
If they game more on Steam, they may well also buy more games on Steam.

> do you expect the Steam Deck to push Steam player numbers even higher?

It will surely push the number of on-line users and probably also in-game players, even if the game will be paused and the deck laid aside.

I buy old games on GOG. Most of it is either running in DOSbox or wine. Anything new that doesn't specifically ship linux native I default to Steam because Valve has put in and continues to put in a TON of work to make linux game-friendly. GoG offers linux options when it doesn't have to put in much work. So I buy accordingly.

EPIC has told us to eff off. So I did.

Blizzard has told us top eff off. So I did.

Origin......

GOG has quite a few problems. First of all, the prices of old games went up quite considerably. Recently they added some Star Trek games for 10€ each ... no thanks. It is also simply more convenient to buy on Steam (wonderful Linux support), quite a few games I would be interested in are also not available on GOG. And there seem to be issues with developers as well. One time I contacted one about supporting Linux on GOG (there was a Linux version of his game on Steam) and he did not sound happy about GOG at all. Don't know why and did not ask.