Game store GOG has a new blog post up detailing how they're doing, and it seems like things are starting to go a bit better for them. Back in 2021, I reported on how in the CD PROJEKT financials, it showed that GOG was losing money, so it seems they may be starting to turn things around a little bit.
In their new post, they showed that for 2022 they have seen an 11% increase in active users across all of GOG services with an 18% increase in their overall user base. However, GOG Galaxy only "remained consistent", so it seems they aren't seeing much growth for their launcher. They're also reporting a net profit of $1.2M USD, noting they're losing around 4% due to suspending operations in Russia and Belarus.
Nothing close to how they were doing in 2020 though, which they attribute the spike that year to Cyberpunk 2077 and COVID-19 increasing sales due to people being at home more.
As for their market split they're seeing 53% from Europe, 37% from North America, 4% Asia, 4% Australia and New Zealand and 2% elsewhere.
The amount of games releasing on GOG has been increasing every year too, although it's nothing close to what Steam has, since GOG do a little more curation on what they accept (which is at times a little weird on what they deny). From 296 releases in 2018 up to 684 in 2022.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: ShmerlI made my own script framework for launching GOG games (both Wine and native), so they are pretty easy to use most of the time, once some commonly necessary things like dxvk and vkd3d-prton are provided. lgogdownloader helps with incremental updates for them using Galaxy protocol.
More active official Linux support from them would be good of course, but they are consistently the biggest DRM-free gaming store, so I don't mind buying games from them and handling set up on Linux myself.
And while I do enjoy the ease of Steam, if we are being fair, it's never been easier to play a game on Linux, even if there is some setup required for a GOG game. It's still practically click and play!
Quoting: denyasisAnd while I do enjoy the ease of Steam, if we are being fair, it's never been easier to play a game on Linux, even if there is some setup required for a GOG game. It's still practically click and play!
I agree! In the past Wine required a lot of fiddling to make games playable. Now very rarely anything is needed bedsides enabling dxvk/vkd3d-proton in the prefix.
The only other major feature that's useful is esync / fsync. I build Wine + esync patches from Wine staging for that. It helps performance of CP2077 and some other games quite a lot. Hopefully winesync solution will be upstreamed to avoid extra steps.
Last edited by Shmerl on 5 May 2023 at 9:04 pm UTC
Quoting: egocanis...
GOG isn't even close. Recently thanks to 3rd party apps, like heroic store app and lutris, gog gets something viable. But i don't think they deserve much credit for that...
Maybe so, but the credit they do deserve is for not standing in the way of such launchers.
For all the support that valve gives to linux, one still must download and install valve's shop just to be able to play the games you purchase on steam.
Last edited by emphy on 6 May 2023 at 4:25 am UTC
Abolishing, you mean. There is no way in hell GOG returns to Russia. They'd better forget it.
Last edited by Alm888 on 6 May 2023 at 5:18 am UTC
Quoting: Alm888There is no way in hell GOG returns to Russia. They'd better forget it.At the same time, CDPR recently resumed sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in Russia and Belarus.
Oh, this capitalism.. 
If you want to eat, you will be bow-legged even worse.
Quoting: InstallI prefer buying on gog over steam since you own the games. Steam is drm and you dont own those games, you rent them. I feel gog fits the same philosophy as linux in terms of freedom. gog does support linux, there might be cases where there isnt a version but most of the time they sell them.
Well, about all of this is wrong. Wherever you get software from a store, you get a licence. Steam, Gog, ... MS, ... even GPLed software - that's what the "L" is all about! So you neither own nor rent it. Some games of Steam are DRMed, some are not. Gog's "support" for Linux is so big, they aren't even making a client. (I understand why they don't, but it's still not great support.)
Quoting: mphuZI believe you are wrong on this one. Don't believe everything that is being written on the Internet. It is better to check.Quoting: Alm888There is no way in hell GOG returns to Russia. They'd better forget it.At the same time, CDPR recently resumed sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in Russia and Belarus.
"Cyborgs & Punks 20/77" is still unlisted in RU region of Steam:
And obviously (as anything else) is unavailable for purchase on GOG:
So rest assured, CDProjekt stays firm with their believes!
Last edited by Alm888 on 6 May 2023 at 9:00 am UTC
Quoting: Alm888I believe you are wrong on this one. Don't believe everything that is being written on the Internet. So rest assured, CDProjekt stays firm with their believes!Why should I read something on the Internet if I live in Russia myself and see everything from the inside?
You know that you can sell games for Steam and GOG on different platforms, right?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me