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GOG to go through some reorganization after suffering losses

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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.
Tags: GOG, Misc
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95 comments
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rustybroomhandle Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: The_Aquabat
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: The_Aquabatnot surpised since Cyberpunk is a pretty bad game.

Not sure what you mean. I've been playing it for a while (close to completing it) and it's a very good game. It feels smaller than the Witcher 3 in scope though.

seriously Physics effects are a bad joke? everything feels unfinished on cyberpunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LB5N8Eht2g

That's a 1 year old video. And C2077 has way better story and characters than GTAV. Seamless dialogue, and the city is generally much more enjoyable to be in than any of the boring-ass cities in GTA. Is it a better game overall? Probably not, but it's much more my thing.
Shmerl Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: The_Aquabatseriously Physics effects are a bad joke? everything feels unfinished on cyberpunk

That's not my impression from it. It can be still improved surely, but it's already pretty good.


Last edited by Shmerl on 30 November 2021 at 4:17 pm UTC
kaiman Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: 14$2M is about 10 developers for one year when you think about industry salaries, benefits, equipment, training, etc.
But surely not in Poland?

Quoting: 14Proton games are often click-to-play, whereas the GOG version requires me to fiddle with minigalaxy + Lutris so I can install the game easily and then actually run it
I finally gave in and run Galaxy under Wine. Installing and playing supported Windows games is just two clicks.

Though I wish I would not have to go through a launcher to play a game. So in a way I am glad they did not bring that atrocity to Linux. OTOH, with games getting larger and larger, downloading the whole thing for every update starts getting tiresome.

Anyway, reading all the comments so far, seems there's no insight as to what this will actually mean for the future of GOG. Guess time will tell.
Alm888 Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: scaineBut I've bought two bundles on Itch, which amounts to several hundred games/tools, and while I page through, or search those titles on that same page, there's no way to see them in the client. You have to go to the game's web page and activate it somehow - I forget how now, but when I realised I'd have to do so for 59 pages of games, I gave up.
You have to attempt to download the game at least once. Download from a bundle page also works, no need to go to the game's page.

That was done so in order not to clutter the library with useless (for yourself) entries: some bundles are really big (like 1000+ entries from one of the charity bundles a year ago or so), but contain mostly game assets and prototypes, and most of the people got the bundle for just a couple of games.

Quoting: scaineBut as I say, my main gripe is that while I bought, say, Nuclear Throne, on Itch about 3 years ago, I can still buy it again, while logged in, with no warning at all that I already own it. Now extend that to 59 pages of bundles... yeech.
Yes, you can. And even may want to, if you really want to show support. I've bought a game I got from that bundle because I knew that was a charity and developers did not get any money that time around, but I liked the game.

Besides, itch.io warns you that you are in fact have the game already (at least on the game's page).


Last edited by Alm888 on 30 November 2021 at 4:41 pm UTC
Vemod Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: VemodI'd love to use GOG more, I have lots of game there, even bought Cyberpunk 2077 from GOG.
Problem is that their GOG Galaxy client - with cloud saves and all that - simply don't work on Linux.
I've tried some third-party GOG clients but had nothing but issues, and none of them support cloud save anyways.
So I can't really use GOG, even if I want to.

You _can_ use GOG, you just don't want to.

Nothing stops you from copying save games and backing them up, etc. One of the whole points of GOG being DRM-free is that games don't rely on a third party client, and so nothing stops you from the running the game. So it is a choice: you don't want to use GOG, even if you can.

That's not true, and you don't know my situation or needs.
There's no way for me to download my cloud save data without the official client.
Which means I'd have to install Windows just to get my save data, then copy it back and forth when I switch computer, which means putting it on a USB stick.
Compare that to Steam where I click Play and all my save files are there.
dibz Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: mao_dze_dunGOG and by extension - GOG Galaxy, offers a better experience on Windows than Steam.

I disagree with this, my main issue with the client -- which I was highly looking forward to when the new one came out -- is how bad it is at handling large libraries if they're not GOG. It takes several minutes after starting the client, every time you start the client, before it's usable and not laggy from importing/updating games. It's only okay, (way) better then Epic but that's not saying much, if you stick to just GOG games. The client kind of feels made to just never be restarted, on an always-on computer.

I suspect it's an issue with community python integrations in general, but that's IMHO the main selling point of the otherwise "okay" client.


Last edited by dibz on 30 November 2021 at 7:27 pm UTC
Koopacabras Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: rustybroomhandle
Quoting: The_Aquabat
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: The_Aquabatnot surpised since Cyberpunk is a pretty bad game.

Not sure what you mean. I've been playing it for a while (close to completing it) and it's a very good game. It feels smaller than the Witcher 3 in scope though.

seriously Physics effects are a bad joke? everything feels unfinished on cyberpunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LB5N8Eht2g

That's a 1 year old video. And C2077 has way better story and characters than GTAV. Seamless dialogue, and the city is generally much more enjoyable to be in than any of the boring-ass cities in GTA. Is it a better game overall? Probably not, but it's much more my thing.

here's a newer video from this month
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDgtJTv4Jo

just look how shooting at stuff doesn't do anything, stuff should break and explode, physics seems unfinished, I'm playing the game right now, and still they are. Npc can't swim, if you bump something with a motorcycle and fall nothing happens, there's no visual feedback of getting hurt... machine gunning a cactus wont destroy it... lots of things feel unfished. if you shoot to tyres they won't get flat, if you block a road with a car, npc cars don't know how to turn and skip it.. lots of stuff it's poorly done.

damn just look what happens if you throw a NPC to the water, sorry I still think the same, it looks like a bad unfinished joke.

don't get me wrong it's not that bad game, but not something you would expect from a game that has 300M usd dollars of investment.

it's just such a let down it was touted as the most revolutionary game ever, and they can't even get physics right.

makes you think in what they actually invested those 300M dollars? surely it didn't went to devs salaries. They should have thought their investment better, probably they paid the 300M just on Jonny Silverhand salary, and gave devs slave wages. no wonder why they are doing so bad on finance.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 30 November 2021 at 5:34 pm UTC
t3g Nov 30, 2021
I have a lot of games on GOG, but there are times where there's a native Linux version of a game on Steam (like Metro Exodus) but GOG is Windows only. Also scenarios where versions of Quake on Steam got a free update to the Enhanced Edition, but still absent on GOG.

I'd love to have a native GOG Galaxy client, but for now, I have to settle for Lutris.
Purple Library Guy Nov 30, 2021
Quoting: GuestSeems to me like it is exceedingly difficult for any PC game store to be profitable unless they sell Steam keys (or they are a big publisher profitable in other areas), such is the nature of Valve's stranglehold on PC gaming. I know so many linux users don't like a bad word said about Valve but their market power should concern everyone
I gotta agree. I mean, it's not like Valve are doing anything bad--it's a company's job to make money and grab market share, what else are they supposed to do?
But there's a tendency for that to result in one or a couple of firms grabbing most of the market share, and the results of that are almost always bad. With the advantage of size and, usually, the ability to put up barriers to competition, firms that dominate their sector are then able to stifle innovation that might threaten them, jack up prices and lower the quality of their product and generally mess over their customers. We're seeing it all over the place right now--using the excuse of things like supply chain disruptions and the perception of inflation, many companies, like grocery store chains, have been jacking up prices far more than their expenses have actually gone up, and are making huge windfall profits as a result. They're not even monopolies, but there are few enough of them that they can easily agree among themselves to all hose us together and not rock the boat.
That's why things like antitrust law came into being: Companies following the intended approach of what companies are supposed to do often leads to monopoly or cartel situations and that is bad.

It happens that Valve have actually done very little if any of that bad stuff. Not yet, anyway. Valve is a fundamentally weird company. But they are nonetheless, depending on your definition, a monopoly or near-monopoly in their field. They have the market power to do abusive stuff, they just don't seem to have abused it yet. It bears watching.
twinsonian Nov 30, 2021
I have a large steam library built up over the years like everyone else. I do not really buy games on steam anymore though, mainly for one reason. There are games I want to play, games my son wants to play and games my wife wants to play. Trying to navigate which of the three steam accounts to purchase games on is difficult without having to buy the same title more than once so that we aren't locked out of our steam account when sharing etc. Its a huge pain in the ass.

So now I really only buy and play stuff on GOG so I don't have to mess with steam and the hassle it brings. If GOG didnt offer DRM free copies of the games then I wouldn't buy from them at all.
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