As long as the majority is not only seeing them as a consumer, as well acting this way the most straight out way possible... as long as it is with this shape there will be no major changes.

They would have to start seeing themself as a customer and act as a customer. Simply start to consider that their influence is driving the economy and can even decide who ultimately will win or lose...

If they want it... they can... tomorrow... totally wipe Playstation or even Steam, but they dont because they sufficiently and with a strong belief "trust in it" and mostly are enjoying this "consumer-service"... as i said, consumer-service, not customer-service.

The difference is simply, a customer, such as shareholders... is able to influence any company the way they want it to be and are not sucking at a big cows breasts without any ability to change the milk they are getting out of it. A consumer is simply without any true will sucking the milk they are becoming, day after day and year after year... no matter what has been served.

A customer as well is owning their stuff in a serious manner... such as the shares of a shareholder or the game of a gamer. Without any ownership... a customer is a consumer that could be losing their milk at free will as soon as their mother cow is not anymore feeling fed too well... from the customers. The customers decide everything and the consumer simply have to suck the milk that is being served to them without any ability to change matters or owning anything outside their own body.

As long as gamers do not have the required sensitivity and ability to see a difference and to grow up toward a full adult... they will never stop being a fully controlled and helpless consumer.

Sure, purely fictional... it is even possible building a whole economy around "agents" and AI-robots that are generating money by doing tasks usually done by real humans. They could even become Steams or Sonys new "consumers" and playing all the game instead of humans. So if the humans are gone those agents and robots can take over this task of being a consumer and play all the games from those platforms. At that point they may not need humans anymore and either the humans start to build a new environment that is still serving real humans or then it simply will be over... because they are not really required of keeping up this economy anymore. If the economy is not anymore acting for the humans... then virtually, in the strongest sense... anything is possible and it could become very concerning.

Humans only will stay strong as long as they are being heard and respected, as well as long as they actually act as grown up humans and not as some sort of extended agent that could be emulated by AI at some point.

I second that.

Here's hoping they keep adding old titles from the dreamlist.

Unfortunately there are still many great games missing on GOG, for example there is not a single... not a single... Monster Hunter game.

At least Final Fantasy was, not so long ago... finally visiting GOG, which i do already see as a major improvement.

As well there is not even nearly as much "trash" released there compared to Steam. Yes, Steam gets like 10-20 games a day but it could take weeks until i find a actually interesting "quality-game" for me. On GOG there are few releases but... i would say every 3. game or so looks interesting to me (not always good enough for buying it but surely interesting). Perhaps one of 7 i would buy if i could, which is not the case so far... so i got around one of 10 or lesser.

On Steam the ratio would be much worse... significantly worse.

Unfortunately that indeed is a human nature thing and not sheeple as claimed...some people tend to take things too seriously (and even making a whole persona/identity of out if...wild...)

Ironically before joining discord was team DRM-free, suggested GOG etc.... but after seeing how extreme positions and obsessive the cult is (and sometimes out of touch with reality) that actually had the opposite effect and now am completely indifferent to DRM - i.e. i prefer DRM-free games, hence being here, but dont really care about "activism" and just look at the business proposal at hand - sometimes GOG is better, sometimes Steam, when a tie, i prefer Steam.

For some games am ok with paying for the experience and only playing them once - something to me unthinkable a few years back - but the current and constant outrage + triabalistic cults made me simply not care anymore - if that makes me a "sheeple" or "bootlicker" thats fine with me, everyone is free to have an opinion even if complete non-sense :p would think that is the view of many as gaming is hobby that was fun, and would prefer to keeping fun.

Just think that the cults are as bad as the companies just squeezing every €, and i prefer to stay out of it.
TLDR: that would be great that GOG would at least match Steam but for so many reasons besides the above, that is very unlikely to impossible IMO.

Monster Hunter has been get progressively worse.
The good ones don't even have PC ports.


But I stray off-topic

Anyone going to PC gaming will use steam that isn't a question, it has the most robust interface not to mention having all games for purchase gog barely has a fraction of steam library.
If you have actual metrics to back up that 100-250 million claim please share that with companys because they'd easily start selling here day 1 with those numbers. Reality is that with small percentage of the PC market most games sold on here are lucky to even break or come close to 1 million. So as I said GOG will be viewed as a second hand store by most companies selling when they need a little extra cash. So most will likely buy it on steam finish and move on.

Even ignoring the economy most aren't going to repurchase a game unless they really like it or want the offline installer.

My main point was that customers/users in theory could get more publishers to release their games on GOG DRM-FREE easier if users in mass also buy a 2nd copy of a game they own on Steam or other platforms that is on GOG DRM-FREE.

The $100-250 million was just an example, 50 million users buying a game at $2 during a sale = $100 million. 50 million users buying a game at $5 during a sale = $250 million. I was just pointing out that people in large numbers can affect change and in this case can entice publishers to release their games on GOG day 1 or at least a lot sooner compare to the rate it is now, if majority of Steam & Console users did buy a 2nd copy of a game on GOG even at a big discount in mass. I also acknowledge that this is a catch 22 situation.

I think we both are agreeing that majority of people value convenience over DRM-FREE ownership, so most aren't going to repurchase a game on another platform when they already bought the game on Steam.

I own 1280 games on GOG (just checked). A lot of these games I also own on Steam, Playstation and/or Xbox. I bought them to show the distributor and GOG there is demand for these games. Hell, I even bought games I am not interested in or will play (e.g. Doom, Wolfenstein) just to show the publishers there is demand for these games.

Having said that - GOG is getting less and less relevant for me. I am interested in (both older and modern) AA and AAA games. The 13 trillionth pixelbased games which looks and plays worse than games I played in 1990 do not interest me. I want to play games like Freelancer, Mass Effect, Cities Skyline, etc.

I was a little hopefull when the original founder reqaquired GOG. Unfortunately I do not see any progress.
Don't get me wrong - I will keep buying games on GOG. Even games I already own on other platforms. But am I really positive about GOG's future. I'm not and I do not see any signs of GOG proving me wrong (what about the Fallout 4 update which was promised in April 2024 and is stil not here - even worse, GOG does not react to any questions about that in the forum).

I think you're right, because Steam gives a better experience and a ton of new games. Still, I think a few PS players might switch to GoG too, since losing a physical disc is also about ownership.

I get that, but that would require to get more consumers to use the store with a larger percentage of the PC market more games release by default after all no company would miss 15-20% of the overall market.

You aren't going to convince people who want everything on one store to repurchase said games on here even if its cheap.

It doesn't have to be second hand simply having anywhere near 50 millions users on here would be enough to convince companies.

In the end its about getting more customers which gog currently can't do.
Kinda hard to say that when only days gone, GOW 2018, uncharted 4 and Horizon zero dawn is on here. Steam has the rest of PS library. But lets be real they won't care people will be outraged until something else happens if people didn't push back with Nintendos Physcial card DRM they won't do it for digital only especially since its been like on consoles for awhile.
Considering how bad the next gen update was and that it was mainly for downloading mods not sure what GOG could really do. Anything on here using online in any fashion or galaxy gets massive push back for some reason.

Not really. The main reason companies such as Sony are moving away from physical media is that physical game sales have been declining for years, while digital sales have continued to grow. As a result, the majority of game sales are now digital. Yes, there are still some consumers who prefer physical copies, but that segment of the market has been shrinking year after year. Sony is largely just following existing market trends here. If any concerns about ownership were causing large numbers of consumers to abandon digital purchases, we would expect to see the opposite trend, digital decreasing and physical increasing. Instead, the continued growth of digital sales suggests that the majority of consumers are more than willing to accept digital only distribution.

It is also an assumption that people who decide to leave the PS would be moving to PC gaming. Many are more likely to choose another console or a console-like platform instead. If anything, that could be seen as an argument for the growth of alternative gaming platforms, such as PC-based consoles or indeed the Steam Machine, rather than for traditional desktop PC gaming itself.

I disagree a little bit with this.

Physical is dying because there are fewer opportunities to buy physical copies. I mean, if a game doesn’t have a physical version, how would you even buy one? Also, if we compare a game that has both formats, physical and digital, the situation is totally different from what Sony is saying publicly.

My point is that consumers are accepting digital not because it’s so good, but because companies are forcing them to. If you only have one option, how could you even choose something else?

I'm not saying that physical is better than digita, both have their pros and cons. What I'm saying is that Sony is purposely making it seem like digital is more successful.

Don't wanna be a downer, but much easier said than done.

What do you propose GOG management should do to get the #s you're claiming? Even doubling annual revenue took GOG ~7 years to do from 2014 to 2021, ignoring 2020 as an outlier due to CP77.

No one is forcing them, they can easily just not buy it if its purely digital but they still do. Heck just because its a physical disc doesn't mean drm can't be attached via Nintendo. In the end physical isn't worth the cost to produce anymore heck most AA and indie more or less only sell digitally. If this shift ment games were cheaper to buy I'm all for it.

But as always they still try to keep the default price.

It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation - a feedback loop.

Yes, you could argue that digital sales have increased because there are fewer physical copies available, making digital the only option in many cases. However, you also have to think about how we arrived at that point. One of the main reasons fewer physical copies are being produced is just that the physical games market has been declining for years. What has happened now is that we have reached a tipping point where physical distribution is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain compared with digital distribution. It simply is not generating the sales volumes that justify the additional manufacturing, shipping, and retail costs.

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that a game released simultaneously in both physical and digital formats today will sell roughly the same number of copies in each format. On the contrary, the sales data we do have generally shows that digital versions outperform physical ones, even when consumers are given a choice between the two. You can certainly argue that physical media still offers some advantages, for example the ability to resell games or to give them as gifts. However, I do not think it is any longer credible to argue that physical and digital sales are anywhere close to parity. If you have evidence suggesting otherwise, I would be really be interested in seeing it.

My view is that consumers have increasingly accepted digital distribution because it is simply more convenient. You are no longer limited by local stock, opening hours, or the availability of physical copies. Why go to a shop only to discover that the game you wanted has sold out, when you can buy and download it from your sofa with the click of a button? This is specially the case for younger consumers, the trends I have seen is that it is the older conusmers that still prefer physical, and it is just a fact of life that you will always phase out older consumers for the next generations.