this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2021
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GOG has not been in a good place in the past year. There was the Devotion debacle, Cyberpunk 2077, what a disappointment that was. Then there was the attempted HITMAN release, the fact that the DRM-free game store still sells games with DRM, the fact that Linux users still don't have an official client, this entire spreadsheet, etc... GOG has been stumbling a lot.
DRM-free stores do have a place and a purpose, but the way GOG has been going about doing things... it's not great. I do wish they did better. I LIKE the idea of a store that only sells DRM-free games, but the way GOG operates is just half-assed. Here's hoping 2022 is the year GOG turns things around.
The problem really is the growth mind-set. They could have kept with the "good old games" idea (DRM free ofc), but that is a limited niche market. Sooner or later these kind of negative outcomes are inevitable if you prioritize growth.
I use GOG for years. I believe that when they began to implement their own launcher it was a misstep. I know someone else on their forums pointed it out better than I could but had they stayed DRM FREE without launchers they could have avoided a lot of cost with having to 1) Keep up with the launcher battle 2) Deal with DRM creep coming into their releases 3) Have a unique identity in the game digital distribution world.
The amount of research I have to do before I pull the trigger to buy one of their games made me back up my titles and close my account.
Well put. And I hate it how much I empathize with this sentiment. Every time I want to buy something on GOG I have to make sure it's not a lesser version of a game available elsewhere. It's annoying to say the least.
I think Cyberpunk is probably the biggest factor to blame here. Let's be real: most of the popularity the platform gained in recent years was because PC gamers started praising CDPR as this perfect game developer for some reason. CP2077 completely shattered that perception, it inverted it even. CDPR as a whole has a negative image now, and I can't believe for a second that the store reporting loses out of nowhere, when it was doing better than ever right before the game's release, is a coincidence.
TLDR; GOG's popularity came with CDPR's very positive image, it's going away with CDPR's very negative image.
Well yeah. That's what happens when you screw up the launch of the second most expensive game ever produced. It even got pulled from the PlayStation store due to customer complaints. You know, the same store that still sells gems like this. Let that sink in.