Why is GOG not as succesful as a Gaming Alternative?

[draegur@lemmy.zip]

i figure it's a momentum thing.

Valve benefited from being First To Market with this model. They were already well established before anyone else tried to make their own.

epic games store, ubisoft connect, and also whatever used to be origin, all these launchers were HEAVILY marketed and users were shoehorned into them as a mandatory condition of playing a game, and they are all floundering.

GOG, though? No marketing. No coercion. Mostly it's word of mouth and good will. And they are doing pretty alright. They were also NOT being first to market. They furthermore did NOT waste loads and loads of cash trying to push themselves onto people. Furthermore, you buy a game from GOG and you don't even NEED to install their launcher! All their game installers function perfectly STAND-ALONE!

I'd say, with all that in mind, GOG is literally doing better than anyone that isn't Steam.

And in my view, they are ever improving, even now.

[zephorah@discuss.online]

GOG is missing critical convenience features. Like the ability to buy and gift games. Or even just buy a gift card for their games. This would be a yearly buy for my nieces and nephews but there’s no availability. I keep asking. It keeps not being there.

[multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de]

That's not correct.

I have totally gifted Games via GOG in the past.
E.g. my nephew got KSP from me last birthday.

On the Game page it prominently shows a "buy as present" button.
Recipient doesn't even need his own GOG account.

Perhaps some regional block?
Where are you from?

[zephorah@discuss.online]

Is this a new feature? USA.

[retrohax@feddit.org]

"Like the ability to buy and gift games" uh wut? >.>
Now maybe theres a misunderstanding in English but i can gif Games to my Wife and she aslo to me and we never had Issues really even tho were from different Continents :P
But i do agree with the Gift Card Abbility considering that even Steam has such -.-

[dantel@programming.dev]

Eh, GOG is doing alright. I switched almost completely. If there is a GOG version, I buy it even if it is more expensive - which it very often isn't or just very slightly. And I'm saying this as someone who is playing all of this on a SteamDeck.

[multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de]

Looks like this for Games in my library, for other Games there is a checkbox for gifting later in the order process.

[gottahavefaith@fedia.io]

I switched to gog, but with the steam deck it's more convenient to have games on steam so I switched back since I bought it.
Also I like indie games and there are
many missing titles on gog

[murrayl@lemmy.world]

I think this is missing one other crucial factor in GOG becoming established: they targeted a niche.

Seems like a lot of people don’t really know this any more, but GOG’s ‘thing’ didn’t used to be a focus on being DRM-free, it was a focus on making old games accessible again.

GOG used to stand for Good Old Games.

Until GOG came along, publishers had next to no interest in making their older games available - things like Doom, Monkey Island, System Shock, Star Wars Dark Forces, etc. Hard to believe now, but none of these games used to be available to buy anywhere - if you wanted to play them you had to either own the original discs, find a torrent, or visit a dodgy abandonware site.

It was GOG who identified that gap in the market and established themselves as the store for legally owning digital copies of these old games for the first time. Steam was actually playing catch up on that front for quite a while, and many old games are still better maintained on GOG than on Steam.

[retrohax@feddit.org]

For me i use mostly itch io for Indie Games rather than Steam actually XD
which is for example also how i bought Celeste :P