Why is GOG not as succesful as a Gaming Alternative?

[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

[rose@lemmy.zip]

I'd say GOG's position only proves the point of Epic and the ongoing class action lawsuits against Valve. Steam is deeply entrenched in the market and uses shady tactics like telling developers not to sell games for less outside Steam. You'd think offering good features and better practices would help, but it has not. Gamers are overwhelmingly positive about GOG, but most feel tied to Steam, and only a handful buy from GOG. It's no wonder Epic prioritized exclusives.

[Guest]

**Telling developers that they can't have bigger discounts on other store fronts is an unsubstantiated claim by one developer. The official policy has to do with discounting Steam keys, ie selling a Steam game for less than on the Steam store, while keeping all profits and taking advantage of Steams features.

If general sales were actually being restricted by Steam, it would have been made immediately obvious with sites like isthereanydeal. Such a site would have no reason to exist if the Steam store would always have the best discounts due to forced store policy.

*EDIT: Was gonna strike through this text, can't get formatting to work. See below comment by Rose@lemmy.zip

"Overwhelmingly positive" please spend at least 5 minutes reading the GOG general discussion forums and get back to me. GOG is constantly being criticized by their main user base for how poorly they run their store and their nonsensical business decisions. I don't think this is a bad thing tbh; its a better situation than the Steam fanboys being creepy boot lickers. But I would not describe GOGs most adamant supports being universally "positive" about the state of the store and company.

The general customer base of GOG does not care about the Galaxy 2.0 client, or GOGs collaboration with Amazon Luna for streaming owned titles. I don't know what other "good features" you could be referring to. GOG is barebones, but competent, in the world of digital store fronts/game launchers. But obviously being competent is not enough when dealing with an entrenched monopoly.

Most gamers do not care about DRM. This is the same market that is suffering from enshittification at an abnormal rate. This market has already long normalized things like gambling mechanics advertised towards children, or installing spyware for the sole purpose of stopping cheaters. Outside of the bubble of online discussions, the target audience does not think about these things and will buy whatever slop is put in front of them. Clearly the people who buy Denuvo releases at launch on Steam do not feel any reason to buy games on GOG specifically. And judging by public sales/player data, that's a lot of people.

[rose@lemmy.zip]

One developer? The Wolfire case contains dozens of those messages to various developers, irrespective of Steam key use. See page 160 here. The way Valve goes about it is also not contradicted by you pointing out there are lower prices. For one, they say they expect price parity soon, not immediately. Secondly, they don't and can't enforce that rule automatically, so there are always instances they don't see. As seen in those messages from court, sometimes their response is to restrict the games' visibility on the store, which is not something a platform like ITAD can track.

[Guest]

I will admit that I foolishly believed someone else's summation on the situation; that sourced report, assuming the emails are real, is pretty damning. Notably the email correspondence between publishers/developers and Valve does not mention any official policy, but without additional context comes off as threatening... multiple examples of punishment and out right removal from the store, wow.

And incidents as recent as 2022. I would have figured the older examples would be there because Valve was a lot more blatantly corrupt when they were first forcing the Steam client on consumers. People tend not to bring up when Valve was buying exclusivity of already released retail CD games and taking them off shelves to force Steam exclusivity. Wonder why its taken this long to come out in a court case? Its not like there isn't a long, recent history of indie devs yelling publicly on the internet about the dumb shit Valve puts them through.

[rose@lemmy.zip]

A case like this takes money and years of efforts. I don't think any indie dev would be willing to spend that much, especially knowing Valve can afford incredible lawyers. The evidence would have to be really convincing for this to even be worth risking. Those messages not being accurate could also make the plaintiffs liable for lying under oath.