GOG reportedly suffering from staff turnover and poor management: “Current business model is likely running out of steam”

In what way? I know it's great but I don't know if I'd call it the last hope for all of gaming. It's a good store front. Their application has better FOSS alternatives and there are other pretty okay ways to buy games too. I don't follow them closely. Are they doing anything particular that warrants that description?

There's also itch.io, which is great. It does have a lack of game selection, but we're comparing it to GOG, so...

Shit I really like GOG as it’s the only competition to steam

There are plenty of competing PC game online stores, it's just that they all suck monkey balls when you're not using Windows. Microsoft is currently using their old monopolist playbook and release Blizzard games to the fucking Microsoft Store and Game Pass and not a single 3rd party store.

And don't forget that the other publisher-owned storefronts like EA's and Ubisoft's are also still alive. They suck hard but they exist and apparently they do well enough to continue to be around.

Steam is the only PC games store that fights Microsoft's Windows monopoly. GOG Galaxy has been written using the Qt framework. Making a Linux version of an existing Qt application is relatively easy (at least compared to a full port). Do that, integrate umu-Launcher for Windows games, bundle everything up and release GOG Galaxy on Flathub. Boom, done. But they don't do that despite their massive pile of Witcher and Cyberpunk money.

So plenty of competition exists but if you happen to not be Windows-exclusive, everyone but Steam is bad.

I mean, the Epic Store exists. Well, not on Linux. And it’s missing a lot of features the other storefronts have.

Current employees are running over to Steam.

perhaps - i didn’t read the article, but going by your comment: if it’s your contract workforce rather than full time then sometimes you just want to transition from expensive “temporary” employees to permanent positions

Especially competition that actually delivers something unique a segment of the population wants as opposed to simply existing. Their DRM free stance and standalone installers are a pro consumer move giving control back to the consumer once they download the files.

strong DRM stance

They have allowed content protected by DRM into their store four times already, which is not surprising, given GOG is owned by CD Projekt Red who included DRM into their own DLC for Cyberpunk, including on GOG. That's not "strong" in any sense of the word.

So in other words, they sell you the "feel good" anti-DRM narrative but quickly look the other way when it's good for business. At that point, might as well purchase on Steam, where DRM is common but optional and Valve actually cares about making the games platform-agnostic, easy to backup, easy to share, etc.

EDIT: cool downvotes, doesn't change the fact that GOG provides software protected by DRM on their "strongly anti-DRM platform". There is no amount of downvotes in this world that can change this reality.

the games I bought off GOG work, unlike Steam

Which games from steam don't work? I've never had any issues at all and I have traveled internationally for years while playing my whole library. I think that might be something specific to some game and that game wouldn't be available on GOG anyways so it's a moot point. In other words games work or don't by their own stance on DRM, and I'm sorry to tell you but

I love their strong DRM stance

That's a myth. They do allow DRM on their store, there's a huge thread discussing which games have DRM: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1

And that's just focusing on SP, any MP game has DRM. So I'll ask again, which game didn't work on steam when traveling?

I didn't even know they had a client. I do everything via their website.

when I am travelling internationally,the games I bought off GOG work, unlike Steam😡😡😡😡.

You must be doing something very wrong. I bring my Steam Deck on travels and it always works.

The fact that you have loyalty to a commercial storefront makes you a fucking gonk. - Johnny Silverhand

It's pretty hard for GOG. Many of the things people don't like about GOG are not really GOG's fault, they are just a result of small market share. Steam is the bigger platform, and so naturally it gets priority for basically everything.

You game doesn't work on Steam? Then you'd better fix it immediately, because that's where the bulk of players are. But if your game doesn't work on GOG... well.. maybe fix it when you get some spare time. (Or maybe don't have a GOG version, because you don't want to have to keep multiple platforms up-to-date.)

So publishers and developers are generally less cooperative with GOG. And GOG themselves obviously have much more limited resources to do stuff themselves.

Steam's recent work with Linux has been great. And I do wish GOG would have something like that. But again, Valve has vast resources for that kind of thing - and they've been working on it ever since the Windows 8 appstore threatened to wipe them out. (That threat fizzled out; but nevertheless, that was what got the Linux ball rolling for Valve.) I'm in two minds about whether GOG should try to boost their Linux support. On the one hand, GOG is all about preservation and compatibility... and so it makes sense to have better Linux compatibility. On the other hand, it would be leaning further into a niche; and working on a problem that is kind of solved already. i.e. We can already run GOG games on Linux with or without a native linux version... it just could be nicer... Maybe it's not a good use of GOG's resources to go for that.

(That said, when I look at their linux start.sh scripts and see cd "${CURRENT_DIR}/game" chmod +x * it makes me think they could probably put at least a bit more effort into their linux support.)

That's... Largely a financials problem.

Steam: $8-10 billion/y

GOG: $80-120 million/y

Steam can throw 10 GOGs worth of resources at a problem and barely break a sweat. Yeah, of course they are making huge strides, that's how consolidation of wealth works when that wealth is actually reinvested.

The hell do you mean "barely did anything for the Linux gaming scene"? Listen, I'm up to my neck with Linux gamer crybabies always removed about how someone doesn't throw them a bone, for years. Valve is doing Linux gamers a great service and since Linux was all about free-this and open source that, DRM-free is at least a thing. Fucking can't please whiny Linux gamers.

An official Steam Deck mod would probably be nice. Heroic Launcher kind of works.

they need to use super generic popular idioms in order to be search engine optimized. technology killed journalism

The other day I was thinking about the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray, and how during one of the Scenes of Christmas Passed he got his girlfriend a pack of Ginsu knives for Christmas and how that's on-theme for his character who is obsessed with TV because Ginsu knives were a big As Seen On TV product and how someone on the writing staff must have went to college to think of that.

GOG is a side project of CD Project, the makers of The Witcher and Cyberpunk. They are massively wealthy. If GOG goes down, it's because CD Project lets it happen, not because there is no other way.

i don’t want it to be the only option.

Neither do I but it is. GOG doesn't support Linux. Heroic is a 3rd party community effort. Valve is currently the only company making financial investments into Linux gaming.

GOG is the only big option if you want to own the games you purchase.

Gabe Newell has promised that if Steam goes down you won't lose your library, but we only have his word as assurance.

If steam goes down I'm sailing the high seas from then on.

A lot of steam games dont have drm

You would lose only most of your library, not all of it

You have it backwards.

If GOG goes down, you actually lose what you own.

If Steam goes down, you lose your privileges.

What exactly is the distinction between acting tactically and strategically? This doesnt even make sense.

Selling old games and new games isn't mutually exclusive, and more money tends to be spent on new games than old ones. It's not unreasonable to expect that selling new games too could subsidise the work to make old games run on modern platforms.

If I could just download right from the Website

You can.

I don't use their launcher at all.

It's kind of a convoluted process but you can definitely download every game you own through gog without it.

Yeah galaxy is sadly a bit of a mess. Back when i was still running windows it broke its own update capabilities once or twice.

Can you not download from the site on mac?

Download Heroic Launcher from the Discover app in Desktop mode and add it as a non-Steam game. You can log into your GOG account there. In a best-case scenario, which is more often than not, you just hit download, and you can play the game on Steam Deck.

But sometimes it doesn't work like that. Steam will often bundle dependencies with your download, like DirectX versions or Visual Studio runtimes. To get these working, you'll need to run "winetricks", which can be done on a game-by-game basis from within Heroic, and then install the dependencies you need. To find out which dependencies you need, if you had trouble launching the game in the first place, you can check SteamDB and see what other "depots" the game has. This resolves the problem about 99% of the time, if there's a problem at all. In one case, Phantom Fury, I was unable to get the same compatibility with the GOG version that I was with the Steam version, and I don't know why. Also, at this point in time, I don't think you can rely on cloud saves working, and you might need to rely on a solution like SyncThing, but it looks like cloud saves working reliably via Heroic is imminent, if it isn't already since the last time I checked.

The easy way is with the Heroic Game Launcher. Log in to your GOG account and direct install.