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GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

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Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#361

Post by georgeecollins »

ninth_ant wrote: post #138
georgeecollins wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but the model that Valve pioneered is the model that supports 90% of all commercial PC games made today, a higher percentage if you cut out MMOs and free to play games, which you certainly don't own. I love GoG and I have worked closely with a lot of people there on projects they are great. This announcement seems like good news. No one has to sell games on Steam. No one has to use a model where they "rent licens…

> They don't because too many people pirate games to make that a viable business. This is an opinion, stated as if it’s fact. There are many factors contributing to the ongoing success of steam. Ease of access, a strong network effect, word of mouth from satisfied customers, a strong ecosystem of tools and a modding platform, willingness to work across many platforms and a variety of vendors including competitors, an…

True, this is an opinion but I am guessing you don't know my background. And having some expertese doesn't guarantee my opinion is correct. But I guess I can say I am considered enough of an expert to be asked to speak on panels about the game industry or serve on juries for awards. And you are right it is a complicated question.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#362

Post by kevml »

t-3 wrote: post #352
Ygg2 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because rather than pirating from cracxxxed.warez I can buy the game on Steam/GoG sale for $1.4.

Exactly. Games are just software, there's no real unit cost to factor in when setting minimum prices, just market strategy. Running sales with different levels of discounts is as close to optimal as possible $/customer without doing stuff like individualized pricing (which surely requires a vast amount of computing power and human effort to do at scale). Only the truly penniless or retro-game fans need to pirate nowa…

The real unit cost is worker development cost. Like any other tech company, this cost gets muddied in the platform/framework development costs versus more product focused costs.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#363

Post by sokoloff »

BrenBarn wrote: post #338
mindcandy wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My source is first and second hand reports from management of game companies having worked in the industry for decades. But, they don’t make numbers like that public. The best public report I can find is https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18759... which shows a median difference 20% of revenue for games where Denuvo is cracked “quickly” but also no significant difference if Denuvo survives for at…

> My source is first and second hand reports from management of game companies having worked in the industry for decades. But, they don’t make numbers like that public. As an aside, I find this kind of behavior on the part of companies rather irritating. It's like, if you want people to believe that something affects your sales, you need to publicly release the sales data (and do so in a way that people will trust).…

Why would they care if you or I believe them or not?

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#364

Post by solatic »

georgeecollins wrote: post #91
Fiveplus wrote: post #23

> Can I still download offline installers? Yes. This is the only line I was looking for. I stopped buying on Steam sometime ago because I realized I was just renting licenses. GOG is the only major storefront where I feel like I actually own the product. As long as offline installers remain a core tenet, I don't care who owns the company. That said, it helps that it's someone returning to their roots rather than a pr…

OK, but the model that Valve pioneered is the model that supports 90% of all commercial PC games made today, a higher percentage if you cut out MMOs and free to play games, which you certainly don't own. I love GoG and I have worked closely with a lot of people there on projects they are great. This announcement seems like good news. No one has to sell games on Steam. No one has to use a model where they "rent licens…

> They don't because too many people pirate games to make that a viable business

Game piracy is fundamentally un-safe for players, since games are fundamentally executable code, where setup usually requires admin permissions, and pirate distributors are financially incentivized to add malware to turn the game system into part of someone's botnet. The only "safe" way to pirate is to do it on a dedicated machine, on a separate VLAN, network controls, etc., which most people will not set up. This is not like TV/movie piracy, which would depend on zero-day exploits in the video player.

Buying a DRM-free game legally is much safer.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#365

Post by georgeecollins »

dmantis wrote: post #190
cogogo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up playing pirated games on the Apple II 35 years ago. The fact that many people pirate is not an opinion.

It doesn't prove that DRM free is not a viable business. I also grew up pirating, but I haven't been pirating games for more than 10 years now. A few bucks costs much less to me these days than a headache with finding a cracked version and installing potential malware on my computer. Not even talking about supporting the artists and developers. Gabe is right that piracy is a service problem. If you have proper easy i…

The first game I ever sold had no DRM, it was distributed by cassette tape. I did very well making games for CD-ROM, up until CD burners got cheap.

There's nothing stopping anyone from making a business selling DRM free games. I think you can get original DRM free games on itch.io. There are probably other places. GoG is great, but they don't typically sell new games.

If someone thinks they can make high production value games without DRM I hope they try and succeed. Anyone here who is certain it is possible is welcome to try.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#366

Post by krige »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #278
TulliusCicero wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% cut is standard, and was so at retail even before Steam existed IIRC.

And the cut can't be lower? The rush to defend Valve's monopoly is so weird since HN usually hates fat cat billionaires. Valve is raking in so much money as a middleman that Gabe Newell has ~$1 billion worth of yachts alone, in addition to the rest of his wealth, yet gamers want Valve to keep on bleeding them and game studios?

Ah yes the Tim Sweeney argument. Get a better service with a lower cut, sure. Why does nobody do that? They must be stupid.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#367

Post by swiftcoder »

georgeecollins wrote: post #91
Fiveplus wrote: post #23

> Can I still download offline installers? Yes. This is the only line I was looking for. I stopped buying on Steam sometime ago because I realized I was just renting licenses. GOG is the only major storefront where I feel like I actually own the product. As long as offline installers remain a core tenet, I don't care who owns the company. That said, it helps that it's someone returning to their roots rather than a pr…

OK, but the model that Valve pioneered is the model that supports 90% of all commercial PC games made today, a higher percentage if you cut out MMOs and free to play games, which you certainly don't own. I love GoG and I have worked closely with a lot of people there on projects they are great. This announcement seems like good news. No one has to sell games on Steam. No one has to use a model where they "rent licens…

This is mostly fear-mongering on the part of the big IP holders.

We saw the exact same cycle with mobile distribution of audio and video - Amazon even had to fork Android to add kernel-level DRM before any of the video rights holders would allow Amazon Video on tablets (this is before Google added DRM to android in general).

And now? That DRM was circumvented, and you can torrent pretty much any Amazon video the day after it goes live. But it's inconvenient enough that most people don't, the rights holders still feel all warm and cozy, and nobody really cares.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#368

Post by generic92034 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #91
Fiveplus wrote: post #23

> Can I still download offline installers? Yes. This is the only line I was looking for. I stopped buying on Steam sometime ago because I realized I was just renting licenses. GOG is the only major storefront where I feel like I actually own the product. As long as offline installers remain a core tenet, I don't care who owns the company. That said, it helps that it's someone returning to their roots rather than a pr…

OK, but the model that Valve pioneered is the model that supports 90% of all commercial PC games made today, a higher percentage if you cut out MMOs and free to play games, which you certainly don't own. I love GoG and I have worked closely with a lot of people there on projects they are great. This announcement seems like good news. No one has to sell games on Steam. No one has to use a model where they "rent licens…

> They don't because too many people pirate games to make that a viable business.

So, how does it work for Valve to sell games which are also available at GOG without DRM? If too many people are pirating, why would anyone buy the Steam version?

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#369

Post by chii »

esrauch wrote: post #349
chii wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the cut can't be lower? why should it be lower (or higher)? steam's cut should be whatever they set, and the market responds. The natural equilibrium would get reached. The value steam provides, imho, certainly justifies their cut imho. There's plenty of other platforms to release games on - including free ones (such as itch.io, or your own website).

The main claim here is that it is a defacto monopoly, and that there are not "plenty of other platforms", since none of those platforms actually have any reach. It results in most games smaller than Fortnight or Blizzard having literally no choice but to use steam regardless of policy or cut. Any time you have no choice it at least makes for a very warped market.

> since none of those platforms actually have any reach.

so really, this is about getting reach, and that a 30% cut for said reach is too high. I am arguing that this price is a market price, for which it is justified by mere existence. If this price was too high, then these other platforms that you claim have no reach will get some reach, since the PC platform is not locked down (yet).

Unlike in the model of apple's app store (until recently at least?), which has no alternative possible. Even android's supposed alternative is somewhat going to get locked down by google looking at the trend. Then the claim would be that those platforms hold not only a defacto monopoly, but an actual one, and their cut is therefore not a real market price. That makes it possible to claim that they're unfairly pricing their platform. Steam doesn't have this issue at all.

Re: GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder

#370

Post by krige »

roxolotl wrote: post #251
legitster wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’re not buying games you’re leasing them Counterpoint, the cost of "owning" offline games is not zero and their lifetime is not infinite. I have a stack of old games on CD (or older) and getting them to run on anything is a massive pain in the neck. (In fact, for nearly all that I care about I also have bought a Steam license in addition). Ultimately, everything comes down to user experience. We can pat ourselve…

Yea 100% it’s not as easy to use. But as far as I’m aware Steam doesn’t provide any guarantee games will keep working and GOG actually has it as a mission statement that, as least those selected as “Good Old Games”, will[0]. Now of course that requires GOG to survive so it’s sorta the same thing like you’re saying. But I’d argue there is a material difference between “if you try hard you can run an original copy of D…

GOG's mission statement is applied very selectively. For a long time they did not support windows 10, and even now it's really spotty. It's frequently on a per-game basis, and sometimes games that used to work, don't anymore.
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