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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

#451

Post by fc417fc802 »

toyg wrote: post #419
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…

> Web apps are primarily DRM I've been saying that for decades at this point. Web apps trade post-release support issues with slightly higher development costs upfront (dealing with browser compatibility), but the real kicker is that the company is now in complete control of who gets to use what and when.

It's a vacuous argument. Even in the complete absence of piracy web apps would still have won out over desktop software due to turning a one time sale into a recurring subscription. That's what drove their adoption.

MMOs show the same thing. There are plenty of multiplayer games with centralized servers that are effectively impossible to pirate. But subscription based MMOs score a clear win in terms of revenue.

(It turns out free to play gacha is even more lucrative than subscription, but I digress.)

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

#452

Post by sokoloff »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #448
sokoloff wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my point: they don’t need people to care. They just need law makers to support IP/DRM laws that allow them to continue to operate. (I made games for a while at a small studio; I understand some of the pressures that studios are under and don’t support piracy of games.) And they can get that support without publicly releasing detailed time-series sales data.

It doesn't add up though. If they were actually dependent on DRM as described then broad public support would be a massive benefit to them. Yet seemingly none of the many studios out there publicize such data. And this comment section is full of hand waving about "well I can't provide actual data but I talked to someone who said ..." it sure looks like BS to me.

What form would this “massive benefit” take?

What change would their CFO see on their spreadsheets from this massive benefit?

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

#453

Post by spockz »

71bw wrote: post #397
vintermann wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what he does, from the comment about accidentally kicking each other out.

No, the new system allows multiple users to play the same game at the same time (unless the publisher explicitely opted out).

Does it? I thought only as many times as there are original licenses in the family. Or is this yet another mechanism?

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

#454

Post by badsectoracula »

georgeecollins wrote: post #365
dmantis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

> If someone thinks they can make high production value games without DRM I hope they try and succeed.

CD Projekt RED did exactly that with both Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, which were available on GOG day #1 (and the Steam version did not have any DRM whatsoever) and while the latter had a rough start because of technical issues, they both sold very well and were positively received (after some patches for CP2077 anyway).

GOG also releases many new high production value games on day #1 too, e.g. Expedition 33 (which won a crapton of awards in recent times) was released on it the same day as on Steam. Baldur's Gate 3 was also on GOG on release date as is Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon right now, which also seems to be a high production value game with relatively well reception.

The only games missing are those by companies whose business models rely on sucking out gamers' wallets dry with microtransactions (so they need the "protection" from their own customers that DRM provides) or companies that have people making decisions based on assumptions stuck in past decades.

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

#455

Post by qwytw »

chii wrote: post #369
esrauch wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not exactly how markets generally work ("free market" is more of a theoretical concept than something that has ever existed outside of commodity markets at least).

In a way it can be justified in the sense that developers would rather get 70% than not make a sale at all if their games were only available on less popular platforms. But effectively that's what allows Steam to charge charge as much. They certainly have a dominant position in the market due to very little competition.

It's like retail/supermarket chains in certain countries being able to extort better conditions from their suppliers because they have very little choice. Or e.g. real estate agents being able to charge disproportionally high fees due to how the market is structured.

Whether someone considers that fair or not is of course rather subjective...

> Steam doesn't have this issue at all.

IMHO it's a matter of degree but fundamentally the same thing. The barriers to switching to a different store are just much lower than not having an Apple/Google phone but they still exist.

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

#456

Post by bigfishrunning »

wilg wrote: post #386
ManlyBread wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOG is no different, you're still renting licenses and GOG still has the right to revoke your license, effectively making your "offline installer" no different from a game downloaded from myabandonware or a similar website.

I genuinely don't understand what people think "own" means here. Downloading from Steam you "own" it in exactly the same way as if you install it from a CD: you have a license to the game. There's nothing to own in any case, unless you literally own the copyright to the game which of course you don't. Also Steam doesn't apply any DRM unless developers add it, so backing up your Steam library folder to an external dri…

That's true, the CD is a license in the same way steam is. But practically it's different, because in many cases there's no mechanical way to revoke the license from that CD; it'll keep working after music rights expire or the game producer gets cancelled on Twitter or whatever. The game won't just evaporate like it can on steam

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

#457

Post by qwytw »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #247
Hammershaft wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam uses outsized market power to take an enormous %30 cut so it also does major damage to the games industry.

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

Of course compared to retail its a great deal but that's because of the huge number of middlemen involved in shipping a game/software back then. It's not like retailer margins were that great.

The 30% is mostly arbitrary though, IMHO had apple decided to charge 20% or 25% when the appstore came out that would have become the industry standard.

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

#458

Post by qwytw »

chii wrote: post #309
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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 natural equilibrium would get reached

Except somehow they managed to get it right from the beginning and there was never any real market pressure to change it. Had Valve (or Apple of that matter) decided to charge e.g. 20% due to whatever reasons or conditions that existed in 2007 (but might not anymore) that would still somehow be the "natural equilibrium" even today in the exactly the same way.

The fee is also very sticky, platforms can't really increase without a massive amount if backlash, therefore reducing it becomes much riskier since they can never go back. Given a competitive market doesn't really exist a variable fee based on "market conditions" can't really be a thing either.

It's very hard for someone to undercut Valve just because of the scale. They might sill be very profitable if they charged 15-20% while other smaller stores might not be able to afford that. Same mechanics have always applied to most other monopolies or oligopolies in other industries.

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

#459

Post by Uvix »

izacus wrote: post #334
Uvix wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroic's cloud save support is flaky; I've had it upload saves to the wrong path so Galaxy on another machine can't download them. As for achievements, I wouldn't say it's had support for "a long time"; they were added in August 2024 (v2.15.1).

So it supports both for a year and a half, what are you nitpicking now exactly?

That it’s had either for “a long time”. Maybe once they’ve been there and working correctly for five years I’d feel that’s an accurate adjective.

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

#460

Post by nialv7 »

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…

I think the individual game developers can choose whether they sell you the game or just rent you a license, right? Steam doesn't enforce DRM, they do provide an API game developers can use to add DRM to their games. But the developers don't have to use it if they so choose.
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