GOG - The First 5 Years

Couchpotato

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GOG.com has a new post celebrating their first five years. Here's hoping we have many more to go with it in the future.



As a new year begins, and with 5 very successful years in the digital gaming market, GOG.com takes a look at its past. Join CD Projekt's Marcin Iwiński, Guillaume Rambourg, our Managing Director, and Piotr Karwowski, our Creative Director (both of them core members of the GOG.com team who were with us for years), as they talk about the company's history, the concept behind it, and the best (and one not very good) ideas in our history.

Thanks for being with us, dear users, and for making GOG.com the awesome place that it is!
More information.
 
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The first game I got there was Sacrifice. I've still got a shortcut to it on my desktop.
 
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Congrats gog.com and I also hope you guys will be around for many more years to come.
 
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That was me, you. I don't see it's business model sustaining without change. Gog has gotten more and more desperate, where there is a Fall Sale with 80% off all games, then a week after Fall Sale with 82% off all games, etc. Unless they get a LOT of new games, I don't see how they can stay solvent. The model needs to change. Greenlight is another GoG killer because indies would much rather have Steam versions than GoG versions.

This is just my opinion, and I hope I'm either wrong, or that they come up with an inovative idea to get lots of new games and stay DRM free.
 
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It would really suprise me if they are not doing very well, just look at their work with us page. A company not doing well does not post a big list of job opportunities.
 
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Um, sure they do. It's whether they actually hire a bunch of folks that shows growth, not putting up a job board. A job board can be a smoke and mirrors tactic to hide the fact that you're struggling. Again, not saying this is the case.

I'm looking at their business model and the onslaught of sales at massive discounts. It is always the same couple hundred games on sale and saturation is inevitable. If they're not hurting yet, they will be, without a massive change in inventory.
 
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I think (and hope) that they will do well in the future, as there is a HUGE library of old (and will become old) games that will always be around. The only problem, as crpgnut highlighted, is growing their collection and getting licenses to put games drm free on their store.

I think that they are doing very well, and even Steam is following their footsteps by releasing the same old games in GoG.

In the worst case, they will be the portal to release CD Projeckt Red games, much like UPlay or Origin with a DRM free library in the background.

By the way, they have just released Bloodnet on GoG.
 
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I agree with pretty much everything crpgnut is saying. Gog.com may be making profits now but they need to get more games to sustain growth in the future. The number of games they are adding to their catalogue needs to go way up.

I really like what they are doing and I hope they can do this forever but I also see warning signs...
 
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GOG = how to make me buy games I already have... :)

Congrats :party:
 
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Many lovely old gems on gog, which it mainly was made for in the first place. The massive success they had is a factor to the somewhat newer games being on the store today.
CD project has yet to fail to impress me in any way. Massive respect for these Poles.
 
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Well if you follow the news they have a new submission portal that is much easier then Steam. Can't forget the 30 day money back guarantee is much better also.

Also they have a few more changes on the way in 2014. One of them might be a DRM-free client like Steam. Many have been asking for more social interaction, and a better way to patch the games.
 
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If there are any game etailers I'd be worried about it's the ones that are basically steam key resellers, not GOG. They're at the mercy of Valve and as soon as they start competing too successfully they'll get the shaft, so they'll always be limited to bit parts- that's the inherent and fundamental problem with having a monopoly choke point. GOG does not have that problem, has the second largest exclusive title base and clearly has an increasing user base since they quadrupled their server capacity for the recent sale(s) and it still wasn't enough.

It's easy enough to dismiss all that as GOG PR spin that is made up to project success, of course. Then again, as a private company Valve can lie far more easily as they won't get thrown in jail by regulators (ohohoho, ahahaha, like that would ever happen) for manipulating their stock price. I'm not saying it's the case, but Steam's x million users could be just made up to hide that it's struggling, all its DOTA players bar a few could be bots etc etc. You can do that for anything using that method, as any sign of success automatically becomes a smokescreen for failure.
 
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I like GoG but their offerings have stalled out. There are so many games I'd love to run on Win7... Just the other day I was trying to install XWing vs Tie Fighter but couldn't get it to work. Checked out GoG for the title but no luck. Ah well.
 
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Haha. A steam conspiracy theory. I've heard it all now. ;)
Not a (particularly) serious one though. The main disputation is the last part, ie if you see all signs of strength as covering up signs of weakness then you'll always be convinced someone is weak, whether it's steam, Apple, IBM, GE or Google.

I'd suspect that GOG has actually released more games this year than any other, since they've added ~180 games the past year.
 
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I think (and hope) that they will do well in the future, as there is a HUGE library of old (and will become old) games that will always be around.

GOG is going to struggle to renew their library.
They've distributed so far games coming from before the Internet, games that grew obsolete because of technological leaps. But their gameplay is intact.

To compensate for the fact that technological obsolescence is going to be harder to hit, the industry is attaching gameplay to a community. As the community dissolves, a large part of the gameplay is gone.

Playing an old game from the future is going to be like watching a tv show like lost years after its conclusion was aired.
It might be good but it is much less good without all the passion that was stirred in the community of watchers when the show was aired for the first time.

Worst for GoG: playing an old game from the future is going to be less good than playing a present game from the future.

Replaying old games from the future is going to lose most of its interest.
 
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I think that they are doing very well, and even Steam is following their footsteps by releasing the same old games in GoG.

Just following my previous comment as I just seen that Steam added Realms of Arkania classic to their library. Steam really want to dominate everything!

Nevertheless, GoG is always my no. 1 choice of buying games.
 
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To compensate for the fact that technological obsolescence is going to be harder to hit, the industry is attaching gameplay to a community. As the community dissolves, a large part of the gameplay is gone.

Very good point, and highlights the shift in the industry towards blurring the lines between single and (online) multiplayer aspects of games.

Maybe it is not very wise as the industry will lose revenue that might come from their legacy games - but probably they overcome this by re-inventing the wheel every now and charge increased price preying on the old and new gamers. It is always a win-win situation for them!
 
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