GOG.com has fired a significant number of employees

Well, the nice thing about GOG is you can download the games at any time, DRM free, so I guess that is a nice perk if people are worried about the store being in trouble or failing.

But there are many gamers who do care about DRM, namely - they hate it with a passion - that I have seen make comments on various game forums, that I've seen anyway. They are out there.

That said, it is surely a niche market. GOG will never be able to be as big as steam.

I think that most people would prefer no DRM - if it were a straight choice, and that being the only differentiating factor. I just think that it's a concern that's outweighed in most people's minds by the convenience and dominance of Steam.

For myself it depends on the DRM. There are two types of DRM i absolutely hate - the type that requires invisible authentiifcation on each usage or reinstall (even if using steam) as it is a ticking time-bomb that is likely to cause problems in future years (securerom is an example). The other type of DRm I hate is the one that destory performance (some implementations of denuvo has shown this to be a serious issue). I don't really care if there is 'invisible' drm that doesn't interfer with the gaming experience.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
Well, the nice thing about GOG is you can download the games at any time, DRM free, so I guess that is a nice perk if people are worried about the store being in trouble or failing.

But there are many gamers who do care about DRM, namely - they hate it with a passion - that I have seen make comments on various game forums, that I've seen anyway. They are out there.

That said, it is surely a niche market. GOG will never be able to be as big as steam.

Originally Posted by porcozaur
also giving away free games if you got them on steam surely wasnt a smart move financially

They only loose the money from people that have a game on Steam and buy the same game on GOG as well. I have no numbers to back it up, but I think the amount of people who do that is limited.
On the other hand they generate goodwill by offering this and potentially users who stick around to buy more games on GOG.

I prefer great old games much more than I do steam, but yeah downloading can be an issue even these days, and I've still not even tried out the galaxy thing. I wouldn't call them a "niche" company, unless their actual appeal is far less than I surmise it to be.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So GOG fired twelve workers and everyone freaks out?

There's also info from some ex-workers saying the company is in financial trouble. If they are, it will come out soon enough through normal channels, though.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if GOG went under, personally. They seem to have two selling points. One is the "good old games." Most folks looking for that nostalgia have already gotten the games by now, though. There will be some younger enthusiasts that will buy but not anywhere near enough to keep the place going - especially when Steam has a lot of them now, too. The other thing they've got is DRM-free. A few folks are extremely passionate about that but, as we can see from the sales figures, most would rather have all those features Steam has been putting in for the past decade and a half.

All in all, buying on GOG feels like you're paying five star prices for a cheap hotel room. They either need to crank up the features or drop the costs.

Well GOG has already came out on the official website and social media blasting the hit piece Kotaku article that started this. This was taken from the website yesterday.

We want to ensure you everything is good with GOG. Being part of a big gaming company, some reports - especially some given by significant media outlets - can often sound much scarier than reality.

But don’t worry, all is good, and we have a great plan for the future of GOG. We can’t wait for you to see some of the exciting things we have coming very soon.

I'm not denying sales are down and CD Projeckt exclusives flopped, but insiders say it was only 10% of the company that got fired. This happens in every business.

It's called downsizing to save money.

Damn, it would be a loss for the gaming community if they went under IMHO. Personally, it's the main place I buy my games: if it's on GOG, then I get it there.

Hopefully the rumors are just that: rumors.

I agree, great old games is where I go first and it would be a terrible blow indeed to lose this service. Whatever restructuring they are doing, I hope it all works out for both their benefit and ours as consumers.

Originally Posted by Cacheperl
If there is zero insight available, it definitely is an overreaction.

That makes no sense.

Originally Posted by Darth Tagnan
That makes no sense.

I'm sure you think so.

GOG has only generated $7.8k net profit in 2018
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comme…ir&sh=f25decc0

I honestly thought the company was much more robust than that would indicate. =xxx

$7.800 profit?
Look at the bright side of it - they cannot afford to hire EA's CEO. Which is a positive thing.

I think it's interesting to look at GOG's plight. In many ways they have tried to do things right by the consumer, but maybe they needed to be more aggressive to get a bigger market share.

I can imagine Epic getting blame if GOG goes down, but perhaps that's taking the wrong lesson from the situation…

Well gog is only a small portion of the total company. More important you would have to dig into the detail financials as to what was written off this quarter and why. I.e, the profit/loss values can be very misleading because some of the numbers are not tangible. I usually feel that cash-flow is a more useful estimate esp in quarters where large intangibles are written off.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
I honestly thought the company was much more robust than that would indicate. =xxx

Lol…

Businesses stopped caring about declared profit decades ago. Seriously, unless a business has a specific demand on it to declare a profit then why on earth would they? So the taxman can have most of it?

*lifts up rock* Oh hi, welcome.

Some time ago, on this site, the point was made that GOG was healthy because they were floating recruitment ads.

No fear, no shame. The past does not exist.

An update of a sort…
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl…evenue-decline

Speaking during a presentation on the company's annual financial report, CFO Piotr Nielubowicz confirmed that CD Projekt acquired a plot of land late last year, which gives the possibility of developing 3,000 square metres of office space.
"That's likely less than half the current seating of our company, so we will probably be able to provide 250 new jobs for CD Projekt Red and GOG," said Nielubowicz.

-12
+250
That ain't no EA math.

That does also note that the decline is also in revenue, not just in declared profit. I don't think there is any need to worry too much about CDPR itself, and games companies' revenues surely fluctuate with release schedules of major games, but i am a little more concerned that GOG could have the plug pulled if it's not bringing in the coin.