Shit I really like GOG as it’s the only competition to steam
GOG reportedly suffering from staff turnover and poor management: “Current business model is likely running out of steam”
Submitted 2 days ago by lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/12/20/gog-layoffs-staff-turnover-poor-management-report
Comments
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
There’s also itch.io, which is great. It does have a lack of game selection, but we’re comparing it to GOG, so…
stardust@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Yeah itch lacks the bigger titles GOG has been able to pull.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
pennomi@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I mean, the Epic Store exists. Well, not on Linux. And it’s missing a lot of features the other storefronts have.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Epic exists on Linux to the same degree gog does: heroic launcher.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The approved competitor to a monopoly is… *checks notes* a wannabe monopoly that’s trying to buy their way into the position by providing less for the customer and instead bribing the publishers for exclusivity?
No, thanks. I would rather stick with the existing monopoly than reward Epic’s anticompetitive and anti-consumer bullshit.
amstafff@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Wdym I’m playing several games on arch through epic games since I got them for free
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The former employee knew what they were doing with their choice of words.
DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com 2 days ago
Current employees are running over to Steam.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 2 days ago
Using a release Valve.
BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 2 days ago
“GOG regularly adapts its structure to its strategy and ongoing projects, sometimes this means eliminating certain roles — as was the case recently.”
Yeah, but 30% of your entire contract workforce reveals that you don’t give a flying fuck about sustaining the lifespan of the storefront and prefer to pad the executives golden parachutes from the stock valuation.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 2 days ago
perhaps - i didn’t read the article, but if it’s your contract workforce rather than full time then sometimes you just want to transition from expensive “temporary” employees to permanent positions
BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 2 days ago
No permanent positions were created or filled, if you read the article. The article also says you need to PM me your credit card info. Don’t worry about reading shit for yourself, just believe what we say about it in the comments without question.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 1 day ago
running out of steam
THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO GET DEGREES IN FUCKING ENGLISH TO DO THIS
nutsack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
they need to use super generic popular idioms in order to be search engine optimized. technology killed journalism
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
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 and how someone on the writing staff must have went to college to think of that.
glitches_brew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s nice sweetie 👵
aggelalex@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Let’s be honest, this was apparent for a long time. Steam, a centralised platform, has been making strides in Linux gaming and has been making innovation after innovation together with its steam deck. Gog, a forefront to freedom in gaming, barely did anything for the Linux gaming scene. No innovation either. Its just the simple (and well needed) premise of no DRM. It’s necessary, but not enough. It didn’t cater to its niche, it just committing to creating one under a premise. That’s not how you go forward. How does this connect to bad management? Well, I think that with good management gog would make different moves. And wouldn’t rest on its laurels so much.
blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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.shscripts and seecd “${CURRENT_DIR}/game” chmod +x *it makes me think they could probably put at least a bit more effort into their linux support.)GaMEChld@lemmy.world 1 day ago
As someone with no Linux experience, what’s wrong with that code?
emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
How would a game “not work” on GOG? isnt their whole thing that they give you just the game files with no DRM or whatever?
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
crossdl@leminal.space 1 day ago
An official Steam Deck mod would probably be nice. Heroic Launcher kind of works.
L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Running out of steam
Lol
7rokhym@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I’m really happy with my experience with GOG, but they put a lot of effort into their Windows app and i ws pretty blunt with my feedback, it is pretty useless to me and I find it unhelpful. Heroic game launcher on Linux great and cost GOG $0.00. My thought is that they have been focusing on the wrong things, fundamentally I love their strong DRM stance and when I am travelling internationally,the games I bought off GOG work, unlike Steam😡😡😡😡. So if they have come to this realization, then nothing about these changes are disturbing as a customer, but sad to hear their employees taking the hit. 😢
kadup@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
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.
ika_chan@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
I don’t follow the logic here. You said it yourself – GoG has only allowed DRM onto their platform four times. This is a violation of their anti-DRM policy but it still means like 99% of games on GoG have no DRM. It’s good to be principled about these things but I don’t see how this merits a knee-jerk response to run to Steam (a platform where 99% of games do have DRM and no guarantee other than an informal promise that they’ll do “something” to make their games available if Steam were to shut down).
QuantumEyetanglement@lemdro.id 2 days ago
Four times? How many times has Steam allowed it? Trying to follow your argument, TIA!
tomalley8342@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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: www.gog.com/forum/general/…/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?
blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Note, if you actually look at that list you’ll see it’s a very loose interpretation of DRM. All of the games on that list work without any kind of phone-home security check, or unlock code, or anything like that. The list is stuff like “getting the DLC requires a third party account”. It’s definitely a list of things people don’t like, but whether it is or isn’t ‘DRM’ is not so clear cut.
GOG’s official position is that the store doesn’t allow DRM at all. They describe what they mean by DRM on that same page, and it sounds fairly reasonable; but its certainly understandable that some people would prefer a stricter set of rules.
Ravenson@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Not the person you asked, but one game I had problems with on Steam that I did not on GOG was the OG Riven. It was still playable, but the various animations associated with pressing buttons and suchlike were completely broken. Very rare experience though and I have played many retro games on Steam.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
any MP game has DRM
Well, that’s not true either. I hate this trend of developers only relying on the platform-provided servers for multiplayer, but you have to find a game with LAN. That limits your selection a lot, but I for sure played Star Wars: Episode I - Racer from GOG in LAN without talking to their servers at all.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’ve traveled domestically and had the Steam Deck randomly decide that the games I preloaded need to be authenticated again because I didn’t explicitly put the device in “offline mode” before traveling. A GOG game sideloaded through Heroic would just work.
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
I didn’t even know they had a client. I do everything via their website.
NutWrench@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
There’s nothing wrong with the business model of selling older games at affordable prices. This is about poor management. (Or deliberately bad management by a “CEO” who was hired to destroy GOG to remove a popular choice from us).
TipRing@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Unfortunate. Competition is generally good for the consumer and I’d hate to see one of more more customer-friendly storefronts go away.
stardust@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
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.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 days ago
I really like GOG so it would be highly unfortunate to see them go under. I guess we really can’t have nice things in this day and age.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
zqps@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Are they publicly traded?
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Thankfully if GOG goes down I don’t lose anything.
Now if Steam goes down, I lose my entire library
aido@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Gabe Newell has promised that if Steam goes down you won’t lose your library, but we only have his word as assurance.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 2 days ago
No doubt the corporate drones that take over after his death will shit all over his legacy.
pyre@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gabe Newell is much more likely to go down before steam does. his words mean nothing for the future.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 days ago
As great as Gaben and Valve are his word doesn’t mean anything. Luckily if they fail to keep their promises (or legally cannot) then the crack community will step in. I’m pretty sure they cracked Steam DRM ages ago. I remember a friend using it for Left 4 Dead back in the day.
ugjka@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Anything that uses steam apis and services won’t work without steam and steam offers a lot of that to game devs
uskok@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Do you have a source for this? People like to repeat this rumour but I’ve never found out where he promises anything like that.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If steam goes down I’m sailing the high seas from then on.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 2 days ago
A lot of steam games dont have drm
You would lose only most of your library, not all of it
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I would lose some of my library, but I think most of it would still work.
DicJacobus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
GOG was good for acquiring and re-releasing OLD GAMES. somewhere along the way they decided they wanted to compete with the big platforms and be “We’re just like them but without DRM”
I haven’t used GOG for years, they allowed me to relive a few of my old adolescence favorites, but stopped being useful to me a long time ago :/
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
DicJacobus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
i mean I get that, but what I was saying was the original purpose of the store became an afterthought.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’d certainly love to hear that they’re at least turning a profit. It’s my default store now, but given the ambiguity of what I’m buying in the multiplayer space, and the lesser experience I get as a Linux customer, they’re certainly not making it easy.
BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 2 days ago
The fact that you have loyalty to a comedian storefront makes you a fucking gonk. - Johnny Silverhand
poke@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
OK but this is the storefront without DRM. It’s the biggest one that doesn’t make you rely on it.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I think I openly admitted in the comment you replied to that I don’t have loyalty to them.
Rooty@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Too bad, I use Steam and it works wonderfully on Linux, but i don’t want it to be the only option.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
It does support Linux: it lets you download Linux installer for games that have a Linux port.
The lack of GOG Galaxy on Linux just means you have to manually manage your games.
lengau@midwest.social 2 days ago
Many more companies than Valve are making financial investments into Linux gaming, including companies that own various Linux distributions (Red Hat, Canonical, etc.), CodeWeavers (who amongst other things have been contracted by Valve on a lot of Proton work) and to a lesser extent Humble Bundle.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 days ago
GOG is the only big option if you want to own the games you purchase.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I mean it is owned by CD Projekt
freeman@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
The publication added that CD Projekt cuts jobs at its subsidiary every two to three years, with annual staff turnover reaching around 30%.
As summed up by another former employee, “GOG has been acting well tactically from a financial perspective, but poorly strategically, and the current business model is likely running out of steam.”
So nothing burger? Other than a corpo being anti-worker which is not news…
emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
What exactly is the distinction between acting tactically and strategically? This doesnt even make sense.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
As a result, no one on the team has the courage to express their opinion. Under Gołębiewski, GOG typically makes business decisions that may be profitable in the short term, but may not contribute to the platform’s long-term growth.
Why half ass things when your the good guy?
sirico@feddit.uk 2 days ago
People talking about money kinda missing the point this is a culture issue. They need to sort themselves out clean house if people can’t be reasonable for their staff.
als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
If only they were a co-op
feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The word choice is certainly not accidental.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 days ago
No…
They’re the ones who preserve and update old games. I can’t… I can’t
Suavevillain@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I hope they stick around they are great for gaming. I need to buy off there more often.
Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
This is a real shame, I used to buy all my games on GoG and had high hopes for the galaxy 2.0 client. Hopefully they keep going because we need a viable competitor to Steam that isn’t awful.
atempuser23@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The launcher that they have is pretty rough. I downloaded it for Mac OS and it just wouldn’t run right. Kept closing down. If I could just download right from the website they’d have some money.
If they draw is drm free games why only allow purchase through a custom launcher like everything else?
Don_alForno@feddit.org 2 days ago
If I could just download right from the Website
You can.
scottywh@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah galaxy is sadly a bit of a mess. Back when i was still running windows it just broke its own update capabilities once or twice.
HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Can you not download from the site on mac?
oo1@lemmings.world 2 days ago
I see what they did there. groan.
carp1@lemm.ee 2 days ago
NOOOOOOO I LOVE GOG
Fontasia@feddit.nl 2 days ago
“no pun intended”
GooberEar@lemmy.wtf 2 days ago
That’s too bad. No doubt I appreciate it Steam for what it is, even knowing that I don’t actually own any of the software I buy from them. That being said, I try to support GOG where/when I can.
Is there any “easy” way to get GOG games running on a Steam Deck? It’s been awhile since I last tried to look into it, but back then it seemed like a lot of steps and a lot of places to potentially mess up the process. I believe I kind of got something working at one point, but I’d honestly have to go back and double check.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
The easy way is with the Heroic Game Launcher. Log in to your GOG account and direct install.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 days ago
GameWorldObserver.
Can they be trusted?
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
This makes me sad. I wanna believe in gog. The last bastion of hope for gaming.
Alk@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
In what way? I know it’s great but I don’t know if I’d call it the last hope. 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?
Darorad@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They’re like the only store that actually sells you the game and not a revokable license to a game