Have no idea why did you take that out of context, just to clarify for other people: I was talking about Cyberpunk and Witcher 4. The topic is not about whether non-profitable games can harm studios or not. Cyberpunk was definietly profitable, just look at the sales numbers.

Yes. If Witcher 4 flops, it will damage CD Projekt, and by extension, GOG.

But will Witcher 4 flop? Despite the backlash, Cyberpunk 2077 still sold 30 million copies. Witcher 3 still managed to sell more than 20 million copies ever since Cyberpunk's launch. Witcher 4 might not sell as much as Witcher 3/Cyberpunk, but to downright flop? I think they would really have to try to accomplish that.

In my opinion there's no chance The Witcher 4 will flop. It will most certainly sell very well.

It might not have the same cultural impact The Witcher 3 had on the world for so many years, but it sure will be well sold initially.
Depending on the quality of the gameplay and quests, it might reach 3's fame.

I personally can't see a scenario where The Witcher 4 hurts GOG.
Its a The Witcher game after The Witcher 3 with Ciri. A The Witcher game, with Ciri.
With Ciri. ...with Ciri, get it?
Modding possibilities, big world exploration.
Ciri... see? Ciri, modding, world, quests, Ciri. :P

The Witcher 3 launch apparently was very bad, and they fixed it.
We could argue that the people who made 3 is not there anymore, but CD Project Red has a history of terrible launches and fixing their games through time.

The only scenario where 4 hurts GOG is the one that The Witcher 4 is so bad, with so much bad writing, destroying Ciri character to a point of no return and bland gameplay that people would call it out, which is, to me, impossible of happening.

Why impossible? Because The Witcher 4 is a RPG.
There will be many choices, quests, and so on, with bad and good outcomes. Devs already explained that they intend to give players in game reasons and player choices for Ciri development and how she will, or will not, become a Witcher, maybe, continue to be, or not, a Witcher.

They also said Geralt will appear at some point, so there will probably be choices also based on their interaction. Coming from 3, where you could choose how to deal with Ciri's will to be her own and to prove herself, this will probably also impact how Ciri on 4 will deal with CD Project Red interpretation of how Geralt would treat Ciri, now, the player, on being a witcher or living a life so hard as the witchers.

Again, it might not top 3, but there are plenty talented people on CD Project Red still.
I don't think it will flop at all.

No, probably wont. But that doesn't mean it can't. The gaming industry is littered with the proverbial bones of once great studios that fell apart after too many bad decisions. This is becoming even more common how that game development costs are stupid high.

This year alone has been nothing but 'AAAA' flops like we've not seen in years. And a non insignificant part of that is companies chasing bit sales while being dumb enough to let their writers try to current year up a game because they've swallowed the lie that trying to chase some vague concept of appealing to wider audiences is how to get more sales.

All major game releases carry some risk; they are expensive to produce and need to recoup those costs.

You bring up Cyberpunk 2077, which indeed had a rough launch. However, CD Projekt Red has managed to turn things around. Cyberpunk 2077 now has very positive reviews, and with the addition of Phantom Liberty, they have exceeded total revenues of ~$752 million back in March. This figure doesn’t include summer, autumn, and current winter sales. (jekt.com/en/media/news/cd-projekt-looks-back-at-2023/)

So, if you're comparing it to Cyberpunk 2077, there’s little reason to worry.

Not having a Linux version of Galaxy doesn't probably affect GOG almost at all at this point. And I say this as a Linux user (and partly a Linux gamer too).

The good thing about GOG is though that you can play many of the offline-installer Windows versions of games on Linux, where the existence of the Galaxy-client doesn't matter.

Just refreshed my local GOG game library today! 2680 GOG games (offline installers, only the English Windows versions).

Can't even hope to be able to do the same with my Steam or EGS games... Then again I haven't bought a single game on EGS, yet I already have a sizable library there (311 games, all gotten for free from them). If the store closes and I lose the games, I can always console myself that I didn't lose any money with them...

People like you make me embarrassed to even considered part of gaming culture.

Attempting to count chickens before they've even gestated is a farcical folly and people complaining about the changes/differences are a vocal & ignoble minority.

Early days still but i don't see how the game could flop.

Inspite of everything liable to damage the game and/or company perception wise, red knows how to play their strong cards, narrative, characterization, production values, those tend to trump, and for the most part rightly so, everything not strictly in-game.

Slightly less favorable reviews/scores/ratings? Sure, that could happen, or not, largely depending on life and world between now and then. Flop ? Nope, nothing short of an unmitigated tech train wreck could bring that about and even then an utterly insipid anime series could probably set everything back on track :p

Yep, I can hardly imagine things going worse than with Cyberpunk, so if they could turn that around, they should survive everything. That said, Cyberpunk was sorrounded by absolutely bonkers, detached from all reality levels of hype before and around release. And that kind of hype happenig seems to be at least as much a matter of random luck as it is of good marketing (and straight up lying to fans).

In truth it's way, waaay too soon to even speculate about anything Witcher 4 related. Lets reconvene in 3-4 years and then we may have something to talk about.

Indeed.

Sure, it's a date ;)

I'm not worried in the slightest.

CDP will be fine. GOG will be fine.

It might damage the parent company's (CDP) bottom line (especially expected future revenue), but somehow I doubt it'll have too much of an impact on GOG itself. Likely it will be a red mark on CDPR which it would shoulder against its the profits of its previous successful titles.

The biggest issue GOG faces is internal mismanagement.

Besides, I don't see Witcher 4 is at risk of being a flop. It should recover its cost of production at least.

CDPR is fine, but GOG will not be. Anyone who is following the finances knows this. Excluding CDPR releases, GOG simply does not make any net profit to sustain itself. That's why they keep laying off staff every 2-3 years or do funny accounting to put themselves barely above 0 net profit. Without CDPR releasing games, it wouldn't nearly be operating at this scope.

I'm super surprised at everyone's takes here despite the spreadsheet I keep on posting.

I'm hoping for something drastic, like worker unions overthrowing management or the death of the Galaxy Client/Cloud Storage.

Indeed, we've discussed many issues before.

IMO, best thing to do is to fire the upper management in charge of GOG and bring in well-connected consultants if there aren't any experienced people left in the company. Like I know people are adaptable, but when GOG is being headed by an air traffic guy who somehow climbed the ranks quickly, I have no confidence in management. Then ruthlessly cut down costs like bizdev people so devpubs can manage their own sales like Steam, cut down on Galaxy/cloud storage, and tapping lower hanging fruit like reinviting previously rejected devpubs and proactively reaching out to new and proven indie devpubs to boost revenues.

The games will sell themselves with good marketing materials already prepared by the publishers, whatever streamer partners the pubs partner up with, and good pricing; you don't need separate business development marketers to help with planning sales especially when they get overwhelmed with an increasing library. Just have the pubs pick when they want to join themed sales and let them set prices up to a year in advance.

CDP claims zero resources put into Galaxy 2.0 R&D in the past few years, but I don't know if it's still accumulating costs elsewhere. I keep saying GOG would've been better off hiring the PlayNite and/or Heroic launcher guys full-time and letting them do whatever they want and they could accomplish more than what the current Galaxy team has.