If we were talking about GOG of 3 or 4 years ago sure, but with Galaxy and the success of the Witcher 3... GOG's growth and increase in popularity can largely be contributed to having more games and a better service now in relation to Steam. Epic Games could quickly turn GOG back into the niche store front that it has spent the last 3 / 4 years trying to desperately escape.

This will likely have an impact, possibly a large one. Hardcore GOG users can only maintain GOG for so long. GOG needs games and it needs casual users who come around during sales.

GOG was becoming the alternative store for indie developers that wanted to release outside of Steam, and now Epic Games is far better position to fill that role.

3-4 years ago, when i could use an older browser and the features worked, when the forums were more lively and people didn't up and leave due to new guidelines. About the time it was still $1=$1 and you weren't having multiple region pricing. Back when simple BBCode tags worked.

I'd rather go back honestly.

arguably, no it was not. gOg has or had a bit of "bad rep" among many indie developers, due to communication problems, old fashioned tech and procedures (improved now with Galaxy, but a rep is not easy to improve) and very difficulty even getting onto to start with (curation).

The alternative indie store of choice is becoming more and more ichi.io as it is much more developer friendly, it has grown quite a lot the last couple of years.

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Checks out! ;)

Yes. it's clear that they are catering to the devs and zero to the customer. The way they talk about things hints of a very closed-garden approach in regards to their customers, where they will do their best to ignore the needs of the consumer in favor over developers. Already, their refund terms are unclear, compared to other digital stores. There is also the fact, that they illicitly made use of the DMCA to sue players in that whole thing with Fortnite. Who knows, forget about the standard banning of a game library, they might just haul you to court if you do anything they don't like! For me, their total behavior spells bad news. And if there has to be one dominant store, Steam will be by far better for the average consumer. Steam has so far, offered a reasonable compromise between devs and players.

@Topic
Steam certainly has the resources to compete against Epic. It's merely a matter of whether they wish to. I was thinking about it, and actually see Steam stepping up their game as being beneficial to GOG. If they can retain their usual base there, it will be just the usual split between Steam and GOG. GOG on their part needs to do a bunch of fixing up. Improving the website and the developer pipeline. Likely, GOG will need to take a revenue cut as well. If Cyberpunk 2077 goes well, it shall be a fantastic marketing tool to enhance their presence. If GOG adapts, they will still be relevant, which is the idea.

Even though GOG isn't perfect, they have the most customer friendly ideas, like DRM-Free and dedicated customer support. It's always awful to see the better guys coming in last.

I wish GOG was more relevant for CD Projekt. The platform is lacking pretty much anything that requires some financial resources to be made: more languages support, a linux client, a workshop-like environment for user generated content and game editors, a controller-friendly interface etc. It's pretty basic, and it probably won't grow fast (since no one is even thinking about these features at GOG, except for maybe a more straightforward mod support). The Epic Store, on the other hand, can afford timed and permanent exclusives, because there's a much higher budget available to develop the platform. I can see every GOG Galaxy feature (except for store-wide drm-freeness) coming to that platform too in less than 12 months. It's not hard to imagine that the EGS will take GOG's 2nd place on PC really fast.

Yep, which is why the lack of communcation by GOG is a shame. There is no "yeah, we noticed the redesign is rather bad and has lots of issues, we will try to fix it" or other such things, there is no dialogue between the customers and GOG which is, from my perspective, bad. Obviously, I want to support GOG, cheer them on, but how is it possible like this? All I can do is make cynical remarks these days.

Absolutely not. They should implement Nexus, ModDB and such instead of creating an environment like the workshop. Anything gated like that is bad.

I wouldn't like it either, but apparently it's a feature that's been highly requested by some developers and it's the reason a lot of games haven't showed up here (or have missing content, such as level and map editors)

Me too.

First and foremost for the free Subnautica.
After that? We'll see.

Opening an Epic Store account is not different from opening an Origin account.
Which of course, I also did because of their free "On the House" games.

So - nothing really new here.

I've had Epic account for ages because I've been on an occasion dabbling with UE4 engine. I like the new launcher they have, it seems pretty fast and functional, though how it fares after the store gets more items is another question entirely. But for now, I do like how clutter free it is at the moment.

Interesting. Well, then it's actually an opportunity. Steam obviously has the monopoly, so they would want their Workshop to persist. But, GOG could always communicate with Epic (and other stores) to implement those third party websites in some way. This would benfit all the smaller stores and would have the advantage of only having to put the mods, maps etc there.

I wouldn't make that argument. Sure GOG may not have been the preferred choice of indie devs looking to sell outside of Steam, I agree with you, but it was the only store capable of providing enough sales outside of Steam which made it worth selling on. Which is what I was referring too.

Indie devs like itch.io because of they let you set your own dev split and stuff like that, but itch.io doesn't have any brand recognition and for sure doesn't come close to GOG's user-base which is why it's still largely irrelevant outside of hobbyist type games.

That won't be a problem for Epic Games, who will not only be friendly to devs but also have a large ass user-base due to Fortnight that dwarfs not only itch.io but GOG too.

I had the unique fun case of helping a friend with getting their custom filter/plugins (in the sourcecode) to work in UE4. Which was just a lot of C/C++ #IfDef's preprocessor lines, then making a diff file so they could SEE and follow line by line where to go when making their next one. By far it was my best experience in C++ to date. No weird classes, no fighting with order of operations, just a confusing mess of managable #IfDef's.

- Behind the epic is Trencent, they have money money money

-It is impossible that Cd project can compete with valve and epic

-For Cd project gog is not the main thing, but for valve and epic your store yes they are

-Gog business volume is going to decrease because insurance is going to take second place, the one that had gog

-Many developers will see in the epic store the alternative to steam and will publish their games only on both platforms

-Epic will buy many exclusives that are not going to reach gog ever

-Gog can not compete with profit margins as low as epic

-The epic store is focusing on developers. Developers do not like that users can comment on their games, nor the returns nor the drm ... (gog gog gog)

-In the medium term Gog will have to go back to its beginnings and only sell very old games if he wants to survive


It's a shame because gog was growing, and the idea of not drm was wonderful.

The difficulty is that businesses rarely have the capability to go back to their roots after significant growth.. it's more likely that they just go bankrupt after struggling a while to make a buck in their overgrown state.