What did Blizzard do? Well, aside from partnering with the Devactivil?

Ahm, yeah, using those same made up numbers means said developer would lose $35,000 on Steam if the game was sold for $7 but cost $8 each to procure them.

Both Steam and GOG are digital distributors, so the "cost" per game should be nearly equal to sell on both. Unless you count whatever developer costs are required for in game achievements, in which case then Steam costs per game would be higher than GOG.
Diablo III always online DRM, and I have no idea what Devactivil is, it actually got zero hits on Ixquick.

That's it? Meh. They're releasing their old games for free! Well, two old games so far, still!

umm.... it is a total cost, not cost per unit. that just means you priced the units wrong.

so - it is a total cost of $8000 getting the game on gOg and a total cost of $8000 getting the game on Steam, however the return from gOf will thereby be -1000 and the return from Steam is (insert calculation here)

Until they release Warcraft 1 and 2 and Diablo 1 for free digitally every PC gamer is happy :)

I also very much like that you can use a retail key for Diablo II, Starcraft and Warcraft III to generate a digital backup.

Yeah, I'm really hoping they'll get that far. I would love to have DRM-free installer for W1 and 2 + Diablo handy. That didn't happen yet tho, so I'm wasting time with Lost Vikings :D

I'm sorry, but where exactly are you pulling this "$8000" figure from?

I assumed they put the game up for sale on GOG, and GOG get's a percentage of the sales, and nothing before the first sale.

TBH I'd settle for just a re-release of Diablo Hellfire; unlike WC 1 & 2 and Diablo I itself it remains hard to acquire. Though, Blizzard probably don't even have the rights to it, since it was an outsourced expansion. :[

Yeah, you're right, I used a bad example by making it a per game analysis on a digital distribution.

Still the point is you made up those numbers out of thin air, when there is no economic explanation for saying a digitally distributed game would cost any more to distribute to 10 places than it would to distribute to one.

There are minimal coordination costs, which would be higher on a per game basis to a retailer that sold fewer games, but the fewer the games sold the less coordination required as well, and there is no justification whatsoever for the figures you just pulled out of thin air.

ADDED: Ugh, the one thing I didn't consider is the damned legaleze associated with game sales, and thus when lawyers are involved, it could get pretty expensive pretty quick. So I guess I can see where it would be possible for the legal costs associated with an agreement would be such that it may dwarf potential sales at a site, despite the fact that digital distribution doesn't add much in real costs.

Sorry, totally forgot about all the legaleze involved with gaming rights and such. My bad. Yeah, I suppose it is possible your numbers could be valid.

well given the number of users steam has it makes sense , we have seen how games like garry's mod etc have made money
but hey any idea how many gog users exist on this site ? any rough figures

as I have always said - pulled out of thin air to make an academic discussion.

and everything incurs a cost. be it time to get deals in place. lawyers to look at contracts. Cost of creating builds. Staff to pay for answering emails (even if it is yourself, your time is also monies) and so on and so forth.
my numbers are a complete fabrication :)

but yes, everything procures a cost, and there is a lot more hidden numbers than people think about.

Interesting. I actually work for a digital distribution company (*not for games), and if a client sells a product on the website, they simply agree to a couple things (state that the data is lawfully theirs etc.) and it's uploaded onto the website with no risk of loss for simply marketing the product.

and most of times it works nicely. Still, contracts must be signed. Agreements must be made. Builds have to be created.

Yes, but that's part of building assets. Do you have any source of information that would say GOG requires money up front before a game is featured on their site? I'm actually curious.