Just did a GOG survey that focused on the idea of a paid membership option on GOG. Seems they’re determining what people would be willing to pay extra for. Some of the options were
- a tool for backing up offline installers
- ability to install previous versions of a game
- extra insight into the preservation work they’re doing.
- voting rights on games to bring into the preservation program.
And others that I can’t remember.
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GOG maybe give us an option to turn off cookies inside your app before asking us money!
I really hate most subscriptions, because the prices are often too high, they rely on locking stuff behind paywalls, instead of providing a good service.
Here is the difference, I am ok paying monthly for storage space, servers, and hosted/managed open source web services, because there is competition and standard interfaces there. They do not hold you (or your data) hostage to their service, what they provide is good on its own.
For example, if GOG invests money into writing open source libraries, apps and APIs to efficiently and easily share save games between devices. Let people self host the open source backend, but offer up a subscription for a managed instance, with maybe some voting rights for new features or support for games/platforms to be integrated into the open source front & backend, then I would be willing to support this.
And other stuff like this.
Use subscriptions to offer good services, which also allow you to improve the whole ecosystem, while also not putting yourself as the gatekeeper, and locking people into their service.
I like what GOG do, but gating features, even niche ones, behind a subscription sounds like the first step towards enshittification.
Also, I’m sure as hell not giving them extra money until they fix their platform on Linux/Steam Deck.
Bad move GOG, you’re as of right now still inferior to steam & you want to enshitify your platform ?
- Port your GOG-Galaxy launcher to Linux (it has to be native)
- fund Wine
- Accomodate for more local payment systems
- Have more currencies
- Would be nice if you made your launchers (or at least the core-functionalities OpenSource)
A subscription seems like the exact opposite of what GoG stands for. I buy a game, I own it forever. How does a subscription improve that?
I got the impression they’re aiming more for a “fan club” kind of thing where you get access to articles/videos/Q&A/voting rights, etc. So more a kind of Patreon like many creators have. I didn’t get the impression that this would in any way change the business model of the store.
I also got this survey and I had the same feeling. It felt more like a patron for their game preservation program with possible features like a members-only-community, interviews or documentation about the preserved games, their publishers/studios and the efforts to keep them running or some kind of loyalty rewards/discount coupons. Maybe even ‘special builds’ like ‘experience the OG version 1.0 of $game’.
There was one option, that I interpreted like ‘maybe we will put future compatibility updates after purchase (e.g. supporting Windows 12 or whatever) behind the membership’ - but that’s purely my interpretation of a single bullet point style line in that whole several page long survey
If that’s the case, I may be interested. I’d still like Galaxy on Linux before I give them additional money.
Select a game from a catered library to be granted lifetime ownership? Like rent to own perhaps?
But they specifically don’t appear to be talking about that
Yeah I’m not at all against the idea of throwing a few bucks at them per month for something, but I just don’t see anything that fits in the context of why I use GOG in the first place. Voting rights doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Ideas like earlier versions of games, tools that help with backup, etc should be offered for free or sold for a one-time cost IMO.
Source code access to your library?
Not sure what else they can offer
- a tool for backing up offline installers
This really should be something they offer for free, and there are already some FOSS options that do this, although they aren’t as good as I’d like.
- ability to install previous versions of a game
This is a feature they already have for free and there would (or at least should) be backlash if they were to lock that behind a subscription
- extra insight into the preservation work they’re doing.
Sure, neat.
- voting rights on games to bring into the preservation program.
Sure but said votes better have an actual impact.
The previous versions of a game thing is something they took away, IIRC. They only keep the latest version and a patch to get up to it available for download, and you can only roll back to previous versions that you had already installed over time, or something like that. This is them seeing if you want to pay money to get a feature back that they used to offer, which is kinda lousy.
When did they take it away?
I’m not sure, but years ago, at least. Likely to save on server hosting fees. If you go to download the installer now, you only see the latest version, but you used to see every version.
Oh, I thought you could still download older versions under download offline installer
How about GOG Galaxy on Linux?
They need to fix their launchers on all systems before the do anything else. I’m happy to support them in their mission of game preservation, but they really don’t do a good job at providing a high quality service.
Also, I’ve purchased things from them that were never provided, and they refused a refund (warcraft 2 battle net key). I know it was likely Blizzard’s fault, but they could have at least responded to my emails with more than “no refunds, we are working on it”.
Wait so they’re taking away features and going to paywall them? We can already downgrade
Shit must be dire at CDPR after that earnings report was below last year
I was quoting them from memory. Could be that I misread that specific question.
You did good there. The survey looked like they got some new marketing idiot.
Has been since the 2019 mass layoff i guess. Their galaxy development was questionable at best since then. Only noticeable action was marketing. I see CDPR/GOG pretty critic with their new billionaire CEO nowadays, sadly.
GOG is fucked. As soon as services like this start talking about subscriptions, it’s already over.
Memberships are fine as long as they add perks and don’t take anything away from what non-members have access to now.
Ironically, I feel the community that is most apt to fall in line with their project goals, and want to support this change, is also the community they are currently outcasting. Personally I stopped using GOG when it stopped working easily on my Debian system. I shouldn’t need to use a third party program to get it to work, and I swear it feels like they intentionally made it so WINE no longer works for it.
For a project that is supposedly for open use and game preservation, they don’t make it easy to actually do so.
here’s the survey if anyone wants to answer: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/MURG4B
I did it. I made sure to beg them for Galaxy on Linux.
I filled the survey as well. It’s mostly focused on “games preservation”. I’m not up to pay subscription for anything they’re willing to offer and even made sure to tell them that I’m willing to pay a premium for whatever useful content (games) end up exclusive to subscribers
Anything but properly supporting the Linux community 🤡
How have they still not learned that the largest intersection of the people that care about their core value proposition (game preservation, DRM-free, etc.) are Linux users?? It’s not like they have to create the compatibility layers from scratch; Valve did it for them.
If they provided a launcher for Linux users, I’d actually buy shit from them. Yes, Heroic Launcher exists, but I’m not paying GOG for the work that the Heroic dev did. I want first-party support.
What if I told you that the intersection between people who care and the 5% of their potential audience that are Linux users is very small either way?
I’m not saying Linux isn’t a chance for them, but it’s also an investment and very like not a profitable one for quite a while.
What if I told you that there are roughly 4 million steamdecks in existence. Ref
And that this is about 1\3 of the Steam Linux market. Ref and about half of the entire handheld PC market. Ref
Of course, we dont know how many MAU GOG has so maybe 4 million new customers is baby numbers, but Steam seems enamored enough of that market segment to commit huge new UI and store features (deck verification, “Runs on Deck” filters, other deck specific stuff) including the game controller mappings which do help with non-deck also but were clearly a necessary element for handhelds. Maybe deck users, it being a committed gaming platform, spend more on games?
Anyway, trying to get subscribers (always a teeny fraction of your free users) ahead of converting new non-customers into customers, seems like bad econ to me.
If GOG is so hot for game preservation why not see if they can score an emulation deal to bring lost handheld titles to PC\deck? Sega might be down, NeoGeo is owned by the Saudi’s, I’m sure they’d love some free money for their back catalog. That’s in line with Lutris’ mission of being the one game launcher for your entire library. A few strategic investments and partnerships could open up GOG as the gateway to classic gaming across devices, but that would require some vision to carry through.
1/3 of the Steam + Linux market, that accounted for an incredible 1.45% of Steam installs in February. This means there were roughly 67 Windows gamers for every Linux gamer (using Steam) that month.
So even if Linux gamers are 10 times more likely to care (and pay for) for game preservation, you are not even approaching the number of Windows users that might. Suppose 90% of Linux gamers care, while only 9% on Windows do, you still have roughly 9 Windows users for every Linux one. And this is a very generous assumption to make.
Maybe, eventually, at some point, this makes sense financially. But if your goal is to be profitable, you grab the low hanging fruits first, not invest in maybe 10% more potential users.
Steam’s investment in UI and store features are part of the onus of hardware platform growth. Steam isn’t just a storefront anymore. GOG has no such interest.
I do think indicators are good for the future of Linux gaming, but it’s just not good business right now to go chasing it.
I’d love a gog galaxy client for Linux with proton support. I also agree though, that it probably wouldn’t help them become more profitable.
You do know Heroic exists, right? It works perfectly fine.
And I prefer an open source solution integrating multiple platforms to a single closed solution per platform.
At this point they should just hire the Heroic devs, I doubt anything they could build themselves would compare in terms of quality.
I’d be happy if they did and adopted Heroic as an official launcher. However, if that happens, I’d still want proper controller support to be added so that browsing the GOG store in Heroic doesn’t require mouse and keyboard bindings on something like a Steam Deck.
Why do you want a launcher? I have a few GoG games and I don’t really feel like a launcher is something I need.
What I do want is games to actually update on GoG at the same time as steam, not over a week later. X4 7.0 came out and it was over a week longer for the GoG version to update, in the end I refunded and bought it on steam instead.
Cloud saves, achievements, and tracking hours is something I do like. I have over a 100 GOG games, so individually managing exe files isn’t something I really want to do.
Because there is no linix client some games that use these features do not release their linux version on gog due to their company’s feature parity policies.
I backup my own saves, don’t really trust someone elses computer to do as good of a job as I can myself. Wrote a script to automate it.
That’s great, but maybe we should stop talking about you. People pay for Steam, Netflix and many other services because they don’t want to write scripts. They want something convenient and easy to use. They also want additional functionality. You said how you back up save files, but nothing about achievements, time tracking, friends, screenshots sharing, guides, parties, etc.
And you just ignored the rest of the reasons, and to add to those: automatic updates.
Do you not have to update that script every time you play a new game? Cloud saves are pretty automatic, and regardless of platform, they’ve been pretty reliable too. It also fits that use case that you go to a friend’s place and want to show them something in your save file on a whim.
Typing
backup "Game" "/path/to/files"is pretty simple though. I wouldn’t complain about cloud saves existing, but I won’t rely on them and absolutely wouldn’t pay for them.Syncthing?
Yes, that’s what I use when I need it for GOG saves. But typically, every game puts their save file in a different spot, so you do need to do a one-time setup for each individual game.
I’m fairly sure the update cadence is set by the game dev/publisher, not GoG.
… and Steam is more important to them than GOG
They might have to grease some wheels somehow then. Some kind of incentive structure to make sure they do it.
Because I use a Steam Deck and having a launcher for third-party stores is the easiest way to install games.
Additionally, the reasons mentioned in the other comments.
It’s not like they have to create the compatibility layers from scratch; Valve did it for them.
I do just want to point out, Valve didn’t do that - Proton is mostly just pre-existing software that they packaged together into an officially supported feature. I love that they did it, and having it in the biggest PC game platform presumably did wonders for Linux gaming, but it was most certainly not made from scratch.
I agree with you for the most part, but valve also is funding the developers behind the most important things out of proton. DXVK and vkd3d-proton were almost non-existent before Valve employed them.
