Comment on Why is GOG not as succesful as a Gaming Alternative?
Rose@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I’d say GOG’s position only proves the point of Epic and the ongoing class action lawsuits against Valve. Steam is deeply entrenched in the market and uses shady tactics like telling developers not to sell games for less outside Steam. You’d think offering good features and better practices would help, but it has not. Gamers are overwhelmingly positive about GOG, but most feel tied to Steam, and only a handful buy from GOG. It’s no wonder Epic prioritized exclusives.
greencoil@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 hour ago
Telling developers that they can’t have bigger discounts on other store fronts is an unsubstantiated claim by one developer. The official policy has to do with discounting Steam keys, ie selling a Steam game for less than on the Steam store, while keeping all profits and taking advantage of Steams features.
If general sales were actually being restricted by Steam, it would have been made immediately obvious with sites like isthereanydeal. Such a site would have no reason to exist if the Steam store would always have the best discounts due to forced store policy.
“Overwhelmingly positive” please spend at least 5 minutes reading the GOG general discussion forums and get back to me. GOG is constantly being criticized by their main user base for how poorly they run their store and their nonsensical business decisions. I don’t think this is a bad thing tbh; its a better situation than the Steam fanboys being creepy boot lickers. But I would not describe GOGs most adamant supports bring universally “positive” about the state of the store and company.
The general customer base of GOG does not care about the Galaxy 2.0 client, or GOGs collaboration with Amazon Luna for streaming owned titles. I don’t know what other “good features” you could be referring to. GOG is barebones, but competent, in the world of digital store fronts/game launchers. But obviously being competent is not enough when dealing with an entrenched monopoly.
Most gamers do not care about DRM. This is the same market that is suffering from enshittification at an abnormal rate. This market has already long normalized things like gambling mechanics advertised towards children, or installing spyware for the sole purpose of stopping cheaters. Outside of the bubble of online discussions, the target audience does not think about these things and will buy whatever slop is put in front of them. Clearly the people who buy Denuvo releases at launch on Steam do not feel any reason to buy games on GOG specifically. And judging by public sales/player data, that’s a lot of people.
Rose@lemmy.zip 31 minutes ago
One developer? The Wolfire case contains dozens of those messages to various developers. See page 160 here. The way Valve goes about it is also not contradicted by you pointing out there are lower prices. For one, they say they expect price parity soon, not immediately. Secondly, they don’t and can’t enforce that rule automatically, so there are always instances they don’t see. As seen in those messages from court, sometimes their response is to restrict the games’ visibility on the store, which is not something a platform like ITAD can track.