Zrevnur: Yes but I excluded these. Far as I understand contemporary game industry many (smaller) companies have to min-max financially to survive. This is part of my premise here.
They still somewhat disprove your stances/statements on that one bit.
Also you shouldn't exclude some aspects just because they disprove your premise...it's a bad form of debate at the least. All data(that proves or disproves one's ideas) that is applicable to that idea(can either prove or disprove) should always be applied to be fair.
Zrevnur: As said the size of the deal is IMO the most important indicator for bargaining power. So if GOG takes more its an indication of them having a strong position. The shop getting 30% just for (usually automatically) selling in contrast to the developer side getting 70% for making the game - for me this is indication of the shop side being unhealthily strong.
You have to remember(as I said) that GOG sells less units for most games....as such most partners are likely to lose less overall(compared to steam/etc) due to GOG taking a bigger cut & as such be ok with it if it means more money for them(for the ones that care about such more). Also some likely "bite the bullet" to make more sales and get their game out to more people and accept the lesser cut for themselves(compared to other stores).
Zrevnur: It would be a different matter if this wouldn't generally be true - some games require more customer support than others for example. But if GOG gets away with taking 30% for games which run "rock solid" on all supported platform then this looks rather imbalanced to me and can only be explained by market limitations working in favor of the shop side.
There can and likely are other explanations...you seem to slightly favor certain ones that support your ideas, it seems(though if I am wrong feel free to correct me). Of course I could be in part wrong myself(as I am not privy to every bit of data and insider info), but common sense, reading posts on sites by ip holders, watching trends shows that I am likely to be more right than wrong on this.
(If I was more wrong, though, i'd gladly accept it and admit it if solidly proven wrong:))
Zrevnur: What I was trying to say is that publishers get extra money due to that which they couldn't get otherwise. Even if they convince all potential customers to buy on Steam - they still wouldn't buy it twice like those people here.
Yes, but not every GOG forum goer likes or wants to use Steam...in fact a good number have stated over and over before in the forums how they dislike and would never use Steam....so not every bought GOG copy is a second copy sold to the same person, necessarily.
Also with GOG's sales and most people buying from them, the ip holders likely don't get as much from such sales(same as with Steam's sales which it has often).
You are right in that there is the potential for them to make more money, but as I said for some control of IP/etc is more important than money(and as it is part of the equation it factors somewhat into this discussion).
Also YES, gog c*ration also plays a part in us not getting some games, but those are usually indie/smaller dev games. Zrevnur: From what I know about GOG rejecting games - if there are only "few" expected sales then GOG doesn't even want the games in question.
This is sadly true, but also some games would sell well but GOG's c*ration team doesn't
seem to like them or feel they fit GOG and reject them for those reasons as well(I cannot prove this with hard evidence, but the trends and patterns are there).
Zrevnur: Those not wanting to sell on GOG are not part of this discussion. So I don't see your point here. And about the big ones - this is too political for me and would require inside knowledge which I don't have so I cant sensibly discuss it either. That's why I limited my statements to the "median" ones.
For the non sellers that is fair enough, but you cannot just discard the AAA publishers here as they show part of how strong GOG's bargaining really is(you need to show highs and lows and in betweens).
Zrevnur: As you said yourself - for big publishers things work differently.
And GOG likely has to be fair and apply at least a default set of options when signing new partners/getting them to bring stuff here, and that is likely more dictated by GOG's dealings with the "big boys/girls". Zrevnur: (And don't forget that my claims were about "median" publishers selling on GOG and not big ones.)
Yes but to properly debate this we need to talk about ALL ip holders....the big ones, the small ones, and the median ones.
Zrevnur: Proof: Where can I find it? I don't remember any in this thread.
Others have posted such proof of GOG's bargaining power in other threads(cannot recall which atm due to poor memory, sadly), and ip holders talk on their stances on GOG/etc all the time online(social media/etc).
Zrevnur: Common sense: I dont think different people mean the same thing with this.
Watching trends: If you watch a trend and dont communicate it with evidence here then I obviously dont get it.
By those I mean if one watches what ip holders do/say one can get a general picture of their stances on things and how others are in relation to them(stronger/weaker/etc in this case). "Even a blind man can tell which way the wind is blowing", as some say.
Zrevnur: "Small flash": This isn't about comparison with other storefronts. How about some hard evidence of market share for games which are sold - preferably with same release date - on multiple platforms?
I remember some numbers but forgot what they were and where to get them unfortunately. Searching found only this anecdotal statement:
This sounds like GOG being second biggest (after Steam) for indies. And if they are particularly choosy this does indicate a relatively strong position too.
Good find, but that page also has this at the top:
"Yes. There's a small but non-zero number of players who avoid Steam, so having your game available in at least one other store is a good idea.
Being on every store is probably a bad idea because it becomes a hassle to update all of them when you need to update or patch your game, but one or two is good."
So some smaller devs would likely be better off going to steam(bigger user base and cut of profits) and maybe one other store at most to cut down on workload/etc. Which they choose, though, is up to them.
