Over the years I've seen a lot of folks say that the reason GOG doesn't get more games here, especially AAA games (even older ones), is because of the DRM-free requirement. But I have to wonder if the fact that GOG has a much smaller userbase/reach compared to Steam is a bigger issue. (A few others have said userbase is a bigger issue in another thread but I wanted to get others' opinions.) I mean Thronebreaker was supposed to be exclusive to GOG, yet (afaik) it was considered to have undersold here to the point where it was put on Steam.

(Also, in what cases are exclusives acceptable in your view? Obviously a lot of people are angry over Epic getting exclusives, but not so much when Steam or GOG gets exclusives.)

AAA's hate DRM-free, for obvious reasons. It is a big part of why places like GOG will always struggle in the face of that.

It would be an interesting thought experiment to see a big franchise title like COD or whatever is the flavour of the moment (PubG?) get a GOG exclusive release ;)

Userbase first and foremost I'd say. If most people bought their games on GOG then DRM-Free would be a non-issue to releasing here since it'd be the main place they'd want to release anyway.

As for exclusives, games that were exclusives to Steam or GOG were usually because either the developers didn't bother to release anywhere else or because the platform (GOG) did special work to release it there and earned some exclusivity for that. Epic's paying devs to stay exclusive which is why it's earning scorn, though you could argue in some way that that's still a developers choice to not release anywhere else than that platform as a result.

Its a bit of both

Some companies vehemently believe DRM works, even Valve's paper thin DRM. Sega absolutely will never release here due to this mindset.

The rest its a case of cost vs return.

Unbinding a game from Steam (even with galaxy API) can be an expensive prospect. I'm sure GoG and partners do have figures to say how profitable it is, but their never vocal about them so it puts companies off.

There is also an additional support cost. Had long conversation with an Square-Enix CM regarding the support costs for an extra platform are much higher than you would expect, mostly due to back-end error reporting systems. But they are improving.

As for thronebreaker, that may also be a case of coming to that market a bit too late. Had it released a year or two earlier it may have been a different story.

Its both the DRM-free requirement and the small community.

I would also like to add how easy it is to pirate GoG games. It makes me sad tbh but publishers see this and they choose to stick to steam or in worse case denuvo.

yet theres a few triple a games here. like fallout 3 and new vegas, THQ nordic games, and soon rebellion with sniper elite v2 remastered and no i dnt want any battle royale shit on GOG and even if you did its online only so like GWENT you would need galaxy to play. and call of duty i think cod 1 -5 should come here nothing after cos it sucked after world at war

id love to see dynasty warriors 1 - 5 here maybe one day we will but until GOG states otherwise then its no. think the devs are koei

With current trends, there's no way to turn a release on GOG into a "CONTINUOUS REVENUE STREAM" or offer "GAMES AS A SERVICE".

Though I'll be blunt, those are the kinds of things I'd fully want to avoid anyway so the lack of major releases is of no consequence to me.

You mean like the computer industry was like in the eighties?
Gog started its life in the shark- and pirate-infested waters of post-perestroika Warsaw Pact Eastern Europe, with only the promise of support to entice the public, who could — and mostly did — obtain any game for "free".

Shareware, another legacy concept, was good enough to make Romero millions of fans and even more dollars.

Most pirating, despite the howls of denial and anger from publishers, is not commensurate with lost profit. People who pirate simply wouldn't have bought the game in the first place, mostly because they couldn't afford it. Suggestions that DRM somehow gives these poor people the incentive to buy games is absurd.

I get all this but like you said its the publishers that don't and they make the call where a game gets sold. To be honest with you though i like the games that come to this platform. I don't need GoG to get every console port and big indie, i like how heavily curated the store is. So they can keep their AAA games. Im good with what we get.

We are in violent agreement, then. :)

It's not so much they genuinely believe in DRM than piracy serves as a convenient scapegoat for the game failing. Why did our AAA game sell 60000 copies? Piracy! Did we use DRM? Yes, but you know these nasty pirates, they crack Denuvo in three hours, couldn't be helped, so sad.

More to this point, counting a pirated copy as a lost sale is absurd in concept; it was never lost as there never was a purchase had, and to a further point, won't affect the bottom line of the company.

I'd go with the smaller user base first, and the DRM requirement second.
If I was the dev/publisher of an AAA game, I would ask myself: is the little profit (in comparison to Steam) worth it, to release an -easy to copy/share- DRM free version of my game on GOG?

I know, I know - there's probably no game out there that can't be found in a pirated version anyway.
But try looking at it from the devs/publishers standing point: a DRM free GOG version doesn't even require any skills on side of the pirates...they can just upload the files as they are. No further work required. Well, it sits on my wishlist. And as with all games that are available both on GOG and Steam - I will buy it on GOG.
DRM free is important to me. But I understand GOG's decision to release it on Steam, too.

That's where the smaller user base on GOG comes into play, again.
The Steam user base is massively larger.
If you want to reach the greatest possible audience for your game - you can't just ignore a Steam release. I know I'm pretty alone with that opinion - but exclusives are always acceptable.

Every dev/publisher has the right to freely decide on which platform/store they release their game, and whether it will be released there exclusively or not.

Every dev/publisher makes this decision, well knowing, that a certain percentage of the possible buyers won't support that decision.

But if the expected profit by going with that decision is estimated high enough...

If I don't want to support a certain platform/store, it's on me to forgo buying and playing the game(s) in question.
And the decision is actually pretty easy:

A - Is it more important for me to boycott a certain platform/store, or...
B - is it more important for me to play the game(s) that are exclusively on that platform/store?

That's a simple choice between A or B.
There is no "A, but..." or "B, but..." involved.

What are your preferences?
What are your principles?
Follow these - done.

I'm pretty sure CDPR knows the size of GOG's userbase better than any other studio. If they still released Thronebreaker here as exclusive initially, that means that the userbase is big enough for it to make sense. The game just didn't sell well enough amongst this userbase, probably because GOG's userbase was largely sick to death of Gwent by this point, and of Thronebreaker because of the incredibly annoying marketing campaign.

Do you think this part of the explanation why SE has basically stopped releasing games (even games over 10 years old) here?