Would GOG have survived without collectors?
I personally believe they wouldn't have.

For sure, there are a good number of folk who only buy a game when they want to play it or not much later. Many of them probably don't even care about DRM-Free, because they really don't care about playing the game in 5 or 10 years or more again, because they just keep moving onto the next game. So they are likely infrequent customers at GOG at best.

On the other hand, collectors tend to keep buying regularly at GOG.
GOG often seem to be just surviving, so hard to see them able to do even that without collectors constantly buying.

Another benefit to GOG from collectors, is of course, no returns or rarely. A collector is often buying at a rate that far exceeds their ability to play, so the likelihood of playing one of their purchases during the 30 days refund period is quite low. I'm sure it happens, but is likely when a favorite game becomes available and they just have to play it in short order ... but then that type of game is unlikely to become a refund, unless there is something seriously wrong with it ... and even then, collectors tend to look more long term, and so wait, hopefully for an update to fix any issue(s).

If you do care about DRM-Free and aren't a collector, then you should probably be thankful that others are.

But for the grace of collectors, GOG would not likely be.

I think the answer is probably "no."

And I also would include "double-dippers" as a sub-category of "collectors."

I also don't think GOG would survive without double-dippers who have already bought the games on St*** when they were new and fresh, and then double-dipped and bought those same identical games again on GOG many years later, after they had become old & stale & obsolete and after their sales have completely dried-up on the other stores (which is usually the only times when GOG ever gets premium quality games, with a few exceptions to that rule occasionally, from publishers like Larian and THQ Nordic).

I agree, because I know many like me have re-bought what they already owned on disc. So that kind of double-dipping for sure, and I have also re-bought some games I own at Steam, but not a lot, but plenty have admitted to doing that. That said, I haven't really bought much at Steam that was available at GOG, and not much at Steam anyway, only a few exceptions, because I don't believe in DRM.

Don't see why it wouldn't have.

Keep in mind, it's like $50 to register a domain name for like 3 years right?

Project Red already has servers, so having a separate process for GoG would cost them nothing more, just a little prep on making said site.

Then it's just a matter of hosting said space, which again servers, mostly comes to extra bandwidth costs. Having set people check daily and fix minor issues between other more important tasks, and the site could likely work just fine for 95% of the needs of gamers who buy download and don't pay much attention otherwise to the site and happenings. Add and of year accounting and paying publishers for sales and... well it shouldn't need much to maintain if it never got very big.

i once was on a forum, game related (specifically heavy metal war gaming (( you know wild anime girls riding tanks (( and there was a dude that had more digital games in house then GoG at that time offered in their stores.

Wild eh??

They certainly would have survived the first years.

They had it a lot easier when they only had a few games, mostly old ones, didn't need many people.

Now with thousands of games they need much more server space (also because we now have some 150GB+ installers), more people and therefore also more income, meaning that the old game collectors alone won't do. They need to attract the cusomters who also go for new games and want modern launcher functionality. They don't host games on local servers - or at least: not only on local servers. All the offline installers and game files are in the cloud. My downloads for example are hosted on servers in Milan.

When one of the most notable releases in the last few months has been Bad Rats - yeesh! - you know you're not doing so hot, ZP. Let's just keep pretending you're a real competitor.

Well, no, because that was GOG's target audience in the beginning. And that worked fantastically early on and is how they gained their initial success.

GOG's original premise was that they would be an "official" storefront for collectors who wanted to legitimately acquire games that were otherwise considered abandonware and have the added benefit of those games being tweaked, patched and hacked to run on modern systems -- and all wrapped up in a convenient offline installer with no DRM (yes... the golden years). Early GOG had no designs to sell even semi-modern titles, as evidenced by one of their original goals for selling every game at either $5.99 or $9.99 (USD).

While some people just bought a couple old favorite games, my (purely anecdotal) experience is that a lot more people bought a very large number of games, whether it was to have the complete collection of all their favorite series, because they now had the chance to play all games they didn't have the hardware to run back in the day, or even because they now had the means to convert all their physical collection into a digital format with modern system compatibility all within a single storefront.

That worked for a while, until GOG started running out of good old games that they could keep adding to their library. At that point, they had two choices. They could put the store into a sort of "maintenance mode" -- maintaining their original vision of being the go-to store front for classic game collectors, adding an occasional new release once in a blue moon, but basically not growing any further. Or they could define a new target audience that went beyond "just collectors" and tried to pull in mainstream gamers. Whether that decision was for good or ill is an entirely different discussion.

While GOG's early success was definitely due to collectors, I think a more interesting question is: "Could GOG continue to survive if they ONLY stayed focused on classic game collectors (i.e. only games that would otherwise be considered abandonware and ensuring compatibility with modern systems for all released games)".

Who knows, only GOG. IMO, with their current customer retention actions, they target to casual buyers. And many collectors must have learned already the growing obstacle forced obsolescense is

Your comment about many people not caring about drm free, made me think about Hobo with a Shotgun( its a film). There is a part when the hobo stands in a hospital, looking at the newborns. The scene is deep, because the whole world is a mess and he says its sad they will never know anything is wrong with it.

Most gamers just do not know there is a problem with the game industry, until they get burned by it. That is why steam is popular. That is why apple still exists. That is why most companies get away with bad practice.

Razer is another big company. They sell computers and no longer supply offline drivers. If a customer does not clone the drive immediately....tough for you!

I wonder, isn't it in CD Projekt's best interest to continue to support GOG, if only because it works as Red's own store?
Yes, GOG is far from being the main source of revenue for the games they make, but I still get the feeling that what they get from this store for the company as a whole is far more than what it costs them to maintain it.

You do know you are replying to a bot hat has just registered at GOG.

It almost amazes me at how many folk have a very simplistic view of how a business can be run. No doubt it explains why the great majority of business startups fail ... often spectacularly.

There is certainly a lot more to it than what you have suggested .... if only it could be that simple.

One day I hope GOG actually lists everything, properly, that is required in their case ... if just to educate folk, but for more than that really, as a lot of nonsense really needs to be put to bed, and should help folk better understand what GOG are up against.

I agree with you. GOG's success has relied heavily on its user base re-purchasing games they have already owned (either physical and/or other platforms) and furthermore collecting whatever pieces of the whole set they can. There is a great deal of people which have amassed a massive backlog of GOG games and still keep purchasing because, well, that bookshelf won't fill itself.

And their offline installers have played the strongest role in this, as is GOG's purported mission statement that you "own" the games you purchase here.

And yet, I can't help but think corporate doesn't understand this. They think you can muddy the waters and have both feet in client-tied products and DRM-free, as long as "the majority" of the game is playable without the client, but this is plainly not enough for a lot of its community customer-base and has lost a few big buyers over time. Hitman-GOTY-gate was a great example of customers calling out GOG's bull manure, but unfortunately other titles have slipped under the radar, or have been given a pass for being slightly less invasive with the online-only content gating.

I think he knows that, but he replied anyways in the hopes that the bot's employer would see his comment.