Thanks for reminding us about this, I've never fully watched it before.

Just a thought (and it's possible, maybe likely, GOG already does this): GOG might start pushing for more recent AAA games who already got their Denuvo cracked or are already DRM-free on Steam. For instance, it looks like Dishonored nor Mass Effect 1 nor Batman: Arkham Asylum (and so on) have any DRM, other than the (if one views it as DRM) Steam client. I don't know if it's a bad precedent to say,"Hey, the game is already cracked, why not sell it here?" or if devs or pubs just want to pretend like piracy isn't a real thing, or, again, GOG may already try this approach.

So this sounds like the revenue split is not the same across the board and is basically based on services and features you are providing for each of the games, some games might have a higher revenue split than others because the dev/pub decided to use more services/features vs a game where they might use the bare minimum. That is an interesting approach to take if that is what it basically is.

Yes, and that's why their PR guys should be working with their lawyers right this minute on putting out a statement. It's not about putting out numbers, it's about restoring public confidence so that the Kotaku article doesn't become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I honestly still feel like GOG hasn't really recovered from that. To me it seems like that was the moment where the downturn began and GOG felt a lot more corporate and less personal.
I do get it: You're making it more complicated than it is.

Look, are they getting sued for elcook's post? No? Then they won't get sued for a carefully worded press release.

I had never heard of the FPP until now. The country I live in (United States) probably won't even be affected by its discontinuation.

As far as I am concerned most of the posts read like "The house is on fire!!!" When all I see is a well contorled camp fire.
GOG needs to counter EPIC. Ending the FPP is, unfortunately, part of that.
What I find funny is that has anyone considered that EPIC can only keep up spending money like water(getting exclusives and the like) for only so long with the as big of a cut they are giving. I do not think they can keep that up for long.

No, you clearly do not!

They already said everything they can say in the article.
"Yes, we laid about 12 people off, but we have hired about twice that in the past year and have 20 current openings."

None of the financial stuff can they touch. They cannot reveal if they made a profit or loss for 2018. They cannot talk about January or February sales. They cannot talk about anything from after the end of September. They cannot talk about the current state of the company beyond "we are here, doing what we do". They cannot talk about how any of the Q4 or Q1 sales have done. And that is the bulk of the "story".

Besides, it is Kotaku. Who cares? Kotaku is clickbait stupidity. You don't need to feed the trolls. You don't need PR press releases every time some two-bit journalist tries to stir up a controversy.

Just look at this thread and the half dozen others. And how many people think Epic Games is taking away sales with the 29 games in their store. Many of which are DRM'd releases and pre-orders, about a half dozen have been given away for free. Just look at their store and it should be obvious they are far more curated than GoG and seem only interested in AAA releases and the top tier of indie games. They don't look like GoG's competition to me. They seem to be focusing on exclusive 1st day releases.

I appreciate the frankness, and I wish all the best to those laid off, and to GOG's continued business.
If I'd have to recommend another change, it'd be that when you debuted games like Lords of the Fallen and XCOM, you had huge discounts on those. While as a consumer, that's fantastic, for the retailer and the developers/publishers that can't be ideal. The DRM-free arrival of those games here should be a sufficient initial promotion, you can always have deep discounts later on.
And with this change in revenue share, I hope you can go to all these companies that still aren't or fully aren't onboard like Sega, Konami, Tecmo Koei, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, and so on and say, look, we have a new revenue share, your game has been out N years, it's been pirated just as long, we will do X, Y, and Z for you ourselves, what have you got to lose if you sell so-and-so titles with us?
Edit: To be fair, it'd help to have dedicated Japanese-business teams to work directly with those companies. Fly them over to Warsaw and show them a good time. :)

Just preserving for later comparison.

FTFY :P

Of course you won't be affected because the US price is the base price, the issue is with people from some other countries paying an arbitrary amount more than that just because the bits happen to come out between some other lines on a map when they make the purchase.

It wasn't a matter of countries. Wherever the price was above the US price, the package applied. Interestingly though, unlike what is generally seen on other stores, on GOG Australia often has regional discounts, not price hikes (according to MaGOG, so for games added before 2018, the AU regional price was on average 13.3% lower than the US price). There are some games with price hikes too, but guess you didn't notice them.

On a different note, damn, what a difference. Five years ago, the "good news" brought a veritable firestorm, thousands of comments, the large majority extremely negative, hardline stances, raising enough of a fuss to make them change things, introducing the FPP among others (such as choice of currency, which wasn't part of the original plan, which was to force the local currency at all times) to try to make up for some of it. Now, most is understanding and supportive and the few still wanting to stand for something get bashed... As Pratchett put it, those on the side of the people find that the problem isn't that you have the wrong kind of government, but the wrong kind of people. Same here, wrong kind of customers, not standing up for themselves and what would do them good.

Just repeating false things doesn't make them true, you know? No they didn't. For example, they could say all the stuff you yourself said: You might understand finances, but you don't know anything about PR. Yes, they can't talk about any of those things. So what? Nobody cares about those things. They are completely irrelevant. PR is about fluff, not facts. Look at modern advertisements: They barely talk about what makes a product good anymore, they just want you to notice them.
So it's completely irrelevant if they can't say anything more than what was already said in the Kotaku article - you just need to get the message out there. But it's not just Kotaku, because several news sources have already picked up the story, including traditional, non-gaming sites and newspapers, and they don't necessarily always include GOGs statement about how they already hired more people than they fired.

Speaking of standing up for ourselves...
You know, GOG started out with a mission statement to do just that, change the industry, by showing that DRM free is the way to go BUT not ONLY that, but also by showing that regional pricing must go and that customers should be enticed to buy by offering them a better product and a better experience, though added "goodies" and top-class support for every single game, than "piracy" does. What they showed is that the industry changed them. So what's to support anymore? ... other than this false hope I still want to hold on to as well despite every and repeated evidence to the contrary that maybe someday they'll turn back around and do something right again, pick that banner back up.

Ah well. Was good while it lasted. While giving developers more money is always a good thing, its not when the relative price is jacked up thanks to exchange rates and other nonsense reasons (hello, Australia tax).

It's fine, i've more or less bought from gog what I want.

tl;dr enjoy your profits, devs. Enjoy being rewarded for price differences from countries.