I just read something in another thread here on GOG that got me thinking.

Someone posted (and I'm paraphrasing), that: "people would gladly pay good money for their games", to which someone else replied that (again: paraphrasing): "nope, people would rather have their games for free (or at the very least highly discounted)".

Now, I'm definitely someone who likes to get stuff for free or highly discounted, and I couldn't help but think:
"I really didn't buy a lot from GOG this year, did I? I should check that!"

And so I did.

The year is now 11 months old.
Within these 11 months, I added a total of 60 purchasable items (59 games and 1 OST) to my account.
(I'm not counting other stuff that's 100% free anyway - that would rack up that number)

However, the last time I actually spent money here was in June(!).
(end of this week it's gonna be five months exactly, since I bought something)

Not because I "boycott" GOG, or for some other stupid reason, but simply because a lot of the newly released games aren't really my thing anymore ("wrong" genre, lack of nostalgia in case of old games getting released, design choices that put me off, etc), and yeah - maybe the size of my backlog plays a role, too.

Anyway!
To give a quick overview:

of these 59 games (and 1 OST), I:

- have bought: 29 games, for which I paid the total sum of €120,82 (= an average price of €4,17/game), and

- have received for free: 30 more games (+1 OST), saving me a whopping total of €606,02 (including the sum I saved due to the discounts on the games I have bought - I have bought zero games at full price this year).

To put that another way: of the 100% "monetary value" of the games I got this year, I only had to pay roughly 16%.

We truly live in fascinating times.

Although I've got very few games, for the almost 3 years I'm in GOG, the extreme majority of them are games I bought (even though in discount). I claimed very few of the free games that GOG had in these 3 years, maybe 4-5 games. The reason is that I don't want not even to possess games that I don't like their genre and I'm not willing to play.

Also, I want to play and finish the games I buy. That's why I don't buy en masse, not even in discount periods. The large mass would get me anxious and time nowadays is little...

I've posted on a few games on Itch that only have their old-version-demos there, but their full version on Steam, that I'd like the game updated on Itch. Inevitably a random commenter always replies something like "of course people expecting something for free", to which I reply "I'll gladly buy it. I just want to be able to buy it here. There's a whole world of gaming that isn't Steam."

I plussed one the OP, but for obvious reasons, I can't join the cheer.

Well, in my 10 years on Steam I accumulated almost 500 games and paid for maybe 50 of them (that's including bundles and purchases with steam wallet funds from selling cards).

I tend to want to play most games so lack of interest in the offered doesn't help me much (I tend to skip over low rated titles, but that doesn't help me much either as most games released on GOG tend to be at least moderately well rated).

If GOG started adding more drm to their games though, that might do the trick and get me to buy a lot less.

Steam has a lot of games that I would doubtless be very interested in if I look purely at the gameplay and yet, I have zero compulsion to buy anything there. I might consider renting if they one day made their unofficial business model official and switched their pricing strategy accordingly (ie, no more than 20$ a month and I want access to thousands of interesting games in the catalog).

Is it fascinating, or is it cynical?

If they listed Duke Nukem 3D on sale for $100 and then had a one-week-only limited sale where it was 95% off, I would probably buy it, just to have a convenient copy of Duke Nukem.

It doesn't mean I've saved $95, in fact, I've spent $5 on a game I own already.

Neither would I think I've spent 5% of the monetary value of my games. I would think I spent the exact amount of money I was prepared to spend despite the cynical marketing ploys of the marketplace.

And I'm happy with that but I'm not fooled by the giveaways or the sales, just a few months ago we had:

Impossible,
Stop, stop, no more deals,
unfathomable!,
this just can't be happening,
this should be forbidden,
deals, deals, deals, don't sleep!.

etc. bullshit marketing.

edit: changed the example game to one that isn't already on GOG.

I also bought less and less games in the last years. Can't exactly name one definitive reason, why. So is my backlog still too big; catching a lot of good games cheap doesn't feel satisfying anymore; playing games also is less and less fun; being banned here several times for false reasons - in my opinion - also hasn't increased my enthusiasm...
And then of course there is that shit that happens in the real world...

Edit:
Forgot to mention the requirement to verify my logins for paypal also aren't convincing me to spend money. Maybe I should look for a better paying method.

I really like to think that I'm not influenced by marketing.

However, it is so pervasive nowadays and the people behind it are so good (some of the greatest minds at Facebook, Amazon and Google) that I don't think I could claim that with a straight face.

They are spending a fortune to get to know you intimately so that they can better target you.

GOG's best efforts are downright amateurish compared to this and yet, I'm still buying games here so they are doing some things right (admittedly, drm-free alternatives are not abundant, but I could still simply abstain, I have many games).

I do not agree with the OP's assertion that receiving free games equals "saving money," since most times, those free games were not games that the consumer was going to buy in the first place anyway, hence they would have the same amount of money 100% regardless of whether or not they received those free games.

Likewise, I also do not agree with the OP's assertion that buying games at a discount equals "money saved" amounting to the difference between the MSRP and the size of discount.

No it doesn't, because generally speaking, MSRPs for video games are not the real price and do not represent their actual value; rather, the discounted prices are the real price that represents their actual value. Thus, buying at discount doesn't money the money was "saved" to that extent; it simply means the consumer didn't let themself get ripped off with by paying a fake & over-inflated scam MSRP.

The games I want to buy from GOG are the ones that seem to have the most trouble appearing here. Admittedly it is not a particularly long list and I do understand some of the AAA problems, though the continued hold-up on Doom 3 + RoE original is strange to me.

Isn't Doom 3 and RoE on Gog already?

Just BFE Edition, not the originals yet. I mean I've played through Doom 3 and RoE already but I've never owned a legit copy. The originals recently got bundled with BFE Ed on Steam; if they show up here I'll pony up full price. (only $10 but still :P)

I'm pretty sure in the year I've had this account, I've spent 200 bucks. All of the games on sale. The freebies are just the cherry on top.