Timboli: GOG rightly see GOG Connect as a promotional tool, and in that regard, any monetary loss is no different to losses on advertising, except they have the added bonus of making their customer base happier with them, so actually it is better than regular advertising.
It is a false dichotomy to see it as giving a free game for nothing.
Right on!
Having GOG Connect as an active feature would make me much more interested to spend money on GOG than sending some "personal" discount codes in emails that have some annoying emojis in the subject line.
There have been cases where I have received a game through GOG Connect, and then made actual purchases after that. There hasn't been a single case where I have ended up spending money after receiving some emoji attack on the email.
Gearmos: There was a statement some time ago explaining that EPIC's low revenue cut had affected GOG, and that they had been forced to cut theirs as well to remain competitive:
"In the past, we were able to cover these extra costs from our cut and still turn a small profit. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore." "With an increasing share paid to developers, our cut gets smaller. However, we look at it, at the end of the day we are a store and need to make sure we sell games without a loss." That ended the
Fair Price Package and has ended up also affecting free games during sales and GOG Connect.
Yes, that is what happened and Epic managed to mess the entire scene somewhat.
But GOG's response to that is unbelievable. They discontinue GOG Connect which could in theory draw Steam customers to GOG, and end up selling Epic games, which can lead to customers jumping from GOG to Epic!
And as Epic has been giving free games every throughout their existence, GOG's response to that has been to discontinue GOG Connect and terminate the Fair Price Package.
Can someone tell me how GOG is thinking here?
They are fighting Epic by starting to sell Epic games, and when Epic is giving more freebies and discounts to customers, GOG responds by giving less.
I honestly can't see how they thought this whole thing through, but then again that sister company also thought releasing Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state was a good idea...