https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2020/09/conf-call-h1-2020_en.pdf

page 10, read the quote again: He is clearly saying that gamers can expect to see microtransactions in CDPR games and literally directly mentions Cyberpunk in the same sentence. Most people have the ability to put two and two together.

I hope it's fun living in your personal bubble reality, ignoring clear-cut evidence because it doesn't fit your obvious agenda.

"Cyberpunk is a great setting for selling things."

Please tell me what he is alluding to in that sentence, if not having microtransactions in Cyberpunk in the future.

I have no idea what you are talking about nor how this relates to the topic.

Maybe I was somewhat unclear: I was responding to your "<Looks at Cyberpunk 2077> Nope... no microtransactions there." comment and implying that it is too early to determine whether some Cyberpunk game will have microtransactions or not. Or rephrasing: I did not perceive the quoted comment to be useful for the discussion.

How is "democracy" at this point in time any more meaningful than "DRM-Free"?

We're governed by corporate lawyers who love to use fuzzy weasel words, the meaning of which is subject to change without notice, and you don't think that's why our standard of life is going down the toilet?

Those garsh darn eeleets with their edumacations and weaselly words!

Probability of this is very high
like what words?

Yes, though the fact that the company is listed on the stock market and that investors now own shares in the company is not without consequences.

The truth of the matter is that 66% of the companies stocks are floating. The original founders might still run the show, but it is no longer THEIR company.

They can't do whatever the heck they want with it anymore, their actions are answerable to their investors and the expectations of investors (which probably involve GOG being a continuously growing entity and GOG behaving as advertised to them when the stocks were purchased) will shape policy. I would say the mistake was not so much them not knowing what they were putting on the store as much as failing to realize to what degree it would offend their user base.

I'd say there was no decision at all.
I'd say they made the mistake to trust their partners.

They don't have the manpower to test every aspect of every game (after all the devs have test teams as well).
If at all, the testing done at GOG is quite superficial if there is no known reason to dig in deeper.
"Single player works without login ... check. Game is DRM free" That's it.

DRM-Free, democracy, freedom, national security, misinformation, green capitalism, build back better, sustainability, etc., etc. Language is degraded to the point that a great many words no longer have any concrete meaning, which makes it almost impossible to have reasoned discussion.

yeah true , they also change their meaning depending on who says them

I dont know what you mean with "expectations of investors will shape policy". Part of their new business plan is to (pretty much) not tell the public (which includes the free float public) much about what they are doing anymore. Considering that its going to be difficult to have "expectations" as an investor. I do believe this may also be part of why the share price is so low.
From https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/03/trascript-strategy-update.pdf I do believe this "new policy" was not shaped by the expectations of investors.


And about the "and GOG behaving as advertised to them when the stocks were purchased" part: GOG was/is being advertised to investors as (to some degree at least) DRM free. See https://www.gog.com/forum/general/boycotting_gog_2021/post2830 So from my POV what they are doing is not consistent with what they advertise. This is similar to the lawsuits thing here - they are accused of dishonest misrepresentation or something along those lines: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/cdpr_faces_4_lawsuits_from_investors

You may very well be right that the founders are the primary actors to blame in all of this. Wouldn't be the first time that growth and every increasing profits would be the primary motivation behind entrepreneurial pursuits and that any other consideration doesn't really compute (well, it does, but only to the extent that it impacts profits and growth).

It certainly seems from what I've seen in the various publications that are out there that the group who runs GOG is very ambitious, that the Galaxy ecosystem (where the potential for growth is high) is at the forefront of their minds and the offline drm-free aspect (where the potential for growth is not so high) of GOG, not so much. Its certainly a worry that I share, though I won't pretend to have an intimate front-row seat into their though processes (I would say from what I gathered, our suspicions are very likely).

However, the main point I wanted to drive across here is that once things are out in the market for investors to buy, even if the original founders are still at the helm, they are no longer 'free'.

Good due diligence, @Zrevnur. (And thanks for the screen captures. :)

I have been trying to find an old current affairs show about an Australian game developer without success (so far) that explains the stark choice every developer faces. From memory (and sparse notes) I will summarize, here.

95% of revenue now comes from online transactions. (Yes, us old gamers who buy our entertainment, are analogous to an epic fail for the new business model. :) This is generated from those millions of people (typically on public transport) playing a game that prompts them with "Pay to continue?" and they spend $1 or some small amount to keep their game going (until they reach their egress point). All those $1 add up.

Practically, this means that, the developer who wants to concentrate on the single-player narrative game will find it more and more difficult to compete without microtransactions. The rationale is that this cash is necessary to pay for the talent needed to build the games, because of the scarcity of skilled and experienced developers.

As a developer, then, your choice is limited to how and when —— not if —— you will implement them. (See comment by @AB2012 here for evidence of this.)

Seriously, any developer relying on the revenue generated by sales to me will be out of business pretty quickly, since I spend very little.

This is not a new idea. Look at how George Lucas surprised Hollywood when he took control of merchandizing rather than fight for a large portion of the movie proceeds with Star Wars. His fortune was made on all those action figures.

People are gregarious. They want to imitate, participate and display their allegiance to a particular trend (look at all the repetition on TikTok, where everyone does their own version of a particular dance move, or whatever the current trend is) and purchasing a part of the game they love to play is a natural progression.

The hardest part is convincing people who might never do this to take the first step. Torulf Jernström, former Tribeflame CEO (2016)

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation Four Corners current affairs programme (4th May) Are You Being Played?.

edit: added linkies & some elucidation.

Dude, you are spining a narative now. Here is the FULL quote:

": And the third one – Adam Kiciński again – well, we’re never aggressive towards our fans!
We treat them fairly and we’re friendly. So of course not – we won’t be aggressive – but you
can expect great things to be bought. The goal is to design monetization in a way that makes
people happy to spend money. I’m not trying to be cynical or hide something; it’s about
creating a feeling of value. Same as with our single-player games: we want gamers to be happy
while spending money on our products. The same is true for microtransactions: you can
expect them, of course, and CP is a great setting for selling things, but it won’t be aggressive;
it won’t upset gamers but it’ll make them happy – that’s our goal at least."

You cut out you little quote from the middle of this long sentence, thus twisting what Adam was actually saying.

You clearly have a hate boner for GOG and CDPR but stop fabricating "evidence" against them and actually critique stuff they did. They are not saints but you are acting like like a smear journalist.

While I am not going to say your are wrong with many of the basics, when it comes down to real world situation, you are doing one big almighty guess ... especially in regard to the only portion I bothered to quote.

Unless of course you have some inside information you are privy to.

I also wonder if you know much about the history of GOG.

GOG make plenty of mistakes and are clearly not anywhere near perfect, but one needs to stay within the bounds of reality, reason and logic when assessing them ... especially if you don't have all the facts.

That said, maybe the original owners are not as altruistic as many had come to believe, and they saw DRM-Free as an avenue to get great profits, and in reality we have been hoodwinked for the most part. Not knowing them or all the facts, I cannot say. Maybe they are altruistic at heart, but conditions have proved difficult, and they are attempting to do some kind of compromise to survive. Running a company, is rarely easy in the best of circumstances.