Its something I point out any time they mention Epics lack of features and use of exclusives.

A competitor could have every bell and whistle you could possibly desire and more... and they could still fail. Because Steam has a literal captive market, forget brand loyalty or consumer apathy which are both hurdles, people have thousands invested in their Steam library, there's a serious psychological barrier in using another service no matter how much better it might be.

Which is why Epic has exclusives, and it works, because millions of people are using Epic, where otherwise they wouldn't.

Years ago, I went to a Lanfest at one of the intel campus. A friend and I were talking to one of the guys that run intel servers. We started talking about video games. He started bitching because his new GPU came with a copy of the GOG version of Witcher 3.

The guy was upset because he wanted the steam version and could not play it on steam. Forgetting, you can still add the game to steam. This is the mindset of steam fans. Steam brought the console fanboy attitude to PC.

Regional pricing and currency is a little more complex that simply saying this game has this price in this country.

Most places require some kind of regional "office" (just a solicitor and a PO Box), for tax and accounting purposes. Which requires extra expense to the company as well as needing someone with correct regional legal knowledge.

I doubt that regional pricing requires an office. Think of it as a discount based on the country from where the user purchase is originating. I'm not sure about the currency, but opening a small office shouldn't be a big hurdle if you can't avoid it.
It could have been done. Steam did it and it seems easier than attracting big publishers. They had different priorities all these years.

According to you, it is a "verifiable fact" that "D:OS2" sold 8% of its copies here on GOG.

"D:OS2" was a "day-1" release...at a time when the EGS wasn't around yet, so EVERY store kept 30% of the revenue.

So - there was no difference between the shops, at that time, in that regard.

And still only 8% of the sales?
Of a "day-1" release?
At the same price?

Doesn't that tell you something?

Btw: where do you take the certainity, that:

1) a reduction of 30% to 12% of the revenue shares, would mean more releases here on GOG?
The requirement for DRM-free wouldn't change, after all.
And for a lot of games that would mean to invest some work/time (=money) first, to get the game in a GOG-compatible state.

2) more DRM-free releases would somehow draw more customers to GOG?
The DRM-freedom here on GOG is already given since day 1, so shouldn't ALL the customers interested in DRM-free games be here, already?
After 15 years of GOG's existence?

Where do you expect these new gamers, that are interested in DRM-free games, to come from?

Going by your example ("D:OS2") one could assume, only about 8% of the gamers worldwide are interested in DRM-free games (well, CRPGs).

And those are apparently here, already.

Where do you see the reserves, that would make GOG a bigger player in the game?

Depending on trade agreements and commodity, it will. Because of how the legal agreements work with those selling at the discounts. That money must go through the correct channels and taxed appropriately, and very strong paper trail, otherwise people just VPN and get a £60 game for £8. There could also be bureaucracy over whether GOG can even legally trade in a country, but that's just me hazarding a guess.

As for "well Steam have done it", yes they did...after many years

Can I be sure 8% of PC gamers still prefer GOG? No I can not. But it would have to be a significant drop from 8% for the figures not to benefit GOG and developers.

It doesn't matter that EGS wasn't around, unless you're talking about people migrating from GOG to EGS... which I don't see at a likelihood given EGS now has a similar client based DRM solution as Steam. But it could happen.

My point was, delays between a Steam release and a GOG release and poor platform support (be it marketing or feature parity) is bad for GOG. It causes a huge drop in potential sales. So anything that entices Developers to ensure Day 1 release and good marketing is good for GOG.

1) Why would it mean more release
Because currently, even IF a developer does release DAY 1 and 8% of gamers choose GOG, it only realistically increases that Devs income by about 1%. An amount that might not cover the extra costs involved. But if each of those 8% gave a 2.5x higher return than Steam, its much more lucrative to support GOG, even though "only" 8% of sales are through GOG.

2) How Access to More release drives user growth.
If GOG gets more of the popular games, then more users have a choice to use Steam or not. Steam isn't a perfect fit for every user, yes for many its great and everything they want, for others its the only option they have. GoG's biggest issue to gaining new customers has always been lack of timely releases of popular games. If people have the choice they can choose GOG, but if the games aren't here they never will.

This is where I notice, we will never come together.

(1) Yeah, but all those users are already on Steam. Why should they choose GOG over Steam out of a sudden?
(2) The only option in regard to what? Playing "popular" games? If "popular" is all you're looking for: Steam has them all.
(3) Yes..because of the DRM-free requirement. Remember that? And that comes - in the first place - from the fact that big publishers (you know - the ones that release these "popular" games, that draw these huge numbers of buyers/players) don't want their games to be DRM-free within the first few years after release.
(4) But people have the choice already...I think I said this way down the comment chain already: if people rather choose "popular" games on Steam over DRM-free games on GOG...

You seem to see all this from an esoteric standing point:

If GOG will cut their share, the publishers will stumble over each other, to get their games relased here, "we need to get rid of our DRM to release on your money pit?" they'll say..."No problem, GOG! - those 18% more money of your 8% user base make up for it, we're sure!".

And as soon as these games are all here, all the gamers over at Steam will get rid of their digital shackles and rush over to GOG, where they can now play the same games, they could play on Steam already...only now with less amenities and less comfort features...but they say "that's fine, GOG...we know you are the good guys here, cutting your revenue, just so that we can play these DRM-free and content-cut games here, instead of Steam...that's totally ok with us! - Screw Steam!!! Long live GOG!!!!"

You know...reading it like that...it makes total sense.
No, seriously - you convinced me.
Well done.

The reason you both are talking past each other is because there is disagreement on what constitutes a freely made choice, or possibly refusal on your side to admit that customers choosing Scheme was not a freely made choice.

Yes, now please regale us with how "take it or leave it" is technically a "choice" and "it's just the way the world works" etc etc etc. The fact remains that "take it or leave it" does not lend itself to being made freely by a person as there is an imbalance between their respective negotiating power and that of the one offering such a "choice."

I *did* choose "leave it" rather than accept DRM. PC gaming was essentially dead to me for well over a decade+ because I would not put up with the manipulative terms of "accept DRM, or don't game." We wouldn't be in the current predicament if more people back then had made the same "choice" I had and refused Scheme.

Indeed... Kuro no Kiseki is Steam only...
However, there is not so many games like this, for me, and most likely not forever.

Still, in term it is a "great franchise" even only 1 game a year may hurt.

All the other games i had a pretty fair support on GoG and for some new franchises usually PS5 (around 20 yet in over 2 years including PS4-remakes, not truly huge), although some stuff took a small eternity (Skyrim is a good example). However, this is the best version available now, so i will buy it another time and the Steam version is now down... If i get a DRM free version on GoG i usually buy it a second time, even for full price... no matter if i already got a usually cheap Steam version (which is rare). In the end, even if i got it on Steam, as soon as released here... there will be more cash "turned it". Indeed, this is the work of a minority, so it might not be fully sufficient. I just want to make my voice count, no matter if the majority does not care at all and only looking for themself.

I mean, usually i buy the few Steam games i got for 5-15 bucks... and there is not even 2 dozen in my library in a eternity. As soon as it is coming to GoG, the Steam version is shutted down... If they do not update the game anymore i may try to fix it somehow or simply get busted together with the broken game. Why should i always go the convenient way... i was always fighting in my life, not inside a game only.

Actually, making all the very old games work... no matter if you get it on Steam or not... it is always huge work in many cases, not a cookie handed out for free. The ones that appear to be free are the new franchise stuff... okay... at least IN THEORY... just do no moan the next time something is bugged or glitchy... or a server screwing up... and not even the mighty Steam can instantly fix it.

Which actions are Steam taking, which they couldn't do if they were a monopoly?

Looking from a developer's perspective (haven't published yet, just working out the marketing strategy at the moment), the only stuff that seems anti-competitive is stuff that's also pro-consumer: the most-favored-nation rules on pricing and on features / bug fixing. I'd prefer to develop a new feature using one store's beta branch and get feedback, then fix any issues before bringing the other stores up to parity; IIUC Steam's rules force that beta branch to always be on their store and don't allow developers to round-robin on which store gets the beta branch first. However, that's a pro-consumer action because it does keep their customers up to date.

How about responding to the replies that you already got in this thread?

Gog is trading in all those countries right now and its regional discount feature may be under obligation of scrutiny from the publishers (like and other discount here), but why should it involve any local authorities? Besides it's not so complicated to find a country in the time of purchase (like Steam does) and Gog itself was already involved in this with regional prices in Russia.

They did it when they learned it was beneficial for their business (or when the industry was ready).

I think we're both playing a guessing game here, so there's no point in arguing further.

When talking to devs about why a game isn't coming to GOG, the single biggest reason is their reliance on SteamWorks. Steam's size and domination means Steamworks is a de facto industry standard. Even if a company, like GOG, has a feature parity alternative, there's an upfront dev cost in time and skills that many dev teams simply can not afford to take on to support it.

When Microsoft got raked over the coals for being a Monopoly one of the things brought up was how MS API's had become industry standard and that their use hampered competition. MS was forced to open up their proprietary systems to make it easier for third parties to use and be used by them.

i really got no clue what you talk about...
Did you even try to understand the previous statement?