I'm actually curious about this. ZP has been developing two video games for years and has acquired the rights to several children's games. Despite this, they barely make any money and are just managing to survive. If you look up the revenue generated by the games they co-develop on Steam, you'll see it's not enough to significantly benefit them financially. Yet, they still seem to be spending money.

It seems like selling unpopular games might be providing them with some sort of steady revenue stream or is all from the Duke.

But you're right GOG is spending more on promotion. Maybe GOG needs to cut on spending so much.

And of course, others have cited sightings of romhacks, which bemuses to no end.

Which reminds me, I noticed earlier in an entry a citation number, (eg; [23]) and that let me know right away that whatever plagiarism engine that GOG used is stealing from Wikis.

They will never be releasd on GOG. NEVER!

GOG have created a beast that needs feeding and continues to grow, so unless they downsized significantly, they cannot really cut spending. The trick obviously is to spend their money wisely, but then other factors also play a part, and really, to my mind at least, they have taken on a tough task ... DRM-Free is a great thing, but how easy is it to sell it and do all that needs doing to survive ... I can imagine the current climate and situation requires many compromises to keep them afloat.

Don't give up hope just yet, OP. Just take a look at all the games released onto GOG despite having only a single vote!

They could cut or rebudget things, but it would result in the termination of one or more projects. Such as Galaxy. Or their marketing lead leadership.

If you were to ask me, I would suggest they have already started down the road of cuts, and are probably re-budgeting as well. Galaxy like all their other projects, are seemingly promotion related, so probably necessary. No idea how much they spend on a marketing team, which they appear to have been working with for a few years now, but if they had run out of ideas, then that is probably why, and may even be necessary.

To be honest, I don't envy what GOG have on their plate. I'm not sure they can continue to succeed, especially if they have only just been over that line, as seems the case ... perhaps even worse at times. Hell, folk here suggest things from time to time, unrealistic etc to my mind, and I cannot offer anything better, because it feels like there is no solution to me.

The world keeps changing and shit happens, and you can never really turn back the clock.

I hope they can continue to survive, and if possible prosper, but I have serious doubts now.

This gets my vote. GOG should go back to being a store without any kind of client, no matter if it’s so-called "optional" or actually mandatory.

Great in theory, terrible in execution.

If a company's is struggling to survive, it shouldn't be pursuing non-economical releases. There are quite a bit of low hanging fruit GOG can still go after compared to a PC release that did < 100k total sales back in the 1990s even if it was fun. Surely there must be indies out there that do the same job and are much more compatible with modern systems that scratch the itch or completely outperforms in it in every metric.

Could there be obscure titles that would do well economically? Sure, but I'd say the risks are not worth it as there must be legit reasons why it didn't sell well back then. 2 examples: Jade Empire and Advent Rising. The former had 500k sales in July 2005, but flopped because it was clunky, released late on the Xbox instead of X360, and execution of the ending kinda fell off. The latter had marketing in movies and still flopped because the storyline was too generic, it was clunky, and it was pretty much unfinished.

ZP doesn't have like 120 # staff G&A opex they need to worry about.

And I don't know their operations and finances either. Going by their news posting frequency, it could be possible they were inactive from their incorporation to 2019 on very small burn rate / minimal opex. And then 90% of the activity was picked up in the last 5-6 years.

So there are ways of looking good on paper by being frugal with its books and operations. Someone more familiar with ZP can correct me if I'm wrong.

It's seems anyone opening DRM free store has odds stacked against them.

That is 100% true. However, those companies do not have to worry about money like GOG, ZP, or itch.io. Several other game stores sold DRM-free games but eventually replaced them with Steam keys.

I'm still surprised Epic makes so much money.

Yes & No.
Steam is the behemoth that has an almost monopoly, but the situation has steadily been changing, slow but sure.
To reduce the Steam impact takes time, and my belief is that Epic are on the right path, so long as they stick to it for long enough. It is all about behavior changing and new customers. Microsoft don't need to be so actively proactive as Epic either, as what comes around goes around.

It is a mistake to judge things in the short term, as many seem to do.

For sure, as DRM is the way of the world.
Many media providers fear DRM-Free of course, seeing it as just making it easier for pirates.
It bothers them so much, that they are prepared to pay for DRM.
And of course many customers believe the same, that DRM is a necessary evil ... some not even seeing it as evil, but just a necessary business requirement.

A store like GOG's biggest problem is not enough customers. Number of customers give all sorts of advantages, not least of which is where the money is. This is the one big power and advantage that Steam have been allowed to accrue, and it is where the difficulty lies for all other stores, who have far less customers.

No doubt you and many of us, know all this, but it bears repeating or reporting for those who don't.

Oh? Implicitly? Epic isn't making money from the store. That's a burning money pit. The only reason it's been kept up is because some guy accidentally discovered crosspromotional synergy and advertising companies are full of desperate idiots to unload money on.