It could be a number of things, like there having already been a Steam sale (but no GOG sale) for the game, or the game was discounted more on Steam on the sale (someone recently complained about this, some game was on sale on both Steam and GOG, but having a higher discount on Steam), or like someone suggested, if the game was an Early Access game on Steam (and appearing on GOG only later).

I kinda dislike in both examples that they are only one month or a few months after the game was released. I'm more interested to see sales figures (between stores) after e.g. one or two years after the release (not counting the Early Access time).

That's a difficult question. It could be that some will never be convinced, whatever anyone else does. DRM is just something that in the worst case is an inconvenience and in the best case it gives publishers a lot of control and enables things like a two hour trial period or renting games for a certain period or reselling games for a fee or many other things...

I'm not sure AAA will give up DRM any time soon.

I see it somewhat as a similar question whether some console (AAA) release will get a PC release as well, or not. Let's take for example GTA V. The original console version sold insanely well and it was always clear the PC sales would be only a fraction of that. Yet, the developer/publisher still decided to go ahead with a PC version, even if it meant to have to actually develop a whole new version of the game, specifically for PCs. Releasing a GOG version of a Steam game is obviously much less hassle than releasing a PC version of a console game.

Many other good-selling console titles never got a PC release, like Red Dead Redemption. They might have figured with that one that whoever wants that game, buys it for a console anyway. They might have done the same decision for GTA V, but for some reason decided the opposite in that particular case.

So you can't really say black and white arguments like "It doesn't make sense for anyone to release (new) PC games outside of Steam" or "There's no reason anyone should not release their game also on GOG.". It depends on various things, heck some indie publisher even suggested he publishes his games on other PC stores too as he wants there to be alternatives to Steam (more of an ideological reason than a short-term financial reason; sorry I don't recall what publisher that was).

Buying console games through download is actually more expensive than buying the hard-copy version. The main exception to this rule is when there's a sale going on. For example, the retail version of Destiny The Taken King Legendary Edition costs around $63 on Amazon (UK) but around $77 through the PlayStation Store. Wolfenstein The Old Blood costs $24 in the Xbox store but $15 in retail. Madden NFL 25, released in 2013, costs $83 as a download for the Xbox 360 but only $24 as a hard-copy. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance costs $18 in the PlayStation Store but only $8 or so in retail. And so on. By the way, the retail prices I've quoted refers to new copies, not used games.

Buying a hard-copy also reduces risk in that you can always re-sell your game in case you did not like it, so you can recover some of the money spent on the game. Being able to re-sell the game once finished serves the same function. When you buy a game digitally, by which I mean 'not hard-copy', you can't counter these risks.

Impulse buying is also a factor, if you happen to be in a retail store and spot a game you want its quite easy to end up buying it because the nature of holding a physical product makes it more enticing to own.

As someone who needs to have a tangible backup, which I have of all my GOG games as well by the way, buying a hard-copy of a AAA title is a better option than buying through Steam. I re-bought Project Cars on console for this very reason, despite already owning it on Steam. I will most likely do the same with Assetto Corsa and Dirt Rally as they eventually get released on console. I do the same with PC games, I recently re-bought Euro Truck Simulator 2 on CD after learning it doesn't require Steam and I've re-bought my favourite games on Steam on GOG.

I already posted this before on some other thread. Unfortunately, the information with the proper money info was finally edited out of the post (and I don't remember it enough as to post any aproximation).

RPG Codex MRY Primordia post

But I recall it as a better number than Defender's Quest's.

So we could add P&C adventure as a genre that does well on GOG, maybe.

Well this might interest you as the dev updated it for several years and spawn 7 articles about it.
However it don't have a GoG to steam comparison, it have android, apple store, humble bundle and steam comparison. In the future it may have a console comparison too.

Personally, I picked the physical version of Witcher 3 simply because it's a huge-ass game and I didn't want to download it all on my less-than-ideal connection. I'm sure a good portion of the retail sales were made for that reason. Plus, CDPR tend to add some nice extras to their physical releases. It's also an exceptional and big release many people had long been waiting for, so I guess the physical version also has a certain collector's appeal. ( And I'm not just talking about the special collector's version. ) On top of that, I suspect even more people would frequently still buy retail releases, if it wasn't for the fact that most are just Steam copies in disguise nowadays. Many just contain a download code or something along those lines, and you have to download the game either way, so most just go straight for a digital copy instead. Of course that's not what CDPR did with their release of Witcher 3, and it shows that there's still a market for traditional retail releases -- at least if they're actual, old fashioned physical copies, and not the nonsense other publishers like to pull off.
My guess on this one is, that it's mostly a matter of a different customer base here VS. on Steam. GOG does primarily have an older audience, however I suspect most of the members here grew up playing PC games, and Shovel Knight's target audience seems to be old console gamers. Steam probably has a younger and more mixed audience in comparison.

While I'm on topic: The free expansion for Shovel Knight is awesome! The original game was nice, but perhaps a bit too short. But now that the expansion is out, you essentially get two games for the price of one. I think it greatly enhanced the replay value and total amount of entertainment you'll get out of the game.

But that's not related to a distributor being unprofitable.

Profit = Revenue - Expenses

Expenses include things like lawyers and admin to draw up distribution agreements and enforce those agreements, technical staff to debug different builds and release patches, etc. There are lots of reasons why GOG sales wouldn't be enough to recoup those expenses for newer games.

Most of the big publisher games that are here came on GOG because they weren't on sale anywhere, and GOG promised to do the technical work themselves. Otherwise the cost could have been much higher and no publishers would have joined.

This also plays into why GOG had to expand to indie games. All those games published through Steam? Publishers have a much lower incentive to release on another digital distributor, and the cost of updating to DRM-free is much higher. GOG had to move into new types of game or be slowly choked out of the market.

May 17, 2019

Whether or not DRM prevents day-zero or day-one piracy is irrelevant; it's utterly stupid that most publishers refuse to put their AAA titles on GOG (or on their own platform, DRM-free) months, or even years, after their initial DRM-ed release. As stated by several other posters (and I agree with their sentiment), I'm perfectly fine waiting for a DRM-free release. In fact, it may be preferably, as most if not all of the major bugs should be worked out by then, and you would get a superior experience.

I for one would be fine with a guaranteed DRM-Free release delay if that were true. Let it run for a month or 12 or whatever and then ship it our way. That would be better than the never we get in most cases which highlights the likelihood that this early day window isn't what people are using DRM to fix. They want DRM on stuff that can't even be called recent by anyone's standard. Stuff that they are also handing out for next to nothing in regular sales and have been doing so for years.

The vein of fear that DRM is tied to runs substantially deeper than the launch window.

One issue.

Most of today's DRM relies on the usual crap: checking whether you have installed the client or not, then checking your account and whether it owns the game or not online.

This opens something like a smart crack. An EMULATOR for said client can be used on day-one to pirate said games from the first minute of release. No need to do any cracking for the game itself, just trick the game into believing the client is installed and its owned by an account. Such emulators exist for Steam and Uplay, and they make illegally distributing the game just plain easy.

So, until Steam and Uplay goes to counter such smart emulator cracks, the exact second a game is released is also the exact second a game is pirated. DRM just did nothing here, it failed.

And the honest customers that they drive away......

Heh. Indeed. I was buying into this Steam crap thinking that just because I was buying my games original that I had the best copy available. Then I noticed that pirates, who were paying nearly nothing for their games, were getting the best copies while I was restricted as heck by DRM. It didn't matter whether the DRM is the least obtrusive as some rocks would say to counter my point or not, matter of fact is that it needed an internet connection to do anything, and since that was a variable...

Yes. I stopped buying games from Steam and the likes. Maybe the occasional Battlefield is the exception, but that's it. Thank you, DRM.