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General discussionWill GOG every truly compete with steam? (109 posts)(109 posts)
(109 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 25, 2016
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CARRiON.FLOWERS: Other mystery companies have already offered GOG money to merge, they even confirmed it in an old series of live Q&A videos. They've denied all of them because they wanted to grow it themselves.

What are you asking specifically when asking this question? Do you want GOG to have a more complete client? Add DRM? Have a larger community? Have more general attraction and praise? Or are you specifically talking about the games?

Or maybe all of the above?
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JDelekto: I love GOG for who they are, they don't have to be like Steam or any of the other competitors. They got their foot in the door by offering "good old games" and through that door probably sold a lot of the Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt.

However, they are trying to morph and change with the consumer market along with their other competitors; consider their "Movie" sales (anyone ever see a new one pop up lately?)

The are helping to foster the indie development market and while it's not quite in the spirit of "Good Old Games", there are only so many of the good old games out there, so many people who can or cannot give you permission to resell them and probably even less people these days buying them. I welcome the good old games I remember, but I also welcome the new "in development" games in which I have some ability to give feedback and mold a good game I want to play.

So, maybe we should think that we're not just here to buy "Good Old Games", but instead, to make, play, review and support "Good Old Games" of the future.
That's the thing, GOG clearly has larger goals and ambitions that a large number of users devoted to it probably won't agree with. GOG showed that old games can sell decently, suddenly Steam and other stores started offering them (GOG versions of them even!), I don't know the entire history of Night Dive, but I'm sure they saw how well old games sell thanks to GOG when deciding to form their company. Old games in general isn't a selling point anymore, unless they're only on GOG, and through the years I've seen them trickle onto other stores. How many old games does GOG exclusively have now?

Movies was an experimental move to compete with Steam. Everything GOG does from this point on will be an experimental move against Steam. In-Development because of Early Access. Movies because of Steam. Indies because of Steam. Client because of Steam. Account linking because of Steam. They are taking on Steam almost head on. They're the only ones doing it on the level they are, most other stores are content to just sell Steam keys. UPlay games can be bought on Steam. That'd leave EA at #3 behind GOG and MS at #4 behind EA but even Phil Spencer said that won't be the case for long.

Wouldn't be surprised if GOG start selling applications sometime in the future, or start adding more social features to their client. Remember when Steam was barebones? It didn't even have the profiles. It was just your account with your games and the store and chat for friends and that was it. It started as this small thing everyone hated and grew to love. I hope GOG doesn't do it backwards, starting as this small thing everyone loved and grew to hate. I can't exactly blame them for the business decisions they've made, because they want to stay afloat and make money obviously. It will be interesting to see what GOG is like in 3 years. 5 years. 10 years?
Posted June 25, 2016
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skeletonbow:
Interesting points, didn't know that about Valve's business decisions. Thanks for the info.
My question however, is what they'll do if they ever see GOG as a valid threat.
Posted June 25, 2016
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CARRiON.FLOWERS: Wouldn't be surprised if GOG start selling applications sometime in the future, or start adding more social features to their client. Remember when Steam was barebones? It didn't even have the profiles. It was just your account with your games and the store and chat for friends and that was it. It started as this small thing everyone hated and grew to love. I hope GOG doesn't do it backwards, starting as this small thing everyone loved and grew to hate. I can't exactly blame them for the business decisions they've made, because they want to stay afloat and make money obviously. It will be interesting to see what GOG is like in 3 years. 5 years. 10 years?
It wouldn't surprise me at all. However, the time to get in the VR market is now and Steam already has a jump, Oculus store has its exclusive titles and limits itself.

GOG should at least offer a VR area if they're going to compete, I normally don't spent money on Steam store, but all my VR apps were purchased there because they were there first and marketed specifically for VR.

edit: except two titles I purchased here which has VR support sneaking in.
Post edited June 25, 2016 by JDelekto
Posted June 25, 2016
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zeogold: Interesting points, didn't know that about Valve's business decisions. Thanks for the info.
My question however, is what they'll do if they ever see GOG as a valid threat.
Probably sell games. Ooooooh, and also they'll release their secret weapon too:

Half-life Open World VR Extreme Edition

:o)
Post edited June 25, 2016 by skeletonbow
Posted June 25, 2016
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zeogold: My question however, is what they'll do if they ever see GOG as a valid threat.
GOG has so much work to do to even be considered a valid threat by Steam. It's not worth worrying about.

1. Their client is full of bugs, weird shit happening, and doesn't include any of the key features that make people want to use Steam's client.

2. A large portion of people that take advantage of Steam's social features are people that more often than not log hours and hours into MP focused games to play with their friends. So even if GOG offered everything Steam's client offered they'd still be ignored by a large portion of players because GOG doesn't offer any major AAA MP games.

3. GOG doesn't currently offer any exclusive big games that other stores don't have and can't have. CDPR can't make Witcher GOG exclusive as that would be suicidal. They'd be neglecting a huge amount of buyers. While Valve on the other hand has their entire catalog of beloved games new and old only on Steam, and since they were the first on the scene that puts them in a position where they don't really have to offer those games anywhere else. Most people that played HL from the WON days made the transition to Steam. Any oldschool CS players made the transition and kept buying the new versions on Steam. By the time TF2 came out Steam was already loved by many and accepted.

3. Some publishers appreciate Steamworks so much they integrate their games into it. GOG would need to offer something similar to entice devs to launch huge MP focused games here.

When EA cut out of Steam, I'm sure that hurt a little bit. Some of EA's MP games are huge and now only on Origin. Drawing people away from Steam is what will make Steam turn big and green, MP based games are the rage right now, that's where the $$$ is. GOG's current position doesn't even allow them to touch that.

Valve probably sees Blizzard as a bigger enemy than GOG for the simple reason that it is taking their player base away. You can't buy Overwatch on Steam and it's the new big class based MP shooter. And it's not Valve's. *cue thunder clash*

Unless GOG makes some huge game with an MP focus that becomes popular and makes it exclusive on GOG, I doubt Steam will ever see GOG has a huge threat. They'll always be just competition, which Valve never really has a problem with. Just my few cents.
Post edited June 25, 2016 by CARRiON.FLOWERS
Posted June 25, 2016
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JDelekto: It wouldn't surprise me at all. However, the time to get in the VR market is now and Steam already has a jump, Oculus store has its exclusive titles and limits itself.

GOG should at least offer a VR area if they're going to compete, I normally don't spent money on Steam store, but all my VR apps were purchased there because they were there first and marketed specifically for VR.

edit: except two titles I purchased here which has VR support sneaking in.
I doubt GOG is going to do anything special with VR. They aren't big enough to realistically create their own competing hardware VR solution, and with the Oculus Rift software mandatorily connecting to Facebook's servers and monitoring everything people do for data mining for advertising/marketing demographics, I'm sure many folks in the GOG community would consider that a form of DRM since some folks here consider games that require you to own a computer that uses electricity to be DRM. I dunno about the SteamVR, whether it also phones home to Valve or if it requires mandatory Steam account or use of Steam services, but I doubt GOG would be thrilled about that either.

I suspect GOG will be more on the silent side of VR for the next year at least. They might release games here that have VR support, but I doubt we'll see them make any big VR noise any time soon or announce any of their own products regarding VR. If enough games support VR here in the store they may add a filter to the Browse games page, and maybe some promo spot on the home page, but it seems unlikely we'd see much more than that in the short term IMHO.

What are the titles that claim to support VR here BTW?
Posted June 25, 2016
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skeletonbow: What are the titles that claim to support VR here BTW?
"Mind the Path to Thalamus" and "The Solus Project". "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" had early Oculus support was removed, they added VR support again to the game on Steam as a paid add-on.

GOG doesn't have to compete in the HMD arena, just sell games that work with OpenVR. :)
Posted June 25, 2016
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CARRiON.FLOWERS: GOG has so much work to do to even be considered a valid threat by Steam. It's not worth worrying about.

<snip>

Unless GOG makes some huge game with an MP focus that becomes popular and makes it exclusive on GOG, I doubt Steam will ever see GOG has a huge threat. They'll always be just competition, which Valve never really has a problem with. Just my few cents.
All solid points indeed. You got me thinking a bit about the various main reasons why people use Steam in the first place and touched upon many of them in your post. I went to view the Steam stats page just to consider the game availability side of the equation, ignoring all of the other features available within the Steam platform and client for the moment.

We all know that Steam is the biggest gaming platform for PC bar none, and so the statistics of what games people play on Steam are more relevant than probably any other metric out there as to what it would take for GOG to even remotely become a threat to Steam (and what does 'threat' really mean anyway?). It is worth going down the list of top 100 games there and observing the number of users playing each title in the list from the top down, then looking for the specific games on the list that are also released on GOG and looking at the ranking of that game within the Steam stats list. One also needs to take into consideration recent sales/promos and release status of those games as all of those activities cause certain games to spike in steam stats for a day/week or so too before the game falls down to a more realistic spot on the list once the promotions fade away and the top 10-20 games return to what they are almost day in day out.

Now I don't have the entire GOG catalogue of 1500+ games firmly embedded in my mind, but going over the Steam top 10 games, exactly zero of them exist on GOG.com. From 11-20 on the list, two games that I'm aware of are also on GOG - The Witcher 3, and Terraria. In 21-30 there is 1 more game on GOG - "Stardew Valley". From 31 to 40, there are 2 more games - "Mount & Blade Warband", and "Dont Starve Together". And I'll cap it off with the next batch of 10 from 41 to 50, there is one game - "Prison Architect". Altogether tallying those up, out of the top 50 games on Steam, only 6 of them exist on GOG and none of them are in the top 10.

When you look at the number of gamers playing the top 10 games on Steam, the total number completely dwarfs all other games being played on Steam combined in the top 100 list and quite probably on the entire Steam platform including the 12000 other games that do not show up visibly in statistics.

GOG doesn't produce public statistics like this currently and probably never will because they couldn't do it accurately anyway without requiring people to use Galaxy and requiring those statistics to be mandatory to use the platform - both of which are in opposition to what they envision Galaxy to be all about. However, if they did have those stats, I think it is safe to say that there are more people playing DOTA2, CSGO, Team Fortress 2, and Grand Theft Auto 5 on Steam than everyone everywhere in the world playing games on GOG period. In fact there is possibly even more people playing those mentioned games on Steam at any given time of the day than GOG has customers, including all customers, not just those actively playing something at a given time.

There's just no way imaginable that GOG could get that many customers unless they had competing games that were as popular as the ones drawing people to Steam. It's important to note that 3 of those games are owned by Valve, two of which are free to play and I believe all 3 of them use in game microtransactions, none of which would go over well with the GOG audience to say the least. Also, the Sun will expand in size to engulf the earth before a game like GTA5 ever comes to GOG, with Rockstar being probably the most pro-DRM company that ever existed on earth. :)

It is those games that bring in the majority of Valve's revenue from what I understand, and the entire rest of the 12000+ games they offer as well fill in the rest. GOG has about 1/10th the number of games, almost none of them have a viable competitive multiplayer which is what the widespread masses on Steam generally go apeshit over (although there are popular SP titles like FO4, Skyrim and others too).

But as GOG grows as a business and becomes more successful - so does Steam. They are both growing moving targets. Considering all of these factors and many others GOG is unlikely to be any kind of viable threat to harming Valve's business. To be honest though I'm not even sure that GOG even intends to do that. GOG is trying to carve themselves a niche in the market and they're doing so quite successfully from everything we can see from the peanut gallery anyway. GOG could do what they do now and constantly improve it for 5/10/20 or more years and still be very highly successful even if Steam grows by the same amount or more in the same time.

I don't see GOG as trying to destroy Steam or knock them out of the market or harm them really, and I don't see Steam as even caring much about GOG at all as I don't think GOG ultimately makes any real dent in Valve's business because while they have overlap, the two cater to completely different kinds of gamers on the large scale of the customer base IMHO. Over time GOG will likely appeal to more and more people and increase the overlap, but I just don't see GOG/CDPR ever releasing a DOTA2 killer, TF2 killer, or CSGO killer in-house and exclusive, which is what it'd take to even get on that radar remotely IMHO. I don't even think that even attempting something like that is even a remote idea on GOG or CDPR's business plan to be honest.

The day GOG tries to kill Steam or be a threat to Steam is the day GOG loses sight of what it does best and probably ends up killing itself by bad decision making. Valve wouldn't need to even realize it is happening let alone respond to it or care.

GOG should just keep doing what GOG does best and watch their platform continue to grow. They've got a certain type of gamer here and they can expand and shape that to something new that appeals to a particular audience that may or may not be served by Steam or otehr platforms out there. That's where they'll shine.

Not sure if Valve is publicly traded or not, but if they are - the day they see GOG as a threat, is the day GOG would be mentioned in their quarterly filings. Until then, I think that this is the biggest indicator of GOG's remote threat to Steam or lack thereof:

http://store.steampowered.com/stats
Posted June 25, 2016
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skeletonbow: Not sure if Valve is publicly traded or not
No, they are a privately-held company.
Posted June 25, 2016
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Grargar: No, they are a privately-held company.
But only until CD Projekt acquires them, then they'll be public as CDP is public. *runs* ;oP

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JDelekto: "Mind the Path to Thalamus" and "The Solus Project". "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" had early Oculus support was removed, they added VR support again to the game on Steam as a paid add-on.

GOG doesn't have to compete in the HMD arena, just sell games that work with OpenVR. :)
Ah right, I knew that of The Solus Project but forgot.
Post edited June 25, 2016 by skeletonbow
Posted June 25, 2016
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skeletonbow: The day GOG tries to kill Steam or be a threat to Steam is the day GOG loses sight of what it does best and probably ends up killing itself by bad decision making. Valve wouldn't need to even realize it is happening let alone respond to it or care.

GOG should just keep doing what GOG does best and watch their platform continue to grow. They've got a certain type of gamer here and they can expand and shape that to something new that appeals to a particular audience that may or may not be served by Steam or otehr platforms out there. That's where they'll shine.

Not sure if Valve is publicly traded or not, but if they are - the day they see GOG as a threat, is the day GOG would be mentioned in their quarterly filings. Until then, I think that this is the biggest indicator of GOG's remote threat to Steam or lack thereof:

http://store.steampowered.com/stats
Valve is a private company; however, from what I have seen, has best intentions of distributing software (which of course, they make profit).

Valve has collaborated with HTC to create the HTC Vive gear and of course, provide a platform on their store based on OpenVR (a freely available API) and indie developers use it to push their releases.

GOG has released some titles that work with OpenVR and that's freaking awesome, as people with the SteamVR installed can play said games in VR.
Posted June 25, 2016
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skeletonbow: From 31 to 40, there are 2 more games - "Mount & Blade Warband", and "Dont Starve Together".
I don't believe we have Don't Starve Together here. We got Shipwrecked recently, but to my knowledge there's no "Together" here for now.

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skeletonbow: Also, the Sun will expand in size to engulf the earth before a game like GTA5 ever comes to GOG, with Rockstar being probably the most pro-DRM company that ever existed on earth. :)
For my personnal knowledge, why do you say that? I'd name Blizzard and Ubisoft as the more DRM loving companies out there. What makes Rockstar the most pro-DRM company? Just curious.

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skeletonbow: There's just no way imaginable that GOG could get that many customers unless they had competing games that were as popular as the ones drawing people to Steam.
I still think that dissatisfaction with the platform, either because the platform itself becomes jank, a publisher yanks a very popular title off Steam, a dev/pub puts another crap game on Steam à la latest Batman game, could potentially bring more people here than, say, bringing a new AAA game day-one. Would they stay is another thing completely.

Conversatonally, people seeing both platform solely as competitors seem to forget that GOG Connect is a very collaborative project. That while we haven't seen it implemented yet, it's still possible that multiplayer games will be playable cross-platform (GOG and Steam). I think both companies seem to know who they cater to, and what makes them strong on the market.

I don't want to derail the thread too much but I wonder what were the positives and the negatives for both companies in launching GOG Connect. I mean people can claim Steam games here, why doesn't it goes the other way around (being able to claim GOG games on Steam)? It means Steam still have a certainty of selling games while GOG eats the "virtual" (but no so virtual) cost of the games "connected" here. Maybe "eating" the cost is shared by both companies. Did Steam advertize to their members that they could get DRM-free games they already own here (bringing more eyes to GOG)? Or was it an iniative focused solely on GOG's customers?

I don't use Steam so I wouldn't know if they advertized GOG Connect. And I did not go in the GOG Connect launching thread, because it's not a service I'll use. Sorry, if these things were discussed in that thread.
Posted June 25, 2016
Do publishers want games off their DRM?
Do they care about long term sales?
The gaming crowd are savvy enough to pressure the companies to offer more consumer friendly practices?


(IMO) No, then GOG will remain GOG. A few high budget titles here and there, indies and old games. Steam will remain the principal distribution store for PC and the publishers will remain launching games only there out of convenience since the majority of the PC gaming crowd is there.
Posted June 25, 2016
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neurasthenya: <snip> publishers will remain launching games only there out of convenience since the majority of the PC gaming crowd is there.
They do try to get away from Steam by launching their own platforms. It works, but it'll never works as well as a platform that's not tied to one publisher only. A platform that can be central instead of being another program to add to the neverending list of clients to install and keep updated.

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neurasthenya: The gaming crowd are savvy enough to pressure the companies to offer more consumer friendly practices?
Microsoft is one player to keep laser focused on. They really seem poised to choke the market, to leave people no choice, and people (gamers) seem to resign themselves to it, even frigging TotalBiscuit has a "*shrug* what can you do?" reaction to it.
Post edited June 25, 2016 by metricfun
Posted June 25, 2016
fuck it. we need some kind of spam protection against "compete/be like steam" threads creation.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWill GOG every truly compete with steam? (109 posts)(109 posts)
(109 posts)