Some perhaps would call that a rather simplistic view.

Any business that first starts has a grace period, where they know they won't be making much or any profit.

The thing with a store like GOG and something like DRM-Free, is the constant requirement to grow the pie, otherwise you are constantly requiring new customers to buy the same number of games available. The sustainability of that does not last long, hence needing to get new games as well as new customers. Ideally you want old customers to keep coming back and buying. GOG have always had their work cut out for them, and I doubt it has ever been an easy task, except in the beginning, where they would have had less pressures for a while. Those pressures could not be avoided for very long though.

Collectors are the type of customer that keeps coming back ... if you can please them enough. They ease a store's pressures, because they act as a kind of guarantee ... if only to make ends meet, but if done right, profits too

It is true though, that eventually you build a monster that keeps needing to be fed.

Compared to GOG, a store like Steam has always had it far easier. They just have to worry about games, and there are oodles of them. GOG of course need a specific type of game - DRM-Free. Those are thinner on the ground and worse, because you are also trying to get game providers to be bothered when they are better off financially with a store like Steam. They are going to provide to Steam anyway, so providing to GOG requires going the extra mile, and for very low profit comparatively. Many of course don't think GOG worth it. And then there are those who are worried about DRM-Free or don't like it at all. GOG have a much smaller source of games to draw from ... talking higher quality games. Of course, since GOG started Indie Gaming has come into its own, and changed some of the dynamic.

I think, that if GOG were doing really well, we would see more Linux versions of games here, and an official downloader for them.

As a game collector, I certainly collect Linux versions, and have just decided to do the same with MAC versions. But then I don't just buy games for myself, but for my whole immediate family and some now use MACs.

I'm considering the minimum. If you think maybe it was making say $7k or less a month; It would be profitable enough to run a skeleton crew. But it would also be primed to have a few full time employees once it become enough of a money-maker.

So again i say i don't see why it would have folded. Now if it was a full separate business barely scraping by having to pay full server costs and licensing and all that jazz? That's another story entirely. But then GoG wouldn't be under under Projekt CD Red. So....

Maybe my view is a little too simple, the pop-up lemonade and muffin stand where you sell cups of lemonade for 50 cents a cup/muffin. Or maybe i think too bare-metal approach.

And others are realistic enough to know that collectors are not enough.

GOG changed it's face drastically, starting with the name. There are only so many "good old games" for which people are ready to spend a significant amount of money on. At some point you have to decide what to do with the company. Stay in a niche, sell 1-5 bucks games to keep these people happy and paying?
Or go bigger, be a platform that is able to sell games like Witcher, Cyberpunk (even with the unfair advantage GOG has) or Warner Brothers and Bethesda games?
They decided for the latter, needed to expand, more people. Those people want to be fed. That means more income is necessary. And that means more players are necessary from different gaming sectors, those who would not buy here before, in other words: younger players, not just old farts like us.

I didn't start as a collector on GOG, I came because they had DRM free games and Gabriel Knight. Sure, people like me spend tons of money here, but then you find plenty of players who have less than a hundred games. From this sort of players you need a lot more than you need of the others.

If your target audience are collectors, then 5 bucks per game won't do, then you need to work like for example Strictly Limited.
Collectors are the one who spend 250€ for Space Marine or 200€for the Turrican collection (which I did). I am not a hard core collector, I at least open my boxes, one of those who buy because they want to use. Still I own more than half of the Evercade games collection, haven't played most of them, but bought what 'looked interesting' and I might play it some day. A friend of mine owns all of them - still sealed. He owns the console twice, because one evening he was drunk and wanted to see what was in the package. The second one remains unopened of course. If our group actually decides to play some of these games in his basement, I bring mine. These people don't touch the stuff they buy ... or buy it again if they did actually open it (one has two Turrican boxes). THIS is how you make money from collectors.
Of course with pure digital goods this won't work. Apart from the "can be opened" factor, such prices would never be accepted for a bunch of pdfs.

On GOG I bought a lot of stuff which I probabyl will never play, but always only for very low prices ("looks interesting. maybe some day I'll play it, then 1-2€ are not a bad investment") and also because the bundles at the begin of GOG were so much cheaper than the single games I was actually interested in. These mountain of old DOS games is not what keeps GOG alive or makes it even grow, the games starting at 20-30€ do. The low price stuff is only good to cover some costs and for keeping us here.

GOG benefitted a lot from the retro boom that became much stronger over the last 10 years.
Honestly - collector or not - who would pay 20€ for a oldie like Karateka if it was not for the making-of videos included?
Many of the pinball games available here I had on a CD collection with 50 games for a total price of 15€. Not so long ago, the single game prices on this site were considered insane and probably still are because we get 80% or 90% discounts on them regulary but by now I rebought them so I don't check the prices anymore. That's not how you actually make money for your company. But we are here, we see a nice new DOS game, and more often than not put it on our wishlist and wait for a discount for it. We keep coming back to see if some of the games on our wishlist are discounted and keep spending money.
It sums up, that's for sure, but that one 100€ preorder (and I WILL preorder Stalker 2) is a lot better for GOG than selling 50 x 2€ games.

Early on when i joined GoG, i rebought games i already bought, mostly because they were pretty much ready to run, prepatched and all the headaches removed of trying to get something to work.

Nearly all these games were effectively abandonware at this point, so companies trying to get a few more dollars just for posting their patched game might or might not be worth it. And that's still the case now, since after the first 3 months of sales, it drops off to requiring higher and higher discounts to get a few more sales.

Why? If you're going Collectors editions you need physical goods to go with it. I don't see that here. We're talking Plushies, art books, CD OST's, game on Disc, metal book, etc. I don't care how 'exclusive' a digital game is, i am not paying more than $20 for any individual game no matter how exclusive/rare it is.

Sides if you sell 1 game at $250, or you sell 2000 games at $1, i'm sure you see a significant difference in money as well as customers and how many are happy with what they got.

I think statistics were that 80% of steam games that were bought or keys redeemed, were never downloaded or played.

And a number of the older titles of DOS games, may be for collection, or artwork they preferred, or maybe game preservation, who knows. Plus they take up very little space unless they were CD games, we're talking like 20MB max.

A lot of games coming out are lazy cash grabs asset flips and others. While a number of retro games and older games had a lot more work and love put into them. It's no wonder they'd be quite popular.

Old games are kinda like it's-not-real-Piracy. How so? It's a service and convenience issue. Finding your old CD of pinball games, then getting an emulator set up, configurations, how much time is that worth to you? Well my time is probably $15-$20 an hour. So if i spend an hour finding and then trying to get a game working, i likely would have been better spending to buy something that takes 5 minutes to get running.

And while there is a few people who are willing to drop 100€ on a single game, sure be happy with that. But 100x more people can drop 2€ on a game i'm sure, so the sales will likely be higher, unless it's a big hit game that everyone has decided is a must-have.

And no, never preorder, never buy on day 1. Never pay more than $20 for any individual game/program/product that's digital. That's my advice for that.

That's what I basically said and the rest of the post is built on. From the collectors here you don't make significant money.
I would not pay 30€ for that Atari50 collection here, but I have all of these games on the Evercade (great system for retro gaming, many of the new retro games on GOG are also available there). Physical items sell better.

If the company wants to grow, you need to focus on what the rest of the world wants and that's newer games that you can sel lfor higher prices.

ps:
You are asking the wrong person. I payed 120€ + shipment for the Turrican 2 DOS version and 80€ for Lionheart on Amiga recently.
But ... before Steam it was increadibly easy to get old PC games cheap, there were collections in every store, re-releases and so on. If you just wanted the game, that was no problem. Getting the original first release box was a completely different thing.
Even if I threw away most lf my old boxes (never have a girlfriend who needs room when you move to a new appartment) - must have been over 200 over time -I still have a quite a lot of games in my basement, including a lot of DVD versions which never came with a box. I later threw away some DVD versions as well and replaced them with GOG versions. And since during that I was stupid enough to lose both copies of T2 I owned (one from a cover magazine, one from a games collection, both together maybe worth 7€), I bought the original version including the box for 120€.

I actually like getting this old stuff to run, tweaking and trying. I have my DOSBox set up nicely, my MIDI device, ScummVM engine and then I add my games to them.
I rip my CD of Jungle Strike, load it via iso mount so the game can run in it's CD version. I can even start it directly from my preferred launcher without starting DosBOX first.
But usually I do it the other way around. I install the GOG version, then copy it over to my Standard DosBOX environment (or ScummVM), removing GOGd additional files and emulators, set them up finding the nicest looking graphic settings and best music option (GOGs games usually are set to Adlib).

I own so much stuff, I have no moral problem with downloading a 500 GB iso where all this is ready for playing. But I prefer to actually get the games running manually which I have a personal connection to, which I played in my youth.
And if I can buy those I lost somewhere for a reasonable price, I buy them.
Then there are games like JK, wher the GOG version is really really convenient. But would I pay 20€ or more for it? No. I'd rather get my CDs running by myself. With that old stuff there is just not a lot of money to be made if it comes in a pure digital form.

The Turrican Ultimate Collector's Edition was limited to 10k pieces for PS4 and 10k pieces for the Switch.
The PS4 version was sold out immediatly, the Switch version was sold to 98 or 99%.
That means they made 4'000'000 bucks for a basically emulated version (with some slight changes, like a rewind function and achievements) of three games that are 30 years old + some interviews and bonus material.

A cheaper version for 100€ was also available which included the artbook, the documentation and part of the soundtrack, but not the statue and the complete soundtrack on CD (available on Bandcamp as FLAC for 40€). This one is also limited, but to a higher count.

I didn't ask if one would get a unlicenced copy of Karateka (which until recently was the only way to play it), I asked if you would have payed 20€ for it. I know I wouldn't.

As far as refunds go, I've only done it once because of a stupid mistake I made while pre-ordering. I don't see myself refunding anything else unless there's a serious problem. Would even keep things that didn't work right away because there's always the chance they'll work later. I'm not passing up the chance to buy DRM-free anything, if I have the slightest interest in it. Rocket Jockey, Obsidian, FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage, Living Books, Treasure Island, The Space Bar, and some others would count, I'd say.

Same. I don't think of my digital library here as any kind of "collection" and never have. And digital "collector's editions" just baffle me. But hey, at least it's not NFTs.

It's a pay to win scheme. You pay a lot of money and the number goes up a little bit. Get your dopamine rush and buy more games.

No, unless you can transfer what you collect i don't think it would count. You need to be able to trade or gift your collection to your son/daughter when your time comes, and in that way Digital only collection right now is just a money pit.

It makes a lot more sense to "collect" GOG games than to "collect" Steam games, yet some people still do the latter.

No. Would not have survived.

But too many false steps, make me decide to have my spending on this platform coming to an end.

Perhaps in the future I will change my mind, for now, for my money are off GOG.

The question is your, and their, definition of surviving. rtcvb32 gave a good basic theoretical example of what it could mean, and I'll add a real-world example like Fireflower Games. That survives, with a few very niche releases per year. Then there's Zoom Platform, which also survives despite not holding a candle to GOG in terms of releases or sales or visibility or whatever else. And if you're thinking of profitability, there's of course Epic, which has lost well over a billion so far, maybe 2 by now.
The thing is that all of those stores, from FF to ZP to EGS, have results that are in line with the expectations and demands of their leadership, whether it's staying at a level that can be largely maintained by one person who makes ends meet from a handful of titles sold or draining the parent company's coffers to burn all the stages to the big league.
The problem with CDP's handling of GOG, at least since they went public, is that their expectations and demands were always higher than the possibilities, realistically. If they wanted to have a store to ensure getting 100% of sales from their own games and whatever else could take root around that, they could have left GOG to stick to its founding values and only stretch as far as the income generated in that manner allowed, somewhat like ZP but with better visibility and marketing. On the other hand, if they wanted a real DRM-free revolution, instead of asking of GOG to help fund the development of their games and then even maintain Gwent while that was a thing, they could have gone the way of Epic, even if obviously at a much lower level, and use some of the money from their games to hold up a store that'd lose a fair bit on its own, applying that same model of many freebies and lower share of sales taken to draw publishers to DRM free.
So the question isn't whether a store like GOG could survive, since evidence shows that it can, but what's needed for CDP to keep allowing it to. And from this point of view, all evidence so far shows that every little bit is needed to just keep it afloat, in their eyes.

And I have certainly never claimed that they were. GOG would have needed every sale they could get I reckon.

Collectors would have contributed a far larger portion to GOG's survival though, certainly in the early years.

It is a very different picture now though, as GOG have a far wider customer base. However they would have needed to survive long enough to get that customer base, and my belief is that collectors enabled them to do that, and still contribute a healthy portion now.

I'm not saying either, that collectors gave them a tidy profit. That could only have come from the addition of other customers, though we would need to define what was a tidy profit, because it seems like GOG have never really made a lot, and supposedly CDPR have helped top up their coffers on occasion.

I must have missed that. Where was that claimed?

I was certainly a collector of many games on disc, long before the advent of digital downloads.

To be a collector of course, whether deliberate or not, you have to have a very large number of games.

I can see where some might not consider themselves as a collector, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

And yes, collections can be virtual.

P.S. And I would define differences when it comes to virtual. My GOG collection, while certainly made up of digital downloads, also has a physical existence on my backup drives. The same for some of my acquisitions from Epic and Steam, that are DRM-Free, though most are just purely an online collection that I collated and have access to, and grow now and then. I guess you could kind of call me just a manager of some of my virtual game collections.

Not sure if you are saying that a collection can only be a collection if you can sell, but if you are, I am saying bollocks.

Many collectors collect with no intention to sell ever, and in fact many collections are quite a loss not a profit if they did sell.

I have collected a lot of stuff over the years, and would never sell because I would never realize their actual value, let alone a profit. So to me, it is just not worth selling, unless you were maybe desperate. And really that would make a mockery of even bothering to collect in the first place.