How the hell do you guys make a profit!?

1. The new 30 day money back guarantee... I just... wow...

2. The constant deals, I mean, you've literally sold games for nothing, for almost nothing, and down right next to almost nothing. I know you're selling a LOT of games, but... Free? 10 cents? 50 cents? A single dollar? Five bucks for some of these games is only a tenth the price!!

3. Not only have you provided games at a discount or for free - but you've provided free games ALONG with those already discounted or free games... I got more copies of The Witched Enhanced Edition than I know what to do with before I even noticed I was getting them!! I've got a copy just sitting there, doing nothing - absolutely, NOTHING.

4. SO... MANY... DEALS...

5. HOW CAN YOU SELL STUFF FOR SO LITTLE!?

In brief: I love you guys ;____;

Selling lots at a modest price is better than selling a few at a high price. Not that the prices on GOG.com are bad to begin with, but sales generate massive profits for digital distributors. Why did you think they all started doing it after Valve proved its effectiveness?

Pic Related

Because of people like me who are too impatient to wait for games to go on sale :D

Edit: and what Tpiom said below.

With 1.7+ million visitors daily they rely on selling many games instead of a few priced highly.

It also helps that they are not selling physical items so they don't have the cost of storing physical items. Full price or discount, it doesn't matter they have an infinite amount of stock. Because they don't have to worry about stock and they are working in a global market, it is in their best interest to sell as many of them as they can. When a customer buys something here, the money goes to gog and not the competition. Everyone else is making huge ass discounts, if gog can't compete with the competition and offer something the competition doesn't game over.

Not to mention that their friendly corporate practices, solid customer service, and constant discounts engender a loyal fanbase. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers, repeat customers are more likely to be loyal customers, and loyal customers essentially become free-advertising.

The difference between a repeat customer and a loyal customer is this: a repeat customer will purchase from GOG repeatedly, because they have had prior satisfactory shopping experiences (nothing went wrong with their purchases, Support was able to assist them with any problems, they enjoyed the games, they found the community helpful, etc.); a loyal customer is one who will preferentially purchase their products at GOG even at the customer's own expense/detriment. For instance, one who buys a game on GOG even though it has been available at a competitor's for months (in which case it is a time expense, the customer "lost" time in which they could not play the game) simply because they prefer to purchase their product on GOG. Finally both repeat and loyal customers become free advertising, they lend assistance on the boards answering questions, they tell their friends and co-workers about the cool site that carries awesome games, they generate community content just for the hell of it, they hold giveaways, etc, etc. All things that in general help GOG just because the customer had a string of good experiences, and wants to share it. Which is neat! It's just not many companies actually manage to cultivate brand-loyalty well anymore, and it is nice to see it done right. Happy customers mean looser wallets, which means happier GOG.com, which means more rewards for the customers, which means more customers, which equals profits to GOG, etc. It's the best vicious cycle you'll ever see. :D

That's true, but how much does the bandwidth cost? I've downloaded some of my games here 3 times or more.

I stand corrected on that point, I forgot about that. Well, they don't have to pay as much for the physical facilities of storing all those game which frees them from having to be concerned about stock. But they do have the trade off of having to be concerned about having a good network infrastructure and ensuring they stay online at all times. Each moment of downtime is money being lost for them.

Bandwidth is pretty cheap in data-centers.

Users of residential internet get ripped off.

I pay about 60$ of residential bandwidth with 125 GB monthly allowance here (ok, there are a couple of services thrown in as well).

I pay 20$ a month for a VPS at a data center which has a better bandwidth and 10 TB monthly allowance (you read that correctly).

I'm not GOG staff but seeing that the fixed costs are really low for them I guess that constant sales and promotions and good service result in huge profits provided that enough people buy it. The more the better. The more sales, the more sells, the higher the profits.

So unless the market is saturated at some point, they are doing everything right. It might not work out in the long run though. Just look at the last sale. I didn't buy anything because I already had everything I wanted to play.

Just think of the sales price as the current true value of a downloaded game. I'm not sure how much of the bandwith is paid by them and how much paid by you through the monthly fee to your ISP.

The latest number I heard were about $0.03 per GB but I don't know who has to pay it.

http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/01/dirty-little-secret-4k-streaming-content-owners-cant-afford-bandwidth-costs.html

You guys had a big office party last night, didn't you? :D

It generates customer goodwill, which brings in more customers in return. The process you need to go trough to figure out your game is, in fact, not working, is probably quite troublesome - in all honesty, I can't see the feature being used all that much, most people will just forget about their 10 bucks if the game doesn't work. But it's a nice option to have nonetheless. When 10 000 people pay 1 dollar, you get 10 000 dollars Free games bring in more customers, which in turn brings more paying customers, which generates more money.

Make no mistake, GOG is not being altrustic; they have just implemented fairly good business model and are very good at marketing and selling their product.