Mostly to satisfy my own curiosity, I've created a basic analysis of GOG's recent Fall Insomnia Sale, which includes the numbers for each game broken down, totaled, and ordered 3 ways into simple tables:
1. Alphabetically,
2. by lowest to highest price, and
3. by highest to lowest gross sales in total dollars.

(Big thanks to Mondo84 for providing his recorded data to help ensure these tables are as correct as possible.)

The promo began on November 13th, 2013 at exactly 0600 PST (1400 UTC), and the first run of the 101 titles was over between 7 to 8 hours later, by 1400 PST (2200 UTC). The promo ended sometime between 0200 and 0500 PST on November 19th, 2013 (please let me know if you have an exact time). This puts it at almost exactly 6 days total time elapsed.

In total, there were 101 distinct game packages offered in the sale, first in relatively limited quantities, then in a second run that usually doubled the number of the first run, and finally in a third run that usually tripled the quantity originally offered. The total number of games sold was therefore very close to six-times the number of the original run.


Notable decisions I've made in this analysis:

- Every price ending with a 9 has been rounded-up by adding exactly 1 cent in an effort to present straightforward, mostly whole- & half-number prices. This rounding totals exactly $1167.55 (an insignificant 0.32%) added to the final dollar count from 124,000+ games sold.

- Titles shall have any leading "The" relocated to their end, shall have unnecessary subtitles truncated, and shall be ordered alphabetically by their first primary word. Example: "The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Enhanced Edition" shall be "Witcher 2, The".

- Total price is based on the lowest price offered for any given game.

While I personally witnessed and recorded the entirety of the first-run sales, much of my data was either systematically extrapolated or based upon the personal observations of fellow GOGer Mondo84 and the data he collected from other community members. Therefore, while there may be errors in the presented data - most likely in the specific quantity of games sold and resultant gross sales totals - the data presented here is believed to be correct by more than one direct source. There may also be a few price errors, as there was but a single price change that I know of (for "The Witcher 2", dropping from $6 to $5).

If anyone has any corrections they can provide (this goes for you too, blues!), please tell me, as I would like to ensure that the data contains the most correct numbers possible.


A few conclusions from this analysis that I find interesting:

- The average price was almost exactly $2.90 per game sold.

- A GOGer could have paid $257 for the cheapest 93 games, or $85 for the most expensive 8.

- "Neverwinter Nights 2", at just $4, blew everything out of the water, making MORE THAN TWICE the amount of any but 6 other games. "Don't Starve" also made a surprising showing at $5, narrowly beating the most-expensive "Dragon Commander". In the very-low-price category ($2 and below), "Planescape: Torment" and "System Shock 2" brought home the bacon, each sitting pretty at 8th overall in gross sales.

- The epically disappointing "Jack Keane 2" clearly wasn't worth the time it took to sell, the wide annoyance it caused or the endless derision it inspired. (Although the copious memes and jokes it spawned may have made it worth the wait after all!) And the mediocre income it provided seems to confirm that it was a mistake to offer it at its $12 price-point as part of this promotion.

- At 30% average income per game (excluding "The Witcher 2", the sales of which go directly to GOG's parent company - thanks to Dan for pointing this out), minus 2.5% to 5% for transaction fees and likely minus a similar 2.5% to 5% loss in additional serving fees - due to the inordinately high demand they most certainly experienced at various times during this sale (assuming they pay per GB served per month) - to GOG's CDN, EdgeCast, GOG should have made anywhere from 20% to 25% of the third-party-published gross sales from this promotion, + ~$9,000 from "The Witcher 2". (Of course, I would further deduct from this total their cost of offering loads of FREE games as well, but I have no idea what those figures look like.) That means they likely netted approximately $80,000 to $96,000 over the 6-day span of this promo.

I have no idea what their operating budget is, but I would guess that should at least cover the yearly salary of about 2 GOG staffers. I imagine that's quite excellent for a single week of sales.

If anyone is interested in this analysis, feel free to take a look:

GOG's Insomnia Sale Numbers - Analysis Tables

Whoops. Sorry i mean. Wow U actually kept track of every game details during this sale?

Well for the sake of completion maybe you should have put in the 2nd run numbers as well?

The most interesting thing to me is just to see what all 101 games actually were - strange that, for example, out of the series only HoMM 3 and 5 were on sale
Confirmed that I didn't miss out on anything that I really wanted for the price, which is nice...

I did, but that's what Christmas is for :)

this sale has taught me that there are quite a few unpopular games around here that a lot of people wouldn't even buy for heavy discounts.

Nice work!

What impressed me during the sale was the number of customers: seeing 1000 copies of a game sell in a few seconds, that confirmed my suspicion that we are many more Gogers that I thought until recently. I first took notice during the last 5th anniversary event, when many old timers of 2008 with very low rep posted to get a chance to win a game. I couldn't believe the numbers of people who had been members for five years, who were very aware of what was going on at Gog, and yet who had apparently never participated in the forum. Conclusion: the vast majority of members don't ever post at all. And it is clearly a mistake to evaluate the size of the community just by looking at the forums, like I did foolishly!

Before, I could think that Gog was not making so much money. Now I am sure they are doing fine.

I don't want to disappoint you, but you've missed it even 4 or 5 times (including freebies) :S

But remember - Christmas sale is about to begin! :>

Well, all I can say is it's a good thing you a good thing your not a therapist! ;-)

I remember my psychology exam few years ago. Professor: "I'll let you pass this time, but you have to promise me you'll never become a teacher".

So, I guess you're right :>

PS. I got an authorization to become a teacher after all :P But I'm not one, as I promised :>

but if a sale is done right (?), they can be flogged even if people do not want them

+1. I just with they had both Icewind Dale games in this promo.
With the prices of digital games lately, I'm surprised any devs can turn a profit, besides the few that get millions of sales.
I think just 5,000-10,000 in sales is enough to pay for a small dev teams salary.

Is gog the one that can front you money, but in return gog gets all the sales (or the majority of the sale) until they are paid back, then it goes back to the default CUT. what what what? Lol

Thank you for the detailed analysis.

You're welcome, much appreciated.

Thanks for all the positive feedback, everyone. I'm really glad that a few people out there found this helpful, or anywhere-in-the-same-galaxy as interesting as I did.

Regarding the 2nd-run numbers, as I said, I didn't see a reason to include them, as the numbers I witnessed didn't seem to deviate from the standard "2x" pattern (if the 1st run offered 100 games, then the 2nd offered 200), have different prices, or modify the total numbers beyond adding-up as normal. If anyone can provide me with simple observatory data that recalls any deviation from the 2x pattern during the 2nd run, then those 2nd-run numbers would need to be included, and I'd love to add them.

Shared this . Thank you .