The simple fact that the GOG's representative (elcook) came here to assert that changes are being made to satisfy the customers (even if slighty ones) is a proof that their finances are being hurt and they will think a lot about that in the next year.

Tbh its still very unknown to what their plan is for the site. One of the (my) most hated features the hovering vids has gone for now yes, but we've been told its something they woun't remove, then something they are looking into, then something they are just testing and that its only temporary.

Don't know what "curator" collections actually mean? Looks like "ad space from sponsors" to me. Anyway, I just avoid the main page. The only thing I really need to know is what new games were released here and if the my games library section is still working.

Of course they are. People who can't set their local currency anymore will probably miss a deal before they find the solution in the forums or get an answer from support. And people who visit GOG with unsupported browsers and get greeted with a messed up frontpage, will probably think that GOG isn't a trustworthy site. For them it isn't a problem with their browser. The rest of the internet works well for them, so gog.com must be a botch job of some scammers.

And then there are some of us "grumpy old gamers" who still remember the GOG from the past and decided not to buy here anymore before GOG gets their shit together again (lack of interesting releases, missing patches, Twitter drama, communication skills with their community, horrible website redesigns, putting lots of work into stillborn features like crossplay for Galaxy or weird #FCKDRM "initiatives", ditched principles, etc).

Those are all pretty minor problems that don't affect many people. But GOG has quite a few of them, so it adds up to something they'll notice over time. And seeing how slow things are going here (what the heck were GOG's web developers doing the past three months? Disabling auto playing videos because the load was too heavy during the sale? And how old is Galaxy now? Was there any meaningful development since it left beta? What was Galaxy's dev team doing the last couple of years?), they'll keep on collecting annoyed users who don't like shopping here anymore.

The big bosses at GOG don't seem to have any plan... They're trying hard to make GOG a big player in digital distribution, yet they fail to make the right steps to build a team that knows what they're doing. And they're skipping important milestones, necessary to reach their goals. You can't tell devs to put work into their games to enable Galaxy's crossplay if you don't even sell a significant number of copies. GOG is still a niche store. They need a bigger market share before they can tell people to enable DRM free crossplay multiplayer for their DRM'ed games that don't even get released here. Current GOG is a store for semi-old games and indies. They can't even get feature complete games (missing online functionalities) or patches. What made them think that crossplay is important in their current situation?

Better put some work into stuff that's important for users/communities nowadays. But they'd have to talk with us and other gamers to find out what people want. And for that they'd need a community manager (not a Twitter guy who occasionally locks threads on GOG) who doesn't leave or get kicked after a few months. That would make more sense than to pay web or Galaxy developers who don't really develop anything...

tl;dr - Yes, I think they're noticing that something doesn't go as well as planned. But knowing how the "new" GOG ticks, they'll probably invest a shitload of time to develop some very important new feature (like a streaming service for Galaxy, or a way to record gameplay) instead of talking to us and fixing things -.-

GOG is going to have a pretty hard time in the years that come. They tried to set themselves up as the main Steam-competitor, but they largely failed, and now Epic are on the scene together with Discord. That means it's too late to achieve that goal. Now they'll have to fight harder than ever to just survive in a much more difficult market.

Epic in particular has already proven that they're going to do whatever it takes to become a big player, and while everyone are talking about how this will affect Steam, GOG is likely to be one of their first victims.

If GOG had still been Good Old Games, and instead expanded into different retro platforms et.c., then they would have still had that niche basically for themselves. Epic isn't going for it, neither are Discord or Steam (though Steam isn't going for anything, they just are). But that wasn't enough.

Oh, well.

GOG should have tried to set itself apart by adding store sections for good old movies and/or books. They would get much more respect.

Pretty much. And hey, any game becomes an old game eventually, devs no longer care or are gone for good, publishers give up on it or are gone for good, it becomes too tricky to get to run on current hardware and OSs and somebody with that expertise can step in...
And on top of that, there are the crowdfunded ones where GOG versions are promised during the drive, in which case they'd have to be here and under GOG's terms, and whenever I say this I'm referring to the original ones, not just DRM free.
If anything comes on top of that, from studios they have good relationships with, indies that want any opportunities they can get, assuming it's not crap quality, it's a bonus.
They tried movies and didn't work. Rights are a mess. Though then again, it didn't work because users pushed back against them region locking, only releasing in certain regions according to deals, yet they started adding region locks for some games too, so so much for that value as well.

May be some market for some DRM free ebooks (Amazon has the DRM-ed one cornered), but no idea how the rights for those work out.

Good Old Games are finite and once everyone has everything, what are they going to do? The move towards a proper store was the right one....just the way they are doing things isn't good.

Also, real.geizterfahr put together some points mentioned here and there pretty well, especially the part about lack of proper communication. If GOG had a BF/GF, he/she would have left a long time ago.

Books and movies, digital cultural media.

Cavalary already covered the relevant parts. Additionally, there is pretty much no money in digital books (in addition to it already being past peak-popularity). So it's not worth it.

The Epic thing can go multiple ways. Epic is promising to create a completely free platform for chat, matchmaking, networking etc that's open to everyone. If they succeed, they'll make GOG's life much easier and reduce their costs. Also, the hardest thing for GOG has been to get users to give them a chance. Users prefer having their games on Steam. But if Epic actually makes a dent in Steam's monolithic control, users may be much more open to trying other storefronts.

Galaxy networking was clearly a flop, simply because the small user base on GOG doesn't justify devs putting in the effort to support it as well as Steam. But if Epic's free networking services become the default, GOG can easily ride that wave.

One thing GOG could really focus on is a patching system, where GOG can install a title with all needed patches, including ones that improve the game optionally. If I knew that buying a game on GOG really meant everything was included, including all patches that make it work better, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a copy here. Currently, GOG's version is sometimes fully playable but sometimes not, and I then need to hunt for patches that could disappear off the Internet at any moment. Make PCGamingWiki irrelevant by hosting all the patches and providing options for installing different ones.

Yeah, but realistically speaking they've just released a fraction of the good old games out there, and they could have kept it up for a decade or two before the point where they've come anywhere close to "exhausting" that resource. And by that time, a ton of games that are new-ish today would be "good old games".

My main suggestion for expansion has always been to cover more old formats instead of just old PC-games. GOG could have been THE retrogaming destination for PC owners if they had done things differently.

The best way to expand to modern games would have been to start a sister store, maybe with shared accounts. "Indie games from the makers of Good Old Games" or something. Then they would have still had their niche store, and not this mess which is neither fish nor fowl.

Well, whatever. It's a dead horse, I guess. They made their choices, and now they're stuck with them.

Really? So time doesn't pass? "Old" must mean from before a certain set date, not, uh, being a certain age, a certain number of years old?
And new people don't show up? I mean, seems to me they're all about drawing new users, existing ones be damned, so could also be new users who don't yet have everything. If anything, people keep being born and reaching an age where they want games...

I guess it's a matter of perspective. For me "old games" certainly does refer to games before some threshold. Like, I wouldn't consider a 2004 game old and I doubt I will do so in ten years. On the other hand, ten years ago, I would have put the 90s games into the "old" category. For me, it also has to do with technology and that's how I interpret "Good Old Games".
Obviously, "everyone" means the relevant number of people or rather, an unrelevant number of people that does not have everything. People who are born and grow up don't necessarily look at the past (this isn't just the case for games). Additionally, in an age of remasters and such, old games become, unfortunately, a little bit less relevant as they thus also show up on other stores. And don't forget that they have to support their infrastructure and as such, they need to have people continuously buying stuff. And also, we are talking pre-2012 (before they renamed and started selling recent games), not sure why you would bring current changes into the discussion.

epic is only doing a store for the popularity of fortnite if that was not popular they wouldnt have any store, some games are also GOG exclusives and for devs why not jsut have your games on all the platfroms to reach as many people as possible, im stil lwaiting for sniper elite v2 and v3 on GOG or discord games, i dislike steam always have

i think GOG need to reach out to developers if they dnt do so already, like other people have said trheres plenty of old games out tehre that are not on GOG, like why cant they contact gaming companys who owned all these games in the 90's like having legal emulation where you buy old console games but run them through GOG and also giving the devs of these old games money. like ive said in mutiple threads im waiting for sniepr elite v2 and v3 on GOG and with the announcement of a V2 remaster last month it might be likely that the original V2 may come to GOG, as the remaster is jsut going to be steam only anyways