I love the idea of GOG, I genuinely do, but more often than not I find myself having to weigh economics over ideals. Case and point I have Steelrising - Bastille Edition and Terror of Hemasaurus in my shopping carts for Epic Games and GOG. The Epic Games price is $36.06 while the price on GOG is $45.08. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is if a game is sold on GOG then by default it is a DRM-free game regardless of platform, so that isn't a reason to choose GOG over another platform when the price disparity is so large.

I don't know how feasible it is but GOG needs to make this a harder economic decision for me, instead of an emotional decision because emotional decisions usually lose out to a bit of patience, case in point in the time it has taken me to type this post I've settled on taking the economic savings offered by Epic Games. Close the gap GOG.

Incorrect. There are games here which have had their DRM removed but remain DRM-laden in Steam and Epic. Too, for the most part the (I know, not all) games here don't require any client to download or install (and this includes Galaxy).

This is a niche store offering offline client-free installers to its customers. True it's not super-competitive in pricing, but those looking for a bargain here usually wait for the opportune moment to purchase as cheaply as possible, usually during the big sales. This is what bargain-hunting is all about after all.

How does that even work? A bundle of some kind? The games have different developers and publishers so I don't see a connection. For the US, Terror of Hemasaurus should be -30% $9.09 in both stores, while Steelrising - Bastille Edition should be -35% $38.99 on EGS but -40% $35.99 on GOG.

Epic currently has a 25% off coupon on purchases of 15 bucks and higher.

Thank you.

Did you exclude all off Epics own self payed stuff they throw their Fortnite money at to drag customers to their store?

GoG does not have such a game they can use to make up the losses they make with their store. Instead they try to break even with GoG at last.
While breaking even is not the point of Epic. It wasn't in the last years, and it seems like it still isn't.
GoG simply can't pay another 25% off from its own pocket in addition to the sales the publishers are ok to do.

It is the way many (mostly US) companies worked in the past years.
Burning money for a bigger market share in the hope you will get big enough to be in a position where you can make the prices so you can finally rip your customers off.

It goes wrong more often then it works though. Best example is currently the streaming market where nobody was able to be the last one standing or at last the dominating one and now they either loose money or have to call up higher prices.

In my opinion, and direct experience, GOG pricing is fine. Here are my last two orders:

Date - Total
Title - Price
In USD

Nov 9, 2022 - Total = $20.13

King's Bounty: The Legend - 1.74
Heroes Chronicles: All Chapters - 2.49
Soulbringer - .59
Avernum: The Complete Saga - 3.59
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - Missions and Monsters - 3.24
Darkwood - 4.49
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones - 3.99

Oct 30, 2022 - Total = $19.82

Driver®: Parallel Lines - 2.49
Blackguards Special Edition - 1.19
Blackguards 2 - .99
Okhlos: Omega - 3.24
Anno 1404: Gold Edition - 3.74
AER – Memories of Old - 1.49
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun - 3.99
Sword Legacy Omen - 2.69

The prices are whatever GOG decrees, but the total is the real amount spent for actual games received.

I'm not here to defend GOG. No corporation is my, or your, friend. It's easy to point out examples of poor value (almost any new software or hardware), so it's only fair to note good value as well.

Also, almost any personal definition of "value" will be highly subjective.

From the looks of it, nearly everything was 'on sale'. If you mostly sell when it's on sale, then maybe the prices ARE too high.

Considering prices tend to be higher here than other platforms make it annoying instead of being a fair shake. (Oh we'll sell you X at Z, but only if you pay 20% more....). Feel like you're being shaken down.

Personally i haven't made a single purchase since 2016/2017. If all games are $1 each I'd probably reconsider, or packages of say entire consoles/systems (Genesis, NES, SNES, 8bit Atari, etc) for $20 i'd go for it.

Yes, those are "sale" prices.

Yes, I'm aware of the sellers technique of tryng to make "sale" prices look better by inflating "normal" prices.

My value judgement is based on the actual amount of money spent factored by the actual items received (gained access to).

Also, same conclusion as my previous post.

Lot of SE titles going for ridiculous prices anywhere atm. ELysium Fields, Diofields Chronicles, Chrono Trigger, Triangle Tactics, Octopath Traveller, Tomb Raider collection.......... Not that i need any new Tomb Raider game any more.... not with that HUGE give-away done by EPIC a couple of months back. They gave away the whole Trilogy for free, for free! how can one compete with free stuff?!?! It is like they are supported by the cartels or sumething.

Btw news is, TR 4 is in developments \o/

Is this some kind of regional thing, as for me (in northern EU) GOG is the cheapest at the moment for that particular game?

Steelrising - Bastille Edition:

GOG: 35.99€ (59.99€ - 40%)
Steam: 38,99€ (59.99€ - 35%)
Epic: 38,99€ (59.99€ - 35%)

It sounds odd in US it is the reverse, and it costs considerably more than for me. Is the discount still the same, -40%?

EDIT: Or is there some additional extra discount coupon on Epic that someone mentioned? Either way, at least for me currently GOG offers a deeper discount than either Steam or Epic.

Anyway, I would buy it from GOG either way because they officially support the game (single-player) as a DRM-free product, and I can download/install the game without a client (helps a lot if I want to play it in e.g. Linux too). Oh and GOG has gogrepoc.py, I am not aware of steamrepoc.py or epicrepoc.py. :)

CD Projekt could pull Cyberpunk 2077 and its expansions from Steam and make it GOG exclusive, if they wanted to boost GOG sales.

Obviously in the overall picture they would end up making less money, but GOG could still be making more money as a unit.

So there are some ways to go if they wanted to make GOG a priority, but obviously it's not the most important business for the parent company.


And about the prices.
Back in the day, GOG used to talk about the danger of devaluing games with excessive discounts.

Obviously with GOG offering 95% discounts these days, that, like many other early GOG things, is history by now.
But at least GOG officially has stated that they are not trying to offer the cheapest prices, so anyone looking for those should not be surprised or disappointed if the cheapest place is not GOG.

Personally I don't care about prices, I only care about DRM-free. I'm not subscribed anywhere else, due to the latter fact. I'm not rich, of course, so I only buy games on sale and only when my backlog allows me...

Yeah, that's not correct. And even for the games that are DRM free on other platforms, you don't get a packaged offline installer that you can stick on a USB and put on another computer which will install all the dependencies and make sure you've got registry keys in place etc., which GoG provides.

Ultimately, these days, everyone is feeling the pinch, so if you don't feel like you can't afford the extra for the DRM-free GoG release and want to pay less to rent from another store, I don't judge that. Just remember that price is only one of the factors when considering the value of a product.

An even bigger problem than just "price competitiveness," but related the OP's point, is that most or all of the highly wanted titles for GOG already get released on EGS for free long before they ever come to GOG, i.e. Alien: Isolation, the Batman Arkham games, etc.

Or even if they are not released on EGS for free before they come to GOG, then their future sales on GOG still becomes negated anyway, by EGS' previous free giveways of those game games, i.e. Frostpunk, Kingdom: Come Deliverance, the first Pathfinder game, Mutant: Year Zero, etc. etc.

So this begs the question: why would a GOG customer want to double-dip and give away free money for nothing, more or less, to re-buy a game that they already have received for free on EGS?

Some may argue "for DRM-free offline installers that EGS does not give you"...and while that is a true point, I'd counter-argue that it's still a very hard-sell on GOG's part to expect customers to part with money to buy a game that they already have for free on EGS.