There's not much to stick with now and never really was much of note from what I've seen since May 2017.

In that time I have bought 10 videos from GOG, plus the Double Fine Adventure Definitive Edition series of docos that was never available through the Movies section for some reason.

Of those, four are actual movies, the rest are some kind of documentary or concert. I could have bought a few others, but already had them from elsewhere. Some of those 11, I paid for, the others were free.

Back when they had a lot more videos than now, I might have bought some others, but the price being asked was way too much, has generally always been too much on average. So I am not surprised it has been dying a slow death.

Maybe GOG needed to promote the Movies section more, but to my mind the best way to do that is prices, and the subsequent roll on effect of numbers sold. So not only do GOG need to sell the notion of DRM-Free movies, but the importance of price as well ... a hard task no doubt ... likely harder than with games.

I've always been keen to buy more DRM-Free movies or videos, but they needed to carry what I would be interested in and for a fair price.

Never going to happen. Each movie and TV show has legal distribution rights sold to a variety of companies in different regions of the world whom have exclusive rights to distribute that content in that region. Virtually no content has global distribution rights owned by one company, and none of these rights holders want to voluntarily give up their exclusive rights to share the wealth with gog.com or any other company pretty much for any reason ever. Why would they if they can be the sole distributor in a given region or regions afterall.

Marcin Iwinski, former CEO of GOG did a Q&A session years ago on Twitch or YouTube where he fielded questions from customers about various things related to GOG, and licensing movies and TV shows was among the topics covered. They explained how the licensing rights for movies and TV shows were incredibly complex to navigate and that it was more or less impossible for GOG to get any kind of global distribution rights for anything ever because of it. They did a survey to find out if GOG customers would be ok with GOG getting limited distribution rights for movies/TV shows in individual regions that they could negotiate, but be unable to sell in other regions, as well as if people would be ok with the pricing being different in different regions where they could distribute, and having regional restrictions, and they got back a universal "no" from GOG customers more or less.

So the requirements that GOG customers as a whole would have on the entire movie and television series industry in terms of global distribution rights, and pricing, is fundamentally incompatible with what the owners of the properties would ever agree to, or ever could agree to due to having sold the distribution rights to other parties on a regional basis. This more or less ensures that GOG could never ever stand a chance to negotiate anything that their customers would ever accept as "ok".

Aside from that, these big companies that own these rights would likely never be interested at all anyway unless they strongly believed that working with GOG would move the needle of profit for them large enough to even make a dot worth of ink move on their financial spreadsheets, which is probably unlikely. It's just more profitable for them to do business as usual the way they are used to, and it is predictable outcome for them too which they would prefer as well.

I think that even if hell froze over 1000 times with liquid nitrogen that GOG would be more likely to acquire the entire video game catalogue currently sold on Steam and be able to sell it on GOG DRM-free 10 million years before they'd ever get the legal rights to distribute any meaningful movie or television show content based on how that stuff is tied up in legal rights in that industry right now.

I think GOG would be more likely to start selling women's clothing in a section of the website, or cereal or something before ever getting the distribution rights to mainstream hollywood movies etc.

I think GOG should stay away from this and concentrate on their core business. GOG already has enough room for improvement, to put it politely.

Ignoring the numerous weaknesses in the forum, it would be nice if we had equivalent content compared to Steam. So same patch levels, same add-ons, also multiplayer support instead of removing them, etc.

If something would be worthwhile, it would be to catch up with Steam in terms of community functions. But even that would take years.

Or just get more cool games like Fallout 4 or the Sony games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of DRM-Free and of GOG, but that doesn't blind me to its weaknesses.
It's about market shares and primarily about investing in the future. As soon as the market becomes problematic, the consolidations and bankruptcies come and then it pays off tremendously for those who are left. And anyone who doesn't take part will simply be left behind.

Amazon for example made very high losses in almost all of its first 10 years. Look at where they are today. That could have failed, but ultimately such investments are always bets.

I suspect that in the next two or three years we will only have a maximum of three providers. Amazon will definitely be one of them. Maybe Netflix too.

Absolutely

Well then too bad I was not aware of such a poll. No one likes regional restrictions, but having some movies be available in your region is far better than having none of them, so the community was wrong on this one.

It would be like saying that if GOG won't sell pr0n in Germany, GOG shouldn't sell anything at all in Germany.

The number of streaming providers is irrelevant if I cannot own my copy independently from some online service. For now I can still buy most content physically, but that is starting to change.

I think this will all begin to change once Physical Media disappears and there is an outcry for more ownership. It doesn't have to be GOG, I'll buy from anyone who sells me video DRM-Free, but GOG have dabbled in this in the past, hence my suggestion to try again. I think the demand will start rising soon.

If we really want to go down that road, I would argue that finding a DRM-Free "patch" for a game is far easier than recording a video stream yourself lol. Not that you have to record it yourself... Yet here we are, paying for DRM-Free games, because we believe in the principle that "fishing" should not be the only way to preserve our games.

I do not want to talk about legally-questionable means of media preservation, I want to talk about legal means of preservation. Legality out the window, I can preserve anything I want that way with ease already. This exactly why DRM is pointless, because it does nothing to stop the "fishermen", only hurting paying customers. Game studios are starting to realise that and with the upcoming death of physical media, movie studios may finally catch on as well. DRM doesn't work, people want a sense of ownership and paying customers should not get a worse experience than "fishermen". There is money to be made here for whomever figures this out and manages to convince the studio executives.

There needs to be a DRM-Free video store when Physical Media is no more. It doesn't have to be GOG, but GOG is already known for DRM-Free content and they've dabbled in video before. I just think they started and gave up too early.

This explanation was only intended to illustrate that these services could become profitable in the future as fewer providers share the market.

Personally, I also prefer physical films and I also think that the market will collapse. This is the only way providers can use their exclusive content to permanently retain customers. Ultimately, we customers decide whether we accept it or not. However, I don't have much hope.

Skeleton THIS is why I liked region free HD DVD and I don't believe in REGIONAL copyrights. If I am a fan of said show I will buy the best version, including extras. Case in point the original BR version of T2 is absolute TRASH with lossy audio and the video wasn't that great. Compare this with the Kinowelt HD DVD version packed with extras, some of which are HD DVD exclusives because of the formats feature set. But it had lossless audio and superior video.

Thankfully 4K is region-free. Also while regular Blu-Rays have 3 regions, they are thankfully very easy to change on PC (PowerDVD), because the region is completely software-based. The actual 5.25" drive has no region.

We should never forget the disparities between media that we consume.

Music CDs involve X amount of folk in the writing, performance, recording and production. There is of course a good amount of hard work and effort involved. Storage can also be a factor.

It is similar for books and games and TV series and movies, in the basics, but not the numbers and costs. Yet we often pay somewhat similar amounts for each as a customer.

Music we tend to consume repeatedly for the same album or specific tracks.

However, the average for books and games and TV series and movies, is to consume just once. Of course it depends on certain factors. Some kinds of books and games and TV series and movies we consume more than once.

I well remember when movies and TV series were only available on video. Jeepers they were usually hellish expensive, and you would never buy a video (VHS or Beta) unless it was something you knew you would watch repeatedly. That meant it would have to be some kind of classic worth repeated watches. With TV series, you might buy for similar reasons. Of course, if you missed seeing a movie at the Cinema and missed its rare TV airing, that could be another reason to purchase based on reputation etc. Some movies due to popularity did get regular repeated airing on TV. Similar issue with TV series. Then back then there was the Drive-In circuit, where movies were often repeated, especially in some categories.

Personally I only bought music concert videos or true classic movies or the odd comedy movies or series that could be enjoyed repeatedly.

So it is kind of weird what folk are prepared to pay for since the advent of movies and TV series going to DVD and then Blu-ray.

I am guilty of that last myself, so not entirely weird. But my excuse is I no longer go to the cinema, and of course the number of movies coming out now make it cost prohibitive to see all we might be interested in. Then there is timing factor ... finding the time to watch what is available and when it is airing, especially as we have half price Tuesday, which is when most prefer to see a movie ... unless they are affluent enough not to care.

I no longer go to the cinema, because of the behavior of others, especially younger folk and their selfishness when it comes to talking and using their phones, even just the light of a phone can be distracting, and some are real dumb leaving the click noise of the keys enabled. Then there is the silly bias of projectionists on occasion, where they have the bass or volume too loud and the focus wrong. So I decided long ago, with the advent of Blu-rays, and because I have a great sound system and good widescreen TV, that I would rather just buy what I was interested in watching. Of course that means I've ended up paying more to some degree, but when you factor in seeing a movie I loved at the cinema and so then buying it on disc anyway, at least I am not paying twice now.

So at the end of the day, price for me is everything. I refuse to pay too much and will almost happily go without, especially with all that is now on offer. And with a growing backlog that I cannot keep up with, I am never short of something great to watch.

But of course price is subjective, with some folk being prepared to pay almost anything for what they are desperate to get. There seems to be many such folk, and they skew things for the rest of us, often keeping costs too high.

P.S. Of course, before the advent of movies on video, you could only see at the cinema or drive-in or if lucky on TV. TV Series of course was only on TV. So we often missed out or stayed home to see something instead of going out. Our lives could revolve around what was on TV to some degree. Hasn't that changed.

Some very interesting news came out recently:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/european-geo-blocking-law-entertainment-opposition-1235716640/
I hope the EU manages to implement this law. It should certainly make video distribution a lot simpler.