Gog have been heading down this path since they dropped the good old games label due to the limited amount of old games which they could get and other stores could do "indie" games better and pander to the politically correct hipsters pushing them.
We've also seen increasing social media spying with gog and the claim they were feeding sales data off to google plus whatever is hidden behind gog-statics.
adamhm: And to top it all off, to do this with Epic's store in particular? Who have employed such scummy practices that it would have been less egregious if GOG had announced this deal with
Steam!
Steam has been worse but has more features and cheaper games. The way some people are complaining in this thread makes them look willfully ignorant.
krakataul: But for us consumers nothing practically changes (as we still get to buy DRM free games from GOG.com if we wish), other than our perception of GOG and what they (used to?) stand for.
adamhm: Nothing changes for now, but in 6 months? A year? Two years? Five years...? Only time will tell. It took some time for Humble to transition from being their own thing into becoming a mere Steam key reseller too.
Gamersgate went in that direction too. Humble was famous for it's shifty charity scheme.
adamhm: --> So it stands to reason that publishers may well decide "why bother with the time, effort and expense of a 'proper' GOG release of our game when we can simply release the game on Epic, have it be sold through GOG Galaxy and still target the majority of their userbase?"
AB2012: If GOG's "cut" comes out of Epic's with no renegotiation, then there may be more direct financial reasons for publishers to not do a proper GOG release:-
It depends if there is a drm free clause in this deal and easy gog conversion from the Epic files.
krakataul: Unfortunately, I am old enough and, as time goes by, more and more cynical to know not to put too much value on the "core values" of business entities, hypocritical and unethical stances are often the norm.
Public companies are forced to earn as much as they can for their shareholders depending on the countries laws