That's my case. I had already bought several games over the last few months (since I joined GOG in January) and I still haven't played most of them. I might buy more games before the sale ends, but I just don't need them right now. The time I can dedicate to gaming is not what it used to be...

It is a little disheartening to know that discounts have to go so low for people to buy games, but the companies did this to themselves when they devalued their products so much so often that big sales like this are times people buy.

As for me, I have not even downloaded 50 games yet out of my inventory, let alone playing them and the "finishing them" aspect is laughable at this point.

Although I find the idea of "finishing" a game odd for my gaming style. I guess a lot of players these days are one and done. Play the game to the end and move onto the next one. I am different as the "finish" is not really defined for me in a lot of games. I really like arcade games (as a genre style term used now) in that getting high scores on games like Pac-Man CEDX, Super Stardust HD, shmups, Tetris, Pinball, etc. always brings me back to get better.

Perhaps you have to be from a certain era, but just because you could beat games, Mega Man series, Super Mario series, Sonic series, DKC series, Castlevania series, TMNT games, didn't mean you never played them again. I went back to those games all the time.

Also, I have bought games that I never got to the end (overwhelming majority), that I played and played a lot and really enjoyed.

I own the Disgaea series and I have never beaten a single one despite spending large amounts of time in them. I basically work to get all the main characters and open up most of the things you can do in the game and then just plunge into the item world and side quest stuff. And the next thing I know I have Level 150 characters and my main story game opponents are level 25.

I've bought nearly 50 games. Few because of nostalgia factor, few I wanted to play them earlier, but couldn't, few to complete series, few had some really nice videos on YT, few completely different to what I’ve played earlier, so now I'm reasonably happy. Still I have some games on my wishlist, I probably add few more titles in the future too, but now the only problem is time. I want to complete, maybe not all, but nearly all games I have here and in other shops. For me important part was to have digital copies of favourites games. Strange, but three games in three different shops, but now everything is ok I would say.

More than I expected:

Kathy Rain
1979 Revolution: Black Friday
Z: The game
StarCrawlers
Planetbase

Will probably get Abe's Odyssey & Exodus and The Night of the Rabbit.
Thought about Duskers too, but then I remembered I rarely enjoy rogue-likes in the long-run.
Zombasite seems cool, but is just too damn hard for me, I tried the demo and could not get anywhere.

If you buy many games ...
If you buy games just to play around with them for a while ...
If you're not sure whether you're going to like the game at all ...
If you're not sure whether your rig can even run the game very well ...
If you already have a ton of other games to play ....
If you're not exactly rich ... etc., etc.
... then you can't buy each and every game you're mildly interested in at full price.

If you're the type to replay one game over and over again and get 100+ hours of fun out of it, you hardly need to buy 300+ games anyway. You can buy select games at full price and skip the sales.

And if you like arcade games like Tetris, Arkanoid etc., you can find many nice enough freeware titles on the net. Would you buy a ton of these for $15-50 each? (Not that GOG even sells many games of that kind.)

The reason why people only buy with huge discounts is not just because of the sales, but also because of the huge competition. The way it is now, people also pay for stuff that they don't play and that money is split among a huge pool of publishers and developers. The alternative would be people buying much fewer games at higher prices, with the likely result that less developers/publishers would profit from it. The sales with huge discounts are also there because it's much more attractive for devs/publishers to get e.g. 25% of the asking price than not getting anything at all from a customer. And it doesn't really cost them much to sell off digital versions of game for cheap prices to customers who wouldn't have bought the game otherwise. If someone waits for a high discount on a game, that probably means they weren't all that interested in the game anyway.

For quite some time after GOG first started up, many people were asking why they didn't do big yearly sales like Steam does. Their answer was always that they felt is 'devalued' games to offer them on deep discount. And while I think there is somewhat of an effect like this, I'll counter this with the same observation I pointed out to GOG lo these many years ago:

deep discount sales are the only reason I have such a large library (and, consequently, a large backlog). I've spent a ton of money on games I've not even played yet - and may never play - simply because they looked mildly interesting or there was some quirk about them that piqued my interest. But make no mistake: there's no way in hell I'd have bought many of these game at full price. So these developers and publishers have made money off me by putting their games on deep discount that they'd otherwise never have seen. And because of this, I've found some developers whose games I've really enjoyed and have bought their later releases at full price because the previous title was so enjoyable. I do still buy games at full price. I'm pretty sure I can't be the only one in this boat.

I also re-buy some titles on deep discount just to have a DRM-free copy on GOG. This, as well, is something I'd never do if the games weren't on sale. Again, I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Then there's the "gotta catch 'em all" mentality of game collectors that want everything in their collection. These people are picking up games on discount that they'd likely never buy at full price just to have a bigger collection.

Finally, one other situation I've seen is gamers that absolutely refuse to buy games full price with DRM, so they buy these games only when they're on deep discount (this is what I do as well)

Now, are all of these cases generating more or equal money than if the games weren't discounted? Who knows. But the anecdotal evidence in my case suggests that it's making money for them. And I highly doubt they'd continue this practice if it didn't mean a better bottom line over time.

My 2 cents.

*edit* Actually, if you're interested, take a look at my list (post number 2 on page 1). The only game I'd have bought if it weren't discounted in that entire list is the Sam and Max game (and that's only because my daughters wanted it). All of the others were languishing on my wishlist because they looked mildly interesting but not enough to pay full price. So that's 35+ bucks I spent that would otherwise have sat in my wallet.

^This... It's more like a subscription plan for me. I don't play the vast majority of what's in my library, but I buy lots on sales because it just adds to the pool of games and gives me an option for one random day in the future. Like you, I figure the money is just getting spread over the gaming ecosystem for this optionality. Kindof like Netflix - I only rarely watch it, but when I do, I know something will always be there when I do.
Gabe Newell did an interesting interview about this effect years ago. Basically they're experiments were showing the sales and discounts more than paid for themselves, sometimes in a big way. My guess is with all the experimenting with pricing that they were doing, they probably found the point of diminishing marginal returns, because I think the point of maximum discounting might be a couple years behind us (seems that way, but I'm not sure). Anyhow, it's interesting read that helps explain what Steam saw from a sales perspective.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/24/less-is-more-gabe-newell-on-game-pricing/

I'm a bit disappointed with this sale format, I got 1 game and got the free game, but the front page talks about "daily deals", while they were there since the beginning with the same discount. I prefer the sales with XPs, they are more interesting. Also why doesn't GOG make these "daily deals" really something in these sales, with higher discounts than usual? Also with limited copies, I wouldn't mind. At least there would be a reason to visit the site after day 1.

The Dagger of Amon Ra
The Colonel's Bequest
SWAT 4
Tropico 5 complete
Lords of Xulima
Deponia 2
Mount an Blade Warband + Addons
Inquisitor
Mirror's Edge

I read the Gabe article and I know that you can possibly, and some/many do, generate more revenue, but that gained revenue is far less profit per user. Thus, the product is still devalued.

Games that are exceptionally low priced create several problems.

1. It makes it possible to try argument: This is what demos are for, shareware and game rentals all cover the try before you buy. If people like the game you are out the revenue and profit of the full purchase for the cost of a rental at most.

2. When a product is so cheap, people will not give it a fair chance: A game might be great, but it may take 1-5 hours to get into and really understand and open up. If a person spends $40-$60 on a game, they are going to give it every chance to be liked. They will learn the mechanics, the gameplay and invest the time to understand the game.

At extremely low prices, people will not give the game a chance. If it is not instant gratification it is discarded and on to the next one. Often with negative reviews, and/or word of mouth about the game.

3. It is bought and never played: A game that is picked up at a higher price - even $15-$20 - is a game people are going to play and give a chance because that price point requires a try from most people. That try also is not an instant discard, and if the game is good or excellent, it will spread by word of mouth. But a game, no matter how great, if never played, will go unnoticed and never generate the revenue needed to keep a developer around or producing more good games.
This is why backlogs have gotten so huge for so many people.

Right now games are mostly being degraded to cheap collectibles for compulsory buyers.

Demos, shareware and game rentals hardly exist anymore for most games, unless you abuse Steam's refund policy as a trial service. If creating demos would be more profitable than sales with high discounts, there would be more demos and less sales. Game rentals can lead to the dev losing some revenue too and then the money they could have made goes to the third party who offered the rental service instead. Sure, from an idealistic viewpoint, these options might sound less devaluing than sales, but from a financial viewpoint they are obviously less profitable.

And if a product costs a lot of money, many people will not give it a chance at all. And if they buy and try it and find it is not to their liking, the negative reviews will be all the more devastating because the users will be bitter about spending such a huge sum on something they do not enjoy or value, and they will feel scammed. And people will pay much more attention to bad reviews, too, because they will get more cautious about spending money on games if they are more expensive and buying one means not buying others and spending all your time with this one only.

You're arguing from an idealistic developer's point of view who values the perceived quality of a game higher than the customer's time and enjoyment. If I don't want to slog through boring beginnings in order to get to the good parts of a game, that's my choice, and I don't want to feel obliged to play a game I don't seem to enjoy just because I paid a lot of money for it, Stockholm syndrome style. As a customer, I actually like the possibility to quickly switch to something different if I don't enjoy my time with a game, I waste enough time with games in general, I don't need it to be with games someone else thinks I haven't recognized the value of yet, when it feels like unpaid work to me.

You're also arguing as if the high discount purchases would replace the full price purchases, when in truth they complement them. There are still enough customers who buy a game on release day at full price and spend hours to get into it; the sale revenue is an extra from people who otherwise might not have paid for the game at all.

So far only "The Original Strife: Veteran Edition".

Edit:
Turok
Tharsis
Odallus: The Dark Call
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

I honestly on't know. I've never tried carrying a remake character into the post 2 classic games,

Well so far against my better judgement I got:

1. Crysis Warhead(for back-up)
2. Divinity Dragon Commander(for back-up)
3. F.E.A.R. Platinum ( for back-up!)
4. Stories: The Path of Destinies(not for back-up... fancy that)
5. 1979 Revolution : Black Friday(to actually play it)

Edit: Pulled the trigger and also got Starcrawlers