satoru: The cost to steam for adding a new game is literally zero.
dtgreene: Not quite. To add a game, they still need to add it to some database somewhere, and doing so increases the size by a small but non-zero amount. Storage isn't free, so there is some cost to adding a new game.
(It would be more accurate to say that the cost is "near zero", just like the cost of distribution.)
satoru: And every title they add, this cost goes up exponentially.
dtgreene: Again, not technically true. I would argue that, as long as new features don't need to be added to the store, the cost of adding a title only increases linearly. It may be a higher constant for GOG than steam, but it's still only a linear increase.
(If it grew exponentially, that would mean that adding X games would double the cost; unless X is *really* large, this would quickly cause the cost to increase to absurd levels.)
(Yes, I do feel like nitpicking at the moment. There aren't any major problems with your argument that I see, but there are plenty of minor ones, like this one.)
Grrr nitpicky but...... accurate so cant really say much :P
I think GOG needs to abandon their 'high touch' approach to approving and supporting games. It costs way too much to do so, makes it impossible to compete with other players (Steam/Epic) and makes revenue growth very difficult as you're highly relying now on 'mega hits' to stay afloat and can't take advantage of 'long tail' type of games
To me it feels like a situation my friend was in sales. the company wouldnt pay commission for deals less than $50k. But this seemed dumb. It might be way easier for a sales person to close out lots of small deals, rather than banking on a few giant ones to meet their quota. Like I could probably get a PO for a $20k sale without much issue. But if I need one for $100k I have to get a lot more approvals and annoyances. That company would lose out on an 'easy' $20k but would rather bank on the more difficult $100k deal since they dont get commission on it.
Basically GOG needs to
1) Move to 'minimal' curation policy. Basically just "is this game not total garbage"
2) get rid of in-house support of games. Do what everyone else does, and refer them to the developers for support
3) reduce refund window - the 30 day window is entirely based on their tech support, costs too much money, get rid of it. Note this doesnt mean 'get rid of all support'. You still need support for payment issues and account stuff. But get rid of the '3rd party game tech support' side of it. Do what everyone else does, 14 day 2 hour playtime window.
You've now dramatically reduced operating costs, and reduced the incremental cost of adding a particular game. Now you can have more 'niche' games on GOG.