And in a few months, Steam will be just like Apple Store and Google Play, plenty of $1/£1/1€, because nobody would want to pay more than a 95% discounted price.

Few months after, there would be a radical crisis, where only a few AAA games could remain because of their fans, and plenty of indies struggling to reach "Steam top sellers", and less midsized games than now. Yes there still would be early access and crowdfunding but just like AAA fanbase, there just will be fans. Sudden massive discount a month after release would be the norm to keep attention.

And then, developers and publishers would scream for help from Valve, asking them to force people to pay more. But Valve will use the same model than TV now: transforming a web digital store onto an online service on demand. Where you would have to pay something like $20 a month like Netflix, or PSN+ or XBoxLive Gold. You will pay a rent for games, with limited time licence.

Video games won't be products anymore. They will be limited time services.

That will be the true end of PC gaming.

And that's the worse, many people will be happy and will be fine with that, and will be asking for that.

And then, I will have the whole rest of my life to hate the current and next generations.

I use both Steam and GOG. So do a lot of people. Of course they affect each other.

Now they just need to allow publishers to create packages together. Then they could create their own bundles without involving the HIB or other 'cuts' that they have little to no control over. ^^

People are here for various different reasons though and some of them don't care about DRM either way. I strongly prefer DRM-free personally and presume the majority here does but we don't really know for sure. Having said that, I've bought several games via bundles or other sales which were Steam based even though GOG does have them in their catalogue simply because the price difference on the particular promotion was significant enough to go the Steam route for me. For example, I bought the "Bundle #5: Indie Mashup" bundle from bundlestars.com last year for somewhere between $4-6 or so because it came with 10 games of which 4 were on my GOG wishlist. Don't remember the exact price paid but if I use $5 as an example, that's 50 cents per game in the bundle, or $1.25 each per game I actually wanted, with 1 other game that looks fun and 5 I'll probably trade for later or giveaway. The games in this bundle that I was interested in were Still Life, Still Life 2, Syberia, Syberia 2 and the best I'd seen them ever go on sale for on GOG was somewhere around $2-3ish. So despite being a big DRM-free fan, I'm willing to compromise a bit for deals like this where the money spent is pocket lint and the DRM (if there even is any) is of minor consequence.

I suspect many others share this sentiment judging from the preponderance of giveaways and code drops in the forums which the majority are Steam keys from bundles and various Steam related sales out there.

While GOG targets a different market segment than Steam does, people from all walks of life and motivations shop on both sites. Also if one reads the forum posts concerning the changes to regional pricing, many very vocal people have stated that they care more about pricing than they do about DRM and that they're happy to leave GOG as a result for what they perceive to be greener pastures elsewhere because prices are more important to them than anything else. Should Steam have better prices on certain games which are also sold on GOG and regardless of the DRM status on Steam, some number of people will most definitely buy from Steam as a result. It's just supply and demand and competition via pricing in the end. Some of us care about things like DRM or other factors but I think whether or not we have preferences or ideals like that, we're all in the minority compared to all shoppers out there worldwide.

GOG indeed considered deep discounts to be bad for the industry and they're probably right in terms of the profitability of things, but the customers demanded it and they responded in suit by providing deep discounts also eventually. If other trends become popular enough with consumers I wouldn't be surprised if GOG listens to their customerbase and provides similar changes here in the future also.

I suppose one could say that it's just the evolution of an industry business model over time for better or worse or more likely both better and worse depending on one's particular viewpoint. Either way, I think there will be no shortage of low cost games in the future one way or another, at one store or another. :)

GOG have stated this in the past? I assumed that it took them a while to get a big enough catalog and customer base to sell a high enough volume in order to offer deep discounts, not because they could have all along and just decided to do so recently. I'm sure the customers clamoring for it played a role, but I thought it was because of their sales volume holding them back.

Hmm, could that actually mean less or not so many above 50% discount sales in the future?

Anyway... i advise you all to stock up with this plugin if you haven't already :P

http://www.enhancedsteam.com/

Looks like it will be put to quite the use

Yup. I could give a crap about DRM. I want cheap and "old". I dont care if The Legend of Bruce Lee shows up here or Steam, I am buying it. So happens i still thinkits more likely to show up here, but thats neither here or there.

Yeah, there's an industry video presentation with them on Youtube which is posted a lot and one of the things they discussed in it is how they felt that the deep discount pricing that was happening is overall bad for the industry, but that since customers expect it they decided to provide this to customers as well.

I imagine that was a smart decision in the end. Distributors and publishers/developers will make less profit per title with such deep discounts, but they make up for that by having massively increased volume of sales and greater interest from consumers for games which further draws more customers and more purchasing power. I dunno how everyone else feels about it but I for one welcome deep discounts and bundles as it's allowed me to buy massive numbers of games that none of the distributors or publishers would have gotten a red cent from me for if it wasn't for the price being "right". :)

They purposefully overprice games anyway knowing in advance that there are lots of people who wont buy things until they go on sale, and that sales stimulate purchasing. That's nothing unique to gaming mind you but pretty much universal with most products on the market I'd say.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/06/gog-talks-preserving-value-of-games-slow-death-of-drm/

"Even while sales numbers skyrocket for both Valve and the publishers who line Steam’s catalog, GOG thinks they’re out-and-out hurting the industry.

“Heavy discounts are bad for gamers,” Rambourg explained. “If a gamer buys a game he or she doesn’t want just because it’s on sale, they’re being trained to make bad purchases, and they’re also learning that games aren’t valuable. We all know gamers who spend more every month on games than they want to, just because there were too many games that were discounted too deeply. That’s not good for anyone.”

And others at the same time.

According to and [url=http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1yy56p/steamwork_developers_now_can_self_discount_their/]this (see the Steamwork FAQ) sources, this can't happen.

With this many games on sale I'll have to make sure I keep my wishlist uptodate, at this point it's the easiest way to keep track if there's a sale I want

Picked up A-Train 8 so far... still hoping for that -75% Brother in Arms Pack some day xD

That's about how I feel about it. As you alluded to, they're making a sale that they may not have made otherwise without the big discount.
They're kind of like 1st class seats on an airplane. A pilot told me one time that the 1st class ticket sales cover the Airline's costs for the trip. The 2nd class ticket sales are gravy.

Thanks.

I'll just say that there are plenty of people out there willing to pay release day prices for games. I don't think that's going to diminish or disappear anytime soon.

Yeah, that's one of the quotes I was referring to, thanks for tracking it down. The other one was from a presentation from Iwinski IIRC.

I like your optimism. :)

Thats like part of basic psychology though, you train someone or something enough with the right bait , they will take it and repeat the same action. People unfortunately are affected by price more than anything else which is why the contents of that quote. Steam sales (last two sales were really shite tbh - plenty have said that) are really bad for the industry, for the devs, good for customers. Steam has trained their customers to expect new games for heavy discounts... having said that indie bundles are equally culpable for this effect as well - how many times do we heavy people waiting for a sale?. Honestly i dont know how that heavy discount model can be sustained by the market. JUst because steam does it doesnt mean everyone else does - although in practice that is what happens to a point :/. If you look at comments regularly however, you do find plenty of people are willing to purchase games from GOG without discounts.I believe in general GOG supporters/customers are nowhere near as cheapass as steam customers.... the same cheapass customers are imho generally those buying into bundles regularly....
I also don't think it will affect GOGs business model at all. Customers who go to Steam will buy from steam. Ones who come to GOG will buy from GOG.