GOG

i figure it's a momentum thing.

Valve benefited from being First To Market with this model. They were already well established before anyone else tried to make their own.

epic games store, ubisoft connect, and also whatever used to be origin, all these launchers were HEAVILY marketed and users were shoehorned into them as a mandatory condition of playing a game, and they are all floundering.

GOG, though? No marketing. No coercion. Mostly it's word of mouth and good will. And they are doing pretty alright. They were also NOT being first to market. They furthermore did NOT waste loads and loads of cash trying to push themselves onto people. Furthermore, you buy a game from GOG and you don't even NEED to install their launcher! All their game installers function perfectly STAND-ALONE!

I'd say, with all that in mind, GOG is literally doing better than anyone that isn't Steam.

And in my view, they are ever improving, even now.

Eh, GOG is doing alright. I switched almost completely. If there is a GOG version, I buy it even if it is more expensive - which it very often isn't or just very slightly. And I'm saying this as someone who is playing all of this on a SteamDeck.

GOG also has a partnership with Amazon Luna. You can play some games you own on their service (like through a fire tv stick). It's a smaller library than what all is available on GOG. And it requires an Amazon Prime subscription. (I know some people don't like Amazon, and for good reasons. Still thought I'd mention.)

Gamers just don't care about non-intrusive DRM. The ideological downside of losing access to a game at some unknown point in the future just isn't real enough for many people to care about. If there were more examples of it happening (e.g. The Crew) I think we'd start seeing a culture shift. I do think there are a fair number of gamers who will skip buying games just because they include worse DRM like Denuvo, but games that ship with Denuvo are typically also just bad games, so the intention of "voting against DRM with your wallet" gets a bit diluted.

GOG is missing critical convenience features. Like the ability to buy and gift games. Or even just buy a gift card for their games. This would be a yearly buy for my nieces and nephews but there’s no availability. I keep asking. It keeps not being there.

I'd say GOG's position only proves the point of Epic and the ongoing class action lawsuits against Valve. Steam is deeply entrenched in the market and uses shady tactics like telling developers not to sell games for less outside Steam. You'd think offering good features and better practices would help, but it has not. Gamers are overwhelmingly positive about GOG, but most feel tied to Steam, and only a handful buy from GOG. It's no wonder Epic prioritized exclusives.

I prefer GOG too but Steam is simple, no installation needed for the games, has more games at the same price.

I switched to gog, but with the steam deck it's more convenient to have games on steam so I switched back since I bought it. Also I like indie games and there are many missing titles on gog

Having been a gog account holder for...waayyy longer than i care to admit:

Gog started off with old games in DOS wrappers, that was their niche. Modern games and galaxy are relatively new additions. So they've been coming up behind steam, but they're definitely getting there

EGS strongarms their position by dumping money in more immediate strategies. Steam is one of the earlier to stick around, they're discreet and they have well-integrated social features. Other big players some years ago I'd say that must think DRM free = piracy, but nowadays it seems more like a case of "you will own nothing and be happy".

Meanwhile, GOG has the tendency to be stretched thin monetarily, its launcher sucks, they do some big blunder every few months (including a potential geopolitical one with Devotion), their social features are the best they've ever been (reads "miserable", instead of "abysmal"), and only in recent years the worries about ownership and privacy seem to be becoming mainstream. Also GOG's previous CEO seemed to only appear publicly to do damage control with crocodile tears, and their communications and support depts. felt as empty as the Linux maintenance dept.

However, in this past year, they've been doing quite a lot changes hopefully for the better, and that due to culminating with Michał buying the company off CD Projekt, I feel like those were demands of the purchase process that must've been in the works at least since the changes began.

So aside from the recent AI blunder (old habits die hard, eh?), I'm curious to see if the changes for the better will keep building up.

@RetroHax EN : Because it's “neither here nor there.” They preach ethics but only do things halfway, with old games that have bugs that make them unplayable and missing features (fewer languages) without any rational explanation. But they could go further and attract a certain audience thanks to this:
stop one-off sales and instead offer a steady reduction to a reasonable price that doesn't change, more Linux games, free games...