In its quarterly earnings call, CD Projekt said its GOG games storefront is losing money. However, it has a plan to hopefully prevent additional financial losses.
Part of the plan is a refocus. GOG started as Good Old Games and offered DRM-free versions of older, classic titles. Over the years, it turned into a more all-purpose storefront, similar to Steam or the Epic Games Store.
According to CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz, GOG will return to its original model. That means offering a “handpicked selection of games with its unique DRM-free philosophy.”
The other part is GOG leaving the cross-division Gwent consortium. This means the storefront will not shoulder any development costs and will not share profits from the development consortium.
It’s too early to tell whether these cost-saving measures will help. GOG saw a slight uptick in revenue, but also saw a net loss of $1.14 million in the most recent financial quarter.
In all, the storefront lost $2.21 million in the last three financial quarters. This compares to the $1.37 million in profit it garnered over the same period in 2020.
GOG isn’t the only storefront feeling the crunch. The Epic Games Store hasn’t yet made a profit and isn’t expected to do so for another three years. Then again, it has the juggernaut that is Epic Games behind it.
Then again, folks have become more entrenched in other storefronts. Steam, for example, has seen a steady increase in the number of peak concurrent players over the last eight years. It helps that Steam is the most popular games storefront on PC.
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